Celebrity Big Brother: hyper-sexualised link bait, and bloody entertaining

by Lucy Reese.

So what does this year’s Celebrity Big Brother say about our wider culture? Obviously the recycling of ‘reality’ celebrities like Sam or Luisa or Ollie is very much part of the story – we live in a culture where television spawns these creatures on an almost hourly basis. But what strikes me most is how sexualised the house has become – endless talk about orgies, bisexuality, Luisa plotting to win by cuddling up with Jasmine and Lee playing Casey and Jasmine off against each other. Sex sells – gets tweeted, shared, you name it – something known only too well by Channel Five’s proprietor Richard Desmond who famously cut his publishing teeth on ‘Asian Babes’. Celebrity Big Brother is hyper sexualised link bait – soft porn for the masses.

Free schools are Marxist? Then I’m a banana

by Lucy Reese.

Michael’s Gove’s latest pronouncement is that free schools are a Marxist ideal, a comment so outlandish and preposterous that it might at first seem that the hot weather has gone to the Education Secretary’s head. If free schools are a Marxist idea, then I’m a banana. What’s Marxist – or even democratic – about schools […]

Cathy Come Home: then and now

by Lucy Reese.

Although I’m a child of the 70s, I’ve always had a fascination with the 60s. A strange time of change and experimentation that seems so different from the world we live in. I love the music, fashion and art of the 60s and am inspired by the radical ideas that emerged from this turbulent decade. […]

Fight for our local hospitals – or we’ll lose the human touch

by Lucy Reese.

At the end of last year I felt a bit tired. I’d been working hard, looking after the kids and doing a lot of political stuff on top of it. I felt I was spreading myself too thin – something had to give and the politics seemed the obvious choice. But sadly, in the world […]

What Women Want – beyond Mel Gibson

by Lucy Reese.

One of the worst films I’ve ever had the misfortune of viewing goes by the title of What Women Want. The plot is wafer thin and so bad it’s almost good: everyone’s favourite fascist Mel Gibson plays advertising executive Nick who electrocutes himself and then gains the uncanny ability to hear what women are thinking. […]

Why we should be bothered about long-term funemployment

by Lucy Reese.

It’s not often that I thank my lucky stars that I’m middle aged, but when I read articles like this, I’m glad I’m 42 not 22. This article is one of many I’ve seen recently bemoaning the lot of young people, desperate for jobs in ‘cool’ industries like media or politics, who end up working […]

Don’t sneer at poor people for eating junk food

by Lucy Reese.

One of my least favourite things about the world we live in today is the readiness of so many people – even relatively enlightened people – to bash the poor. To denigrate people who live on benefits. To mock council house dwellers. To laugh and jeer at people on low incomes for having too many […]

BBC crisis: wishing for a new Profumo

by Lucy Reese.

Many, many years ago – OK, the late 90s to be exact – I worked on one of the first of the many ‘list shows’ I ended up making my living from. Most of these programmes were about TV, pop music or popular culture. This programme was called Top Ten Scandals and was about – […]

BBC-bashing: fashionable, but at our peril

by Lucy Reese.

One of my least favourite newspapers has to be London’s Evening Standard, also known as the Evening Boris, because of it’s slavish devotion to our ‘Mayor’. It used to be the sister paper of the Daily Mail until it was sold to an oligarch. The only thing that can be said in its favour is […]

There is such thing as society: and I saw it when my child ran away

by Lucy Reese.

A couple of days ago something genuinely terrible happened. My eldest child ran away from a park where he was playing with a friend after school. It all happened in a split second; the two boys were messing about, not wanting to go home, much to the irritation of the adults. Then they suddenly vanished. […]

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