Our Man Abel
(START) Our man Abel cannot sleep. He cannot think. He is writhing and naked on a white sheet on a thin mattress. He cannot sleep because he is psychically aware of the gory misdeeds of others, they saturate his mind like salt in water, in open wounds, as soon as he closes his eyes. […
BAIAE
Noon estranged all living things, Taking black heaven; Sucking in the sea, the (seven) hills. We trek. Irretrievables progressed, are away. We edge off The rim of everything; the sea stasis attends A gull’s catechisms, face wrapped in Evening wedding veils That genuflec
WEEKLY ROUNDUP: BORIS FACES SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT, TRUMP IMPEACHMENT, AND MORE.
Supreme Court Judgment This Tuesday the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Prime Minister Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was unlawful. The Court was faced the issues of whether the decision to prorogue was “justiciable” (i.e. whether it could be looked at by the court, some politi
The Politics of Space in Oxford
It is perhaps not a surprising statistic – Oxford is the UK’s most expensive city to live in, with an acute lack of affordable and social housing. Over thirty people have died sleeping rough on its streets over the past five years. And the social and economic inequalities in the city are mor
A Lesson in Simplification
As a regular Twitter user, my timeline is an erratic blend of breaking news and memes. For better or for worse, the intense flurry of tweets that accompanies any news updates has become one of my main sources of information. On 5 August, before news outlets had begun to report on the Kashmir lockdow
Too Close for Comfort
On 19 June 2019, Oxford University Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson appeared on the Today Programme to proclaim “as good news a story as you are likely to find in a long time.” Earlier that day, Oxford had announced the construction of a new humanities building funded by an “unprecedented”,
WEEKLY ROUNDUP: SAUDI ARABIA, NEW VISA LAWS, AND CHANEL MILLER
Saudi Arabia oil plants burn after drone strikes A second attack from ten drones on two oil plants at Abqaiq, which are owned by oil company Aramco, has resulted in fire outbreaks at the facilities. Although the blazes have now been brought under control, the politics of the attack are far from mo
The Politics of Representation
Earlier this year, the former environment secretary, Michael Gove, spoke repeatedly of a ‘climate emergency’, trumpeting that the UK would be carbon neutral by 2050. This was before he trotted off to cut the ribbon on a gargantuan construction project which will see a third runway built at Heath