Coming at a time when the global financial crisis and contracting of consumer spending is ushering in a new epoch for the fashion industry, To Die For offers a very plausible vision of how green could really be the new black. Taking particular issue with our current mania for both big-name labels and cheap fashion, To Die For sets an agenda for the urgent changes that can and need to be made by both the industry and the consumer. Far from outlining a future of drab, ethical clothing, Lucy Siegle believes that it is indeed possible to be an ‘ethical fashionista’, simply by being aware of how and where (and by whom) clothing is manufactured. The global banking crisis has put the consumer at a crossroads: when money is tight should we embrace cheap fast fashion to prop up an already engorged wardrobe, or should we reject this as the ultimate false economy and advocate a return to real fashion, bolstered by the principles of individualism and style pedigree? In this impassioned book, Siegle analyses the global epidemic of unsustainable fashion, taking stock of our economic health and moral accountabilities to expose the pitfalls of fast fashion. Refocusing the debate squarely back on the importance of basic consumer rights, Siegle reveals the truth behind cut price, bulk fashion and the importance of your purchasing decisions, advocating the case for a new sustainable design era where we are assured of value for money: ethically, morally and in real terms.
Category: Long listsTTTT
Sherard Cowper Cowles
A frank and honest memoir by Britain’s former ambassador to Kabul which provides a unique, high-level insight into Western policy in Afghanistan.
For three years, from 2007 until 2010, Sherard Cowper-Coles was on the diplomatic frontline in Kabul as the West’s mission in Afghanistan sank deeper into crisis. First as British Ambassador and, later, as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative, he witnessed at first hand a struggle that by the time he left was swallowing billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money a year, and had already cost the lives of more than 2,000 coalition troops, including nearly 350 British soldiers, as well as tens of thousands of Afghans, in and out of uniform.
In Cables from Kabul he offers a ringside seat in this unfolding drama in a high-octane narrative that transports the reader from the backstreets of Kabul and fly-blown villages of the Helmand Valley to the corridors of power in London and Washington. Packed with colourful portraits of major political and diplomatic players such as President Karzai and the US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, the book gives a rich flavour of embassy life in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
With his unique, high-level insight into the West’s policy in Afghanistan, Cowper-Coles raises fundamental questions about the viability of the whole Afghanistan project, even after the death of bin Laden. While paying fulsome tribute to the bravery of our soldiers and the tactical success they are undoubtedly achieving at a local level, he asks whether this will be enough to secure within three years the wider strategic goal of stabilising Afghanistan to the point where the Afghan authorities can govern the country without outside intervention.
As Our Man in Kabul, nobody is better placed to tell this story. Powerful, witty and astonishingly frank, Cables from Kabul explains how we got into the quagmire of Afghanistan, and how we can get out of it.
Taken from Harper Press
Wiggy
A girl. Noisy, sweary, political, very ranty. Geek mixed with a touch of law. No-longer-practising barrister.
Taken from Twitter profile
Submitted posts
In screwing Ken Clarke, Victoria Derbyshire fucked rape victims.
Adoption stories from the Tories: Part 1
Shoesmith and Baby P: Who does have blood on their hands?
The Sun, that picture, and that headline.
Slutwalk: Just more noise, in an already noisy space.
Other links
Gavin Knight
Everything you read in here is true.
In Manchester, Anders Svensson is on the trail of drug baron Merlin and his lieutenant Flow, a man so dangerous his type is said to appear only once in a decade.
In Glasgow, faced with the highest murder rate in Europe, Karyn McCluskey is a one-woman mission to end gang warfare.
In London, Pilgrim finds he’s no longer feared. Troll, the child soldier, is terrorizing the streets.
This is our hidden urban underworld.
Untold, until now.
Edward Docx
Edward Docx writes for The Times, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, The Observer, Vogue and The Independent. His most recent journalism appears in The Guardian and Prospect Magazine. He has also published a number of books including The Calligrapher and Pravda. He is based in London.
Taken from Edward Docx’ website
Submitted articles
Postmodernism is dead
Other links
Caroline Moorehead
On an icy dawn morning in Paris in January 1943, 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz – the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp.The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer’s wife of 68; there were among them teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and university lecturers.
Caroline Moorehead’s remarkable new book is the story of these women – the first time it has been told.It is about who they were, how and why they joined the resistance, how they were captured and treated by the French police and the Gestapo, their journey to Auschwitz and their daily life in the death camps – and about what it was like for the 49 survivors when they returned to France. Six of the women were still alive in 2010 and able to tell their stories. What they had to say – and this was confirmed by the children of those who died – was that great affection and camaraderie grew up among the group. They became friends, and it was precisely this friendship that kept so many of them alive.They supported and cared for one another, worked together, shared everything, watched out for each other and faced the horror together.Friendship, almost as much as luck, dictated survival.
Drawing on interviews with survivors and their families, on German, French and Polish archives, and on documents held by WW2 resistance organisations, A Train in Winter covers a harrowing part of our history but is, ultimately, a portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and endurance, and of the particular qualities of female friendship.
Taken from Vintage Books
Lisa Ansell
I am Lisa Ansell. This blog is my thoughts. I have accepted it is unlikely that the next year is going to throw up a political solution to the global crisis the news is pretending we aren’t in. In the absence of a credible economic alternative, I am seeking my own. So while I attempt to defy the economy, I shall keep this. My perspective. Probably not yours, which is rather the point. I never understood how one perspective was ever expected to see anything in the round. I can pretty much guarantee that I can’t change reality to match your current political or ideological requirements. I apologise in advance. I am often wrong, I mostly write in a hurry and edit sporadically. The only line I take is my own, and it changes as I learn. And lets face it, there is little to do but learn at this point in time.
Taken from Lisa’s new blog – Defy the Economy
Submitted posts
Labour’s financialisation of welfare.
Response to Polly Toynbee’s piece in the Guardian last week…
A summer of little bread and increasingly spectacular circuses: part 3.
A summer of little bread and increasingly spectacular circuses. 2. Rioting and looting.
Stunning victory in egypt, but this is not the end. It could be the end ofthe beginning…vice versa…
Other links
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
London-based journalist writing features and news for print and web. Recently completed a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship reporting on immigration and asylum in Greece, Italy, Spain, France and the UK. Prior to that worked for the Washington Post’s London bureau chief as editorial assistant/special correspondent. Cut my teeth as news editor for the Partnerships Bulletin, a trade magazine all about PFIs and project finance. Before this, won a Guardian Scott Trust bursary to study print journalism at Sheffield University.
Taken from Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
Submitted posts
Is this what gentrification looks like?
”We are here and we are human”
”Greece is becoming a big concentration camp”
“Our job is to prevent them coming here” – EU border police
Nobody leaves home if things are good
A humanitarian crisis in the forests of northern France
”The police make us feel like animals”
Rodric Braithwaite
In a timely and eye-opening book Rodric Braithwaite examines the Russian experience during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Basing his account on Russian sources and interviews he shows the war through the eyes of the Russians themselves – politicians, officers, soldiers, advisers, journalists and women.
As former ambassador to Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite brings unique insights to the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The story has been distorted not only by Cold War propaganda but also by the myths of the nineteenth century Great Game. It moves from the high politics of the Kremlin to the lonely Russian conscripts in isolated mountain outposts. The parallels with Afghanistan today speak for themselves.’A superb achievement of narrative history, sensitive writing and exciting fresh research’: so wrote Simon Sebag Montefiore about Rodric Braithwaite’s bestsellerMoscow 1941. But those words, and many others of praise that were given it, could equally apply to his new book.
Taken from Profile Books
Christopher Hitchens
For forty years, Christopher Hitchens has been at the epicentre of the battle of letters in Britain & America. This blockbuster volume is the collection of a lifetime.
‘As soon as we abandon our own reason,’ wrote Bertrand Russell, ‘and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.’ For over forty years, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed truth where others have spun falsehood and written, with passionate commitment, on matters that others fear to broach. This volume of essays spans Hitchens’ whole career and encompasses his writing on politics, literature and religion. It is the most comprehensive collection of the work of the finest English essayist since Orwell.
Arguably contains all aspects of Hitchens’ wide repertoire as journalist, polemicist and critic. Divided into sections such as: ‘All American’, ‘Eclectic Affinities’ and ‘Foreign Quarrels’, Hitchens unfolds his views on subjects ranging from Clinton to Kissinger; Powell to Proust.
Hitchens’ life has, above all else, been one of defiance and wit, courage and humility: in an age of digital punditry and twenty-four hour hucksterism, he has been a voice of reason amid the clamour, making his indelible and brilliant mark on politics and literature on both sides of the Atlantic. While his many books exist as a formidable legacy, it is his mastery of short-form journalism and criticism that constitute his lasting claim to greatness. Arguably is a unique anthology and the indispensible companion to the Anglosphere’s pre-eminent political writer.
Taken from Atlantic Books
Fintan O’Toole
Longlisted articles published by the Irish Times and openDemocracy
Fintan O’Toole is assistant editor of The Irish Times and author of ‘Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Killed the Celtic Tiger’. He has written for The Irish Times since 1988 and was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001.
Submitted articles
Triumph of the spivs as democracy is sidelined
Reckless, feckless and feral employer is all talk, talk
Citizens trapped in a two-state nightmare
The week that Anglophobia died
Obama not just another excuse for blarney
Other links
Anna Chen
Introduction Anna Chen’s blog. Writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 4. First British Chinese comedian to write and perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Suzy Wrong — Human Cannon, 1994) and appear on British television (Fist Of Fun, 1995). Writes and performs poetry. Madam Miaow casts a sharp eye over the political and cultural landscape and takes a scalpel and a shotgun to the guilty parties.
“Just imagine, the whole place being upset by one little Chinese girl in the scullery.” (Piccadilly, 1929)
Has written for New Internationalist magazine, the South China Morning Post, Tribune, the Guardian. Writer and presenter for BBC Radio 4
Taken from Madam Miaow Says
Submitted links
Seumas Milne on 9/11: some comrades more equal than others
Takeaway review: Theatre Royal Stratford East
Looting and the UK riots: as above, so below
Rupert Murdoch: ain’t our democracy wonderful?
All the tea in China: the return of the East India Company
Is China a responsible stakeholder? Chatham House report review
Ai Weiwei: the Monkey King goes missing
Working for the Clampdown: Niall Ferguson’s testosterone theory of history
Orange Tone: a poem about perma-tanned politicians
Militarised Hamlet at the National Theatre: review
Other links
Ms Baroque
I am a poet, critic, conversationalist, personal shopper, siren, and housemaid to the gods – at least they think they’re gods. So it said when this blog first opened in 2006. The little gods have grown up and are – as used to be said – beginning the world; the guinea pig died long ago, and I’m frankly too tired to be much of a siren; and yet Baroque in Hackney has a life of its own.
Taken from Baroque in Hackney
Submitted links
Vaclav Havel: Another hero disappears
You live with the common people
Schmalz overload in Westminster: three days to go
Ai Weiwei, Vladimir Tatlin, and the dream the speaks
”Audacious, bold, puissant and heroical”*
John Rentoul
John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, and visiting fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, where he teaches contemporary history. Previously he was chief leader writer for The Independent. He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning.
Taken from John Rentoul: Independent Blogs
Submitted posts
The “Why Should I Tidy My Bedroom” Theory
Getting in touch with my inner Cromwell
The Ridiculous Beatification of Brian Haw
A Higher Form of Something, Certainly
In (left-wing) praise of Tesco
George Osborne’s failure to buy gold cost up to £4.5bn
Another voice: Why Cameron had no choice but to fight
Other links
David Rennie
Bagehot columnist surveys the politics of Britain, British life and Britain’s place in the world. The column and blog are named after Walter Bagehot, an English journalist who was the editor of The Economist from 1861 to 1877
Taken from Bagehot’s Notebook
Submitted blogposts
Britain and the Nordic world: The strongest girls in the world
Family Values: Is marriage a symptom or a cause?
David Cameron in the Gulf: David Cameron defends the defence industry
Freedom of speech: The right to burn poppies
Ed Miliband: Labour’s flat-earthers demand the cuts go away
Cycling in London: Cyclists for crackdown on cyclists
Britain in Afghanistan: David Cameron’s hunt for Afghan exit strategy
Unethical journalism: The depressing tale of Johann Hari
Britain and the EU: Britain, not leaving but falling out of the EU
Misha Glenny
The benefits of living in a digital, globalised society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and every criminal’s dream. We bank online, shop online, date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security – sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who cares to relieve us of them? In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international bestseller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the 21st century: cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber industrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year, fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible, often super-smart new breed of criminal: the hacker.* Glenny has travelled and trawled the world. And by exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website, DarkMarket, he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players – the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims – and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history. The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarket is authoritative and completely engrossing. It’s a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.
Taken from Bodley Head
Polly Curtis
Polly Curtis is the Guardian‘s Whitehall correspondent working in Houses of Parliament and writing about government, politics and policy. She has previously covered health, social affairs and education for the paper and is currently seconded to write Reality check, a daily blog fact-checking the biggest news stories of the day
Taken from The Guardian
Submitted posts
Pink v blue – are children born with gender preferences?
Government austerity cuts: are the rich or poor hit hardest?
Who’s telling the truth in the public sector pension row?
What happens if Greece leaves the euro?
Reality check: is now the time for households to pay off their debts?
Reality check: can owning a cat be grounds for appeal against deportation?
Reality check: why is the coalition losing women voters?
David James Smith
David James Smith writes for the Sunday Times Magazine for whom he has travelled around the world writing cover stories, investigative articles, reportage and profiles. He has also published a number of books, including ‘The Sleep of Reason’ (his definitive account of the James Bulger case), ‘One Morning in Sarajevo; and ‘Young Mandela’.
Taken from David James Smith’s website
Submitted articles
The secret life of a killer (£)
The secret torments of Galliano (£)
‘A marriage breaker? That just isn’t the Claudia I know’ (£)
Other links