Goths and Chavs wage war in the woods

Why didn't local councils fund this when I was a teenager?

Go you Pommy bastards!

Eighteen long years of Australian cricketing dominance appear to be dissolving in Nottingham, as England follows its strong showing in the second and third tests of the Ashes series with a relentless assault on Australia's batting lineup. Bereft of the Sky coverage I was able to cadge last week, I'm reduced to sitting up reading ball-by-ball coverage on the marvellous cricket net site. Warne has just bit the dust, and with Aussie eight wickets second innings wickets down for a lead of only 89 runs the Poms must be able to sniff victory. Go you Pommy bastards! My enemy's enemy is my friend!

New adventures in language

Is it the wonders of twenty-first century computer and copying technology, or just a strange desire of otherwise-sensible people to waste their limited disposable income on disseminating the lurid fantasies of dubious literary types? Either way, there are a number of interesting new publishing ventures appearing on the horizon for Kiwi exponents of innovative writing. Titus Press was founded this year, has already published several stylish volumes, and now has an online admirer and rival in the form of Cry Wolf Books, a venture with one foot in Auckland and the other in Edinburgh. I do like the logo, and the blurb on the under-construction website:

The High St bookshop has ceased to be a place to go for adventure...the most extraordinary writing today can be found in stranger corners, in electronic or physical form...Cry Wolf has been set up for the distribution of novels, poems and stories of high quality and extreme or innovative tendencies. We believe this is the true stream of literature in the present day, driven underground...we invite writers whose work falls into this category to submit short samples...

Titus' guidelines for submissions are here, and a report on the launch party for its first three books is here.

Vote Labour Now and Smash Capitalism Later?

It's a provocative headline, but it has sparked an interesting discussion here.

Updates: the International Socialist Organisation has a statement up on its website calling for people to vote left, without illusions, while the Anti-Capitalist Alliance puts the case against any sort of support for Labour here.

Who says social democracy is dead?

Not the good folks who live in the Republic of Bergonia, that's for sure.

In search of a web designer

I've just become the managing editor of brief which, as you can see, is badly in need of a website. Any sucker out there interested in working for free? Our new (32nd) issue is devoted to Joanna Paul, the artist, poet and political activist who died tragically a couple of years ago in Rotorua. The poems by Ahmed Zaoui and various collaborators which appeared in the previous issue made it into Emma Neale's selection of the best New Zealand poems of 2004.

Zimbabwe: It's About Land Rights, not Human Rights

I've put another article about Zimbabwe on indymedia here. The BBC has a report on how the IMF is tightening the screws on Zimbabwe here. Elsewhere on the BBC site, there's a discussion about the advisability of sporting sanctions which shows how ill-informed most people in the West are about this issue.