About
Welcome to The Third Estate
Founded by a group of Cambridge graduates who wanted to put their degrees to good use by setting the world to rights, The Third Estate is one of the most popular political blogs in the UK. Offering high-profile interviews with leading figures in politics and the media, alongside a daily dose of news, reviews and typically irreverent comment and analysis, we first came to the nation’s attention when we broke the Guardian-Trafigura gag.
The Third Estate welcomes quality submissions.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Dan. S is now a postgraduate student at the University of Essex, and is finding it hard to adjust to living in East Angular again. He has been a member of the Socialist Workers Party for a percentage of his life that grows by the year, and often uses this as an excuse for not having a social life. He’s dismayed by what passes for philosophy these days, but somehow seems to have wound up studying it all over again. He believes another world is possible, and is pre-occupied with how we get it.
Dave. S lives in Poplar, in east London, and works as a Community Organiser, as well as doing shifts in his local pub. His chief interests in life are: skinny blonde girls, finding ways to get around the fact that he never has any money, and reresolving to stop smoking. At the time of writing, he is having little luck with all three of them.
Jacob. R lives in London and splits his time between occasional work, learning German, sleeping, reading, and arguing. His main interests are in critical theory (particularly Adorno,) and music (particularly opera after Wagner and early modernism.) In his spare time he likes knitting and single malts.
Owen. K studied philosophy and is on the whole less dismayed by it than Dan. A lifelong Guardian-reading North Londoner (with all that that entails), he’s currently employed as an admin peon with the NHS. Rumours that he can leap tall buildings in a single bound remain unsubstantiated.
Reuben. R is currently pursuing a number of harebrained schemes. He is passionate about web 2.0, to the extent that he recently had a nightmare about Harry’s Place (true fact.) He is passionate about freedom, equality and Leonard Cohen. He is equally passionate in his denunciation of the countryside. He also makes music.
Salman Shaheen studied Social & Political Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has written for The Times of India, was literature editor of Varsity, once co-hosted a children’s news series with Jon Snow and has an unceasing urge to interview famous people for The Third Estate. Writer, ranter, raver, or thereabouts, he’s currently working on a magic realist novel set in Bolivia during the Gas War.
COLUMNISTS
Jack. T is a posh, fake scouser who studied History at Cambridge and took the management studies diploma at the Judge Business School as a means by which to understand the enemy and his capitalist machinations. He has a self-avowedly pretentious and wanky taste in cinema and literature and a penchant for taking the piss.
JW Arble is The Third Estate’s resident theatre critic, with a penchant for the surreal and the satirical. He is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s creative writing programme and trained as a journalist. Before getting wordy, he worked in a graveyard maintenance office and as schoolteacher in Hong Kong, but the disciplines refused to merge. He has written for City AM, spoonfed.co.uk, totallytheatre.com and numerous local papers.
Liz Stephens is a political hack and comedy writer, who spends her time alternating between writing the news and mocking it. She has written for various rival political websites, including politics.co.uk, and for The News Quiz and The Now Show on BBC Radio 4. Liz is currently working hard at her role as a one-woman quota filler. As a skinny blonde girl she is also frightened of ever meeting Dave in the flesh.
Richard. B bio coming soon.
