One of the pleasures of arriving at a port-city is the first impression, the immediate surfaces, the familiar-strangeness. The roll of the train into the station; cinematic movement, office blocks, bridges, viaducts the electrical infrastructure of the inter-city and suburban railways, glimpses of an earlier time, when capital took different forms, red brick buildings withContinue reading “Notes on Hamburg and its Housing”
Category Archives: Ships
Autonomous Networks
Starting points…where to start? It seems a flood, of hate and bile and anger and screwed up raging faces. Influencers, social media companies, the right wing press, the shock troops of the new right, lies and dis-formation. Anything goes. Pointing fingers, provocative behaviour, murder-speech, writing lies and far right propaganda. A newspaper claims a ‘pro-Palestine’Continue reading “Autonomous Networks”
A day or two…
Marx’s Grundrisse is a set of notebooks. Sometimes the sentences themselves are merely short points, in the way we all make notes at times. There are digressions into detail which may be ignored. It is the substance which is of great interest and discovering how Marx worked out his ideas. There are moments while readingContinue reading “A day or two…”
We Refused to Moor the Ferries
‘We refused to moor the ferries. They can’t make us’. The man telling me this was fishing on the beach. A big guy wrapped up for all sorts of weather. Sun, snow, wind, calm, lashing rain. He had the hood of his jacket pulled over his woollen hat just in case.‘They should have put aContinue reading “We Refused to Moor the Ferries”
A Map of Dover, 20 March 2022
The Spirit of Britain in Dover Western Docks (next to Admiralty Pier). The sacked workers have all left. Essentially blackmailed by their employer, DP World. ‘If you don’t do as we say, you won’t even get your redundancy money’. There are people on the three ferries as at least two have been firing up theirContinue reading “A Map of Dover, 20 March 2022”
Tyger, Tyger
‘It’s not that they’ve made any losses, it’s just that they haven’t made big enough profits’. The Albanian taxi driver tells me. He is half in and half out of his car outside Dover Priory station. Another driver stands by the car in the sun. We’re talking about the news that P&O Ferries has justContinue reading “Tyger, Tyger”
Notes for a War Diary
The word ‘agate’ had to be looked up because I realised I only had a vague notion of what ‘agate’ might be. It seemed a small, trifling thing, referenced in Franz Hessel’s lovely book Walking in Berlin. As he describes, ‘In the evening of that overfilled day, I was welcomed into the home of anContinue reading “Notes for a War Diary”
A Sea Crossing in Times of War
The air is heavy with war. In Ukraine the air is heavy with bombs, rockets, shells, machine gun fire. An account from someone who said her son vomited as he tried to eat some food. Vomited with fear. Pictures of people with their faces full of fear. The first reports of casualties. The British PrimeContinue reading “A Sea Crossing in Times of War”
Global Supply Chains
We should take liberties with Raymond Williams book Keywords. It was never meant to be definitive, a list of all possibilities. It was a methodology. How to take a word and look at the social relations which help to form and define it and how meaning changes over time. According to The Shorter Oxford EnglishContinue reading “Global Supply Chains”
It needs a driver
Workers are hidden, out of sight, to be kicked, spat at, abused, ill-treated, badly paid, forced to work in dangerous conditions, made a scapegoat for the ill-will and corruption of politicians. Workers are to be despised, shouted at with racist slogans from the mouths of money drenched riff raff. Workers are to be blamed whenContinue reading “It needs a driver”
Commodity Fetishism 