Blogs

BBC 4 iPlayer Storyville, The Internet’s Own Boy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b051wkry/storyville-20142015-11-the-internets-own-boy You have 19 days left to watch this. I suggest you do. It says a lot about where we are. Aaron Schwarz committed suicide 11 th January 2013 in Brooklyn, New York. He was aged 26. Aaron’s girlfriend, Tarren Stinebrinckner-Kauffman, claimed that he wasn’t depressed, rather his suicide was the direct result of a vindictive prosecution and prosecutor out to...

The Perfect Script

In a surbaban homeland, there are four personas.The suppotive husband,the fortunate wife,the obedient daughter and the assiduous son. In a surbaban homeland ,there are four characters.The egocentric husband,the good wife,the plaintive daughter and the candid son.In a surbaban homeland, there are four people, the opportunist,the subordinate,the pretender,the truth.In a surbaban homeland, there is a recipe ...for the perfect script!

Plainsong by Kent Haruf (fiction review)

I've given this a try and I can't get into it. It's a story set in smalltown USA about a single Dad with two sons who takes in a schoolgirl Mum. It's OK, I suppose it simply gives me nothing new and hasn't any laughs unless I've skipped them. I liked George Eliot's Silas Marner a lot when I read it, so I've nowt against single Dad tales per se but GE's had more to it; the broken-hearted barmaid mother dying of an OD, the story of Silas'...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‘We Should All Be Feminists’.

About thirty-years ago some girl (although I I thought of her as a woman then – the bee’s knees in fact) was lecturing me about the evils of gender inequality, but I was more interested in the evils of her breasts. In other words I was an arsehole. I’m still an arsehole, but perhaps less fixated and more ready to listen to coherent argument. The first question I would ask is who is Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche? I’d say she is one of the best writers...

Apple - the number 1 hit.

Apple’s quarterly returns $18 billion (around £12 billion) in three months from October to December 2014, selling 34 000 iPhones an hour, is pretty impressive especially when factoring in I don’t even have one. Nor do I have an iPad, AppleMac or neither will I purchase the much hyped Apple watch. So what took Apple to the top of the tree without me? Quite simply they make beautiful toys, but that is not enough. They market them as the must-have...

The Forward Books of Poetry

Boxes of treats! The Arts Council started this annual competition in 1992 publishing the top entries There is serious prize money for best collection, best first collection and best first poem.Usually around 140 pages of solid quality,and illustrates true diversity of style and topic. There appears to be no length limit either min or max to the entries. Quirky poems by names unknown to me stand out The last Cafe in the West by Stephen Plaice in...

The Old Firm Game, League Cup Semi-final, Hampden Park tomorrow.

I stood up and cheered when we got drawn with Rangers in the League Cup. We’ve not played them for three years. We want to rub their noses in it. We’ve missed it (but only if we win). Chris Sutton is getting some stick for saying what many Rangers’ fans believe: Celtic could win playing with their men blindfolded. That’s true. We’ve got the best young players in Scotland. And in Liam Henderson we have the most exciting talent since Ian Durrant (...

Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Finding a poem this week was quite hard because the quality of submissions was even more outstanding than usual. I think maggyvaneijck is the rightful winner though, with the multi-layered Blue. Definitely one to read again and again. For the Story of the Week you're getting three for the price of one! Noo's trio of wonderful shorts, each with an unlikely ending - and they were so good, I am nicking the title and theme for this week's...

Robert Frank (2008) Richistan

This book is outdated. It was published before the crash and unravelling of high finance in 2008, but the bounce back of the increasingly wealthy has been so spectacular and complete it’s as if that event never happened. A more major shortcoming is Frank’s believe in the benefits of trickle-down economics. It’s worth repeating wealth flows at an increasing speed upwards and if the rising tide has lifted fewer boats during the Obama years, as one...

Competition Alert!

Make sure you visit ABCtales on Saturday when we'll be announcing the details of our fantastic new competition!

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