Archive for September, 2017
|I was relaxed about Britain’s drug culture revolution – but not any more | John Harris
Saturday, September 23rd, 2017
With deaths at record levels, calls for legalisation feel simplistic. But we must do more to make drugs such as ecstasy safe
Thirty years ago this November, a DJ called Danny Rampling co-founded a club night in Southwark, London, that he called Shoom. Essentially, he was trying to capture what he had experienced that summer on the Balearic island of Ibiza: a celebratory subculture built around so-called house music, and the drug methylenedioxymethamphetamine (or MDMA), otherwise known as ecstasy, whose euphoric rush inspired Shoom’s name.
So began the revolutionising of British popular culture, and the decisive passage of an array of illicit drugs from the cultural fringes to the mainstream. The saga is long and complicated, but it reached an unlikely kind of denouement this week, when that well-known raver the Duke Of Cambridge paid a visit to a treatment centre near London’s Liverpool Street station, and asked a group of recovering addicts the kind of “massive question” guaranteed to instantly crash-land in the headlines. “There’s obviously a lot of pressure growing in areas about legalising drugs and things like that,” he said. “What are your individual opinions on that?”
Related: Acid house and the dawn of a rave new world
Related: ‘A lost freedom’: When new age travellers found acid house – in pictures
Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »
Life’s complex enough. I fear your next iPhone will make things worse | John Harris
Friday, September 15th, 2017
The iPhone X is a thing of beauty, but I wonder about its true value. We’re putting ourselves at the mercy of systems we barely understand
It was just before 10am, Pacific time, on Tuesday, and as the crowd gathered at the new Steve Jobs Theatre in California for the launch of Apple’s latest products-cum-miracles, they were serenaded with the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. It had been chosen, presumably, as a signifier of the boomer supremacism still built into Apple’s culture, the company’s boundless ambition – John Lennon’s first line, let’s not forget, is “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” – and its senior management’s apparent belief that making billions of dollars is a serendipitous byproduct of the company’s mixture of philanthropy and art.
Related: iPhone X: even an embarrassing launch glitch can’t knock Apple off the top
Today’s great leap forward can easily become tomorrow’s yawn
Related: Facial recognition is here. The iPhone X is just the beginning | Clare Garvie
Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »
Life’s complex enough. I fear your next iPhone will make things worse | John Harris
Friday, September 15th, 2017
The iPhone X is a thing of beauty, but I wonder about its true value. We’re putting ourselves at the mercy of systems we barely understand
It was just before 10am, Pacific time, on Tuesday, and as the crowd gathered at the new Steve Jobs Theatre in California for the launch of Apple’s latest products-cum-miracles, they were serenaded with the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. It had been chosen, presumably, as a signifier of the boomer supremacism still built into Apple’s culture, the company’s boundless ambition – John Lennon’s first line, let’s not forget, is “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” – and its senior management’s apparent belief that making billions of dollars is a serendipitous byproduct of the company’s mixture of philanthropy and art.
Related: iPhone X: even an embarrassing launch glitch can’t knock Apple off the top
Today’s great leap forward can easily become tomorrow’s yawn
Related: Facial recognition is here. The iPhone X is just the beginning | Clare Garvie
Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »
These Europeans came to live a British dream. Is it all over? | John Harris
Friday, September 8th, 2017
Hard-working and self-reliant, they moved to the UK to get ahead. But tough talk on immigration makes many fear for the future
On the southern edge of Peterborough is a new residential development called Cardea – a huge expanse of housing served by a solitary Morrisons supermarket and a self-styled “clean, modern pub” called the Apple Cart – which has become a byword for the more affluent elements of the city’s Polish population.
On roads called Jupiter Avenue, Hercules Way and Neptune Close, newly built homes extend into the distance. A three-bedroom detached will give you change out of £250,000, and put you in close proximity to the expanse of warehouses, distribution centres and retail outlets which power a big part of the local economy. The openings such places offer tend to fall one of two ways: management positions and tech roles for people who have either worked their way up or arrived with the right qualifications; or, at what the modern vernacular calls entry level, more uncertain roles for people who are prepared to put in the graft, and who often shoulder the burden of mind-bending shift patterns and low wages.
Related: 80% of Britain’s 1.4m eastern European residents are in work
Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Bulgarians and Romanians have fed a job market in which few British people are interested
Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »
SEN assessment: one of the Cameron era’s most howling disasters | John Harris
Tuesday, September 5th, 2017
Changes to England’s special educational needs system have led to an absurdly complex regime full of trapdoors
• ‘People give up’: the crisis
It was March 2011 when the coalition government announced proposals to reform England’s special educational needs (SEN) system. Some of the initial noise around their plans was grim: government sources said as many as 450,000 children could be taken out of the category of special needs altogether, while the dependably sensitive Mail Online ran such headlines as “Schools on a scam and an excuse for lazy teaching”. At the same time, ministers made contrasting pledges, many of which I heard first-hand – not least the promises to make things “stronger and simpler” for parents and children.
Related: Schools battle to support special needs as teaching assistants lose jobs
Related: Parents pushing for special needs diagnosis for children, survey says
Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »
John's Books
-
Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll:
The Ultimate Guide to the Music, the Myths and the Madness
-
"The Dark Side of the Moon":
The Making of the "Pink Floyd" Masterpiece
So Now Who Do We Vote For?
The Last Party:
Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock
Britpop:
Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock
-
-
You are currently browsing the John Harris blog archives for September, 2017.
Archives
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- January 2010
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
Categories
- blogs (3)
- comment (4)
- features (2)
- Guardian RSS (1009)
- Labour Party (1)
- Music (3)
- Politics (6)
- Uncategorized (1)