Left voices, unfiltered, unedited, Ungagged.
Since the last time I wrote about my Covid-19 experience for Ungagged my life here in Xiamen (on the south coast of China) has regained a degree of normality. Initially many people were saying things like “normal isn’t really very normal any more”, and the expectation was that the strictly enforced new rules were here […]
Apart from moaning and complaining about politics, I spend a lot of my time at my day job preparing Chinese youngsters for future exams (and life in general). I’m a primary school teacher at a foreign language school in Xiamen, on the South East coast of China. As you would imagine, there are some interesting […]
Browsing social media recently I came across one blogger who claimed that Covid-19 will be America’s Chernobyl. That seems a bit like hyperbole. Chernobyl, as history records, became a central part of Gorbachev’s Glasnost campaign which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union (helped of course by the industrial level of corruption among […]
The Walking Dead tells the story of a group of survivors in a post-apocalypse world. It’s one of an increasing number of graphic novels that has grown beyond cult fandom into mainstream popularity, having been adapted for a successful TV show about 10 years ago. The apocalypse in question, as it transpires, is a virus […]
These days it feels like every app on my phone has some Covid-19 related content. One of them has a list of all the rich and famous who’ve fallen victim to the virus – movie stars, sports people, politicians. I’ve seen the related conversations on social media, where people debate who the most famous victim […]
The collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it the end of the Cold War and an apparent end to any challenge to Western capitalism. Fukuyama famously called it “the end of history”, others called it the end of ideology. Western neoliberal hegemony and “free markets” were to be the new unchallenged normal. It wasn’t […]
Beinn Irbhinn (anglicised: Ben Irvine) is a Scottish socialist, originally from Greenock. He is known in Greenock for his activity while a member of the SSP, where he campaigned for the socialist case for Scottish independence, as well as being vocal on issues such as fuel poverty in Inverclyde and strongly opposing Inverclyde Council’s insidious […]