DannyB

Broadgate; or how I learned to love (some) postmodern architecture

The train fares have gone up again. These increases are accompanied by marketing campaigns with inane grins which smirk about cheap tickets. Capitalism in the twenty first century is all about facades. The Spectacle has a new coat of paint but the rot beneath produces a greater stink. The speed of this Spectacle is notContinue reading “Broadgate; or how I learned to love (some) postmodern architecture”

The Progressive Office Tower

I was thinking of a reference for Guy Debord in Paris in, I think 1957. It runs along the lines of ‘he tried to organise a walk, it rained, no-one turned up, he left, and didn’t try to do this again for perhaps a decade’. Where had I read this? I was thinking of itContinue reading “The Progressive Office Tower”

Buying Books, Strikes, Anti-War

The train comes up from the tunnel under the Thames. The Dartford Bridge, a couple of car carrier ships at Purfleet. A Norman church in the distance. An untidy pile of colour clashing blue and green containers. Abandoned here in the Thames estuary, last years trinkets, food that cannot be sold, shoes that the shoelessContinue reading “Buying Books, Strikes, Anti-War”

Coming Soon…Radical Folkestone Walk

It’s Friday morning and I’m buying a return ticket for the train. Yet again comparing notes with the woman in the ticket office about our hoped for retirement dates. It feels as if time is in limbo and we are both frozen for ever in a world of toil. Like billions of others. She asksContinue reading “Coming Soon…Radical Folkestone Walk”

Shopping Vignette with Hans Memling

Triptych of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist (detail), Hans Memling, 1479 “Could you help me?’ an elderly woman bent over a large trolley in Marks & Spencer asked. She was smartly dressed in a dark blue woollen jacket with a flowing red scarf and well cut black trousers and black boots.Continue reading “Shopping Vignette with Hans Memling”

Unconscious Collective

The train comes into Liverpool Street Station, platform 17 with a metal on metal sound of wheels on rails, the sound of bombs bursting, machine guns, rockets crashing through the glass canopy, people screaming, playgrounds, maternity hospitals and system-built housing estates collapsing in the explosions and fires. Soldiers, conscripts, mercenaries, cheap flop house petty thiefContinue reading “Unconscious Collective”

A Walk to the Shops

Money is integral to what we do and to some extent, who we are. Money determines where we live and how we live. But the psychology of money doesn’t get much attention. I’m going to return to reading the Grundrisse which attempts an explanation of money in great detail. It feels as if days haveContinue reading “A Walk to the Shops”

Nevzdáváme se – We Don’t Give in

I first met K – in the street. We would say hello as we passed each other with bags of shopping. She walks with a stick and often wears a red hat. And for about a year she always got my name wrong. ‘Are you Steve?’, she would say. I would laugh and explain thatContinue reading “Nevzdáváme se – We Don’t Give in”

Marxism and A Pattern Language

The preparation for the Radical EC1 Walk continues with the usual diversions and tangents and books being brought together without obvious connections. I’ve been reading Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman, a lot of Christopher Alexander and the first chapter of the Grundrisse. I suspect I understand about 10 percent of what Alexander and MarxContinue reading “Marxism and A Pattern Language”

The Study of Consumption

There is no moral framework for production within capitalism. Nation states give priority to the production of nuclear missiles, chemical weapons, cluster bombs, police truncheons, tear gas, water cannon; feeding people and providing shelter, health services and education are secondary, or less. Even outside the arms industries there is plenty of immoral production; oil, builtContinue reading “The Study of Consumption”