The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
This is Tory England
TOM SYKES went to Jaywick in Essex last summer and kept a diary. Here is an extract illustrated by his companion on that journey Louis Netter
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
WE’VE only been in Jaywick for an hour and we’re sure this is the most deprived place we’ve ever seen, at least in this country. The stats bear this out — 57 per cent of the denizens rely on some form of state benefit to survive.
Besides, you know your town might just be in a spot of bother when a United Nations poverty investigator decides to visit, which is precisely what happened here in 2018.
Professor Philip Alston concluded that Jaywick’s woes had nothing to do with personal idleness, and everything to do with years of public underfunding and the Tory government’s callous universal credit system.
More from this author
Genocide, racism and imperialism are in the Labour Party’s DNA, argues TOM SYKES
A legal case at the ICJ has exposed the role of Indonesian arms sales that were crucial to enabling Myanmar to kill thousands of civilians, reports TOM SYKES
Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jnr has won, using a tech-savvy social media rewrite of his parents’ dictatorship and a troll army to smear his closest competitor — DR TOM SYKES reports on a society seemingly unable to leave its own dark age
TOM SYKES examines the ever-expanding military-industrial-academic complex
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