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... which has just started a new series on BBC4, is everything that the dreadful Blunkett play failed to be. Where the Blunkett play was comforting (especially to most of those it was supposedly satirising), The Thick of It is bleakly unsettling. The standard description (The Office + Yes...

I didn't get home till half past flaming two... over an hour waiting for a 171 at Holborn... But great to meet those I hadn't met before, and always good to meet those I already know...

Obviously I agree with all of this. There's a crucial distinction to be drawn between fidelity and orthodoxy. But - just to facetiously play devil's advocate for a moment - on what grounds/ criteria do you propose to distinguish between an orthodox punk and a punk who has effectively...

Yes, but only because, in most real-life cases (mystificatory New Age rhetoric to the contrary) it boils down to a matter of either-or. Most of the time, you can't have your cake and eat it (though one plus/ and that does work is: you can be a hippie AND a managerialist :) ).

Some points: Descartes might have introduced mind-body dualism in its modern form, but the idea that he or it 'led to scientific dead ends' needs some nuancing. Descartes was certainly a major figure of the scientific enlightenment, massively significant in wresting thought from theocratic...

Forget MIA, forget Franz Ferdinand, why doesn't Mike Skinner (text: Lad's Mags/ music: casio presets) get the hatred he deserves? :)

<i>"Importance and relevance is a scam and a trap. Don't bother with it. Don't think too much about it. Once you stop thinking about things in those terms, all of music and art becomes far more enjoyable"</i> This is almost zen; I love the way it sounds like something that would be said to...

Who is the 'he' here? I'm confused...

There are no consumers Of course it is, which is why nobody except Ben Watson holds it. :) The issue is not about the content of the music, or, worse, about the 'experience' that the music produces, nor about some 'objective criteria' for assessing music. To be lured into that aestheticist...

There is another angle on this - existentialism. So much of today's culture is anti-existentialist because it makes it impossible to choose, or to make any choice that's meaningful. As Deleuze puts it in 'Postscript on the Societies of Control, we are in a world today in which 'nothing is ever...

I see what you mean, but surely ppl are invested in post-punk etc, which FF demean by their derivative retreads?

I think this is silly.... It isn't as if she casually mentions that she 'lived in a mud-hut' in passing, she does it calculatingly to gain credibility...the fact it is true doesn't matter... it becomes an exercise in cynical spincerity by the very fact she keeps banging on about it in interviews...

I too am largely baffled by the level of heat that MIA-discussion seems to generate. For sure, she seems to be her own worst enemy; I rather enjoyed the record AS sound (catchy grime and bashment-inflected pop) but her presence IS so overweeningly smug and precious that once you've seen an...

shit yeh, you're right... the reasons that I disliked Dylan were clearly that he was too Pop.... and there's nothing worse than being 'girly'... I repent of my sins and promise never to be interested in anything on a major label ever again... (hmmm, that Dissensian nu-rockist isn't such a straw...

yes, it was completely implausible, and didn't even have an internal logic that would have made sense of Kimberly Quinn's conduct, which appeared random and unmotivated. I can't help thinking that the power elite would have been reassured by the whole thing .... the depiction of each of the...

Well why not DO IT then? Surely meta-meta critique of thread content is at least one meta too far... You'd have to have read the thread in a very cursory way to think that it's about how we're seen in relation to ILM... it is, in fact, a discussion about politics and aesthetics, but how it...

Did anyone see this on the new c4 digital channel on Monday? I thought it was perfectly dreadful... not only were the characterizations witlessly pasteboard and devoid of any surprise, you ended up being sympathetic to Blunkett, which can't have been the point... More disturbingly, the...

Has anyone heard ANYTHING negative said about the new Wallace and Gromit movie? It's practically a national duty to admire it... and can it really be true that it's #1 in the US box office charts too?

Oh, I'm intrigued, can't believe this one has passed me by... Jayston was in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and like everyone in that serial, has earned my eternal respect because of that...

This might be true in some sense, although I get the impression that most threads (GRIME SPAM!!!!!!!!) have little to do with Matt, Simon or my interests or approach... I think the board could do with some more 'heavyweight' posters, not so much for pop, but for politics and theory... my...