Trickle-down Economics, I don’t think so…

 

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Review by Ashley Chapman

‘Inequality is threatening Capitalism itself,’ is unequivocally proposed in this interesting and revealing documentary The Super-Rich and Us for BBC television. Jacques Peretti heads off to interview economists and billionaires in an attempt to try and find out if the Super-Rich are net contributors or not.

Recent OECD figures suggest that Britain’s economy would have grown by twenty per cent had the rich paid their fair share of tax and wealth was spread more evenly.

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Hyperion Cantos

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The shrike awaits…

Review by Ashley Chapman

One of the main themes in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos is how humanity’s future among the stars may be affected by artificial intelligence (AI).

“Simmons wants us to know that while AI is potentially highly toxic, malignantly thrashing about in its own depth, conversely it can cast light on the mind-soul scoop that lies paradoxically at the heart of man’s nature.”

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Bitter Lake

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Review by Ashley Chapman

‘Those in power tell stories to make sense of the complexity of reality,’ begins the avuncular voice of the commentator in Bitter Lake, edited and directed by Adam Curtis, and currently on the BBC’s iPlayer.

“‘This is a film about why those stories have stopped making sense, and how that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive force in the world.’”

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It took a nurse to sit on my mother for me to birth…

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‘On a sunny October day in 1965, my birth was announced to the three million readers of the Daily Express, where my father worked as a roving reporter and where notice of my arrival would serve as a column filler.’

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