disquieting to read the story about OUH maternity care today.

whenever someone I know in professional contexts discovers I’ve had a baby and writes me a congratulatory email, they foolishly activate my trap card: sending a raft of unsolicited photographs of the Nugget

‘Labour polled 11% in a seat that the party has held for 100 years’ is the headline news this morning. Feels like a headline going to hear a lot in the next year. (Also result - Plaid win - does show that the fissuring of British politics isn’t all to the right)

A periodic reminder that the ORIGINAL STAR CHAMBER CEILING from Westminster Palace is now in a hotel outside Liverpool. www.leasowecastle.com/dine

The worst use of quotation marks in the history of human civilisation is in.

“What’s the charge? Eating a seal?”

my baby daughter has started smiling socially and it is the best. thing. ever.

poppy, who’s not a fan of baths, got 2 of them today: one in the sink and one from panzer #cleanboy

Just seen a headline which asks "Thatcher was born 100 years ago and her reign feels a lifetime away. Why is her effect on the country still so huge?" It's because she was a massive bastard. Hope that helps x

if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees

this is horrifying. The NHS is failing trans people.

My dad has turned up this photo from a visit "many years ago" to the Forth Bridge. I think it's taken from what he calls the howff, just below track level, used by the maintenance workers. I guess when you're engaged in a proverbially endless task, you need a wee cup of tea once in a while.

When you drag a woman by the hair, beat her and force her to kiss your flag, that’s how you tell the world you are the Good Guys

finally had the chance to take my first hot bath since I got pregnant. no lobster was e’er more delighted to be boiled.

New Bibliography: Royal Proclamations statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory

On National Poetry Day, the greatest poem I have ever read

American Idiot really holds up over two decades later. concept album of the millennium?

since I’ve had a baby I’ve read more news articles than ever before, simply because I need something one-handed to do at 2am when she’s feeding and I’ve stupidly forgotten to connect my earphones before latching her on

parenthood: trying to establish whether the scent of baby vomit has sunk into your cardigan or if it’s just the baby themselves (or a secret, worse third option)

my kid straight up looking like Tony Soprano getting the newspaper

So the DFS sale really has been going on as long as we thought

day ??? of maternity leave. my house is an unending series of muslin hiding places and I’ve lost count of how many Waitrose mini sausage rolls I’ve eaten.

imagine getting qt dunked by ed davey. unrecoverable. you’re furious and he is serenely going down a log flume in bognor regis.

I wrote about the groypers and the Fuentes-Kirk fight years ago, in Hate in the Homeland. Cautioning here that there is still a lot to know about the shooter’s motivation, I’m sharing these two paragraphs here to set the history of this fight in context:

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”

Look I think valuing human life is a phenomenal, wonderful, fantastic idea and also that’s why everyone opposes the genocide in Palestine and the colonial violence in Haiti and Sudan and Congo right? Oh oh you didn’t mean those lives I see

Keir Starmer rushing out an immediate tweet bemoaning the death of a US fascist whose UK organization was a failure, but posting nothing about the UK fascist march at which the site he's posting on's owner called for a racist revolution.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2... watching the world descend ever further into anti-democratic, fascist mania is doing my blood pressure no good.

i’m not going to be lectured about political violence by people whose politics is violence

BREAKING: Keir Starmer somehow comes up with the one thing that will make him less popular than he already is x

Watching everyone from Dem politicians to baseball teams venerate Kirk is like pulling back a strip of wallpaper and realizing your house is full of mold.

Dismayed by the "I loathe Gl**ner but his arrest should scare us all" takes. The bar for arrest over a social media post *should be extremely high*, but a guy who's harassed trans people 19 hours a day for 8 years, telling his 600k fans to attack any trans women they see, clears that bar v easily?

Thank you for all the suggestions for attracting more hot men to the National Trust. My favourite so far was getting Hot Priest to come and hide out in some of our priest holes. If anyone knows Andrew Scott please can you raise the idea with him - just casually.

Jesus Christ alive. This is lunatic territory.

It's really peculiar to accuse "Corbynistas" of "taking over the Green party", when Corbyn himself is literally right there, waiting for people's votes. 🤣 They just can't conceive of people - a big diverse population of them - longing for progressive politics, can they. It's a hell of a blind spot.

– Graham Linehan: "It's sissy porn." – Julia Faure Walker KC: "You must be more familiar with it than me." – Graham Linehan: "Oh, I am — I really am."

Remember “compulsory chemical castration woman”? The new Home Secretary…

I can’t help but feel that some SpAd being forced to watch me repeatedly insist that the public sphere should be applied to the sixteenth century would be a cruel kind of punishment

Imagining Reform ministers frothing at the mouth over my weekly rants about historical methodology

As Angela Rayner is forced out, let's pause to recall that the current UK Ambassador to the USA, Lord Mandelson, was forced to resign from the Cabinet twice in three years, once for a dodgy loan, and once for a dodgy passport application.

fully overwhelmed this afternoon, because a friend surprised us with a handmade quilt inspired by early modern decorated ceilings for Nugget. absolutely astonishing work and a kindness that is rare to find.

Iconic moment at the Downton Abbey premiere

thanks to @dorianlynskey.bsky.social for introducing me to this movie poster, featuring a tagline that made me hyperventilate with laughter

Back at my printing night class (in-depth etching this time) and I will repeat my advice to academics: get a hobby. Preferably get a hobby that you can fail at and it doesn't matter. In facts it only makes it better.

@zackpolanski.bsky.social : "The challenge to the Lab govt is if you really want to stop Reform & the rise of the right, stop aping them, stop copying them. When Farage does a press conference that demonises migrants.. Starmer can't even criticise that, in fact he implicitly gives it the nod"

Reminder that I am open for business for all your research, writing, editing and copy-editing needs! Recent projects include creating a personal archive catalogue, and copy-editing English academic manuscripts for authors of other languages. Get in touch via website or DM! www.drvicclarke.co.uk