Roaring Trade
Soho Theatre, London
ONE of the really boring things about the credit crunch is that everybody’s talking about the credit crunch, and everybody agrees about the credit crunch. Nowadays the greatest taboo is disagreeing about the credit crunch, questioning its extent or raising an eyebrow at some of the media clichés about it. So far, there have been mercifully few plays about credit, so Steve Thompson’s new one is something of a trend-bucker.
The Rhythm Method by Nicky Forbes
Suffolk & Watt, £15
SEX and drugs and rock’n’roll go together like, well, whatever tripling you fancy but drummer Nicky Forbes’ racy autobiography separates the reality from the glamour in the world of punk and pop. His is a warts and all story of an Essex childhood, doing the circuit with wannabe bands and then joining the Revillos, who rose out of the ashes of the Edinburgh punk rock group the Rezillos – remember Top of the Pops, Destination Venus and Motorbike Beat? It’s a tale which, while it amuses and annoys in equal measure, is a salutary warning to all budding rock stars. Maybe it’s even a moral tale born out of some of the stunts and the girls he pulled.
ALREADY in 2009, we have prime contenders for the very best and the very worst films to be released in Britain during the whole of this year. In the blue – as in depressingly gloomy – corner, we find the embarrassingly wretched British gangland “drama” Clubbed, a thuddingly inept farrago which boasts barely any redeeming features. In the red corner – and at the diametrically opposing end of the quality scale – we have The Wrestler, a genuine five-star masterpiece that instantly takes lofty rank among the decade’s cinematic achievements.
The Gods that Failed
by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson
The Bodley Head, £12.99
FOR far too long, the high priests in the temple of capitalism preached free markets, privatisation, excessive credit, debt, deregulation and minimal state intervention. Greed and speculation masquerading as financial engineering and risk management was the order of the day. Derivatives and credit default swaps conjured money out of thin air. Governments allowed industries such as steel, mining, heavy engineering, shipping and textiles to become bit parts in the British economy. Then, as this excellent book shows, it all came crashing down. Instead of the prosperity and stability promised by the gods of the financial world, we got chaos and an unprecedented crash.
Censored 2009: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007-08 edited by Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth
Seven Stories Press, £11.99
PROJECT Censored advocates a free press and in the United States focuses on First Amendment issues and the protection of these rights. But in the UK it is perhaps best known for uncovering stories that are “underreported, ignored, misrepresented or censored by the corporate media”. Its annual reports, culled from up to 1,000 submissions a year, have become essential reading for students, broadcasters and journalists around the world.
I’m With the Brand by Rob Walker
Constable, £8.99
I WILL never forget just how disappointed I was to hear that the concoction of cheese and chunky bread and pickled onions and salad I enjoyed at the pub was about as connected to the people who plough the fields as the space shuttle.
AFTER more than a decade away from the Conservative front bench, Kenneth Clarke is back. Previously he only wanted to sit on it if he was Tory leader and, preferably, Prime Minister. David Cameron need not stop there if he is bereft of ideas. He could take a leaf out of Gordon Brown’s book and [...]
Moving Homes: The Housing Corporation 1964-2008 by Alan Murie
Politico’s, £14.99
AS I began to read this history of the Housing Corporation, the newspapers were full of dire predictions for the house building industry this year as well as recording that the total of new homes built in 2008 was the lowest for any year since 1924, when this country’s population was half its present size.
NO WONDER the taxpaying voters are getting fed up. The latest bank “insurance scheme” seems to be a mechanism for simply siphoning off cash from the public purse to “nationalise” the losses made by banks while shareholders have prices propped up by taxpayer guarantees. Hey, supposedly Labour Government, some mistake here, surely?