When I hear the phrase “democratic psychiatry” I immediately think of the rhetoric of “service user involvement” and the ideology of empowerment. These aren’t the directions psychiatry should take simply because this is the direction psychiatry is already taking and which it is already perfectly able to assimilate. I am […]
Sloganism for late 2013: “I feel protected by unpublished Suite A algorithms.” (J. Sjerpstra) – “I am on an angry squirrel’s shitlist.” – Join the Object Oriented People – “When philosophy sucks, but you don’t.” – “See you in the Sinkhole of Stupid, at 5 pm.” – “I got my […]
Nobody could now match those thumbnail portraits of the big picture that Marx could write, but one has to try. Let’s start with the sun, with its energy, stroking the planet, and the warmth of its light, trapped by the atmosphere – the greenhouse effect. A sun whose energy fuels so […]
After the local elections on the 2nd May 2013, there was a certain level of satisfaction amongst some anti-fascists that the British fascist threat was in the process of being comprehensively defeated. Despite five years of national economic turmoil, the British National Party (BNP), riddled with splits and infighting, faced […]
OT: What is Grow Heathrow? What’s it about and how linked are you to the transition town movement? Paddy: Grow Heathrow is a squatted market garden in the centre of where the third runway was due to be built. Our project was set up by Transition Heathrow which was a […]
Last year, after months of paying extortionate rent to live in a cold, damp flat and angry about the impact of the multiple cuts to housing benefit, I decided it was time to do something. It turns out that other people were thinking the same thing. Since then, we’ve become part […]
A home is such a basic need that the provision of adequate and decent housing should be a fundamental requirement of a fair society. But what do we require of a home beyond sound and safe shelter that can accommodate our household in a reasonably convenient location? Security of tenure […]
Urban transformation and public protest in Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro has arrived. Or at least that’s what the city’s authorities, and most of the international publicity the ‘cidade maravilhosa’ has received in recent years, would have us believe. After decades of economic malaise and social distress Rio’s fortunes appeared […]
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die So I might as well begin to put some action in my life – Judas Priest, Breaking the Law At midnight on the 1st September 2012 it became a criminal offence to live or intend to live in a residential building […]
The evacuation of the inhabitants in the neoliberal world-class city As I write these words, the London Real Estate Forum is under way in Berkeley Square – within, we are eagerly told ‘a 25,000 sq foot pavilion space, bespoke designed by Carmody Groarke’. For the pleasure of partaking in such a prestigious […]