She probably thought she was now going to get into a shitload of trouble with her bosses. Which is probably a reasonable fear, given how media organisations are behaving.
English Lit prof based in Edinburgh. Bisexual English Scot - volatile organic compound - he/they. Roundhead in politics, Cavalier in spirit. Small room dj.
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She probably thought she was now going to get into a shitload of trouble with her bosses. Which is probably a reasonable fear, given how media organisations are behaving.
The next time Yes voters are called ‘flag-waving nationalists’ by opponents, all we need do is hold up a picture of the Prime Minister ringed by Union Jacks. If anyone is a flag-waving nationalist it’s Starmer, only the nationalism in question is British www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...
Graham Linehan once took issue with a sketch I did and tweeted about me referring to me not by name but only as to who my boyfriend was and called me an NPC ( non player character.) It was misogynistic and his “standing up for women” schtick is baloney.
We're so proud of our candidate in these casual vacancy elections, @matthewbarnard.phd. Please vote Matt for UK-elected representative when you receive your ballot paper: and if you are in the Northern or Yorkshire and Humber regions, please also vote for Adam Hansen. #ucu
Education is about nothing greater, or lesser, than *care*. It is caring, and we are carers (deliberately pushing back against the devaluation and marginalisation of those terms). Not to care, not to be able to care (and god knows it isn’t always made easy for us) is to fail to educate at all.
Roses are Red, Violets are Blue...
These are the things that make me proud to be British 🫡
It’s very curious to compare and contrast the likes of Bob Vylan and Kneecap and the media and politics reaction vs Linehan, it’s weird how free speech works isn’t it
No I don’t have something in my eye, I’m just sobbing.
When I was announced as the lead in a Doctor Who spinoff in 2023 Graham Linehan tweeted about me for TWO DAYS, tagging the BBC and others to say that I am pro-child abuse and they shouldn't work with me.
If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?
Ooh we've opened our call for small research grants. £10k for any humanities or social sciences research. Open to independent scholars. We use partial randomisation to allocate the funding: random allocation between all that meet the quality threshold www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/ba-l...
Given how freely, if not brutally, the whole conceit has been knocked into different shapes over the years (even from the first sequel) I’m very surprised they’ve managed to find a take which is both wholly its own and still retains a meaningful link to how it all started.
Alien Earth is shaping up into a really good series. This week’s episode absolutely slaps, both in itself and in how it refocuses the narrative. Also the eye creature is proper creepy. Looking forward to the rest of it.
How has Wales remained Wales? - some thoughts from Aberystwyth prom: open.substack.com/pub/abolishw...
🎉BREAKING: Scotland has joined the global movement to boycott Israel! The proposal put forward by Green MSP @patrickharvie.bsky.social was supported by a majority of members in the Scottish Parliament.
Exactly like the way they’re trying to seed the idea that all asylum seekers should be assumed to be rapists threatening ‘our women and children’. Getting buy-in for the assumption is the goal.
Not sure they’re even disputing that - the argument seems to be that all trans women having a wee in a public toilet are supposedly predators busily predating, so it couldn’t be wrong to advocate assaulting them. The initial claim is what they want people to accept, even tho it’s ofc a gross libel.
As far as I know the only source for this claim is, er, the bighead bigot himself.
Nigel Farage looks uncomfortable as Jamie Raskin uses his opening statement to absolutely demolish him
Channel not challenge. I hate you, proto-AI.
Hopefully a few politicos in the UK are looking at this and having a lightbulb moment.
The Democrats are clearly compromised in all sorts of ways domestically, but the fact that some of them can still challenge the venerable American urge to tear strips off a posh Englishman is a wonderful thing.
You’ll be getting regular updates lol
Somehow, it gets better bsky.app/profile/acyn...
Starting on the ADHD meds tomorrow. Been a long journey to get here - way too long. Here’s hoping.
I once accidentally broke up with a girl on a carousel when I told her, "I don't think this is going anywhere."
Since we're sharing examples of Linehan's scummy behaviour
It’s such an eye opener. The fraudulence exposed with one question. If only Labour weren’t so utterly shit-scared by him.
Proper filleted here. The deference to Farage’s suburban golf club nineteenth hole schtick clearly doesn’t travel.
I mean obviously not ‘podcasts’, but proactive multichannel comms done well.
This is the way
Those certainly look like good honest clouds
You can write to them! I’ve done it and they were very nice.
/this/ is how you write a piece on this subject
Well yes, I was going to say it would be very odd for a battle in the English Civil War to take place between two armies from different kingdoms in a country that wasn’t and still isn’t England. This is a little bit more than a technicality and probably deserves more than a parenthesis!
Book tour news. Here are the appearances that I am making for Upon A White Horse. Look out for more, including one in London. Please do come along, if you can. And if anyone would like to discuss an event at their book shop or festival then do feel free to get in touch.
We live in a cool country where the husband of the very racist Home Secretary gets to berate you for not supporting their party enough on live breakfast tv
There is no problem for which Tony Blair doesn’t think ID cards are the solution. He probably thinks they could solve Man United’s goalkeeping fiasco.
In shock news, the gentleman pictured here, "Billy Cooper", appears to be a crook... www.insurancetimes.co.uk/builder-pays...
That has been their attitude in Scotland since the SNP won the 2007 election. The entitlement is quite something.
Worth it for the bit where Polanksi calls out Labours entitlement over people voting for them and Ed Balls pulls this face.
Labour keen to show that they subscribe to the idea that the law should have in-groups that it protects but doesn’t bind, and out-groups that it binds but doesn’t protect. Only that was supposed to be a summary of the reactionary vision of the rule of the rule of law…
Precisely this. Other considerations aside, international students are a huge export earner for the UK economy, so this is just self-sabotage and will make the country poorer - with the effects felt worst in places that are already suffering. The madness of xenophobia.
Astonishing editorial choices being made by the BBC atm.
tbh a fresh hell would be kinda refreshing
By this argument, of course, there should never have been a Labour Party because it took votes from the Liberals. Good to see @zackpolanski.bsky.social calling out the smug blackmailers and their hostage strategy towards the non-Labour left.
For years, Nigel Farage has thrived on grievance politics. But why do his “solutions” never solve the problems – and why do voters keep feeling aggrieved? A view by Prof Ailsa Henderson and Prof Richard Wyn-Jones. From #TheConversation -- thanks!
Exeter and Leicester at the top of the list of universities (and regions) that would be harmed by the levy, together with the government's growth agenda, new report suggest. 1/2 With a sharing link for 3 non-subscribers: on.ft.com/45O7zly
‘Illegitimate concerns’
You did it. The neo-Nazi gig planned for Great Yarmouth has been CANCELLED. ❗ Over 34,000 of you emailed the Home Office and spread the word. Local press, councils and police took notice, and under pressure, we have just received the news that the venue has pulled the plug.
With headlines like this it must be obvious to everyone that they’re huffing glue. The most they’re due is the occasional expression of concern for their wellbeing.
One of my favourites 👌
#TodayInQueerHistory September 2 (2014) The San Francisco Rainbow Honour walk is unveiled. Honouring 20 LGBTQIA+ people who left a lasting mark on society. It showed folk like reformer Jane Addams, health worker and human rights campaigner George Choy, disco dazzler Sylvester & artist Keith Haring.
The pun there was unintentional and a bit corny but kinda works anyway.
It’s moving away at a hand’s breadth each year - the longest of goodbyes. One of the most moving things I ever learned.
‘Stop the hate towards LGBTQ people’, says the guy hating on the T people.
This was 115 years ago. One hundred and fifteen years.
Keir Starmer in 2022: I will abolish House of Lords to ‘restore trust in politic Keir Starmer in 2025: I will fill the House of Lords with more people.
He would say that, wouldn’t he
I also think the fervour with which Graham and his allies are crying "Police State" would make more sense if he was not literally the only person I've ever known to gloat about getting someone - the teenager currently taking him to court for criminal damage - arrested for tweets they posted.
Confident that our great leader can limbo dance this one considerably lower.
‘I was obeying orders’
America heartbroken to discover president somehow still alive
In Scotland it’s mostly called diluting juice, which would have been helpful to him here - he kind of reaches for the term, unsurprisingly given his upbringing, but once he’d launched ‘squash’ into the conversation he was, alas, lost. 😂
Predictably, this article is full of outraged responses to the prick’s arrest, but doesn’t say what was in the tweets which occasioned it. But it does quote his own exculpatory take. Spoiler: they were not just ‘over transgender issues’. Shocked, I tell you. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
According to Starmer; A waste of police time. Not a waste of police time.
bluesky hasn’t become massive but it’s not because we’re an echo chamber, it’s because we’re annoying in a ton of other ways and i think that’s beautiful
Should have called it diluting juice, would have made this much easier.
😖
As ever, the advice for would-be critics is to read the fucking book. It’s kind of a prerequisite if you ask me, but what do I know?
The director of a film adaptation of a classic of Romanticism has made the terrible mistake of emphasising the Romanticism.
There will be scoffing, jeering, misprision, and a not inconsiderable number of dubious Tufton Street graphs.
Obviously snark is Crace’s whole schtick, but the Greens (E&W) are now going to be doused in several tanker-loads of the odiferous condescension previously sprayed over the SNP, Corbyn’s Labour and anyone else who dares to take a step to the left of hopelessness. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
This milk’s gone off.
Stressed out wedding planner: WHERE IS SAMUEL, HE IS NEXT OF KIN. HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING A SPEECH NOW. Wedding planner assistant: hes listening to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner Wedding planner: WHAT Assistant: It's a guy who shot a bird
Any day now the fash will be like “only true Englishmen drink piss” and Starmer will get behind that lectern like “I love piss. Ever since I was a child I’ve loved tasting piss.”
wait are labour trying to say electing a prime minister who could make everyone in the country's tits bigger would be bad? why does starmer hate big naturals?
It’s happening. They’re going to merge into one, like when a Xenomorph and a Predator birthed the Predalien.
Labour are going to spend the next four years complaining that the Greens are being mean to billionaires, corporations and génocidaires and it seems unlikely this will be a winning line for them.
I mean aside from the fact that this is just a flaccid bit of readymade cope, how clueless are they that they think they can credibly attack anyone else for ‘pursuing division through polarisation?’
UCU - Labour's attempt to "outflank Reform" on international students "political suicide", says UCU www.ucu.org.uk/article/1415...
After seven long years Glasgow's Citizens Theatre has finally reopened its doors. @rhojogan.bsky.social takes a look at what's been happening, and what's coming up 🎭
Once again watching England with an archly raised brow from Scotland; we've had 15 years of scorn heaped on Independence supporters up here for being narrow, flag-obsessed nationalists, and now the whole UK Cabinet is lying about having loads of flags they shag all the time, mortifying behaviour
Of course not. The context of the quoted post should make it entirely clear what I’m doing, sheesh.
*Labour cabinet minister to pose for a photo where they eat a St George’s flag & feed one to their child*
Honestly this is too easy.
‘The SNP have never been left wing… They are a party of social stasis – not social progress. In response to difficulties, … the answer is to put out more flags – but you can’t feed your weans with a flag.’ labourhub.org.uk/2022/07/25/y...
I don’t have enough outraged screaming left in me for this.
lmao
Make it like Prague 1618!
Our collection, Mapping the Early Modern Inns of Court: Writing Communities, is being launched! Come and join us (in person at Middle Temple Library or online) at 6.15pm on Tuesday 9 Sept. Email MappingInns@gmail.com for more details. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Dispatches from the West Country: somebody’s painted 🏴s on a load of roundabouts in Penzance and the locals are furious because they also hate the English
Bellenden Gardens in Edinburgh would like a word
At what point do liberal commentators stop giving them the benefit of the doubt? There is rapidly decreasing room for doubt. They know exactly what they’re doing and they want to do it.