anti capitalist musings

The rest of the blog

Satirical illustration of a coin with two faces: one side shows a smiling Nigel Farage in a suit, the other side shows a stern, frowning Nick Griffin in a suit, symbolising two sides of the same coin
Britain

Operation Restoring Injustice

Nigel Farage’s “Operation Restoring Justice” is nothing new. Strip away the slick staging and media amplification, and it’s the same nativist bile the BNP peddled in the 1990s, only now treated as respectable politics.

An image of a contract torn in half
Football

When Is a Contract Not a Contract?

When star forwards can down tools before the season starts and still win the move, a “contract” is just a polite fiction. Isak and Igamane are the canaries in the coal mine.

Britain

Planes That Will Never Take Off

Planes will never take off, but every promise of mass deportation erodes rights, normalises cruelty, and casts the mob as the voice of the nation.

A realist oil painting shows a Joan of Arc–like figure in medieval armour standing amid urban chaos. Flames engulf the street, sending black smoke into the air as police and emergency vehicles appear in the background. She raises a banner with a red cross high above her head while holding a sword at her side
Britain

The Free Speech Martyrdom of Lucy Connolly

Keir Starmer’s law-and-order theatrics have handed the far right its new saint: a self-styled free speech Joan of Arc—except this saint didn’t want to be burned, she wanted others to be.

Britain

The Law, the Hotel, and the Vanishing Migrant

Paul Bristow cites the Epping Forest ruling to demand hotel closures for asylum seekers, but offers no plan for what follows. The Conservatives built the hotel system; Labour inherits it; local politicians weaponise planning law while migrants disappear from view.

Keir Starmer

Dawn Raids and Banned Placards

The arrest of a part-time cleaner for sharing Facebook posts backing Palestine Action shows how Britain’s response to Gaza has drifted from foreign policy into domestic repression.

A distorted television broadcast screenshot from the 1980s showing Margaret Thatcher speaking. The image is heavily glitched with horizontal multicoloured static lines disrupting her face and suit. She wears a dark blazer, a pearl necklace, and has her characteristic hairstyle. The glitch effect creates a retro, unsettling atmosphere.

Shifty and the Curtis Method in Decline

Adam Curtis’s latest series attempts to diagnose the collapse of public trust in Britain—but without his voice, a clear argument, or fresh material, Shifty drifts through the ruins of the neoliberal age, recycling fragments and offering atmosphere where once there was clarity.

A square graphic split vertically into two halves. On the left, a Barbie doll is depicted wearing a striped concentration camp uniform with a yellow Star of David and an identification number. On the right, a grey microwave oven is illustrated. The background uses muted beige, purple, and grey tones, with thick black outlines and a retro graphic style. The image critiques the commodification of trauma and modern consumer culture.

The Century of Soap and Barbie

Europeana is what happens when history loses faith in its own narrative. Part bureaucratic fever dream, part Adam Curtis montage, it recites the atrocities and absurdities of the twentieth century in a tone so flat it becomes damning.

A vivid red and orange photograph of a nuclear explosion during Operation Upshot-Knothole. A massive fireball and mushroom cloud dominate the image, illuminating the night sky. A steel test tower is visible in front of the blast, and silhouetted Joshua trees and human figures can be seen in the foreground, emphasising the scale and intensity of the detonation.

Destroy Everything, Explain Nothing

There are no responsible nuclear powers—only powers with the bomb and those without—and by explaining the science while ignoring the politics, Frank Close turns history’s most destructive weapon into a tale of tragic inevitability rather than state terror.

Shock and Awe, but for Who?

Israel’s assault on Iran wasn’t an act of self-defence or solidarity with the oppressed—it was a theatre of imperial dominance, applauded by the West, sold as morality, and carried out with the full force of a nuclear-backed settler state.

A stylised graphic in a 1968 protest-poster aesthetic shows a hooded figure silhouetted in black, arms outstretched, standing before a fiery red and white explosion. The background is highly textured with grainy, distressed effects. In the bottom right, bold red and black block capitals read: “BRITAIN’S POGROM LOGIC.”

Britain’s Pogrom Logic

The mob lit the match, but it was the right-wing press that soaked the ground and stood back to watch it burn.