Cultural Capital: Election 2010

This is a cross-post from Enemies of Reason

We'll read a lot about these student protests today. Much of the rage will focus on the fact that an elderly chutney maker had his car kicked in by some people on his way to see Michael McIntyre and Cheryl Cole perform in his honour. Some will deplore the breaking and burning of things by those whom Kay ... read more

This is an opportune moment, following Gordon Brown's momentous statement earlier today, to revisit my Books Interview with Christopher Harvie, MSP for the Scottish National Party and author of Broonland: the Last Days of Gordon Brown.

Your book Broonland traces the political trajectory of Gordon Brown. You first met him in the mid-1970s, didn't you?He worked part-time for the ... read more

The play's the thing: as politicians stayed up way past bedtime on 6 May, a group of playwrights were also pulling an all-nighter to script five brand new dramas. Whilst politicos struggled with squaring the circles of government by Venn diagram, the "first five plays of the new parliament" were cast, rehearsed and produced by the Supporting Wall theatre company in just 24 hours. The resulting show was  read more

I blogged on The Staggers on Monday about Gordon Brown's remarkable speech, which ended with an allusion to Cicero and Demosthenes:

When Cicero spoke to the crowds in ancient Rome, people turned to each other when he had finished and said: "Great speech." But when Demosthenes spoke to the crowds in ancient Greece, people turned to each other and said: "Let's march!"

Someone called Jack Cunningham (not ... read more

Judging by this weekend's polls, Gary Barlow's endorsement of the Tories, which Daniel blogged about on Friday, doesn't appear to have done much to stem the tide of Cleggmania. And potentially the most decisive, and certainly the most compelling, celebrity intervention in the election campaign so far will cause more gnashing of teeth in Conservative Central Office.

J K Rowling's response to the launch of ... read more

. . . Take That's Gary Barlow. He joins a stellar cast that includes Michael Caine, Jim Davidson and, um, the woman who presents all those property programmes on Channel 4.

We at Cultural Capital are left speechless by the news, so last words go to the music journalist Tim Chipping, who tweeted earlier today:

"All of Mark Owen's numerous sordid, drunken ... read more

Britain's first televised leaders' debate has irrevocably altered both the terms and the style of British politics. The debate, which was broadcast last night a mere fifty years after American audiences first got the chance to watch their prospective leaders tear each other into elegant shreds on air, shone a spotlight on the languishing art of British political rhetoric, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg trouncing his opponents in ... read more

You'd expect the tabloids to belittle the government's commitment to the arts, but from the Guardian it just sounds weird. In a blog headlined "Don't vote for 'arts policy'", Jonathan Jones argues: "At these kinds of times, when the nation's future is held in the electoral balance, you realise exactly how silly and trivial the media fiction of 'the arts' actually is." He concludes his piece with the ... read more