Kester Brewin

Apologies (really, I’m saying sorry? For what?!) for not posting much recently. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say…just not much to say in public right now. Lots of writing getting done, so watch this space (if you like watching space.) Anyways, something I’ve been pondering the last couple of days: the importance of [...]

Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items. Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now [...]

It’s been interesting watching the argument over whether the England football team should be allowed to wear poppies for their international matches this weekend. The international governing body of the sport, FIFA, ruled that they could not have poppies on their shirts as this contravened their guidelines. The FA, the British body, cried foul and [...]

Seems to be an annual posting I know (see 2010‘s and 2009‘s!) but I’m really passionate about reclaiming Guy Fawkes night. Why? Partly because it’s very very English. This is not imported, it’s not some pagan festival that the Christians co-opted, and it’s not something that can be easily marketed and commodified by Supermarkets – [...]

One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you [...]

  Interesting video here showing Slavoj Zizek at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. His speech can be read in full here, but what I love about the video is that, for some technological reason no doubt, he cannot himself speak. The crowd around him who can hear directly have to shout out [...]

The media coverage in the UK has been limited, but I think the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest is interesting, and I hope it turns out to be significant. There was comment on BBC radio the other morning suggesting variously that it was the Democratic equivalent of the Republican ‘Tea Party’ movement  - though I’m not [...]

Not had much time to post – flat out at work preparing for a school inspection, and reading and writing when I can too. All of which ironically brings me to post about the very idea of work… It starts with rather a good story, which I hope you’ll bear with before I try to [...]

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the conversation about the ‘Year of Opposition’, and the comments in particular that dealt with gender imbalance. What has really struck me about the above conversation is that all the voices are male. And I wonder whether the language of “thrashing things out” and the imagery of the boxing [...]

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, and in the last few days how it might relate to the discussion of whether ‘newness’ is possible. This isn’t meant as an holistic critique or discussion of the events all those years ago, instead I’ve been drawn to thinking about the [...]