Churches turned into pubs. Brooding Victorian warehouses replaced with sparkly identikit apartments. Family shops and independent cafes bankrupted by Starbucks, Tesco’s et al. When will we wake up to this grim, placeless reality?
Having an allotment is no longer a tiresome hobby practised by old geezers in wellies and donkey jackets. It’s an insurance policy against an uncertain future, as Paul Kingsnorth has found out for himself over the last three years.
Are SUVs a crime against civilisation, or paragons of efficiency? Are they ugly, arrogant and antisocial, or bright, beautiful and mobile? And do the polar passions they arouse pit the politics of envy against the Americanisation of British culture? Paul Kingsnorth and Michael Harvey discuss
School dinners by McDonald’s. Corporations taking countries to court because their environmental regulations are ‘too tough’. The BBC sold to Rupert Murdoch. Paul Kingsnorth explains why we should be very worried by what is about to go on behind the closed doors of Cancun.