I post less than I used to because my social life's improved.
North East England
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I'll be discussing my books George Orwell on Screen and Old Bailey Hack: An Unofficial Guide to Rumpole at Hartlepool's central community hub this Saturday. 10am to 1pm, with a ten-minute speech scheduled for 11. Come along if you fancy it.
Dozens of writers set to attend Hartlepool Author Showcase trib.al/eDVRfSd
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David Ryan retweeted
Every academic claiming Scruton was a fraud or a pseud or "massively overrated" or whatever has roughly the same bio - "Age: 39. Deputy assistant interim professor of theory (part-time), University of Gravesend. Author of Was Thatcher Pure Evil? (forthcoming). Patreon..."
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We all know the feeling. You're keen to watch a Dr Who Blu-ray and it takes forever to load, with glossy animations that lose their shine after one viewing. As of today, my government will outlaw "To select audio navigation, press enter now". Change, and not a moment too soon.
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“Apartheid” going well.
Explainer: Arab voter turnout could make or break Netanyahu in Israeli election buff.ly/OXI9lRv
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My sister gave me an Amazon voucher for my birthday last month, so I put it towards a portable power station.
Just how close did Britain's electricity grid come to collapse on 23 June? Allegations began circulating soon after that date of a cover-up by the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO).
While external observers could see that something abnormal was happening, with the frequency of the grid falling below operational limits for several hours, NESO quickly denied that anything was wrong.
They claimed that the grid was ‘not at risk’, an assertion which was repeated by energy minister Michael Shanks in the Commons.
✍️ Ross Clark
Article | spectator.com/article/how-cl… | @RossjournoClark
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A clip from It's Garry Shandling's Show, 1986. His real middle name was Emmanuel, not Aloysius - so, was he or his co-writer a Tony Hancock fan?
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David Ryan retweeted
When I was 16-20 I worked as a checkout girl at Tesco. We had a female changing room and a male changing room. Were I employed there today, this union would work against me and my fellow female employees to keep men with special feelings out of that changing room. Extraordinary.
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One of the best plays I ever saw was Arthur Miller's All My Sons at the National in 2000. James Hazeldine, Julie Walters, Ben Daniels, Catherine McCormack. Now I discover there's a film starring Edward G Robinson and Burt Lancaster. How did I not know that?
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This strange idea that young people are interesting. I blame the Beatles myself.
something youll learn when youre older is college kids are fucking morons who think they know more than everyone else and are incredibly easy to manipulate by people with nefarious motives. And in 2026 college students are like 50% dumber than they used to be
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The British Army was at its best when it was comprised of council estate thugs led by public school bullies.
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I don’t know if young people appreciate that it used to be just your few anarchist friends with daddy issues who said shit like this. Now it’s like half the professional managerial class
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David Ryan retweeted
Younger people might not know this, but before social media, we didn't have to listen to crazy people. At all.
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Michael Gove’s @michaelgove superb counter-blast against the monstrous regiment of modern educators.
It’s superb. As an educator I am 100% supportive of Michaela and firmly opposed to the silliness of Cremin. Facts matter. Information matters. What educators should be doing is helping learners to understand, to navigate material and make sense of what it is telling them. They can’t do that in a knowledge vacuum. It’s weird we’re having this conversation, as normal people, and teachers, know this experientially.
I think we need a public debate between these two, without the dancing….
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So, it seems that this 1994 hardback, bought in a charity shop goodness knows how long ago, on a whim, is, er... signed by Douglas Adams.
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Christopher Plummer, who was a concert standard pianist with a fine musical ear, was furious when his singing voice was dubbed in “The Sound Of Music” (1965), and went on a drunken rampage through Salzburg. (He told me in an interview that the dubbing incident was one of the reasons he was rude about the film.) This is Plummer’s original vocal performance of “Edelweiss” - a chance to hear the song as he recorded it.
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Ali G has nothing to do with Muslims. It has been pointed out to this individual many times, even by those there when the character originated. So how remarkable is it to see an editor of a religious news site happy to use his profound ignorance on a subject to stir up hatred?
I stand by my opinion about Sacha Baron Cohen ridiculing Muslims.
His Ali G character had ambiguous origins for the first four years. His name was Ali and his uncle's name was Jamal. Naturally, a lot of people assumed he was Muslim.
Only later did he reveal the character's name as Alistair Leslie Graham after four years of ambiguity.
Cohen's career then included a racist depiction of Borat from Muslim Kazakhstan. And then there was the Muammar Gaddafi impression in the Dictator film.
Baron Cohen was brought up an orthodox Jew, speaks Hebrew and has spent a lot of time in Israel. He has made a series about Mossad and has made public statements supportive of Israel.
Join the dots - he's a Zionist ridiculing his enemies.
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The first Hancock's Half Hour radio show, from 1954, features a French chef called Pierre Higgins. So, now I want to know if he inspired Jean-Pierre O'Higgins from Rumpole of the Bailey. #niche
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