DannyB

No More Buildings

The Labour government has recently announced plans to build 1.5 million homes. Keir Starmer has promised ‘shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky’, suggesting that this is the only way to create that most mysterious place, the future. All this digging of trenches, pouring of concrete, chopping down of trees and no doubtContinue reading “No More Buildings”

The Gateway Flats, Dover

The Gateway Flats in Dover were completed in 1959. Over 200 council flats, with sea views and easy access to the sweeping, curving promenade by the harbour. There was some controversy at the time, and small echoes of that rumble on. Why should council tenants have such elegant and graceful housing? Why this intelligent andContinue reading “The Gateway Flats, Dover”

Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne

“In Paris in 1885, a judge declared that for a landlord to be compelled to lay on water in his houses for the use of the tenants was an interference with the liberty of the subject, and held that a water-supply was not an indispensable necessity for maintaining the healthiness of the a dwelling” CatherineContinue reading “Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne”

Ostheim, Stuttgart

Ostheim was discovered by chance, and perhaps the experience was more enjoyable for that. I was going to the REWE supermarket to buy a couple of bottles of beer. I walked along Landhausstrasse and slowly my senses started to pick up that there was something rather attractive here, rather unusual, in the local streets. I’mContinue reading “Ostheim, Stuttgart”

Paris Manuscripts

It was as if a scrap of paper was found in the street. One of those anonymous streets that lead through a time-space warp and into a fragment of the city that is both imagined and real. A door opens, tumble through, a dusty corridor, it’s airless and stale, there is someone in the cornerContinue reading “Paris Manuscripts”

The train to Paris, a city of Capital

There’s a crowd of people slowly moving toward platform 7 and the 13.31 train to Paris. I become aware of a young woman and man in close proximity. Why them? There are plenty of other people within a few inches or so. And yet no one bumps another and if they accidently do, they generallyContinue reading “The train to Paris, a city of Capital”

Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds

A woman in a trim blue padded coat stopped and asked if she could help. Blond hair blew in whisps across her face. She was all smiles and sparkly eyes. I was standing at a road junction near the railway station at Shepherdswell studying an Ordnance Survey map. I looked at her over the topContinue reading “Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds”

When Marx went to Morrisons…

…Hegel came too In the film The Million Pound Note Gregory Peck plays the character of the American sailor Henry Adams. He has been blown off course in his schooner, picked up in the Atlantic and ends up in London penniless. Two eccentric brothers, Oliver and Roderick Montpelier see him in the street (he isContinue reading “When Marx went to Morrisons…”

In the beginning was the commodity

The question is raised as to why Marx starts Capital with the ‘commodity’. It’s right there in the first line of the first chapter of the first volume: “The wealth of societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production appears in the form of an ‘enormous accumulation of commodities’ “. Why did Marx start withContinue reading “In the beginning was the commodity”

(Night) train to Antwerpen

The most unlikely places create stimulation. Stepping out into Kings Cross from a train that’s just arrived from the coast. Into the middle of a world city. The train ran up from east Kent and the Channel could be seen alongside the track. Grey and steel-like, container ships and tankers and bulk carriers in theContinue reading “(Night) train to Antwerpen”