Posts under ‘TV/Radio’

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 – […]

“Hard-working families” and why we should be worried by Newspeak

by Conrad Landin.

Sometimes it is a disservice to describe George Orwell’s seminal novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as dystopian. Some of the novel’s best commentary is on spectres that existed in 1940s society, and continue to exist now. First among these is Newspeak, which was really born in Orwell’s polemical exploration of how the English language is subtly used […]

Guardian’s Michael White asks about party democracy

by Newsdesk.

With coverage mainly focusing on vacuous gossip, often the media lose sight of what conference is actually all about. Thankfully, the Guardian’s Michael White took the time on Wednesday to assess “the changing face of the Labour party conference”. Featuring appearances from Left Futures contributors Kelvin Hopkins MP and Conrad Landin.

A fictional school for the Gove era

by Conrad Landin.

The man in the restaurant was unkempt, and brandished a carrier bag. As he railed against the involvement of private money in education, as much as I agreed with him, I could feel the producers had set him up as the villain. But the start of the latest series did at least confirm that Waterloo […]

Port and plotting – does anyone outside the BBC really care?

by Amelia Horgan.

On Thursday night, the media’s seemingly never ending obsession with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge delved new depths. The programme in question was BBC2’s ‘Wonderland: Young, Bright and on the Right’. Young Tories have, perhaps deservedly, never met the best press reception – see Harry Enfield’s ToryBoy or its real life incarnation in a young William Hague’s speech to the 1977 Conservative Party conference – but this show’s anthropological study of the young right’s high fliers tells us very little.

When did looking down on others become the national pastime?

by James Bloodworth.

I don’t know about you, but before I tuned into the Channel Four show I had no idea what a big fat gypsy wedding was. I assumed it must be something to do with gypsies and weddings, obviously, but I failed to grasp why such a program would ever make it on to television. Lots […]

We need a Murdoch-free press

by Darrell Goodliffe.

It’s been a bad week for Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corporation. The ‘apology’ for its phone-hacking  antics are set to open the floodgates on other such claims but few readers will worry about that. Indeed, News Corps plight isn’t worth even a note from the world’s smallest violin. The problems that underpin the story, however, are […]

Banksy’s child labour sweatshop intro to the Simpsons

by Jon Lansman.

For those who haven’t seen it, we present the opening to the Simpsons shown last week in the US, storyboarded and directed by graffiti artist  Banksy. It adds to a modified into  a typically subsversive picture of a grim chinese factory where child labourers and enslaved animals produce Simpsons merchandise. Surprisingly perhaps, Fox permitted it […]

The Trouble with the Pope (Channel 4, 8pm tonight)

by Jon Lansman.

Human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, presents an hour-long examination of Pope Benedict XVI, at 8pm on Channel 4 tonight, three days before the Pontiff’s State Visit to Britain. Summarising the documentary, Peter Tatchell said:

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