Chris McLaughlin talks to the Prime Minister about crises, cuts, taxes, Tories – and the forthcoming electoral contest
Archive for February, 2010
‘We will fight every inch of the way for victory’
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Jack Dromey would be a more than adequate MP. But this doesn’t mean he should do it. It would look as if he had got the job because of who he is married to. It would look as if he had lined himself up a nice post-retirement life because he had the connections. It would [...]
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Will there be a hung parliament after the general election? You said: Yes – 67% No – 33%
ROCK: Charlie says – do mosh into strangers
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010Fightstar
Heaven, London
“Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’” The famous words from the classic 1976 film Network are surely totally unknown to this crowd of befringed teenagers massed under a Victorian railway arch; nevertheless, Fightstar have it played over the sound system while preparing to take the stage, and it doesn’t dent their enthusiasm. This kind of respectful nod to works of authority, while remaining resolutely in crowd-pleasing territory, is what Fightstar do best.
Brown: ‘Saddam’s WMDs were not why I backed the Iraq war’
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010by Chris McLaughlin Gordon Brown has revealed that he did not support military action against Saddam Hussein because of the possible existence of weapons of mass destruction. The threat of a WMD attack on British interests was the primary reason given to the House of Commons by Prime Minister Tony Blair for the invasion of [...]
BOOKS: Walk on the dark side
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
Picador, £16.99
Roberto Bolaño was no stranger to the darker side of life. He arrived in Mexico, aged 15, in 1968; the year protesters were massacred in Tlatelolco. When he returned to his native Chile in 1973, he was briefly imprisoned during the Pinochet coup against President Allende. He met the guerrilla-poet Roque Danton in El Salvador who was later murdered by his own comrades. In the 1980s, Bolaño was down and out in Spain and, some believe, taking heroin. It was only after he met his Spanish wife and had two children that Bolaño finally settled down, abandoning poetry for prose. Sadly, he died in 2003, aged only 50, while waiting for a liver transplant.
Icy warning: the Nordic saga of a Bourbon country that has learned – and forgotten – nothing
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010Meltdown Iceland by Roger Boyes
Bloomsbury, £12.99
Pity poor Iceland. Lost in the icy seas of the Northern Atlantic between Europe and North America, this ancient democracy has only known poverty and cod for centuries. Bullied by Roy Hattersley when the Daily Mail columnist was, briefly, a minister decades ago and sailed forth to lose the cod war, Iceland took its revenge on Britain by stealing billions of pounds from poor British investors in one of the greatest pyramid schemes of all time.
THEATRE: Surfeit of ideas, but space is not the final frontier
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010Really Old, Like Forty Five
National Theatre, London
One of the most pressing social issues of our time is the care of the elderly, so Tamsin Oglesby’s new play, Really Old, Like Forty Five, seems at first to be a timely intervention in the debate. But only at first. We start with a family which, in its complexity and chaos, mirrors contemporary life. When Lyn begins to lose her memory and then acts erratically, her brother Robbie and her daughter Cathy decide to put her into a care home, the Ark. Add Lyn’s sister Alice, plus her grandson Dylan, plus Millie, a 16-year-old adopted daughter, and you can appreciate that it takes Oglesby a while to introduce her characters.
VISUAL ARTS: Spotlight on the sacred and profane, seductive and unsavoury
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, February 18th, 2010Chris Ofili
Tate Britain, London
The devil, they say, lies in the detail, which is certainly the case with Chris Ofili’s paintings that need close scrutiny to reveal their multi-layered narratives. The subject of this mid-career retrospective, Ofili’s spectacular rise to fame in the 1990s – resulting in him winning the Turner Prize in 1998 – can be followed as he dealt with the perception and representation of the British black experience.