Girls to the front

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The fair-go fallacy

GR OnlineRunning as an independent parliamentary candidate is like building a plane while flying it – there’s no party machine, no head office, no ready-made team. Everything rests on your shoulders, and more often than not, it comes down to one thing: money.

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Gay saints

Non-fictionWhat is it that makes cinema, for Pasolini, sacrosanct? The answer lies in his affinity for a painter who made only one fresco. Not only was Caravaggio’s reputation restored by Pasolini’s teacher and mentor, Roberto Longhi, but Caravaggio and Pasolini have the same taste in men. Swarthy, young and savage – as likely to sit for a portrait or engage in a bit of sloppy top as to stick a knife in your ribs. You wouldn’t want to run into his John the Baptist in a dark alley (unless maybe you would). It is not just the revolutionary psychology of Caravaggio’s painting that speaks to Pasolini but his selection of subjects – his sacralisation of the scorned, the unclean, the seething subproletariat both created and rejected by an indifferent urban landscape; Caravaggio’s ‘new kinds of people’.

Up for debate

In ConversationDebate emphasises different ideals. You are forced to argue for positions you don’t believe and, regardless of your stance, you learn always to consider the opposing perspective. That is quite literal: after preparing your case, you turn to a different sheet and write the four best arguments for the other side or mark up your argument for its flaws and inconsistencies. Paper and pen. That is countercultural at a time when we expect a tight nexus between speech and identity, and I think there is something to be gained from such role-play.

The trouble with eternity

Poetry I had a dream about the afterlife: I died quite unexpectedly Although it is, of course, to be expected, And I materialised in the middle of a...