Alasdair Pettinger

Sailm nan Daoine, a Gaelic Road Trip The Glasgow Film Festival opened this week, with two standout films.

'A profoundly moving film of redemption & loss, grief & nurture ... both intensely personal & acutely political. If this is a road trip, it is a trip through memory & identity, community & language ... about fragility & precarity as much as language' fiftysixdegreesnorth.substack.com/p/sailm-nan-...

It seems impossible to appease campaign group Sex Matters In April 2025, Sex Matters – the UK’s most prominent gender-critical campaign group – declared a win, but the fight seems far from over

'The supreme court’s “biological” definition of “sex” (which applies specifically and only to the statutory interpretation of the EA2010) is now being arbitrarily pushed into other unrelated pieces of legislation [and also] shoehorned into media reporting': yorkshirebylines.co.uk/opinion/what...

‘A first class broadcaster with something to say’: Nontando Jabavu, the BBC, and the cultural politics of African broadcasting in post-war Britain Abstract. This article examines the South African intellectual Nontando Jabavu’s broadcasting career at the BBC and how she established herself as an autho

Excellent (open access) article on the BBC career of Nontando (Noni) Jabavu in 1940s and 50s: academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

Children with autism encouraged to “Hunger Games it out” for school support The Government has announced a bold, innovative and low-key evil approach to SEND funding for school students, the Education Secretary revealed yesterday. As part of measures to protect the nation's m...

As part of measures to protect the nation’s most valuable resource – its money – minister Karen Hoyland, 42, announced the construction of a £4Bn Thunderdome, where children with autism will earn their educational support by “duking it out to the death”.

The government's SEND reform plan: good intentions, progressive instincts – and a terrifying loss of rights The eventual scything-down of Education, Health and Care Plans threatens to leave families stranded

And if you want even more on the SEND reform plan, here's a piece on my (free!) Substack maybeimamazed.substack.com/p/the-govern...

Superb guide to the govt's SEND plans. Without Special Needs jungle, the conversation would be sorely lacking. Must-read!

MEP Ann Widdecombe sparks fury with gay science comments Ann Widdecombe is criticised after suggesting science may

Everyone is a Nietzsche expert these days www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-4849...

Screenshot of BBC news headline: 'We thougjt Gen Z had started going to church in droves. But the truth is more complicated.'

They meant drones.

Revelation through repetition: the world of Solvej Balle The protagonist of Solvej Balle’s ‘On the Calculation of Volume’ is living the same day again and again. Has she got it all figured out?

A fine appreciation that understands the poetic and philisophical appeal of Solvej Balle’s ‘On the Calculation of Volume’ www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7243...

You Don't Say! A rant about Fazil the pianist

A wonderful bad-tempered review of a performance of the Goldberg Variations by Fazil Say open.substack.com/pub/freewhee...

Colour photograph of sea cliff, strip of sandy beach below, and gently rising grass slope above. The rock is abundantly fissured and folded.

More enigmatic glaciotectonic folds.

Colour photograph of very irregular cliff face, with fissures, folds galore.

'Enigmatic glaciotectonic folds' at Traeth-y-Mwnt. geoguide.scottishgeologytrust.org/p/gcr02/gcr0...

This is very good, but worth noting that the persecution conspiracy thesis was roundly debunked in Paul Hirst and Penny Woolley's Social Relations and Human Attributes (1982) on the basis of scholarship available to them - which suggests that not even Federici's earliest formulations can be excused.

Submissions now open: Creative Non-fiction. Closing date 13 March 2026.

Submissions now open 🎉 We know you’ve been waiting patiently, so we’re pleased to be back open for creative non-fiction submissions in two categories: ‘Place-based explorations of Wales’ and ‘Welsh True Crime’. Visit our website for full details www.serenbooks.com/submissions/

True dat

1925

Re-reading Wuthering Heights, this time paying attention, like Elaine Scarry, to Emily Brontë's verbs—active and monosyllabic, 'like punches', in the first half, then mainly passive in the second.

When someone asks me what I'm feeling, I wish I could just look it up, the way I find out where a film was shot, from IMDb or Wikipedia.

Light Blue Movers

Light Blue Movers, 1987
https://botfrens.com/collections/27/contents/5303

Jeb Loy Nichols

'I try and be the least I can be. Bring the least disruption, the least intrusion, the smallest footprint, do the least prettifying; shut up and be still.' www.jebloynichols.co.uk

- The Hall is Full of Noises Over at Disquiet, since the beginning of the year, Marc Weidenbaum has been issuing a challenge each week. Every Thursday night he invites anyone who feels so inclined to record a short composition in...

On how a John Cage concert led me to recreate its incidental sounds at home, yielding a domestic approximation of the acoustic smoke and ash left over from the performance. (From 2012) www.bulldozia.com/2012/08/15/t...

A Better World Much as I love Blipfoto, its willingness to cosy up to the government and to participate in fatuous campaigns such as the Year of Creative Scotland is embarrassing. Here is Strathclyde Partnership fo...

Remembering when Glasgow's transport bosses chose to rewrite (and ruin) a slogan made famous by Alasdair Gray: www.flickr.com/photos/bulld...

Banner image of said SoundCloud account, featuring colourful abstract painting in the background, on top of which are placed the artist-supplied info, viz. 'Rob Walsh / Music radio the way it should be / Bradford, United Kingdom' followed by SoundCloud's own 'Artist Pro' account label.

Delighted to come across this radio show on SoundCloud from @robwalsh.bsky.social Will appeal to fans of On the Wire, perhaps even those dwelling in the fleshpots of the Fylde Coast. soundcloud.com/blowin-1

Screenshot from printed book: '.... chaque fabricant vit dans sa fabrique comme les planteurs des colonies au milieu de leurs esclaves, un contre cent; et la sédition de Lyon est une espèce d'insurrection de Saint-Domingue'. From Souvenirs et réflexions politiques d'un journaliste (1859), incorporating the text from an article in the Journal des Débats (December 1831).

'Every manufacturer lives in his factory like the planters in the colonies in the midst of their slaves, one against hundred, and the rebellion in Lyon is another Haitian Revolution.' (Saint-Marc Girardin, 1831). archive.org/details/souv...

I cannot sufficiently underline how despicable it is that the IOC has required Haitian Olympic athletes to remove an image representing the leader of the Haitian Revolution (against SLAVERY) from their uniforms.

Movie clip. A young man, wearing a peach sweater, shot from behind, in the process of erasing names of authors from a blackboard. Among the names still visible: Molière, Jarry, Adamov, Kleist, Lorca, Voltaire, Albee, Williams, Brecht, Pinter, Goldoni, Giraudoux, Labiche, Racine.

From Godard's La Chinoise (1967).

This is presumably taking the piss out of Robin William's 2009 suggestion that politicians should wear jackets with the logos of their 'sponsors' on them, like racing car-drivers, so the public would be able to tell who they really work for.

www.snopes.com/fact-check/r...

Get more from Headphone Community on Patreon honest words on honest music

Richard Skelton (@corbelstonepress.bsky.social) is the featured artist this month at www.patreon.com/HeadphoneCom... - in-depth interviews, tracks to stream, albums to download. Subscribe for as little as £1 a month. Well worth it.

Spanish jamón is the best ham in the world – but culture warriors are reviving its dark history | Abbas Asaria The far right is using pork consumption as a means to exclude, just as it was in the Inquisition, says Abbas Asaria, a chef based in Madrid

On pork as a shibboleth and how conversos and moriscos in Spain sought to avoid persecution as heretics by hanging sausages in their homes or cooking ham they had no intention of eating. And how “¿come jamón?” has been revitalised as a test of national belonging. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Graphic reading 'the UK Government-commissioned 'Sullivan Review' of sex and gender in data and research collection threatens British research and trans inclusion. Here's why.'

📣 Today @felicitycallard.bsky.social and I have published the first peer-reviewed response to the 'Sullivan Review' of research and data on sex and gender.

doi.org/10.1111/tran...

The Review could threaten trans rights and inclusion, erode academic freedom, and undermine research quality.