Barney Pite

Taylor Swift’s most recent album Folklore has been met with enthusiastic and vociferous acclaim. The Guardian saw fit to award it five stars and praised its emotional acuity. It took BuzzFeed all of four days to put together a quiz assigning each viewer’s personality a song from the album. Even the Financial Times set aside its share prices and quarterly reports to gush about Folklore judged by the gushing reviewer to be glorious.

The first iPod I ever bought had a genre on it called ‘Easy Listening’. I have never had a clear idea of what it means for music to be easy to listen to, or for that matter difficult. But, in a murky and confused sense, I’m sure my iPod, lost and forgotten, would class Phoebe Bridgers’ latest and sophomore album Punisher as an easy listen. Phoebe Bridgers is a singer/songwriter playing out of Southern California. Her music is somewhere between indie and emo.

On the 27th May 2020, EDF Energy submitted a planning application to build a new nuclear power station at Sizewell on the Suffolk coast. Upon completion and at full capacity the station could generate 3.2 Gigawatts (GW) of power, close to 10% of the UK’s grid requirements. EDF is already building a new Nuclear Power station in the UK – Hinkley Point C – and EDF proposes an almost identical design for Sizewell C. Nuclear power is controversial, but it shouldn’t be.