Author: Gareth Leaman
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The red Welsh way
This isn’t a full essay, but the phrase ‘the red Welsh way’, introduced by Eluned Morgan earlier this month, is too annoying to ignore. A clunkier version of Welsh Labour’s ‘clear red water’, the party surely hopes it’ll serve a similar rhetorical purpose, at a similar political juncture. Keir Starmer is proving to be exactly…
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For all mankind?
It’s one of the most nauseating spectacles you’ll ever witness. Lauren Sanchez (net worth $30 million) exits a space capsule owned by her union-busting fiancé (net worth $206.7 billion) and proclaims that ‘we’re all in this together…we’re all connected’, the preceding eleven minutes apparently teaching her what a lifetime of matrimonial wealth will not. How…
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Vibe is sentient capital
Everyone loves talking about ‘vibe’. Everything new that happens in life – be it political, cultural, personal – can apparently be attributed to ‘vibes’. If change is afoot, we are witnessing a ‘vibe shift’. If something undesirable is happening, it’s because ‘the vibes are off’. And so on… Interpretation of ‘vibes’ is usually deployed either…
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Liberals have nothing left
The result of the US presidential election has further exposed the extent to which establishment liberalism is collapsing in the face of the insurgent ‘new right’. If we can identify an underlying reason for this ongoing displacement, it lies in contrasting abilities to conceptualise the relations between capital, ‘capitalist’ and labour, and how these are…
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Oasis and the haters
As you might expect from an industry fighting against its impending demise, the music press wastes no time when presented with a rare opportunity to shape popular discourse. And so, with the announcement of Oasis’s reunion came an anxious rush of well-worn opinions about the band’s work and its meaning within British culture. It began…
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Substack
Hello. Just a quick note to say that you can also follow this blog on Substack, if you’d like to. This will still be the main version of this site, however. I don’t think I like Substack all that much, but others seem to.
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On the funding of Welsh magazines
Statement in support of the Open Letter to the Welsh Government, Creative Wales and the Books Council of Wales to save Welsh magazines and websites
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On County giving up fan ownership
As hard as it is to wade through the doom-mongering and conspiracy theories surrounding all things Newport County, there’s little doubt that the challenges of a Football League club being owned by its supporters are coming to a head. Pre-season has been filled with ominous financial statements, the manager has made no secret of the…
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If Twitter dies
…it will be for the best. Not just because it’s a chronically addictive abuse sluice that turns all its users into self-important idiots, as the common critique goes, but also because of the incalculable damage it’s caused to the art of writing. Twitter has transformed the way people write, the way thoughts are articulated and…
Disposable Everything 