Just outside the Golden Gate. Photo: Robert Gumpert 17 February 2026
Today an early edition of "Maybe This Week, Maybe Next Week" War Without Reason. A reads to remember the seafarers facing risks, and plus, take the quiz: "DOES YOUR COUNTRY NEED REGIME CHANGE?" robertgumpert.com
26/02/2026 Sent by email To: Lynn Dunning (CEO) CC: Katie Cavanagh (Head of Collections, Exhibitions and Digital) Dear Lynn I am writing to you on behalf of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) to send solidarity greetings to your members, who continue their strike action today. My name is Henry Fowler, and I am writing in relation to the General Strike 100 partnership — a national collaboration of museums, libraries, archives, and local history groups marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. Since the project’s development in October 2024, the National Coal Mining Museum for England (NCMME) has been involved in discussions and joined the partnership. However, concerns have been raised by affiliates of the General Federation of Trade Unions, as well as by other partners, regarding the ongoing industrial action at NCMME involving workers represented by UNISON. These unions and partners have questioned your continued involvement in the partnership while this dispute re
We have informed other partners of this decision and will be publicising this letter via social media to make clear the actions we are taking in support of the striking workers. We sincerely hope that NCMME will prioritise negotiations with UNISON, reach a fair resolution, and be able to rejoin us during this important anniversary year. Yours sincerely Henry Fowler Assistant General Secretary, General Federation of Trade Unions Project coordinator, General Strike 100
Our Assistant General Secretary,@redhen90.bsky.social, has just sent the below letter to @ncmme.bsky.social CEO Lynn Dunning
"It's our position that while you remain in dispute with @unisontheunion members, it is not appropriate for the museum to continue as part of #GeneralStrike100 partnership."
Always a great event
That’s good to hear and the Williamson is one of my favourite galleries
Morning all.
Photographer Robin Dale, Ulla Street Boot Boys. Middlesbrough 1970s.
In the shop the shopkeeper passes me two Barnsley Chronicles and Fred gives her one back, forgetting that I buy one for my neighbour. She tries again and he gives her one back. She tries again and he gives her one back. The song of the opening shutters.
Early stroll. Drizzle gently baptises my face. The horizon’s hesitant smile. A gathering of plant pots by a side door. Number plates as lyrics, engine sounds as music. A man crosses the road at the speed of hi-vis light.
This time next week i'll be in London for this one, would be great to see loads of you there given that between the train, travelodge and two days off work, it's costing me more than HALF the advance just to come and do it 😳😳😳😳😳😳
www.wearebardbooks.co.uk/event-detail...
1. Thread 🧵
Freedom of Movement wasn’t just a policy.
It was a simple freedom: the ability to say yes.
• Yes to a job.
• Yes to love.
• Yes to a new life in another country.
When that freedom disappeared, something subtle but important changed.
When Walter Benjamin spent 5 months in Naples in the 1920s, he wrote about poverty, inequity and the mafia, and most critics stop there, but he went on to write about its anarchic vibrancy, courtyards, streets and stairways, a new theatre, an unforeseen constellation, where nothing lasts forever.
When Walter Benjamin spent 5 months in Naples (1920s), he wrote about poverty, inequity and the mafia, and most stop there, but he went on to its anarchic vibrancy, courtyards, streets & stairways, a new theatre, an unforeseen constellation where nothing lasts forever.
iPhone 17 | Leica Lux Pro
Black and white photo of an unkempt man staring into the camera
Homeless Man, Spitalfields, 1969 by Don McCullin. “I held his gaze and looked into the bluest eyes I had ever seen then brought my Nikon up to my eye and took the photo. He looked like one of those Neptune figures”. McCullin thought this was the best portrait he had ever taken.
Dear Shabana, I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank. You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to make a perilous crossing on small boats.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division. When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney. As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I filled water tanks and picked up litter. What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country. Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it. It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and croissants to refugees and food parcels. When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas.” She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …
Dear Shabana,
Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.
Gordon Parks’ photographs of Black Americans in the 1950s are essential viewing in London www.wallpaper.com/art/photogra...
Really enjoyed this powerful and thoughtful adaptation of Crime and Punishment by Northern Broadsides; do catch it if it comes your way. Cast in Doncaster is a splendid theatre doing a great job!
for attitudinal changes by age. It looks very sloppy.
Too long for social media but they seem have ignored completely the wide variation in general population norms between different countries when it comes to gender roles. It makes the amalgamation of results meaningless. They also haven’t compared like with like on Gen Z v boomers as no adjustments
Also the relevant comparison would be between gen Z and what Boomers thought when they were the age gen Z are now.
It varies a lot according to the question asked. You can find the full results here but I think the methodology is questionable at best https://www.kcl.ac.uk/assets/news/iwd-2026-global-charts-final.pdf
In the meantime—and it's quite possible, I'm advised, that these slimebuckets have closed all their legal loops—I wrote a pretty good book that you can acquire for not a lot of money or take out of the library, and I've been known to answer questions here when people ask me questions.
Still depressing numbers of course
Early stroll. The made-to-measure sky. A possibility of loitering mist. Historic sites of former puddles. The bus passes slowly, like time sometimes does. A security light blink, blinks again, then stays awake.
Lazy click bait journalism. You cannot reliably amalgamate results of a global survey when the views held by Gen Z men in different countries vary so widely. The combined number used in the article is meaningless for anything other than outrage and fuelling generational divisions.
Technocapitalists’ great trick is to make people who hate all this bullshit feel like they’re suffering from the same fogeys-not-coping-with-a-changing-world syndrome every generation succumbs to, rather than, say, just rejecting a rampant evil that seeks to rob us of our individuality and soul.
this is not an amount of money any individual or household should be able to have and we have to abolish both billionaires as a group and the economic system that makes them possible
Richard Hell’s East Village flat full of books
www.nytimes.com/interactive/... #musicsky #booksky
Happy #WorldWildlifeDay! Here's a badger I once painted. Oil on board...
Here's some of my furniture featuring a Welsh blanket pattern.
#art #design #furniture
The declyne of readinge ys caused by manye thinges. A huge cause ys a systematic & decades-long devaluinge of literature at all levels of educacioun. We kan not put instrumentalitye above meaninge and still thrive. Fundinge the humanityes ys key to a just societye of well-informed citizens.
Grammarly's presentation of something they call Expert Review, including my name (plus Stephen King's, plus Mary Norris's), though to be sure I've never been contacted by Grammarly, much less compensated.
What in the absolute fuck is this.
Leeds, c.late 1980s, photo by Peter Mitchell.
