City, suburbs and snobs
Richard Rogers' warnings about middle-class flight to the countryside are wide of the mark.
Articles in Spiked-online
Back to James Heartfield's front page
30 March 2015
Give us the freedom to build our own homes
We need 260,000 new homes a
year, and officials won’t build them.
24 March 2015
The Communist who made Singapore a capitalist success
Lee Kuan Yew
transformed a small trading post – but at a cost.
9 January 2015
Ulrich Beck and the turn against modernity
The late sociologist
encapsulated the fears of our era.
17 July 2014
How the Tories ignited the paedophile panic
Revealing the right-wing
origins of today's child-abuse hysteria.
9 July 2014
The sex ring at the heart of the British establishment… 100 years ago
19 June 2014
Operation Lollipop: a useful parody
How were Twitter’s hashtag activists
so easily hoaxed by #EndFathersDay?
12 June 2014
Homeless spikes: a symptom of the housing crisis
Instead of whining about
this petty measure against rough sleepers, we should be building more houses for
all.
2 June 2014
A comically incomplete exhibition
The Beano was more rebellious than
today’s gothic graphic novels, but the British Library’s Comics Unmasked ignores
it.
23 May 2014
The left is over? I hate to say I told you so
A left-wing writer has
finally cottoned on to the decline of the labour movement – but his proposals
for a revival are deluded.
20 May 2014
The green and NIMBYist war on housebuilding
Nearly everyone recognises
that Britain needs more houses. So why won’t we build them?
25 November 2013
Why greens love high fuel bills
Ever-rising energy prices are the product
of green attacks on our consumption habits.
19 November 2013
The Gettysburg Address: a great work of humanity
150 years on, Lincoln’s
words retain their democratic power.
21 October 2013
The Newspeak of ‘human-centred’
David Chandler’s Freedom vs Necessity
dissects the way governments offer us choice today - as long as we make the
‘right’ choice.
8 October 2013
Both Labour and Tories have failed to mind the energy gap
While party
leaders bleat about rising energy bills, their policies have undermined the UK’s
capacity to generate power.
17 July 2013
Time to face the housing crisis head on
The UK housing shortage has
reached crisis proportions. Building a few thousand ‘affordable’ homes is no
solution.
11 July 2013
Domestic violence is falling. Why aren't people celebrating?
7 May
2013
UKIP’s
rise: a shortlived rebellion
The success of anti-EU parties speaks to the
decline of the old political order rather than to the rise of a new one.
22 April 2013
How to solve the housing crisis
Britain's housing stock is too old and
too expensive. The only answer is to build millions of new homes.
25
January 2013
How
to overcome racism: a hopeful subject
A new book explains how both racism
and multiculturalism have been state-led projects. The way out, the authors
argue, is to revive a sense of common, purposeful humanity.
2 January
2013
When
Lincoln and Marx were on the same side
150 years ago, Lancashire cotton
workers fought alongside Abraham Lincoln to abolish slavery in the US.
2
October 2012
Eric Hobsbawm and the tragedy of the left
Where Hobsbawm’s histories of
the 19th century were enlivened by his Marxism, his histories of the 20th
century were corrupted by his Stalinism.
29 June 2012
Seeking salvation,
behind society’s back
Reviewing Jacques Ranciere, and David Black and
Chris Ford on Chartists and Utopians in the Nineteenth Century
27 April
2012
We are not
all mentally ill now
Kenneth McLaughlin’s Surviving Identity is
an important salvo against the mainstreaming of mental health treatment.
24 February 2012
A surreal
commitment to Stalinism
Román Gubern and Paul Hammond’s excellent new
biography of the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buńuel reveals the reactionary
impulses behind his anarchical facade.
27 January 2012,
Review of Lucio Magri's memoir of the Italian Communist Party
20 September 2011
On the
'Hands orf Our Land campaign
13 September 2011
In
defence of Dale Farm Gypsies
29 July 2011
On the Aborigines' Protection Society,
24 June 2011
Governing the Empire
2 March 2011
On
Education and the Working Class
25 February 2011
Review of Lizzie Collingham's book The Taste of War
25 May 2010
'Why the EU
will thrive on Greek Troubles',
26 March 2010
Review of Ian MacEwan's Solar
11 January 2010
On Yemen
20 April 2009
obituary
of J.G. Ballard
11 February 2009
Council
Housing plans
26 January 2009
against the
Dale Farm evictions
29 December
On Harold
Pinter, with Sandy Starr
5 December 2008
Review of Channel 4's
The Devil's
Whore
23 September 2008
Capitalising on
climate change
The emergence of a market in carbon emission rights shows
that there is big money to be made from trading in hot air.
16 July 2008
'Who
demolished the housing industry?'
7 July 2008
'don't
blame bio-fuel'
3 June 2008
farmers'
protests in Perpignan
20 May 2008
Gordon
Brown at NESTA
7 April 2008
Gordon Brown's Eco Towns Con
28 January 2008
obituary
of Indonesia's Suharto
25 January 2008
Review
Lucy Robinson's Gay men and the Left
7 January 2008
on Xmas
sales and green snobs
27 December 2007
on
Putin's Time 'man of the year' award
21 December 2007
Chris Dillow's book on The End of Politics
reviewed,
18 December 2007
Eco-Imperialism at Bali
6 November 2007
Fifteen
Housing Myths,
1 October 2007
The High
Price of Britain's Housing Shortage
20 September 2007
Review of Oona King and Alastair Campbell's diaries
18 September 2007
GM: where the science does not count
11 September 2007
farewell Anita Roddick, Green Capitalist
23 July 2007
'Stop Romanticising Council Housing'
11 July 2007
Who’s to blame for
crazy house prices?
With NIMBYist sentiments enshrined in policy, and
house-builders tied up by bureaucracy, it is little wonder people can’t afford
to buy a home.
27 June 2007
TV as judge and
executioner
BBC2's Hunt for Britain’s Paedophiles was a sordid show.
20 July 2007
review of Rick Kuhn's
biography of Henryk Grossman
11 July 2007
Who's to Blame for Crazy House Prices?
21 June 2007
my review of Barbrook, Edgerton, Elliott and Atkinson on technology, old and
new
20 June 2007
a rebuttal of Tristram Hunt's Thames Gateway histrionics
22 May 2007
denouncing Margaret Hodge's
'white's first' housing policy
9 May 2007
Seeing people as a
plague on the planet
The Optimum Population Trust’s claim that having a
large family is an eco-crime exposes the anti-human streak in green politics.
8 May 2007
The road to Baghdad was paved with good intentions on Blair's Wars
27 April 2007
Review of Channel 4's "The Human Footprint"
24 April 2007
an
obituary of Boris Yeltsin
16 April 2007
on the
Moscow protests
19 Feb. 2007
Review of Lynsey Hanley's
Estates: an
intimate history
8 Feb. 2007
'Bring down
the House',
Response to reform of the Lords
23 January 2007
Not-so-positive discrimination
Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative
Action, Kevin Yuill, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
17 Jan. 2007,
'A
United Kingdom of Britain and France'
on the revelation that Guy Mollet
proposed it to Anthony Eden in 1956
20 December 2006
Caught
up in a new Cold War (with Julia Svetlichnaja)
When we interviewed
Alexander Litvinenko, we had no idea we would end up being branded as Kremlin
agents.
7 December 2006
Standing up for science
Science vs Superstition: The Case for a New
Scientific Enlightenment, edited by Jim Panton and Oliver Marc Hartwich, Policy
Exchange, 2006.
30 November 2006
Putting
Russia in the frame
The response to Alexander Litvinenko’s death implies
that all Russians are collectively guilty of skulduggery.
15 Nov 2006
my
review of Bettina Aptheker's memoirs
11 October 2006
A
secular version of Kingdom Come
Environmental polemicist George Monbiot's
new book asks why people do not act on their fears of climate change. Good
question.
2 October 2006
Pervez
Musharraf: Mau-Mauing the flak-catcher
The Pakistani president exploits
Western fears of radical Islamism to boost his standing at home and abroad.
12 September 2006
Britain’s phantom housing boom
26 July 2006
Will
Self’s mockery of the mockneys
The Book of Dave envisions a
post-apocalyptic London, rebuilt along lines imagined by all those novelists
obsessed with the seamy side of life in the capital.
29 June 2006
A
miserabilist history of the twentieth century
Niall Ferguson’s War of the
World is shot through with a negative view of progress and some dubious
socio-biological thinking.
31 May 2006
Do we
need a nicer nationalism?
David Goodhart is trying to make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear with his call for 'progressive nationalism' in Britain.
27 April 2006
Interdependent we stand, divided we fall
The New Economics Foundation’s
report on 'ecological debt' is a fascinating picture of Britain's exploitation
of the world's resources. But it is frustratingly one-sided.
11 April 2006
Attacking
Berlusconi for all the wrong reasons
His bank balance, foul language,
rumoured plastic surgery: the left focused on Berlusconi's personal foibles
because politically they aren't that different to him.
4 April 2006
Farewell
to the city?
Ignore the New Urbanists and 'Londonostalgics' - the end of
the boundary between town and country is a liberation, not a loss, says a writer
on urban issues.
28 March 2006
Pinochet
in Suburbia
The BBC drama on Britain’s detention of Pinochet was
nostalgic for Blair's brief ‘ethical foreign policy’
7 March 2006
The
biggest scandal in Italian politics
Never mind Tessa Jowell's husband David Mills; it's the
Italian magistrates hunting him that we should be worried about.
6 January 2006
Who's
afraid of the Thames Gateway?
Why government proposals to build 200,000 new homes in
London and Kent are causing a stink in certain circles.
16 December 2005
Humanitarian
interventionists dig in
In his new book Anti-Totalitarianism, Oliver Kamm makes a
shrill and inconsistent defence of the Iraq war.
30 November 2005
City,
suburbs and snobs
Richard Rogers' warnings about middle-class flight to the
countryside are wide of the mark.
17 November 2005
Cox
Report: creative accounting
Designers and admen aren't going to save the British
economy.
8 November 2005
Who's
fanning the flames?
It is not that assimilation has failed, but that France
only pays lip service to assimilation.
2 November 2005
They
should have dropped the Code of Conduct, not the minister
The manufactured scandal over David Blunkett's earnings
shows up the problem of over-regulation.
21 October 2005
Conservation's
Conservative streak
We shouldn’t be surprised that the Green Zac Goldsmith
has turned Blue.
16 September 2005
Disability on a pedestal
Marc Quinn's sculpture of Alison Lapper in
Trafalgar Square creates a tension between what we are supposed to think, and
what we really feel.
12 September 2005
Concreting over the facts
That's enough handwringing about 'the end of
the countryside': the vast majority of Britain is greenfield, and it's likely to
stay that way.
30 August 2005
Behind
the ‘bra wars’
Making sense of the EU-China spat over textiles.
10 August 2005
Robin
Cook: from ethical imperialist to anti-war activist
3 August 2005
Don’t
protect the Green Belt - build on it
12 July 2005
Revisiting the Blitz Spirit
Myths about the Second World War won't help
us understand what is happening today.
4 July 2005
Mao: The
end of the affair
A new biography by former Maoists Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday blames Mao for everything that has gone wrong in China. What are they
trying to hide?
14 June 2005
Bureaucrat of the Year
Hilary Cottam won Designer of the Year for her
work on Kingsdale School in south London, even though she didn’t design it
17 May 2005
Abolish
the DCMS
9 May 2005
Second
World War: The Battle of the Books
29 April 2005
The end
of Blairism?
Personality looms large in New Labour because it is a
marketing initiative, not a movement.
15 April 2005
British
manufacturing: they think it’s all Rover
The collapse of the
Birmingham-based car company points to deep structural faults in British
industry.
26 January 2005
All Talk and No Bricks
21 January 2005
Pitting
parent against parent
The case against the Parental Separation Bill
10 December 2004
Constructing
Global Civil Society
A new book asks why, from Iraq to Ukraine, Western
politics is being played out everywhere but in the West.
11 November 2004
Arafat’s tragedy
He helped to found the idea of Palestinian
independence, but ended up as a mouthpiece of great power politics.
11 October 2004
Deconstructing Derrida
The French philosopher is dead, but his legacy
lives on in the age of unreason.
1
September 2004
Zombie
anti-imperialists vs the 'Empire'
Today's anti-war movement is motivated more by
romanticism than a serious critique of imperialism.
28 May 2004
Bonfire
of the investment opportunities
What were so many contemporary artworks doing in a
warehouse in Leyton?
26 May 2004
Euro-smugness
gets a free ride
European leaders are making the most of America's crisis
over Iraq
26 January 2004
'This
is the hangover of a major bubble' Doug Henwood discusses his new book,
After the New Economy
20 November 2003
Reviewing
After the New Economy Doug Henwood's book
23 October 2003
Axis of influence
Asian-Pacific states signed up to Bush's war on terror - but
they're more interested in trading with China.
1 October 2003
What Edward Said
Obituary
18 September 2003
Dancing the Cancun
The third world rebellion at the WTO talks has its roots in
London and Washington
19 June 2003
Policy
has not created diversity
Contribution to a debate on culture and difference
5 June 2003
Capital of Complaints
Liverpool's unique cultural signature dwells on a sense of
victimhood.
14 May 2003
A house of cards
America's tense relations with Saudi Arabia
27 March 2003
That uprising
The wishes of the people of Basra are buried under the
myth-making of others.
27 March 2003
Rethinking Human Rights
A new book on the human rights agenda casts light on events in
Iraq.
26 November 2002
Taking Churchill at his words
One viewer's view of the 'Greatest Briton'.
21 November 2002
The French connection
In the UN debates about Iraq, French diplomacy has re-emerged.
How?
1 November 2002
Language barriers
The Chirac/Blair spat shows international personality politics at
work.
17 October 2002
Breaking
up Indonesia
The Bali terrorist attack is the latest expression of Indonesia's
destabilisation.
27 September 2002
Forgetting
the evils of Empire
The left's embrace of Europe as an alternative to America creates
illusions in a destructive elite.
24 September 2002
Germany's
Third Way win
Schröder's narrow election victory came from an appeal to
national sentiment, and caution.
6 September 2002
Trot
along, Martin
Why is Martin Amis cranking up dead Cold War controversies?
22 August 2002
Summing up our fears
Post-11 September apocalyptic thriller strikes UK cinemas.
27 June 2002
TV as judge and executioner
BBC2's Hunt for Britain’s Paedophiles was a sordid show.
11 June 2002
Continental drift
Why is the centre right winning elections across Europe and the
USA?
22 April 2002
Too late, the French left have a cause
Right-wing president Jaques Chirac is now embraced as the
candidate of 'human rights' against Jean-Marie Le Pen.
31 January 2002
Farmers turned park-keepers
The Curry Commission's farming policy proposes a world fit for
beetles.
16 November 2001
Friends, allies and enemies
How the West has abandoned old friends and embraced one-time
enemies since the end of the Cold War
15 March 2001
Culture vultures
How can the UK government present the creative industries as a
major money-spinner? Through some creative accounting.
Articles in the Times Educational Supplement
| Humanist pupils: the right not to pray |
| They have a positive and moral belief, but schools expect them to join hands. James Heartfield reports |
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| Lifting the veil on Islam |
| Most British Muslims are likely to choose faith over fanaticism, writes James Heartfield There are 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, mostly of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin |
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| Scatterlings from Africa |
| Work in the UK keeps most Zimbabweans from returning, says James Heartfield Early this year, the Home Office began deporting Zimbabweans |
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| A kick up the career |
| Master of Teaching is a new degree. The first group to pass believe it will inject life into work. James Heartfield reports |
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| Island trouble |
| Tsunamis, terrorists and gang wars have affected many Sri Lankan Tamils, writes James Heartfield If your students' heads are nodding to the sound of M.I.A's "Arular", they are listening to a back-ha |
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| Suffer the children |
| Be gentle when teaching traumatised Iraqi pupils, writes James Heartfield Fifteen year-old Duua arrived in Britain two and a half years ago |
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| From unrest to uncertainty |
| Many Angolan families in the UK live in fear of being forced to return there, writes James Heartfield. Twelve-year-old Nsona (Natasha) Matambele of Forest Gate school in south London, was refused permission to stay |
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| Refuge makes for Turkish delight |
| Fleeing persecution, many Turks have prospered in the UK. James Heartfield reports There are around 100,000 Turkish nationals living in the UK (according to the Turkish Consulate), mostly in London, |
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| New communities, same old problems |
| The South East building boom should mean many more jobs and exciting new schools. As James Heartfield found, the reality does not match the dream |
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| James Heartfield detects confusing signals in the housing debate |
| The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is regularly responsible for declaring that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new homes are to be built. |
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| Seize a hold on the pole position | |
| James Heartfield helps you to give a warm welcome to pupils from Poland About 70, 000 people living in the UK were born in Poland, and most are based in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, West Yorks | |
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| Fixing a hole? | |
| Labour's commitment to rebuilding schools over the next decade means familiar landmarks could change. James Heartfield looks at architectural styles dating back to the Victorian era | |
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| Section: | Extras & updates |
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| Dangerous Liaisons... | |
| Education is like seduction. James Heartfield charts the history of teacher-student relations since Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens | |
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