If Jerusalem is going to be built “in England’s green and pleasant land”, it’s going to be built in bubble wrap. Before entering, indeed before getting close, we will be warned repeatedly of the metaphoric city’s sharp metaphoric edges and its slippery-when-wet metaphoric steps. Just in case.

We will be told to get there by driving slowly, not smoking, not drinking, definitely not doing drugs and under no circumstance by discriminating – even for comic effect (unless it’s towards the Germans… or the French). More…

Album Review
Jeniferever
Spring Tides

Swedish playwright August Strindberg said, “People are constantly clamouring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life.” Fellow countrymen, Jeniferever, understand this and their pursuit of joy is not a clamour, but a hard, cruel battle of vast orchestrations that are in no rush to deliver gratification. Listeners need to wander the expansive snowscapes of their post-rock instrumentation, sometimes being blinded by the brilliance, other times being haunted by the scarcity of beauty and the solitary expanses. More…

Film Review
Fifty Dead Men Walking

Dolores was right, “It’s the same old thing since 1916”. But for the past decade, the fighting was not being fought with “their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns”, but with diplomacy. And it was working… until the murder of two British soldiers by the Real IRA at the Massereene army base in Antrim last month.

The murder of these two soldiers has caused considerable anxiety of the possibility of Northern Ireland once again drowning in bloodshed. These murders were the first deaths of British soldiers in Northern Ireland by terrorists since 1997 and they show us that the division of Ireland, forgotten by those of us not in Belfast, is still a very real issue. Ireland remains divided. Peace between Unionist and Nationalist communities is fragile. Ireland is still tormented. More…

“Dying is an art,” wrote Sylvia Plath. It is an art she claimed to do “exceptionally well”. Whether her son, Nick Hughes’s recent death by suicide was art or not, we shall never know… it wasn’t a public affair.

Jade Goody’s death, on the other hand, was a public affair. As loathed as I am to write of it, I can’t help wishing that the role of these two deaths were swapped.

Hughes, with his fascinating genealogy, his wonderful mind (a highly respected biologist) and a well recorded paternal devotion (to Ted Hughes) – the ending of which upon his father’s death in 1998 may have been a leading factor in his suicide – is a far more fascinating subject for art than the gormless and one-dimensional Goody. More…

Sometimes we need to criticize that which has the best intentions, as we see the worst results. Last week, the world (well 88 countries, at least) turned off its lights… for an hour… sending us into a dark age of social consciousness.

The World Wildlife Fund asked citizens of the world to “vote for the earth” last Saturday by flipping their switches between 8:30pm and 9:30pm. It was a symbolic call to action and awareness campaign for global warming. A global unification of citizenry united in their concern for rising temperatures and environmental catastrophe. It was a way for us all to “do our bit” in the fight to save our planet. More…