Alan Kenny

Ken Loach’s new film is a scrupulous investigation into the life of a delivery driver for the fictional Parcels Delivered Faster. Ricky, a Mancunian who has moved to Newcastle to build a life with his partner and young family, has been unable to get work in the construction industry. A friend suggests he gets into couriering and recommends him to the depot manager.

Ricky is partially sold on the myth of “self-employment” — really the idea that he will have more control over his work and therefore his life, on a decent wage.

This short book is the important story of the 2001 week-long wildcat strike at JeffBoat, at one of the US’s oldest shipyards on the Ohio River in Indiana. Terry Tapp, who worked there during this time, describes the build up to the unofficial strike and the strike itself. You can get some sense of the place and barge production from the glossy promotional video on the company website.

This debut from Francis Lee is a love story between Romanian farmhand Gheorghe and farm owner’s son Johnny. It is filmed on location in Keighley, south of the Yorkshire Dales.

There is certainly nothing subtle about this film. From the opening shot Lee sets out to describe in an uncompromising way some of the poverty, hardships and brutality of farm life. Lee almost starves his characters of dialogue. The method highlights well the little world of repression in the family (Nan, Dad and son) as they battle the father’s illness and try to make the farm work.

A crowdfunding campaign has allowed Nicola Field to republish her 1995 book with a new introductory chapter. The book makes a welcome reappearance.

Field, an original member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), decided the book deserved a new airing following the huge success of the film Pride (2014) which tells the story of the group.

The author explains in a new introduction that the account in Over the Rainbow (OTR) is the first in-print version of the story of LGSM.

“I kill a man and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this makes me an evil person.” These are the words of world boxing champion Emile Griffith. A Man’s World tells the incredible story of the black man who lived this terrible contradiction.

Griffith died aged 75, just months after Orlando Cruz, the Puerto Rican boxer, came out publicly as gay in October 2012. He was the first ever professional boxer to do so.

For anyone who has been lucky enough to see Songhoy Blues live, it seemed impossible that the band had no record deal — their sound is so accomplished. For sure, they stand on the shoulders of giants. It sent a shiver down the spine when at their recent Hackney show lead singer Aliou Toure introduced one song saying, “This is for our father…Ali Farka Toure.”

As people worry about paying the bills the Olympic "legacy" is not something that most people, even in the host boroughs of Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, spend their time thinking about.

Do a search on any of Apple, Google or Facebook's headquarters and you will see Californian blueprints that chime entirely with those of the fictional internet super-company The Circle at the heart of Dave Eggers latest novel.

Apple has just received permission for its new headquarters - and perhaps this what part of his research - it's a giant ring!

New recruit Mae Holland is shown around "the campus", as if newly arrived in heaven escorted by angels. The twenty-something, bored of her local council job, welcomes every aspect of her new employment as though a gift.

On 23 February electricians learned that the remaining companies committed to the British Engineering Services National Agreement (Besna) had withdrawn the threat of imposing the new contracts.

The "sparks" had been protesting since August last year when there was an inaugural rank and file dispute meeting of some 500 people in London. From day one there was a determination to get right up the noses of the electrical contracting bosses. Gate protests, street blockades, site occupations and picketing were the militant tactics employed on a weekly basis.

This is an exhibition full of surprises. Before arriving at the exhibition I was full of questions. Hockney's latest paintings are of landscapes. Could I be excited by pictures of trees? Could Hockney, now 75 years old, still paint with the energy and humour he did in his younger days? Could Yorkshire really provide the painter with the inspiration that the US had?