{"id":361,"date":"2009-05-11T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T12:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/?p=361"},"modified":"2009-05-11T12:01:18","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T12:01:18","slug":"on-your-marks-get-set-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/11\/on-your-marks-get-set-go\/","title":{"rendered":"On your Marks, get set, go!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished reading two books I grabbed cheap in <del datetime=\"2009-05-11T11:55:01+00:00\">Virgin<\/del>, <del datetime=\"2009-05-11T11:55:01+00:00\">Zavvi<\/del>, Head.<\/p>\n<p>First up was Mark Thomas with <cite>As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade<\/cite>. This was really interesting, funny and horrifying in equal doses. Some brilliant anecdotes of groups set up to take on arms dealers.<\/p>\n<p>Next was Mark Steel with <cite>What&#8217;s Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion<\/cite>. I had been looking forward to this as it covers the last ten years or so. Each chapter has a mixture of the disintegration of his private life, the disintegration of any lonely last principles in the Labour Party and the disintegration of his relationship with the <acronym title=\"Socialist Workers Part\">SWP<\/acrony>.<\/p>\n<p>Each of these is quite depressing and bitter to read and the contrast of the three leads to a real understanding if what he has been going through.<\/p>\n<p>Recently I also read Jack Jones <cite>Union Man: Autobiography<\/cite> and have just started on <cite>IOU: The Story of the Debt<\/cite> a book I got in Poundland and has a first chapter praising Bono so looks to be pretty shit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished reading two books I grabbed cheap in Virgin, Zavvi, Head. First up was Mark Thomas with As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade. This was really interesting, funny and horrifying in equal doses. Some brilliant anecdotes of groups set up to take on arms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,24,52],"tags":[792,267,53,198,265,268,266],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-funny","category-politics","tag-books","tag-jack-jones","tag-labour","tag-mark-steel","tag-mark-thomas","tag-poundland","tag-swp"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agraham.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}