Rav Casley Gera

I write about theatre, art, politics, international development, and the internet on my blog. Below, you can find selected highlights of my recent writing there.

If you like what you read and are interested in hiring me on a full-time or freelance basis, please get in touch.

I can also supply examples of my articles for Chambers Client Report, the quarterly journal of the legal market. And here's my CV.

I also run African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant; Ravindr, a 'tumblelog' of words and images from across the web; and Futurist, a photo blog. And I hate writing these little self-summaries.

While the critical acclaim for PT Anderson’s There Will Be Blood may focus on Daniel Day-Lewis’ studiedly epic performance as oiligarch Daniel Plainview, or Johnny Greenwood’s remarkable, discomfiting soundtrack, much of the film’s lasting resonance may lie in its timely reminder for modern audiences of the harsh nature of frontier life in the early American South and West - and its echoes in modern American politics.
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I recently enjoyed the Environment Agency report 50 Ways To Save The Planet, given away with the Guardian a few months back. It’s a refreshingly positive approach to climate-change pamphleteering, with the emphasis firmly on answers. It’s also a bafflingly varied smörgåsbord of solutions, ranging from the mundane - put a jumper on before you turn up the heating - to mad-sounding hi-tech schemes, like using giant space mirrors to reflect the Sun’s rays away from the Earth. Amidst the sci-fi technology, though, one suggestion caught my eye: No 23, for the Government to legally require one-third of all parkland to be converted to “public fruit and nut orchards and community held allotments” for the production of food.

While the high-tech schemes for reducing climate change might grab many of the media headlines, it’s ideas like this that show the environmental movement at its most radical.
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Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination commentators have been falling over themselves to evoke the memory of John F. Kennedy. Obama’s youth, short time in the senate, and relentless message of change all stir memories of the handsome young upstart who squeaked the presidency in 1960. With the endorsement of Obama’s candidacy by several senior Kennedys in late January, the comparisons became more high profile. “A president like my father”, Caroline Kennedy called Obama. The New York Times evoked Kennedy’s most successful book when it referred to Obama’s race speech as a “Profile in Courage”.

With JFK still generally revered by most Americans, particularly the white working-class voters Obama desperately needs to win over, it’s a comparison Obama’s people are happy to see made (despite the odd snipe by commentators). The truth is, though, that John F. Kennedy and Obama came from very different places politically - and had very different concepts of “change”.
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A new report argues that fifty years of urban policy have failed to revitalise the economies of Britain’s Northern towns. If they’re right, the very future of our Northern cities may have to be rethought

Those who know me will be surprised to hear I’ve been reading a Policy Exchange report recently. PE, for those who don’t keep up with the ever-growing roster of UK think tanks, is the leading centrist (read: sane) entity amongst the conservative ‘tanks. Unlike its crazier cousins, such as Civitas and Politeia, Policy Exchange serves as more than a mouthpiece for bored minor ex-ministers and a peddler of slightly silly state-the-obvious reports.¹ Despite the concerns of the Fourth International, PE is essentially a serious enterprise. And, determined to be taken as seriously as lefties such as IPPR, PE has taken the radical step of commissioning and publishing actual academic research, by actual academics.

This report, into the history of Britain’s urban policy, makes depressing but fascinating reading. Five or six decades of urban policy, it argues, have essentially failed.
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The argument about climate change has been for so long about whether it’s actually happening, we’ve got badly behind on discussion of what to actually do about it. Consideration of what carbon emission targets should be included in any successor treaty to Kyoto, which expires in 2010, needs to begin in earnest now. But the very mindset that the green movement has had to create to get its point across makes it hard to transition to practical thought about solutions. For years, we’ve been repeating and repeating the mantra that climate change is real, is serious, and poses a real threat to civilisation and millions of lives. Now the public and politicians seem finally to be accepting the consensus, it’s a jolt to switch from doom-mongering to planning.
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With the UCAS process completed and a new year of students beginning to gear up for beginning university, there’s a remarkable level of concensus in the media at the success of the Government’s once-contentious funding reforms. Here’s the Guardian, one of the papers most receptive to critics of the reforms in the past:
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The world has been drooling recently over the new Apple mobile phone. Like the iPod, it’s sexy, slim, and simple to use, and it’s expected to fly off the shelves. But it’s not just phone companies who should pay attention: it’s the Government, too.

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I have an announcement to make. This is going to shock some of you, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. Before you all rush to judge me, I’d like you to listen carefully to what I have to say.

This Christmas, 2006, I am boycotting “Fairytale of New York.”

I told you you’d be shocked.
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NOTE: A shortened version of this article was published in thelondonpaper’s “the columnist” slot as “Battling for Online Democracy.” 

In a faraway domain, a fragile democracy is fighting for survival. Everyday we watch on our screens it struggles to maintain order amongst chaos and defend its day-to-day operations against dissent and malicious attacks. What? No, not Iraq! I’m talking about Wikipedia.

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“Patrick roars to nomination,” screamed the Boston Globe. And roar he did, securing 50% of the votes cast in the three-way contest for Democratic Party candidate for Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is not some Masonic colonial-reenactment society. It is simply the state. More than probably any other state in the union, Massachusetts clings to the trappings and pomp of European society, even as it celebrates its own revolutionary heritage). Of course, for the army of supporters who spent Tuesday, September 19 waving signs, knocking on doors, and making endless, endless phone calls, it felt less like a roar and more of a slow, difficult whimper. But now that the hard work was done - at least for now - there was time to relax and celebrate.

When I arrived at the party, my first priority was to find out whether we’d actually won.
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Being the diary of Ravinder Madron Casley Gera, a volunteer with the campaign of Deval L. Patrick, for September 19 in the year two thousand and six, the day of the Primary Election for the position of Democratic Party candidate for Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

6.00am. I’m awake. Having kept holiday hours for several weeks - sleeping 1-10am or thereabouts - this is something of a shock to the system.

6.05am. Right. What to do? The “Primary Day Victory Plan” sheet I picked up at headquarters says we need “visibility from 6.30am.”
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Yorkshire Pride: Sheffielder Richard Hawley’s album Coles Corner has been nominated for the Mercury Prize, but his fellow steelers Arctic Monkeys are the bookies’ favourite

I suppose you could accuse me of jumping on the Mercury bandwagon. Although the ex-Pulp man’s croonings had floated onto my radar before his latest album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I did take the opportunity of the nomination to give it a proper listen. For the uninitiated, Coles Corner is a richly orchestrated smoky-lounge bar album of wistful ballads that recalls Pulp’s This is Hardcore more than their more commercially successful material. It’s unashamedly retro, and unashamedly Americana.
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We live in an uber-digital age. 3.3 billion text messages were sent in the UK in the last month. Everyone from U2 to the Pope has commented at length on the never-ending sea of media messages that buzz, pop and bleep over us from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep at night – and even in between.

So it takes skill and inspiration to make a comment on this brave new world that makes an impact. Which makes the work of New York mix artist Christian Marclay even more impressive. His 2003 piece Video Quartet, recently granted a proper room in the rehanging of Tate Modern, makes for a startling evocation of media overload: startling not for its technical skill or apparently sage commentary, as with so many pieces on similar themes, but for its humour and humanity.
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