Martin Vander Weyer
The Great Sell-Off
Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else
By James Meek
Verso 229pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Private Island is a fierce left-wing polemic against the core principles of what is easiest encapsulated as ‘Thatcherism’: the credo that the private sector can deliver most public services more cost-effectively than the state; that it’s better for families to be homeowners in command of their own circumstances than permanent tenants and clients of the state; and that open, flexible labour markets create more prosperity all round than those dominated by trade unions.
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'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
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'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
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