WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Marxist Notes on Music: January 2, 2023
Tone-deaf budget embarrasses and insults in equal measure
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: Scottish contemporary dance artist Charlotte Mclean presents her solo work And at Dance Base, Edinburgh, as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
DECEMBER 15 2022 saw the Scottish government announce its budget for 2023-24 and though not as damning as what is on offer from the Tories in Westminster, as Roz Foyer of the STUC said “we needed strides, not steps.”
Despite the wonderful PR and public image — bold is not one of their strengths in this circumstance, and realistically the STUC proposed alternatives weren’t really radical either — it just demanded enough of a spine to carry them out.
However, as the Marxist Notes on Music columnist, I’ll focus primarily on yet another attack on culture. The main cultural body funded directly by the Scottish government, Creative Scotland, had their fund cut by £7 million, 10 per cent down on their 2022 funding. Depending on how you measure inflation, this means Creative Scotland would have been £4-10m short even if its budget remained unaltered.
More from this author
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BEN LUNN draws attention to the way cultural expressions of solidarity with Palestinians in the UK are being censored by Israeli-sponsored lawfare
BEN LUNN reports from a new music festival in New York, and singles out a breathtaking composition that protests directly against femicide in Mexico
The centenary of his birth is a chance to assess the remarkable combination of Marxism, activism and modernism in the works of Luigi Nono
