Category: Essay

The Braid of the Landworker’s Alliance UK

Once upon a time, simple bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the earth. But then BANG! Agriculture came onto the scene. A Revolution! With it the grain surpluses upon which Empires were built… So the story goes… We say our human ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Then came the farmers and ploughmen, enabling a surplus upon which new divisions…
Sewage Scenarios

The #SewageScandal (in the UK) is both entirely predictable and entirely unavoidable given the status quo. It’s the inevitable conclusion of the current scenario we are moving toward. Let me explain: A couple of years ago I was hired to empirically create long-term scenarios for water management in Southeast England, paid for by Southern Water…
To be or not to be a man

When Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks to be or not be it is as part of a drama about the entanglement between politics and personal lived experience. When we use a categorising word, usually a noun, we imply we know something about what we are speaking of. For example if I were talking about my brother I…
After the Pandemic, A Living Nightmare?

In a posthumous essay David Graeber opens: “At some point in the next few months, the crisis will be declared over, and we will be able to return to our “nonessential” jobs. For many, this will be like waking from a dream. The media and political classes will definitely encourage us to think of it…
Invasive ‘Eco-Austerity’ Algorithms: A Horrible Green Dream

Digital algorithms are becoming pervasive. In a moment of reflection on them a dystopian scenario of the future occurred to me. In this future, ‘life’ will have been further converted into transactions. There is a tendency in capitalism to already think of any relation between things as a transactional exchange. Algorithmic capitalism increases this in…
Post-Truth and why its not all Bollocks

I am speaking to an acquaintance in the crumbling posterior of a pub when it occurs to me that the post-truth monologue coming at me is an attempt at grasping what is beyond their realm of ‘the known’. Instead of post-truth being some sort of contemporary phenomenon of talking political shit, the ‘post’ in post-truth…
Gilet Jaunes: Mobilising to Challenge the Political Order

Across France people have been donning yellow vests (gilet jaunes) and taking to the streets to protest their government. To those outside France it may appear as just another year of French people protesting. However, the mobilizations have not been organised by labour unions nor established political groups. Instead, the signs are that many of…
The Dirty Nature of Paternalistic Care

The world is increasingly controlled through administration, but it is not a productive process as it often claims to be. It is the exploitation of ideas of harm in order to gain control of resources. Paternalistic ‘democratic’ and ‘caring’ processes are at the very heart of this exploitation.
How Hunters Make Sense

It had been a long winter’s hunting season with only a few partridge shot. We had spent it strenuously combing the countryside in the day whilst sleeping restlessly with anticipation at night. Waking well before any cocks had crowed or signs of day had risen, we trudged for hours through bracken and bushes, and over…