Conversation with a (British) class denier
There are two things that disturb me about our conversation.
Firstly, the idea that a well-educated British historian would suggest that purely because he lives on the other side of the Scotland/England border this means he has should have no idea of social class, and secondly, that social class is something you can choose to identify with or not. (In truth, class chooses us rather than us choosing our class.)
This man admits to his decision to “censor” me and my comments at his blog. He decided to delete my final comment where I agreed with him that our discussion “had become dumb.”
To see how “dumb” someone (intelligent) can actually be, read the comments section of his blog piece here.
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"Berlusconi cabinet has an emergency holiday meeting"
(My winning entry in GlobalPost’s caption contest.)
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How the world of work has invaded the private sphere
“One example is the way many companies give their employees free mobile phones and computers, purportedly to help them work. In reality, it is so they can take their work with them.
That is the starting point for the conflict between the individual who gives orders and the body that obeys […] If the body is pushed too hard, it breaks like a machine that’s been asked to do too much.”*
It’s uplifting to read someone else in the media who shares your own opinions, especially about a problem that has hardly been publicly recognised as a problem at all.
Over a decade ago I first noticed this new feature of work life creeping quietly into outside work time on trains in Japan, a country where use and misuse of technology is often quick to happen. It was startling to me in the late 1990’s to see phones and computers so obviously being used to “extend worker productivity.”
(*Sidi Mohamed Barkat, an Algerian-born philosopher, professor and researcher at the Department of Ergonomics and Human Ecology at the Sorbonne, in France, quoted from a recent speech at CCCB, the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture, entitled “The Future of Labour.” [From an article by J.M. Martí Font in El País.])
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Thumbs down to democracy
“Let the state perish so that the markets can live.”
[EL PAÍS, 25/02/10]
A true statement of our times.
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Poland's heroes and Spain's heroes
A Polish blogger posts an enjoyable rant and rave that expresses so well the completely understandable outrage with a place of great culture and history being used as nothing more than a background for ignorant tourists to treat with indifference. A new statue in Krakov of Michael Jackson? (An (unpunished) child molester who could once sing and dance very well and is even respected by some (younger) people here in Spain.)
The Polish blogger provides a picture of semi-undressed "girls in Zywiec T Shirts." An image that reminded me of those living human mannequins in Kubrick's awful "Eyes Wide Shut" film: ready to serve as fleshy robots. In the town where I live not far from Barcelona there is even a cinema named in Kubrick's honour! The world picks some strange people to make heroes of.
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Poland's heroes and Spain's heroes
Thank you Brett. I have to be careful what I do not wish for though, to invert that old Chinese saying, as I once floated the idea of rebranding Bratislava as a Romance Capital for middle class professionals who wanted EASYJet accessibility to Slovak girls-prettier on average than the English ones on the market and eager and willing to rub along well with a fat walleted Brit. I virtually advocated prostitution, though not as obvious as the Thai brand, and not as danderous as the unknown and dodgy Russian Mail Order Bride industry.
And guess what ?
I got 4 emails telling me I was an ideas man who belonged to a marketing corporation and supporting my scheme. I was thunderstruck by that and realised that satire, if not dead, cannot compete with the near futuristic reality in which women are reduced to mass marketing along national branded lines.
Karl
Poland's heroes and Spain's heroes
It takes a humble man to admit his mistakes. I too once did a similar thing (at the tender age of 19)when I suggested that my former home town Canberra become a high rise capital like New York. I think this is just as bad as virtually advocating the prostitution of local girls, and maybe it's even worse! Around this time, I too got offers of work: to be a researcher/staffer for a (conservative) MP from Australia's massively over-developed Gold Coast. I declined the offer, but not because I (then) disagreed with skyscrapers along the beach. How naive and foolish I was. I also used to think that the free market should not "be interfered with." I woke up big time.
Brett
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