A tumblr blog with obligatory missing penultimate vowel (is 'ompv' an acceptable acronym?) - to accompany the altogether less interesting www.ruritania.co.uk
"We would intend to run a series of outreach programmes that welcome these young kids in to the infinite possibilities of the digital future and provide a framework for them to think about their future. Our aim is to create a team of people from a variety of backgrounds and educational levels, all of whom have a “digital core”, so that we can show the possibilities of technology, provide education, and a positive environment that encourages creation and interaction with the aim to curtail the destructive behaviour of recent events."
"This is the reality of multicultural London. It is not a melting pot. It is a set of groups that are rigidly self-separated by race, language, religion, class, money, education and age group, who have not only come to an unspoken agreement that they will not mix, but have become complacent that this agreement will not and need not be challenged."
"Marxists need to remember the Hegelian distinction between ‘in itself’ and ‘for itself’. In themselves, these riots may indeed be about inequality: the concentration of wealth and power may simply have become too unwieldy, regardless of what the rioters think is going on. But for themselves, they are about power, hedonism, consumption and sovereignty of the ego. Anyone who disagrees with that is simply not crediting the participants with being able to make sense of what they’re doing."
“I have changed. This has been a profoundly life-changing event for me, in many ways. It’s certainly changed my politics. When I was first elected, I was a completely naive and gauche politician. You look at the pillars of the state: politics, the media, police, lawyers – they’ve all got their formal role, and then nestling above that is that power elite who are networked in through soft, social links, that are actually running the show. Why didn’t I know that 10 years ago, and why didn’t I rail against it? Why did I become part of it? I was 34. I’m 44 now. I was naive. But I’ll never let that happen again.”
If anything this admission of changing in response to knowledge is the most pleasing part of this Guardian profile of Tom Watson
23rd January 2012
Notes: 6
