Pink Sauce

One of the joys of Netflix is that it gives you easy access to world cinema. As such I've been able to enjoy Bollywood and South Asian films. The latest one of those is in fact a series. The Ba***ds of Bollywood is a satirical action comedy lampooning, you've guessed it, the Indian film industry. It is a fast-paced roller-coaster of a romp (sometimes even too fast, in the slightly manic way that seems characteristic of that cinema) that mixes genres to very entertaining results. Though that largely passed me by, the secondary cast includes big names of Bollywood playing themselves (sometimes/always(?) with a musical soundbite referencing their most famous work announcing their appearance). Even Shah Rukh Khan is in there!* There could have been more big dancing set pieces (there is only a half-hearted attempt at one) and the soundtrack was a little too Europeanised for my taste (having spent time photographing in south Asian clubs, I have developed some preferences). But these ...

For a number of years people have been warning of the rise of far right ideology in the media and political spheres. We were told that we were over-reacting, that there was nothing to worry about. Well, it turns out there was something to worry about after all. This week, a rising member of the Tory party (Katie Lam MP) explained how she wanted to change the rules for people with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) to be able to deport us should we earn less than £39,000 a year (the median salary in the UK is £32,000), and/or had "taken from society" by claiming any kind of benefit (anything from jobseekers allowance to maternity leave, or state pension). This would affect about 3.5 million people (what amounts to 5% of the UK population: your friends and partners). Comparisons have been unfavourably made with the, at the time, unprecedented scale of Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians from Uganda in the 70s (less than 30,000 people were in the end affected. Ironically they were ...