Rave reviews
I am a long-time and current subscriber to NI and just wanted to applaud you once more for your excellent Mixed Media (NI 541) section of the magazine. I just purchased the film All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (2022) and the album This Stupid World (2023) by Yo La Tengo based on your reviews. I can’t tell you how many excellent films, docs, albums and books that I have purchased over the years because of your magazine suggestions. Thanks! Keep up the excellent and much-needed work across the entire magazine.
Carbon culprit
In many parts of Cumbria it would be a 40-mile round trip to ‘your local coffee shop’ so why not buy a kettle, a Thermos and a jar of instant like many impoverished (sic) folk have to? (Re: Agony Uncle NI 541) That would save all the anxiety over carbon emissions from driving there, multiple boilings of said kettle and leave you with a lovely glass jar which can be repurposed or recycled in a month’s time. You would also find your addiction to black-stained water rapidly declines.
Can capitalism truly be gone?
Regarding your 50th birthday, I’m proud to say that I’ve been a subscriber to NI since the start and have always appreciated the direct and outspoken way in which you’ve addressed inequality and injustice on a global level, with a special focus on the planet’s poorer (sic) and most oppressed populations. But we still have, as your March-April (NI 542) front cover says A world to win and must do so, as several of your features point out, via collective action to bring a better new world into being. The big question of course is what is the nature of that better world? It’s not about things like ‘a more just tax system’ or the tokenism of the Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations [Act], which the magazine also writes about.
The plain fact is that you can’t transform our world economic system (ie capitalism or the profit system) through a gradual series of social measures. Experience has shown that this works neither in the world of advanced capitalism nor in the Global South. The wages or money system that operates on the basis of exploitation of the majority is simply incapable of meaningful change short of that majority establishing, by peaceful means, a classless, stateless, moneyless world, a real democracy in which free and equal men and women co-operate to produce the things they need to live and enjoy life and to which they have free access in accordance with the principle ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’.
New paper gets thumbs up
When the magazine’s binding and paper were stiffened and thickened a while ago, I nearly cancelled my subscription. You see, suffering from stiff fingers and wrists from arthritis at my age, holding the page open became painful and tiring. I approve of the new paper and thinner binding. Not only for the above reason but the appearance, especially of the photos, is now superior. I hope this becomes permanent.
Who is the real problem?
How does wanting clean water and nonpoisonous food make you a rebel but those causing those things are just peaceful businessmen? (Re: Temperature Check NI 542)
Why I...
...value group therapy.
Before I started training in psychotherapy, I had the perception that group therapy was a diluted form of therapy – its function to minimize the costs of one-to-one sessions. But my perception has profoundly shifted. In a group, we can look together at our unconscious interactions in a way that individual therapy doesn’t allow us to. We can act as co-therapists – providing multiple perspectives and adding to a sense of mutual care and collective ownership. Evidence shows that therapeutic groups for people who struggle with self-harm can drastically reduce hospital visits. However, services in the UK have shrunk under austerity. They shouldn’t be so underestimated or underfunded.
