THE TRAGIC MYTH OF THE ANGELUS OF MILLET
In his essay The Tragic Myth of The Angelus of Millet, Salvador Dalí interprets Jean-Francois Millet’s 1859 painting of a farmer in the fields with his wife as a depiction of male castration in the shadow of female sexuality and death. Was this Dalí being playful? Surreal? Provocative? Or was there more to Millet’s work than […]
DALÍ AND PICASSO
In the land of small minds and minor talent, Dalí and Picasso were giants. They were men with visions wider than the horizon and the stamp they left on the 20th century remains indelible. Twenty years older and already the toast of Paris, Picasso one spring morning in 1928 opened the door to his studio in […]
TORY WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The Tory war on human rights will be raging across the tabloid press in the build up to the next general election. The Daily Mail and it’s partners in false news will be convincing voters that Britain is hostage to the European Convention on Human Rights and hope they fall for the deceit. What is the European Convention […]
BOB DYLAN AND BRIGITTE BARDOT
Bob Dylan and Brigitte Bardot were outriders, rule breakers, iconoclasts who became icons of the sixties revolution. When Dylan in 1965 played Like a Rolling Stone at the Newport Folk Festival, this electric tidal wave was a manifesto, his resolve to take folk, country and jazz out of their boxes and meld them into the […]
THE ANTI-TAX AVOIDANCE DIRECTIVE
The Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive adopted by the European Union on 20 June 2016 sent a cold chill up the spines of the rich, elite and powerful who own and run Britain. The directive setting out rules against tax avoidance within the internal market went further on 25 October 2016 by adding an anti-abuse measure to […]
JEREMY HUNT HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS
Jeremy Hunt has blood on his hands that will never come off and a look of anguish in his eyes as his lifetime goal slips into the abyss. Like the Apostles with the gospel of Jesus, he set out to fulfil Thatcher’s vision to destroy the NHS while those other self-serving heretics – May, Johnson, Truss and […]
WHY THE RICH ALWAYS WANT MORE
There is a good reason why the rich always want more. Money provides status and connections. Big money makes you feel big, bigger than you are. The rich open doors for each other. Rich people don’t know and don’t want to know about the lives of poor people, their bills, their empty fridges and pockets, […]
LIVING IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
People in the United States are living in a parallel universe. Half the population believes the last presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump through massive voter fraud organised by a Deep State cabal of Antifa (anti-fascists), BLM (Black Lives Matter), communists and extremist Democrats led by Hillary Clinton who runs a paedophile ring from the […]
BRIGITTE BARDOT – THE GREATEST SEX SYMBOL OF ALL TIME
Brigitte Bardot as a young girl was given twenty lashes from a whip by her father. The pain and embarrassment shaped her life, her career, her relationships with men and her desire to become the greatest sex symbol of all time. Born on 28 September 1934, Bardot grew up in the swanky 16th arrondissement of […]
THE DAY GEORGE HARRISON CLIMBED THE WALL
The day George Harrison climbed the wall at Salvador Dalí’s surreal summer house didn’t take place for another week and during those seven days a large number of red roses crossed the village. It began one sultry afternoon in 1971 when Dalí returned to Cadaqués with Carlos Lozano after inspecting the geodesic dome being […]
WE DON’T KNOW WHO WE ARE
You. Me. Your neighbour. The postman. We don’t know who we are. You will never hear a Scotsman say he is British. Nor a Welshman. Catholics from Northern Ireland say they are Irish. Protestants say they are Loyal British Unionists to avoid saying what they are, Irish. We are not sure where we live. Great […]
JUST BE YOURSELF
People may tell you to just be yourself, but what they usually mean is ‘just be like me.’ It is human nature to believe we have made good choices and our children should set off down the same path. The reverse is also true – clever sons rue the errors of their fathers and […]
WHY WE MUST SUPPORT STRIKING NURSES
There is a very good reason why we must support striking nurses. They are striking in support of us all. They are striking against austerity, ‘stealth’ privatisation, inequality, poverty, hunger, the blatant lie of levelling-up. Nurses earning £30,000 a year work long shifts and then go straight to food banks because increased energy costs and […]
MRS THATCHER’S DREAM
Was it Mrs Thatcher’s dream to see pretty English beaches caked in fetid lumps of human excrement and untreated chemical waste? When she said there was no such thing as society, did Mrs Thatcher dream of a broken health service with striking nurses, a broken railway system with striking railwaymen, a broken society awash in […]
GALA DALI – THE MUSE OF THE SURREALISTS
Dalí and Gala were a double act. She wasn’t his model or manager. He wasn’t her lover or provider. Gala was Gala, ruthless, implacable, that icy promiscuous fusion of liberation and desire that awakens the juices of original thought and creativity. In the soup of Salvador Dalí, Gala was the spice. Gala was a Tatar born Elena […]
MICHELLE MONE IS A THIEF
Michelle Mone is a thief. She should be in prison. She’s not. She’s either swanning through the House of Lords in ermine or disported on a luxury yacht in a bathing costume in the seas around one of the fiscal paradises in the Caribbean. With a successful business selling knickers and bras, she was made […]
SALVADOR DALI AND RELIGION
Salvador Dalí and religion never made a good fit. It is hardly surprising, then, that in 1935, aged thirty-one, Dalí created his own belief system and wrote a letter to André Breton outlining his proposition – a religion without God. That letter, lost for eighty-seven years, has finally turned up in the Breton archive. André […]
BOB DYLAN PLAYS LITTLE RICHARD
Bobby turned on the radio late one night in 1957 and the sound of Little Richard hammering out Tutti Frutti over over the airwaves changed his life. Tutti frutti, oh rootie / Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh Next day in the storeroom at the back of his father’s appliance store in Hibbing, Minnesota, he blew the dust off […]
THE ENEMY OF THE UNLIVED MEANINGLESS LIFE
I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life. This line struck me like the unexpected blow with the cane Zen teachers use to spark fire in the souls of acolytes on the edge of Nirvana. I thought: who am I? Where have I been? Where am I going? Has my own life been full and worthy, […]
WHAT IS SOCIAL MURDER?
Social murder is a phrase applied to changes in government policy that lead to greater poverty and result in anxiety, suicide and early death. The perfect example of social murder is the stance taken by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne with the introduction of ‘austerity’ after the financial crisis […]