The Critical Commentator

  Courtesy is such a quiet force that its crumbling in formerly expected places can feel as shocking as a trusted handrail suddenly giving way... The flashiest slurs have emanated from the White House. In November President Trump aggrieved by a female reporter's question about Jeffrey Epstein, snapped back: "Quiet Piggy!" Earlier this month he dismissed Somali immigrants as "garbage". When the Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were fatally stabbed... Trump suggested that Reiner's tragic death was caused by his negative stance on the president himself and because he suffered from a mind-crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome... The First Madness of Ophelia Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Photo Credit: Gallery Oldham [CC BY-NC-ND]  Trash talk aimed at political opponents and journalists or socially divisive language, did not commonly feature in presidential statements... By maintaining decorum in their public speech, previous preside...

  A study from 2024 found that 45% of Gen Z and 39% of millennials were actively trying to reduce their screentime, a number I can only imagine is increasing daily. My rationale had less to do with being anti-phone - I don't think every second spent on a screen is inherently harmful - but more to do with the free time I was losing. There was a richer life being sacrificed for what was mostly a mind-numbingly bad habit. The prevailing argument for how to resolve phone addiction is that all you need to do is just stop... We're told it's a matter of grit and discipline, something most of us simply lack. There is now a thriving industry of apps and technology dedicated to getting you off  your phone, which operate on this vague assumption... These interventions do work for some people. But for most, they serve as a Sisyphean torment: that even if you do briefly log off, you find the nothingness excruciating and are struck with how badly you are itching to return. You're als...

  Perhaps no scandal conveys the rot in our world more than the Jeffrey Epstein affair... For this isn't a story about left and right: it is a story about right and wrong.More specifically it is about power; about how the rich and powerful of all political persuasions live by a different set of rules from everyone else, not just in America but throughout the western world... The story we like to tell ourselves is equality under the law... But this fairy tale has now become an object of derision for millions of "ordinary" people  - me included and perhaps you too. Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime Amy J. Curr  (active 1885-1894} Photo Credit: Aberdeen Archives, Galleriy & Museums [Public Domain]  How could it be otherwise when dozens of vulnerable children were trafficked, abused and threatened by Epstein and other rich men but not a single one of those men has been brought to justice beyond Epstein himself? The only person serving time is Ghislaine Maxw...

  As I apply for yet another job, I look at the company's website for context. I've now read their "what we do" section four or five times, and I have a problem - I can't figure out what they do. There are two possibilities here. One: they don't know what they do. Two: what they do is so pointless and embarrassing that they dare not spell it out in plain English. "We forge marketing systems at the forefront of the online wellness space" translates to something like "we use ChatGPT to sell dodgy supplements. But understanding what so many businesses actually do is the least of my worries. I'm currently among the 5% of Brits who are unemployed. In my six months of job hunting, my total lack of success has begun to make me question my own existence. About one in five of my job applications elicit a rejection email, usually bemoaning the sheer number of "quality applicants" for the position. For the most part, though - nothing. It'...

 Some of Berlin's most renowned clubs have long insisted that the camera lenses on their clientele's phones must be covered up to ensure that everyone is present in the moment and people can let go without fear of their image suddenly appearing somewhere online. Venues in London, Manchester and New York now enforce the same rules... phones will either be stickered or forbidden. "People need to stop taking pictures and start dancing to the beat," said one of the club's original founders. The Dance of Spring Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933) Photo credit: Glasgow Life Museums. [CC BY-NC-ND] He is right, but it seems the zeitgeist might be aligning in that direction anyway. If 2025 has had any kind of defining cultural theme, it perhaps boils down to people's increasing sense that a life completely beholden is no life at all. To this, add two connected trends: a drop in millions of people's use of social media, and a rising yearning for experiences that are ...

  MPs have accepted almost £300,000 of tickets to sports matches, concerts, red carpet film awards and theatre trips in the last year, prompting questions about how such freebies could influence their decision making. Included in the gifts handed to politicians were Glastonbury tickets from Google, FA Cup final hospitality from the Football Association (FA), and a gift hamper from a Middle Eastern dictatorship. Politicians attended concerts by artists including Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran and Sam Fender. There is no limit, beyond public criticism, of the value of gifts that MPs can claim from individuals and companies from the UK as long as they are declared on the members register of interests. Charing Cross Bridge Claude Monet (1840-1926) Photo Credit: Museum Wales [Public Domain]  Some gifts on the register, such as attendance at industry dinners or tickets to local festivals, could be reasonably argued to be part of MPs' community work. Others are harder to justify, such as the £...

  Nnena Kalu has won the 2025 Turner prize for her colourful drawings and sculptures made from fabric and VHS tape . Here's an art critic describing her work. Nnena Kalu's forms come at you with their almost alien presence. ( What?) They bulge and bifurcate and multiply. ( Really?) The viewer gets caught up in all the roaring, spilling, snagging details, and you begin to wonder about your own boundaries, the body's beginnings and its endings. ( I am beginning to wonder but not about boundaries, beginnings and endings, yet.) The closer you get to Kalu's endless sinewy trails of old VHS tape, their spews of filigree plastic webbing, their bound-up, sometimes cable-tied suturings, the harder it is to know where their forms stop and the space around them begins. ( Am I on an operating table?)  Their containment is precarious.(  I think I must be and  things don't look too good.) So full of life and energy, you think they might burst. ( Sweet Lord, I haven't mad...