It's here. BAD LANGUAGE 13/11/25 "made with love and horror, & a guidebook for our time" — @adamzmith.bsky.social "Mayer's words & a gift and a gateway" — @elizabethlovatt.bsky.social "incantation & spell distil a complex argument" — Lola Olufemi Pre-order: peninsulapress.co.uk/products/bad...

#WritingCommunity! Submissions invited to NEW WRITING SCOTLAND 44! We want poetry & prose in English, #Gaelic, & #Scots from writers who are Scottish by residence, birth, or inclination. All successful contributors are paid – deadline 31 Oct! Submit free via Submittable 👇 nws.submittable.com/submit

And a pleasing penguin companion

eBay’s been writing poetry again

This short film is a fave of mine, an excellent mix of dreamy sci-fi and kitchen sink realism, sounds like a great project You can watch The Watchers for free on the BFI player here: player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...

OK, painting created by David Thomas Meredith c.1975, in the art therapy studio at Netherne Hospital in Surrey, where he was compelled to live. No biographical information is currently known to us

With @bibilynch.bsky.social on Playbus, @regretteruane.bsky.social on Bric-A-Brac, @real-meaning.bsky.social on Press Gang, @iheartbigface.bsky.social on Ulysses 31 and @bobfischer.bsky.social on The Owl Service. timworthington.org/2025/01/06/t...

As a child, I was simultaneously scared & spellbound by Vivian Stanshall & I think lifelong loves are often forged in that specific alchemy of incomprehension & intimidation. Am sure the childhood Smallfilms/Stanshall cocktail explains the adult I am. Anyway, this is divine youtu.be/Fq1Ndnr2HtQ?...

Extraordinary A+ piece of television

Babe, come over, I’ve found a haunted ballroom at the back of the in the airing cupboard & we’re pirouetting across shattered diamond constellations cast by the mirror ball, waltzing cheek to cheek with slow blizzarding dust motes to the trembling, slender notes of the last song on The Golden Record

Recycling hasn’t been collected in weeks, so I began experimenting with papier-mâche to get rid of some. Started as a Wicker Man replica but I lack sufficient skills to make it convincing so it’s become a homage to those cheap 80s plastic ones & now I’m wondering if it’s too much to fuzzy-feltify it

Anne Applebaum? Political violence? Have I got a relevant column for you!

Anubis like "Some of the heaviness is coming from that predatory loan company you set up for 'rapture-motivated borrowing' schemes"

YOU SCAB BASTARDS

I'm hearing that Labour Link members were not consulted in this decision? Is this true?

Absolutely this. Very brave trans members of @unison.org.uk stood before conference and spoke out directly against Phillipson’s toxic politics. McAnea needs sacking for this betrayal of the Union membership.

I want to make it clear that UNISON is made of 1.4 million members, who have passed motions which directly oppose Phillipson's politics The decision on who to support was made by the Labour link Exec - a very small group of people. This does not represent the views of UNISON's members at large

She sounds delightful

Considering how many statements of support @unison.org.uk have made at Conference it’s clear that McAnea should not just be removed as General Secretary, but expelled from the union. There should be no endorsement for a genocidal bigot like Phillipson.

So @unison.org.uk basically ignoring all of the commitments made at Conference over the last few decades. www.thepinknews.com/2025/09/10/b...

Looks like I'm leaving UNISON.

love it when a union decides something by fiat then turns replies off

UNISON didn't, a committee did. I'm a member, I didn't get a vote.

Speaking as a UNISON member I am not happy with my union backing a transphobe.

@unison.org.uk has decided to limit replies on this, presumably because they don't want to hear how they have chosen to throw trans people under the bus. Again.

Turns out we should have been notified in advance about this as union members but we haven't had a Labour rep for 'quite some time'. 😑

apparently without consulting the members, well done boys good process

Hey @unison.org.uk why did you turn off your comments? Didn't want to hear all your members calling you out for this scab behaviour? What quid pro quo did Unison get for throwing their trans members under the bus?

Tempted to cancel my membership purely based on the nerve of disabling replies to this tbh

As a transgender Unison member, let it be known I fucking hate this and was not asked about it at any point.

My former union has chosen to back an anti-LGBT MP to become the country's Deputy PM. There is no LGB without the T. Fuck Labour and best wishes to Andy Burnham in a leadership bid to oust Keir Starmer.

SCABS

Replies Off is it lads

Me to my vizier

This one hit my brain just right

I wrote this for @thefence.bsky.social in July 2024, on Tony Blair, Labout and the ID card mania that will never, ever die.

This is really great reporting from Mother Jones - the "godfather" of evidence-based medicine disavows the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine for misusing his work. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

They’re calling it the “Tan Card” and you have to call it Londonderry to use the bus. Labour are looking to see real electoral returns on this.

The Good Friday Agreement contains the whole road map to one-island status, laid out in black and white. But once the vital trigger for the process had *not* happened by sort-of-late 2022, unification wasn't gonna happen by 2024. (Shrug) Sometimes, alas, life doesn't imitate Art.

If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.

1. The ‘western esoteric tradition’ 2. Post-punk & such 3. Languages I have failed to learn

Do not let these changes happen. Be LOUD about it. Don't blackout. WRITE. TAG. COMPLAIN. Once the enshitification starts, it's so difficult to reverse it. We don't want a site for babies (literal and figurative). We're all big kids who can understand art isn't real, and Nazis don't deserve safety.

Seriously if we trust an algorithm that tags posts based on keywords without context, we'll end up wasting time explaining jokes to Ai moderators. This is just a series of domino's that fall when Nazis get their fee fees hurt. WE SHOULD NOT CODDLE FACISTS. Discourse happens, block and move on.

We recently got more copies of this book from the author: Cheap Copies! The Obsolete Press Guide to DIY Hectography, Mimeography & Spirit Duplication. It's a huge labor of love and a truly special publication that we won't be able to restock. Get it while you can! halfletterpress.com/cheap-copies/

The bakery makes croissants with a laminated cinnamon layer for Cinnamon Bun Day! The free ones in the office simply don't compare!

OK, but the cinnamon buns they serve at work are less good than the ones from the French bakery downtown and if Cinnamon Bun Day is always on a work day I can't go to the bakery downtown.

time to once again test the hypothesis of whether America’s Junker class will gladly accept a check to make 50% of what they normally do on hard work and a good harvest if it still means continuing the ethnic purges and destroying our world class thriving cosmopolitan economy.

does anyone know if he paid his writers yet

You can really feel his influence these days, right?