One question on G*****r's arrest: aren't airport cops routinely armed, so it probably wasn't the full tactical deployment the "armed cops" in the headlines are trying to make us imagine?
Writer, walker, Who and Wolves fan. Lots of other things that don't begin with W. https://linktr.ee/nickbarlow He/him Avatar: Me (50ish man with greying hair and beard) smiling at the camera after climbing Chrome Hill in the Peak District.
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One question on G*****r's arrest: aren't airport cops routinely armed, so it probably wasn't the full tactical deployment the "armed cops" in the headlines are trying to make us imagine?
Given Starmer's recent appointments, I'm expecting we get Baroness Forstater of the Toilet Door soon.
"Lord, let me reform the Lords, but not yet."
All permutations of possible events have now been exhausted, there can be no more news.
Twelve year old me would have found the Look-In Cinematic Universe an amazing idea. Older me would like some ideas that aren't based on Gen X desperately trying to relive their youth.
One thing I wonder about with the Greens is how much churn they've naturally had in their local parties before this. Feels like they've had lots of waves of new members and don't know how many might have lingered.
That is both hilarious and yes, deeply depressing. How do I take him on? Well, I guess BY BACKING THE DAMNED POLICY WE'VE AGREED AND OPPOSING THE HORRIBLE LITTLE RATBAG FASCIST LIKE THE MEDIA AND OTHER POLITICIANS SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE???
"Pursue division through polarisation" Yeah, who's doing that in British politics right now?
One of the party conferences is going to include a proposal for a British pledge of allegiance to the flag, isn't it? And it probably won't be Reform's.
We'll just put that over here with the rest of the arrests.
“Because organising and mobilising people to take action on a Saturday takes a lot of effort, commitment and passion – just like Parkrun! And our brief investigation shows protesters lagging behind.” www.bigissue.com/news/social-...
Using one photo already on your phone, what is the announcement tomorrow at 2?
Random thought following last week's #StrangeNewWorlds : I'm not a linguist, but why is using contractions always depicted as illogical, when they've arisen as a way to make sharing information more efficient? (Yes, I know it's a former of classism, but in-universe explanations welcome)
i by no means am in a position to criticise other parties for sheltering people whose views i consider repulsively transphobic. instead i will offer this reflection on the Jeremy Corbyn Party for Jeremy Corbyn Fans: he and everything he does is incredibly impermeable to and unaccepting of criticism
Damn, still August when he posted this. Thought Bluesky had got so efficient it had done September's American Does A Racism While Criticising British Food really quickly.
I like Casino Royale (ignoring the fact the poker game makes no sense, but that's Hollywood) but the rest are a mess with some occasionally good sequences. Anyway, absolutely here for an ongoing spinoff from the HP thread focused on Amazon/MGM and Bond.
You can hear the moment the other journalist just breaks against the absurdity and asks "Does she realise that words do matter sometimes?"
Yvette Cooper assuming that she has the right to unilaterally rewrite an international agreement is pure post-Brexit British delusion.
Wasn't she married to a Britiah guy at one point?
He's not the only guy doing this, but he's one of the best at it. We need more candidates who enjoy and actively celebrate the place they want to represent. It doesn't stop you pointing out problems but it makes a real contrast to the "everywhere has fallen" messaging from the right.
Jo Cox was murdered then two weeks later no one in the media challenged Farage when he claimed Leave had won "without a shot being fired."
Be interesting to ask him which church he's member of and/or attends.
Because "woke" never had a real definition for them, it's very easily become "things I don't like that I think my mostly imaginary political opponents like."
28 years since being woken by the phone ringing at 5am and hearing my flatmate's mum leave a tearful message on the answering machine. Start of a very odd week ending with a Saturday where you pretty much had to watch the funeral as everything else was closed.
Unfortunately, if they do get there they'll probably only do a Please Don't Be So Mean Mr President bill - and then fail to pass it because "moderates" think it's a bit much.
Any other group's issues are normally blamed on their culture, but the white working class never get asked that. They can never fail, only be failed.
Believe me, I would *love* to have civilized political debates with people whose views opposed mine, if we could scare up any opposing views that are actually civilized. But my opposition is unhinged stuff like "Whites only" and "vaccines are a conspiracy," so yeah, weirdly, I'm not up for a chat.
Tuesday, apparently.
I think you're right, either he manages to consolidate power around himself and delivers fascism more competently than Trump, or he fails and given the people involved and the structures of the US, things don't collapse neatly and quickly.
Wasn't Portsmouth where they had a string of anti-"paedophile" protests in the 00s that drove a bunch of innocent people from their homes?
Just imagining how wild that sort of speculation would get today. I remember them constantly having to explain they weren't (and never were) a couple.
I know voting in the Green leadership election finishes today, but does anyone know when they'll announce the result?
Oh yes, he'd be President in all but name but the "acting" part would chafe his seemingly quite thin skin. (And there'd be the Trump ultras insisting he will wake to save the nation any day now)
I'm so sorry to hear this, I love his book Lost Worlds.
IIRC, they can only declare him incapable under the 25th, not fully remove him.
What if he has a stroke like Ariel Sharon and becomes completely incapacitated but unable to resign? Imagine how much Vance's piss will boil during years of being Acting President, never the real thing.
I can't work out if he genuinely believes the bulk of 'think tank' funding is just ordinary people making small donations, but some of his replies imply that.
Play the Dandy Warhols video with the dancing syringes, you cowards. #TOTP youtu.be/APrpB-i4d_E?...
Fun fact: they were going to use this Kula Shaker track in the Doctor Who episode The Sound of Drums, but realised that after being exposed to Crispin Mills everyone would agree the Master was right to murder all of humanity. #TOTP
Know your Amoses: Tori Amos vs Tory-Labour-Tory-Reform (Alan) Amos #TOTP
Mid-90s Tori Amos on #TOTP leads to lots of middle-aged men in the 20s having a bit of a moment.
No one in the studio audience bought the Mavericks' single, this is a Radio 2 incursion into the top 10. #TOTP
This statement is one line from the NION Women letter. If this reflects how you feel, add your name and join thousands of women standing in solidarity with trans people: change.org/nion_women 🖨️ Posters here: linktr.ee/nionwomen #NIONWomen #NotInOurName #Feminism #WomensRights #TransRights #JoinUs
I've not seen all of the 1998 #TOTP so have I missed the three weeks when Gay Dad were the future of music?
I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)
Reading this and remembering how Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action and others have been dealt with in the media.
Talk of Tom Clancy reminded me of this unlikely blurb on a book. It's about a future Lunar society where gender is extremely fluid and sex can be physically changed in an afternoon. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_B...
I am Tom Clancy’s trans daughter(yes, actually) and I whole-fucking-heartedly endorse this!!
I know being a Farage fan tends to correlate with thinking Putin's regime is a good thing but this take still ignores lots of Soviet history. Like the fact it has an ending.
Quakers do "not angry, just disappointed" so well.
It's the year 2025 and I'm so tired of having to say: - immigration is good - racism is bad - bodily autonomy is good - policing bodies is bad - consent is good - overriding or ignoring consent is bad Why are so many people determined to ignore these demonstrable facts?
"I'm not surprised that so many in this class choose barbarism over socialism. What is surprising is that they choose barbarism even over liberal democracy."
Ruin a book by adding "Tom Clancy's" to the title “Tom Clancy's Slaughterhouse-Five”
Just occurred to me that Donald Tusk was President of the European Council during his first term and the confusion probably stems from that.
As a Wolves fan, I'm sad about United having another terrible season, because I doubt we're going to get any of the playing in Europe add-on payments from the Cunha deal.
There were still incidents - there were questions about England hosting Euro96 after England 'fans' got a game in Dublin called off because of violence - but it wasn't endemic in the club game as it had been before.
Thread. And I remember Euro 96 making a concerted effort to use St George's Cross because the Union Jack was seen as being tainted by the hooligans and racists of the 70s and 80s. Same with Three Lions, it was about adopting new imagery to get football to a new audience.
There's another way he cpuld get people to know who he is, but that would involve getting press coverage for making unashamedly liberal speeches and policy announcements to counter the fascist bullshit that currently fills the airwaves. So, Wall of Death it is.
Lib Dem spin doctors walking into Ed Davey's office carrying a helmet and a set of leathers. "Sorry Ed, you didn't make it to 75%, time to practice giving your conference speech on the Wall of Death."
It can be galling to see one's period misrepresented onscreen but that shouldn't be reason to deny historical truths, like that medieval people shuffled around giving it the whole 'my liege' all the time, unless they had cheekbones in which case they were the king
Took three years for the Tories to get their first poll lead post-97 but that was a fuel protest blip, nothing sustained till after 2005. Best that I can think of for "two years to forgive" is Blair getting a majority in 2005, two years after the Iraq War, but that's in government.
In lighter news, my latest walking post is up
When mainstream media entirely ignores 100,000 people marching in support of trans people, but breathlessly hangs on every word Farage utters, it's reasonable to assume they are fully wedded to fascism. They believe, erroneously, that this somehow won't impact them.
I'd like to return to the time when proposing to pay the Taliban to torture people you send to them would have ended your political career. I think it was yesterday morning.
For International Dog Day, here's the story of how I got Dougal last month. nickbwalking.medium.com/hairy-scruff...
My theory is he's dying, they know he's not long for the world and they want to get their praise and loyalty on record before the chaos begins.
Can we just clarify that not only does Farage want to send people fleeing the Taliban back to the Taliban, he wants to pay the Taliban for doing it?
The European Convention on Human Rights developed from tge work of lawyers at the Nuremberg Trials seeing the need for a framework to prevent those atrocities happening again and make clewr that no government is above the law. The opposite of our current human rights system is Nazism.
The Speak-Your-Weight machine doesn’t have feelings. The humans who operate the Mechanical Turks, not to mention the communities losing their water and clean air to the data centres to run them, are very much suffering *because* of them though.
In a sane, normal country, Lucy Connolly would be treated as a contemptible extremist. Not in Britain. But then this is no longer a sane, normal country. Britain has lost its moral bearings My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...
Assuming that 2028 is going to be an even vaguely normal Presidential election - which his team seems to think - and Newsom's strategy doesn't make sense. Why try to make yourself the frontrunner now and guarantee two years of everyone coming at you?
Anyway, if they ever want to make a TV series about another William crossing the channel and seizing the throne, I'm available to do my pitch for a 1685-89 series. You can even use the lack of cultural knowledge of the period to your advantage by having Monmouth as your S1 dashing hero.
And this lands between the two approaches, so Godwin, Edward, Emma etc are there but ripped away from the actual history in order to serve a narrative where Harold and William are presented as protagonists from the start, not emerging as the story develops. (2/2)
Thinking some more about this, you have two choices here. Either set the story principally in 1066 and explain the backstop as you go or do a longer story of how England and Normandy got intertwined where Harold and William aren't the initial main characters. (1/2)
And the advantage of fantasy is that you can fudge the distances between things so people zipping back and forth in no time at all doesn't seem so eyebrow raising.
And Emma of Normandy - who did not die!
We're being invaded by a multinational force, there was a Spanish galleon in Whitehaven a few weeks ago demanding money from us (to go on board and have a look around).
The good news here is that we've had weeks of the far-right's media friends (and social media algorithms) pushing this and yet they're still getting effectively no one to turn out or take part.
They're letting barely-read newspapers set the agenda, assuming that since it's in the headlines, it must be news, and that creates a feedback loop. (And even after weeks of this, there's still only tiny numbers involved in it)
We got 20-30 people to a poetry open mic night at a local cafe a couple of weeks ago, so a co-ordinated wave of those could get over a thousand people out.
Reform clearly in the pocket of the polluters, but they don't worry because the BBC will do a nice puff piece for their fracking policy that shrugs off the risks and doesn't mention CO2 emissions www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The actual history and politics of the era have been thrown out in favour of making a generic medieval show. No attempt to show how things worked very differently, and also amused that the actual William was just 14 when Edward became King.
Might go reread The Last English King instead, which understands the difference but also the necessity of anachronism in the storytelling.
I know we're never going to get strict historical accuracy but I'm thinking of the early series of Vikings which loved throwing "these people saw the world very differently to us" curveballs. K&C doesn't care about how the 11th century was different.
Earl Godwin was well-known to history as the Cliche Spouter, of course, so it makes sense that every line he says is one.
Only surprise is they didn't film the inevitable snorting of a few lines before starting.
King & Conqueror has taken all the interesting parts of 1066 and turned it into a generic exposition-heavy medieval drama but with good casting.
Going to become PM just so I can add "if Stephen Bush hasn't posted about the Harry Potter HBO series in 24 hours, assume the UK has fallen" to my letters to nuclear sub commanders.
Panscoff, the degenerate that don't even use plates.
"So clear the tracks or wreck them. Brake the trolley or break it. Don't accept the premises and constraints of those who would tie others to tracks. Pursue options that a sensible and empathic person would pursue, and let others pursue other ones, so that we can pursue them all."
Wrote about getting Dougal. Is it just an excuse for posting lots of dog pictures? Possibly.
Some are very polite about it, others express it more violently, but one of the defining characteristics of the right is that they believe they are the only legitimate holders and wielders of power and any attempt at governing without them is illegitimate.
Read the whole thread, but a key point here. No matter what you do, no matter how many policy concessions you make, no matter how many 'reasonable concerns' you acknowledge, no matter how many minorities you throw under the bus, the right will still hate you and want to destroy you.
Harris pitching to do another tour of provincial towns talking to the angriest people he can find at 11am on a weekday and claiming that's the authentic voice of Britain.
He's running on a message of hope. Hope that you're not part of whatever minority he needs to throw under the bus next.
Ah yes, the man who got to be a professor at a leading university and was then funded by a hedge fund billionaire to assist in destabilising the country is not part of "the elite".
Farage spending more time in the first class lounge at Heathrow than he does in Clacton. www.lbc.co.uk/article/fara...
Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".
OK, you got me, maybe solar power is the devil at work.
