I can't make this but it looks an important survey and event. Push the tide of prejudice (including from fellow creatives) back! www.cultural-barometer.co.uk/backlash-a-q...
I can't make this but it looks an important survey and event. Push the tide of prejudice (including from fellow creatives) back! www.cultural-barometer.co.uk/backlash-a-q...
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
Great stuff. I met Pete a couple of times. Once we were both up for the same literature development job. Unbelievably I got it, my first proper job in the arts. (The rest is history etc...) Every time I read his work I wonder how the hell he didn't get the job!
Relief at news that grandson got his first choice of secondary school - same one his mum and uncle went to, and both good and local. Not sure what to call the 'how %%%%ing old am I' feeling mixed in with it though...
Good to see this, and Own Art recognised. Back when I was chair of ArtCo, ACE's then trading company, in the late 2000s, I had to help see off at least one attempt to squish the scheme by sceptics. Very glad Own Art has flourished under @creativeunited.bsky.social.
www.ownart.org.uk/boost-for-ar...
So many things to flabber your gast aren't there? "That's life" said the minister. What is wrong with these people - even at the 'competence of retaining government/councils' level, let alone decency?
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
" Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?"
(Brecht.)
Lmao
Good win, bad losers. The Trump playbook meets VAR.
This was one of many highlights of the Jeff Tweedy gig we saw in Paris (on Valentine's Day, by accident). I mean, we meant to go to the gig but it was an accident we seemed so romantic.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikgr...
a stat i always cite is the number of anti-trans articles in the press went from 60 in a year, to 7,500
"...No matter how dreary the situation is, and how difficult it may be, the storm really doesn't matter, until the storm begins to get you down. β¦it is rough and tough in this ghetto, a lot of funny stuff going down, but you got to walk TALL. WALK TALL. WALK TALL.β m.youtube.com/watch?v=JtTz...
Bet the people on the next table took notes!
In some ways I'm maybe just slow on the uptake. But also the idea of ordinary has been quite important to me,I guess. Definitely not a bubble of wierdos. Could maybe have done with more of that.
Indeed. He does love his choir actually.
Having said that, it's only of late I've properly realised I'm a non-standard fit. (I don't mean the diagnoses described in that piece.)
If I think back to when we first met in our youth I see it now as - 1 or 2 exceptions maybe - essentially some irritants and pieces of grit finding each other...
My grandson will go to secondary in Sept and has already said he's 'only going to make friends with wierdos who play instruments'.
The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...
Not a video but here's our cat choosing her next poetry anthology to cheer you up.
A lot of the rhetoric is kind of reminiscent of 'plastic as space age future' too.
Better people than me. I'd have just linked to a bunch of 'anonymous' accounts to entertain myself.
In happier news I'm in a cafe in Deptford and they're playing this loud and it's proper cheered me up www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjRL...
But cuts to PE. Make this government make sense please.
Excellent.
Marginally safer to visit than the states atm?
I will offer every adult in the country a 20 minute course in understanding and applying the possibilities of my own books. I'm as 'generous' as Microsoft.
Channelled Swift for a minute or two⦠Poetry or policy, you decide.
Five Modest Proposals for Preventing the Children of Rich People Becoming A Burden on the Arts
stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
Very good. Now do all my other book covers!
Having seen the length of his thread I'm saving my time for browsing in a bookshop. Or indeed a record shop. Weird policing behaviour.
I'm sure I remember us going to the Batcave that time. That usually makes goths look at you twice.