General Politics

Sometimes I just need a space to rant about the Tories. Here it is! Enjoy.

I've not always been interested in politics. In fact, I made a point of saying how uninterested I was in politics all through secondary school, as if it was a unique personality trait.

What a difference a few years makes.

Ever since I read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine in 2019, I've been left-wing. If there's any book that'll radicalise you from apathy about politics, I can't imagine many better than Klein's shocking account of neoliberalism. It did also help that I turned 18 that year, old enough to vote for the first time in an election between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson.

Below is a selection of blogs on various political topics - from arts funding to lockdown dancing. Most of it is satirical in tone, and not all of it is that great. A lot of these are more for my own benefit than anyone else's, and I think that's how they read.

Nonetheless, here's some rants:

Cancel All Non-Vegans - 16/11/2023

I Don't Know Enough - A Dialogue - 10/10/2023

They're Partying, and We're Not Invited - 09/12/2021

No Control in the 21st Century - 20/03/2021

Truth is Dead. Long Live Truth! - 12/11/2020

Rishi Sunak: Saving Artists From Themselves - 10/10/2020

Introducing Spacebook: Facebook's New Programme for Interdimensional Travel - 24/08/2020

Metaphors are not Heroes (And Similes know Exactly what this New Culture of 'Essential Wording' Worship Looks Like) - 27/07/2020

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Things Got Bitter

Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon is sunbathing in Cyprus. Once invited to address the Oxford Union , the millionaire (who now goes by the name 'Tommy Robinson') is lounging in a five-star hotel, scrolling through his phone, sending messages to thousands of ardent followers. He had fled the UK after breaching a court order, after losing a libel battle in 2021. This wealthy, powerful, criminal terrorist, fleeing supposed political persecution in his home country in order to reap the benefits of a safer place abroad, is a figurehead of the anti-Muslim violence currently burning across the UK. He doesn't speak the local language, he's got a history of criminally stalking and harassing a woman , assaulting a police officer, and his libel case was against a 15 year-old. Naturally, this man, and all his followers, believe that powerful foreign terrorists are a great danger to our children, and that the best way to protect women is to close borders. Were the government of Cyp...

Finally, a President with Some Conviction(s)!

It should go without saying: this election result is really bad, actually. Kamala Harris, proud supporter of ongoing genocide though she may be, enthusiastic participant in the police state and generally vapid vessel for status-quo Democratic complacency though she may be... she's not a rapist with an endorsement from the KKK . In fact, her entire campaign, based stupidly, fatally, on the one selling point - "I'm not Trump" - does at least highlight the raw fact that Trump is indeed a particularly repulsive bit of bile for the American electorate to spew up into the blood-soaked walls of the "White House". Those who voted for Harris as a means to avoid the full-blown meltdown of democratic order Trump will inevitably unleash are not, actually, all terrible people who don't care a jot for the lives of Palestinians - many will be principled and active organisers against Israel who simply fear for what will happen to trans people, migrants, all women in Am...

My Defense Statement

On April 3rd 2022, myself and a group of other activists from Just Stop Oil blockaded an oil refinery. We stopped the distribution of fuel from a site owned by the biggest private oil company in the world, for a total of eleven hours. As a result, I went to court with eight other activists, charged with 'aggravated trespass'. Most of us represented ourselves in court, which means we had the opportunity to give a an 'evidence statement'. This is where we are given free reign to lay out why we were doing what we were doing on the day of our arrest. None of us were there to deny what we'd done, so we pled the 'necessity' defense - meaning, essentially, that we did it because we had no other choice . Here is the statement I gave, under oath, in a court of law, as evidence that taking direct action on the climate crisis is absolutely necessary. *** Standing in a courtroom, as a young person with what the legal system describes as “good character”, the remainder o...

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