This text is part of a longer article I’m currently writing about the expansion of the UK biosecurity state through the winter of 2020-21, and which I hope to publish before Christmas. However, some of what this section exposes is happening right now. We think it best, therefore, to publish this information as a separate … Continue reading The Betrayal of the Clerks: UK Intellectuals in the Service of the Biosecurity State
Bonfire of the Freedoms: The Unlawful Exercise of Powers conferred by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984
This text is part of a longer article I’m currently writing about the expansion of the UK biosecurity state through the winter of 2020-21. However, the Government’s enforcement of a nationwide lockdown this week has convinced me to publish it now as a separate article. I hope it will offer some lawful and moral support to … Continue reading Bonfire of the Freedoms: The Unlawful Exercise of Powers conferred by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984
ASH Co-Housing: Design Option for the Brixton Housing Co-operative
This co-housing project is the fourth time in recent years that ASH has worked with housing co-operatives as a way to build the much-needed social housing that London councils and housing associations have abandoned in favour of market-sale and shared-ownership properties and other forms of so-called ‘affordable’ housing. The first time was with the Patmore … Continue reading ASH Co-Housing: Design Option for the Brixton Housing Co-operative
When the House Burns: Giorgio Agamben on the Coronavirus Crisis
In February of this year the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, started writing short commentaries on the coronavirus crisis in Italy. Published online by Quodlibet, these drew widespread and almost universal condemnation from every quarter, not only by academics, psychologists and students but by his fellow philosophers. I have written about this attempt to silence Agamben’s … Continue reading When the House Burns: Giorgio Agamben on the Coronavirus Crisis
ASH House: Design Options for the Drive Housing Co-operative
Over the past few years, Architects for Social Housing has increasingly explored alternative ways of funding and building social housing to the current mainstream of local authority and housing association, which is signally failing both existing residents and those in housing need. In accordance with the neo-liberalisation of housing provision in the UK, housing associations … Continue reading ASH House: Design Options for the Drive Housing Co-operative
The Infection of Science by Politics: A Nobel Laureate and Biophysicist on the Coronavirus Crisis
On 29 June, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings convened an online session titled ‘Corona: The Role of Science in Times of Crisis’. The participants included three Nobel Laureates: Professor Peter C. Docherty, an immunologist and pathologist from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a recipient of the Nobel … Continue reading The Infection of Science by Politics: A Nobel Laureate and Biophysicist on the Coronavirus Crisis
The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 2. Normalising Fear)
‘From many sides the hypothesis is now being formulated that in reality we are experiencing the end of a world, that of bourgeois democracies, founded on rights, parliaments and the division of powers, which is giving way to a new despotism; that, as regards the pervasiveness of controls and the cessation of all political activity, … Continue reading The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 2. Normalising Fear)
COVID-19: Implementing the UK Biosecurity State
COVID-19: Implementing the UK Biosecurity State, our collected articles on the coronavirus crisis, is available as a 284-page pdf file for £10 donation to ASH through PayPal: PREFACE These articles, published on the Architects for Social Housing website between March and August 2020, do not constitute a book. Instead, they are a compilation of the … Continue reading COVID-19: Implementing the UK Biosecurity State
The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 2. Normalising Fear)
‘From many sides the hypothesis is now being formulated that in reality we are experiencing the end of a world, that of bourgeois democracies, founded on rights, parliaments and the division of powers, which is giving way to a new despotism; that, as regards the pervasiveness of controls and the cessation of all political activity, … Continue reading The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 2. Normalising Fear)
The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 1. Programmes and Regulations)
‘The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realise that it is our task to bring about a real state of … Continue reading The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 1. Programmes and Regulations)