Eleanor Blatchley
: Human Rights, Hashtags and the UK's Policy Towards Central Asia
Natalie Bennett
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James Snell
: PRISM: Who Cares?
Alex Ford
: Talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan Doesn't Betray the Dead - It Honours Them
Rob Hopkins
: Why Local Economies Hold the Key to Our Economic Future
Britain's wealth of secondhand bookshops are going out of business "at a frightening speed", an expert has warned. A generation brought up on ebook...
Loneliness saps the will to live and can be a major cause of depression, as one 80-year-old lady told me "I wake each morning, get dressed, and sit on my bed waiting for death. I have nothing else to look forward to." ChildLine has proved, as Samaritans proved before it, that an anonymous helpline can break through the barriers of shame or fear. So I suggested that The Silver Line might do the same for the older generation, and enable callers to disclose not just their loneliness, but incidents of neglect and abuse they dared not admit to anyone else. And so it has proved.
The busiest 10 days of Hay On Wye 2012 has now passed as the town is left in a kind of post apocalyptic mess of muddy fields, empty portaloos and dirty windswept awnings leftover from the Hay Literary Festival.
I'm standing in a paisley tent in Hay-on-Wye at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival and seeing art unfold. A camera is positioned to capture Stella Vine's 12 hour painting marathon on a huge canvas. She is disarmingly open. The kind of dedicated true artist who looks at you directly and makes you feel you are in the presence of a spirit.
Every summer in Britain we flock in our thousands to outdoor festivals promising music, comedy and theatre, always hoping to experience those sublime ...
I met a literary agent the other day. She told me that these days when you sell a novel to publishers, there has to be a USP. "A what?" I said. "'Unique Selling Point. You know, narrated by a hermaphrodite, or someone who has been repeatedly raped by their grandfather, that sort of thing.
I have been invited to take part in HowTheLightGetsIn, the music and philosophy festival, at Hay on Wye on 8 June. At first I said thanks very much but no, as I presumed they meant some kind of talking event, which would have filled me with dread, but they said I had the freedom to think of something creative.
ince my last post, things in the IAI office have been manic. Now in its fifth year, HowTheLightGetsIn has become the largest philosophy and music festival in the world. With 410 events, 6 stages, 165 speakers and 150 bands taking part in the 10 day extravaganza, the team have been furiously calling, emailing, drafting text and getting excited about what we hope will be our best festival yet.
With a new lifestyle label up and running, I've finally bitten the bullet and set up an office. It sounds easy, but it isn't. So many people are increasingly taking the decision to work from home, but it is not without its challenges.
I opened the Times on the train to London about three weeks ago and nearly choked on my tea as there on page three was a photograph of myself next to Desmund Tutu in an article about Hay-on-Wye and the anti-retail development fight. My "quotes" were direct paraphrases from this very blog.
Don't let them define your reality... if 80,000 people attacked the Iranian government building it would be called a revolution yet when it happens in Greece it's called a protest. I don't trust anything the BBC tell me and neither should you.
In a way, everyone is a philosopher. We're all trying to work out what our lives are about. In this period of economic, environmental, and political transition, that is surely something worth embracing.
Hay-on-Wye has its own micro-climate, being in a dip with not much winter sun. It always seems a degree or two colder than everywhere locally. Each day I nip in to the centre to grab a loaf of Alex Gooch's beautiful sourdough bread from the local deli and have a quick chat with the shopkeepers.
Tesco's seems to be getting a lot of flack in the national press - maybe its monopoly will finally break. Whatever the outcome, the negative press is all good timing for the Plan B protest group in Hay.
On the News of the World happenings, my lawyer has given the police 14 days to disclose evidence they hold and if not he'll be asking why not? The lawyers representing the hackers have already offered me the compensation scheme, which we have rejected.
The people of Ledbury have just kicked plans for a new Tesco out after a big fight. The people of Hay are no push-overs and are asking for a public enquiry.....Maybe time to get Westminster involved after all.
In an era of global revolution, we'll also ask if art has a duty to be primarily engaged in political change whether or not it is at the top of a buyer's wish list. Most importantly, when faced with the realities of an art world slowly piecing itself back together and an economic climate that promises little immediate relief, the transformative power of creativity is worthy of our discussion.
It's been a week filled with intrigue and subterfuge and lots of whispers rattling around the small market town. Both linked with the proposed development at Hay-on-Wye - which now appears to also involve ripping up playing fields, tennis courts and a Brownie hut for a large retail park.
I'd like to pay my respects and say R.I.P to Sir Jimmy Savile, who died on Saturday. I met him only once, weirdly, it was at a dinner at Chequers in October 1999. I was first to arrive that evening (sad but true) and I was standing talking to Tony Blair, who was rocking his Gap casuals. Anyway, who is the next guest to arrive, but Jimmy Savile. At that point I thought life is definitely getting surreal. Rock 'n' roll to the end, he spent the entire night trying with persistence to chat up my wife, Kate. He was a rock 'n' roller even in his 70s, a bit like my Dad. Actually, my Dad just does the rock 'n' roll, not the charity work.
Basically, Hay has been given a choice...the town gets a new school (around 240 pupils) and a "major retailer" who funds the school gets to plonk a "retail development" bang in the middle of Hay. The implications of this affects the future of a small market town filled with individual shops, with no real traffic infrastructure which is bang in the middle of a National Park.
The art world can be a fickle place, but to Hans Ulrich Obrist it remains unfalteringly loyal. Co-director of London's Serpentine Gallery, founder of the Brutally Early Club (for busy people who breakfast at dawn), interviewer, archivist, and one of this year's Crunch festival speakers, he is, indisputably, an art world powerhouse.
