FT.
Historian/art historian (12C & 18C esp), lover of Old Roses, literature, art, music, pigeons & other cute creatures! Trans-inclusive egalitarian #FBPE #UKEUFriend #Aspie GilchristHeritage at the Other Place. Posts in personal capacity. She/They
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FT.
They are evil, to be blunt. Blueshirt Labour. McSweeney shd know what that means.
Sadly, I can't link to the story b/c of Globe & Mail paywalls. But I feel that I have to share big news from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. It has bought at auction the plaid shirt & the Mountie costumes used in the Monty Python skit in which all sing "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay." 👀
Shiny Happy People.
Yes: a v fine actor!
The Brexiters lied about a lack of democracy in the EU. The US-UK deal has gone through without any democratic process. If you agree that this is wrong, please sign & share this petition. Require Parliament’s vote & an impact assessment on the UK-US trade deal petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...
While ‘gender critical’ transphobes go around claiming trans people are a threat to kids, a known TERF stood by as a man threatened trans protesters with a knife and encouraged him outside a performance of ‘The Cursed Child.’
The Guardian, in their write up of the reshuffle, completely omit mentioning that Tim Allen, new director of comms, was a Trustee for anti-trans hate group Sex Matters. Instead he gets "Allan’s past colleagues describe him as charming and collegiate". Yikes. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Yes, some of which is pretty r-wing & homophobic. So how he squares it…?!
And Streeting's an Evangelical, though how he squares that with being gay, I don't know…
bylinetimes.com/2025/04/01/b...
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/703...
Just look up Lord Glasman, the man behind the whole 'Blue Labour' thing, who is associated with McSweeney. He's v upfront abt his links with Trump & Bannon.
#FBPE to follow: @echarkie.bsky.social @kevinedwoods.bsky.social @janetlovethenhs.bsky.social @badassmutha.bsky.social @tomrom1.bsky.social @helenqu.bsky.social @robertolamela.bsky.social @mikewrigley.bsky.social @noahbeery.bsky.social @citizen689.bsky.social @musicienne.bsky.social @fbpe.eu (Team)
US far-R has been doing stuff behind the scenes for a long time. Bannon pulls strings with Blue Labour, certainly.
But if we didn't vote for them, we're not collectively to blame for them. Living with the consequences of what yr enemies are doing agst yr will shd not mean being collectively blamed.
Less of the 'collective we', please. These bastards are nothing to do with me or my friends.
Starmer is now the tool of the Blue Labour faction, which was founded by Lord Glasman, who talks weekly with Steve Bannon. Blue Labour is the far-right equivalent of the Militant Tendency.
wp.me/p15p2Q-eX5
Not a 'parable'. Moralising abt it seems out of place, to me. Just a v unfortunate loss of important archaeological artefacts in war-time – of which there were many, in many countries.
Spare me the inverted snobbery…
They're getting funding from some v odd sources. Blue Labour is closely linked to Bannon.
With the Wicked Witch of Hogwarts, I think she has issues abt her own childhood (parents wanted a boy) & baggage from abusive relationships with cis men that she projects on trans women.
It's v strange. When I was younger, no-one had a problem with idea 'nature sometimes screws up & needs a bit of help'. Jan Morris was on travel & book programmes on TV, & accepted as herself. All this lunacy has emerged recently, driven by US far-R as wedge issue vs LGBTQIA+.
Great explainer: The ECHR is protecting everyone in the UK 🚨 "Reform has touted its plan as a 'legal reset'. But it is better understood as a total rejection of the UK’s postwar international commitments to protect the human rights of everyone within its jurisdiction." https://bit.ly/3JYzaI8
#BirdOfTheDay #PigeonSky The Feral Rock Dove/ #Pigeon Dazzlingly beautiful, but so often taken for granted.
Nice set @robcrank68.bsky.social These are rather ordinary shots of two of our native pigeons. The Crested Pigeon and the Common Bronzewing
Quick midday Coopuccino visit #pigeonSky
Poor darlings!
@annihawk.bsky.social
That is indeed a lovely colour!
Ther ys power yn a union
🔥 The UK's voting system is bust, writes Polly Toynbee: “The government needs to get to grips with this,” says @appgfairelections.bsky.social chair @alexsobel.co.uk. Keir Starmer could set up a commission right away and implement change before the next election.
This is fabulously useful and includes dolls and historical costume patterns!
Nothing new. Little Ms Atos, as I recall.
FFS!!! The New ‘Executive Director of Communications’ - Tim Allen - was a Trustee at transphobic lobby group ‘Sex Matters’ until this morning!!! 😖😖😤 Don’t tell me the ‘trans lobby’ are powerful while transphobes sit in Number 10 Downing Street! 😠😡 👉🏻 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Have you seen the film where she plays Castiglione? It's on YouTube!
I feel more at home there than I ever will visiting London.
So-called 'home counties' (whose home?) always overprivileged in comparison with rest of us.
Part of the background to it was the model of capitalism introduced in 1990s, creating the oligarchs.
About time, too. Long overdue.
This is honestly fascinating - dissecting vibes into the incredibly concrete - and people should be using it as a discussion starter in writing classes
Why is this govt expending so much energy on persecuting a small & harmless minority?
I like the art & culture. The ppl I met in Gorbachev/Yeltsin era were fine. Politically, it's been a basket-case for centuries, & the window of opportunity offered after the fall of the Wall was bungled horribly.
⚠️ "First Past the Post is not sustainable; not for Labour, and not for the country. We must modernise Westminster and launch a National Commission on Electoral Reform." 🌹 Excellent article for @thefabians.bsky.social by @steveracemp.bsky.social #Labour4PR
Good. Shd never have left Erasmus to start with.
The downside is, that it makes you look pregnant even if you're not.
@hottycouture.bsky.social @invitinghistory.bsky.social This occurred to me a few days ago. Cabarrus had at least 11 kids: spent much of adult life pregnant or post-childbirth. Popularising 'Greek' dress with v high waist was practical: making maternity-friendly clothes mainstream.
I'm 60. Menopause was 5 yrs ago. I may be plus-size, but I like to make most of having waist that's smaller than bust or hips!🤣
Yes, I wanted to see the Caucasus (trip incl a couple of days in Georgia) bcos was v keen on Lermontov. I also saw & fell for the history paintings I wanted to do PhD on. I was last in Russia in 1996. Cd sense the climate was changing. I was actually in L'grad/P'burg during the 1991 coup.
The comments made by Adnan Hussain are unforgivable. A #YourParty figure spewing transphobic rhetoric on birth sex is not left wing. This is what we voted and fought against within the #GreenParty. Thats why we will hopefully see @zackpolanski.bsky.social as our leader
Bcos of my PhD research, Russia was where I visited most until mid 1990s (for research, & as holiday job as guest-lecturer on Moscow-P'burg cruises). I went to France (Strasbourg) for 1st time (work conference) in 2003 at 38, Italy for 1st time at 40 in 2005.
My first ever trip abroad was a graduation present when I was 22, to what was then still Soviet Union.
Yes. There is *no* grass-roots movement behind the Astroterfs. They are top-down.
The animals on the right look rather fierce and the power of Orpheus's music has still to take full effect on them ! Mosaics of Orpheus have been found right across the Roman Empire from Britain to Edessa in Mesopotamia, where this one was found. #mosaicmonday
Keir Starmer has appointed as his new Comms Director Tim Allan who was a board member of the hate group Sex Matters. It's no longer even pretending to adhere to its Manifesto promise to "remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance."
Sex Matters at the heart of government messaging...
It's so much easier for ppl in SE to go to France.
Trips to Paris not practical when you lived in Hull. I was 47 when I visited Paris for the 1st time, but had been there in imagination from adolescence, through my love of Hugo & Villon.
Prob with the latter is positioning itself as Gaza protest party, attracting socially v conservative Muslim vote on a single issue. It's incompatible with more widely egalitarian modern society. I don't want religious reactionaries of *any* religion dictating policy.
Indeed. Labour was supposed to be better than this. Instead, it keeps throwing its natural supporters under the bus to placate the far-R.
One of the things that gives me a flicker of hope for my country is when groups like the Quakers, the RNLI, the Women's Institute and the National Trust stand up for common decency. I just don't understand why the Labour Party can't.
The deadline for submitting proposals for #BSECS2026 is only two weeks away. Get scribbling! #skystorians #18thC 🗃️ This year's theme is 'Big and Small', 7-9 January, Pembroke College, Oxford. www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/...
Whereabouts? Bcos it seems to me that some places have better provision than others.
Un grand merci à l'ami @johnerik-h.bsky.social et aux @cahiers-histoire.bsky.social pour cette recension attentive et généreuse. @libertalialivre.bsky.social journals.openedition.org/chrhc/26144
Go figure. The guy who wants to put hundreds of thousands of people into mass detention camps without trial or verdict is against human rights laws and treaties. Who’d have thought?
Universal values, I'd say. I rlly dislike it when ppl put national labels on things that are just human.
#ParrotSky What a pretty wee bird!
Here in Hull c 1988, the council abolished school 6th forms & junior high schools, & created 6th form colleges. My old school went from being 13-18 to 11-16. It's now an 'academy' focused on science & tech, when it used to be v strong on arts & humanities…
Yes. I was at high school in late 1970s-early 1980s, at what had been the girls' grammar school until late '60s. I did French, Latin, Ancient Greek, a bit of Italian…
No – I can see 2, in fact!
Yvette 'ATOS' Cooper? She's been like that for yrs…
#MosaicMonday #Paphos #Cyprus Leaping Leopard -fantastic details...and so well preserved. Incredible. the mosaics were only discovered in the 1960s when a farmer ploughed through one - no-one knew they were there!
Nous souhaitons une très belle rentrée à l'ensemble des élèves et collègues de l'académie! 🖼️ Henri Jules-Jean Geoffroy, "L'arrivée à l'école", 1909, musée de la Piscine, Roubaix.
The real damage was Blair's govt making language study 'optional'. Lots of schools dropped language teaching, & in turn universities killed off language depts.
Maybe he's heard what the Queen can do to harrassers with her shoe…
O Levels never involved 'foreign trips'. Maybe that's a SE thing, where they can just hop over on the ferry for a day.
Can see one of my old flats in this photo…
#PigeonSky What a sweetie!
She's so cute!
Thanks! I now follow them!
I cut up mine when they voted to trigger Article 50.
I don't think most of them care so long as they get the money & perks.
I wouldn’t have thought many Labour MPs came into politics to strip the rights of torture survivors to be reunited with the spouses & children. They need to take a long hard look in the mirror & ask whether Starmer, Cooper & Reeves are really the leadership their careers should be remembered with.
Owners of the Dragon House Chinese takeaway in York were devastated after their business was vandalised with racist graffiti. When local business Crystal Clean York heard they immediately stepped in to scrub off the graffiti for free.
Yes. He completely betrayed us Remain/Rejoiners. Calling fascists & the fascism-curious 'hero voters'. Have been treated as a non-person by all govts since 2016. We marched in huge numbers pre-Covid, but somehow we don't matter.
Thoreau ref is interesting, bcos I think much of this is rooted in 19C beliefs abt TB, sanatoria in mountains or lakes & c. Main diff being, getting out of polluted industrial cities cd benefit (but not cure) ppl with respiratory diseases. But extrapolating to other conditions is mistake.
#PigeonSky Somewhere, a #pigeon is always watching…
Thinking globally, but acting locally sparked a movement, that has ultimately spread the Safe Space initiative nationwide https://www.wearequeeraf.com/how-my-local-action-turned-into-a-national-movement-creating-safe-spaces-for-trans-people/
My local Labour MP is v much 'party line' & also makes terf-y noises.
Have been thinking abt it for a long time. I cut up my Labour membership card when they voted for A50. I used my Unison affiliation to vote for Starmer as leader bcos of his Remain credentials, only to be betrayed. I haven't voted Labour since he became leader (LD or Green).
Does working in one count?!
As I said elsewhere in the thread, I think, in terms of current Labour MPs, Ed Miliband & Clive Lewis are more positive. I'm v interested in the Greens, though, if Zack Polanski wins. We need someone who will take the fight to the enemy, not enable them.
I grew up with a mother who was slowly outgrowing the legacy of a pre-Vatican2 RC education. Too slowly for me.
This is the problem with a party that's partly spun out of the pro-Gaza protest movement: it caters heavily to a socially/sexually conservative Muslim vote in key areas. I don't like social conservatives of *any* religious flavour.
@labourlewis.bsky.social has a lot going for him, too. I'd like to see a leadership that fights back agst the far-R instead of pandering to them; that campaigns to #RejoinEU; that doesn't throw my trans friends under the bus…
I'd like to see Ed back.
So, you don't give a fuck abt friends & family members in rest of the UK? Gee, thanks. I am not halves of a person. Half my family isn't more deserving & special than the rest. Screw separatism. Nation states shd be abolished, not exhumed from grave.
Blueshirt Labour. Putting together 'nationalism and 'socialism'…
Just thinking of the pair in Hull Minster:
