Goldsmiths strike continues

Staff at Goldsmiths University of London remain on strike as the new academic year starts. The dispute is fundamentally about job cuts but escalated as management responded to lecturers boycotting part of their role by cutting their pay completely. This has now been going on for four months. 

There are pickets outside the main building on Lewisham Way SE14 from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm, Monday to Friday. Watch out for 'teach outs' and other sessions.  For instance, the School of Art are offering a Solidarity Nail Bar on Wednesday.

The financial crisis in higher education is getting worse, partly driven by restrictions on international students imposed to appease anti-immigration voters. It does increasingly feel that it is not just jobs that are under threat, bad as that is, but the spaces in higher education for learning and critical thinking. Whole subject areas in arts, social sciences and humanities are being devalued and courses slashed.

waterintobeer 10th birthday/Acoustic Anarchy 100+

The great Brockley beer shop/bar waterintobeer celebrated its tenth birthday last month with a series of events and some cans especially for the occasion. Earlier this year too Acoustic Anarchy celebrated its 100th event at waterintobeer, marking the event with a one off zine listing everyone who has played there (including me). As promoter  Martin Howard set out in the zine, the monthly night is a great example of 'DIY Culture' with people turning up and singing unplugged (mostly).

The beer and homebrew shop also has origins in this DIY culture. As beer shop owner Tim Livesey has explained, waterintobeer was originally the name of a punk zine he was involved with in Leeds in the noughties, that later gave its name to a local football team before becoming a popular drinking spot at 209 Mantle Road SE4.  

Last Saturday's headliner at Acoustic Anarchy was Joe Solo from Scarborough. Edwyn Collins may have once bemoaned 'too many protest singers, not enough protest songs' but nobody could accuse Joe of lacking in the bolshy ballad department. I liked his explanation of ensuring 'cognitive ease' in protest songs so that people aren't distracted from the message by too many complex chord changes. To be honest I needed some singalong anti-fascism on the day would-be far right paramilitaries had converged on Dover.

Joe Solo at Acoustic Anarchy, 5 September 2026

Music Monday: Always on your side - Bonobo with Joy Crookes

Bonobo's new album 'Distance in Static' is due out at the end of this week. Loving the track featuring Joy Crookes - 'Always on your side'. The video has lots of Peckham snapshots, including the 'Welcome to Peckham' sign at the Prince of Peckham pub and some Rye Lane shots (I think including Peckham Soul record shop).

As featured here before, previous Joy Crookes videos have included Brixton, Elephant & Castle, East Street and other South London locations.