In June of 2004, a bunch of up and coming Liberal Democrats together wrote “The Orange Book”, a publication which had the subtitle “Reclaiming Liberalism”. Within Lib Dem circles, it was highly controversial: most of its ideas and outlook were significantly to the right of your average Lib Dem activist (that not being particularly difficult, […]

June, 2018. A kid from the Deep South of the USA, Noah Hastings, is the biggest pop star in the world. One night on stage in New York City, Noah commits suicide by detonating a bomb attached to his chest, killing himself and ninety-one of his fans. The public and the media, both online and […]

In some ways, I think it’s probably remarkable Mark E Smith made it to 60. Well known for his drinking, not to mention his love of amphetamines (it comes up A LOT in Fall lyrics), Smith lived life on the edge for what seemed to be all of his adult life. None of this removes […]

This article contains spoilers. Only two main pieces of plot information are given over below, but if you really don’t want to know anything at all about the film, turn away now. “The Last Jedi” has received a mixed reaction so far. Critics, by and large, love it; hardcore Star Wars fanboys, for the most […]

A few days ago, the New Yorker published a short story called “Cat Person”, written by Kristen Roupenian. It tells the tale of a twenty-year-old woman named Margo and her brief affair with a man named Robert, whom she initially thinks is in his mid-twenties but actually turns out to be 34. He is also […]

“Morrissey’s Brexit love affair makes him the last true rock’n’roll rebel” is a headline from a recent Brendan O’Neill piece; “Morrissey is probably the only remaining music ‘celebrity’ in the world who tells the truth about politics.” tweets Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars. If you worship the very idea of Brexit, hate political correctness in […]

I hadn’t heard this album in a very long while before yesterday. In fact, I hadn’t really listened to the Police in some time. But I had “Wrapped Around My Finger” pop into my head from nowhere and this gave me a hankering to revisit the album; to see if I would find it stood […]

For a start, I know I’m somewhat late to this debate. However, I’ve only just seen “La La Land”, and I didn’t like it, in fact I found it crushingly dull, and I think I can explain why this is in terms that I haven’t read elsewhere. There have been many people who have critiqued […]

After my five year old daughter insisted on seeing “The Emoji Movie” and I thus resigned myself to having to watch it, I went through a phase right before viewing in which I was perversely looking forward to it. Reading the reviews, it seemed like the film was one of the worst ever made in the […]

Kiss, the rock band from New York that I find it hard to believe is still going, have been noted over their long tenure for many things: face paint, shagging copious groupies, breathing fire, explosions…..and really, really, really terrible lyrics. In fact, when I look back on Kiss, it is the lyrics that I find […]