Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Six of the Best 312

The 'Gotcha' style of questioning favoured by John Humphrys damages democracy, argues Robert Sharp on Liberal Conspiracy.

Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell brings psychotherapy to bear on relations between the parties: "Viewed through the prism of Transactional Analysis, it is no surprise that the LibDem-Labour coalition negotiations failed, but the Conservatives and the LibDems managed to strike a business-like agreement."

Germany offers the best model for the successful adoption of renewable energy, argues Osha Gray Davidson in an interview with AlterNet.

"As a child in Bristol in the 1970s, apart from school, mealtimes and the odd bit of telly (mostly Blue Peter!) my life from aged 7-11 essentially consisted of what experts now call ‘free play’. Although I was very lucky to have access to woods and gardens, much of this play took place in less-than-bucolic surroundings – car-parks, estates, disused patches of land and on the street. This didn’t matter. What mattered was having some freedom to roam and to just ‘be’, to call on friends and hang out with other kids, to be away from the adult world and to create our own." Playing Out on the importance of free play - and Peter Pan.

Duncan Stephen on the curious case of Joyce Hatto - who turned out not to be "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of".

"In the sixties and seventies when these pictures were taken, every street corner that was not occupied by a pub was home to a shop offering groceries and general supplies to the residents of the immediate vicinity. The owners of these small shops took on mythic status as all-seeing custodians of local information, offering a counterpoint to the pub as a community meeting place for the exchange of everybody’s business." Spitalfields Life has a selection of Tony Hall's photographs of East End shops.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Link to Spitalfields life, please?

Jonathan Calder said...

Do I have to do everything round here?