The remarkable story we discussed this morning. (No paywall but do consider subscribing.) www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-e...

Using genetic determinism to prove a natural propensity for fascism is so 2020s (as in many layers of stupid)

Incredibly happy to reveal this year’s two Popfest Wien curators Sofie Royer and Wolfgang Lehmann, two people I hugely respect as musicians and producers. Can’t wait to see what they’re going to come up with.

Wrote this for @fm4.orf.at about the suspicious Tory-on-Tory weirdness of the BBC “scandal” fm4.orf.at/stories/3050...

Beyond Man City, other clubs which profit directly from emirati patronage should ask themselves some inconvenient questions; and if they do not of their own accord, we fans should be pressuring them into doing so. These other clubs very much include Arsenal FC. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Allow me to slip into German. Essenzielles hier von Eva Menasse: www.profil.at/kultur/essay...

Continental arte watchers, I was going to tell you that Die Super-Küche, a 1/2hr doc about the Frankfurt kitchen also featuring myself and my 2008 tribute song to Grete Schütte-Lihotzky, is on today, but seems they already played it this morning. Anyway, it streams here: www.arte.tv/de/videos/11...

60 London Underground staff some who have worked on tube for years could face deportation under tightened visa rules bit.ly/3XpfRuZ

Nipped over to Vienna this week, went to the opening of the Isotype/Otto Neurath exhibition at Wien Museum, highly recommend for a dose of socialist optimism (even if it’s from 100 years ago). One thing to see reprints of those pictorial statistics, quite another to see the originals in the flesh.

Bought the cut & paste Wings book for light relief from the state of the world, and before you know it 63 pages in Sean Ono Lennon drops the pub bore’s Never-heard-of-Oskar-Schlemmer bomb…

Our favourite radio show w @robertrotifer.bsky.social and Monsterheart, Soft Cell (RIP Dave Ball), Mozart Estate, @annacalvi.bsky.social, Lemonheads, Stella Donnelly, @chrissiehynde.com, Simon Joyner, The Barr Brothers feat. Land of Talk, doppelfinger, Stefan Geissler. fm4.orf.at/player/20251...

UK universities are being driven to bankruptcy because of Tory sledgehammer legacy and the Labour government's apathy and ineptitude. Of course they'll seek funding abroad, and good luck with expecting them to live up to their humanistic rhetoric. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Tonight’s @fm4.orf.at Heartbeat, on air & stream from 22:00CET/9pmGMT will pay tribute to the late great Dave Ball (pictured) and join up all sorts of musical universes. Playlist link below, hope you'll enjoy: www.instagram.com/p/DQmL0n7DKw...

See what @nesrinemalik.bsky.social did there… www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Seeing the dubious stuff being posted about Gaza (here too, mostly elsewhere), I’ve long told myself not to join in, but this seems crucial news to me: Fancy not allowing in DNA testing equipment while at the same time calling the handing over of the wrong bodies a breach of the ceasefire agreement

Almost making it sound like the one follows from the other.

Jesus Christ. We go mad about one bloke we wrongly released, yet hear next to nothing about this horror? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

RIP Peter Watkins: his film The War Game is the most frightening I’ve ever seen: it changed my life when I saw it at 15. Nothing was the same afterwards. I wrote about it at length in 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded

Austrian speaking: Hate to have to say this but stripping aristocrats of their titles has only very limited effect on their power.

Now here’s a rare good thing: New global-minded online medium @equatormag.bsky.social just launched, looking extremely promising. www.equator.org/

Keir Starmer, who insisted last month that leaving the ECHR “would be a profound mistake" that should be resisted at every turn, has told MPs to abstain on the Reform bill to do so

BBC News resumé on Gaza talking about “a truce without trust, counted in bombs and bodies.” I’m not sure this sentence works in any way, semantically or otherwise. We live in a world now where reality is bent way beyond what language can take.

The Springsteen movie: Landau character is both brilliant as being the first positive manager figure in biopic history and involuntary parody, especially when explaining troubled Bruce to his wife in bed. I liked it.

Essential book that should be translated into English. Debunks most of what you thought you knew about German post-war atonement or whether it actually happened at all.

God, this extended version is magical. youtu.be/oDiJFNtUIC0?...

Only going to happen when all residents also have voting rights. How quickly politics would change if they did.

I was lucky enough to interview Dave Ball at a book festival not so long ago. He was very nervous but when you got him onto music, amazing. I told him I had listened to Soft Cell every day on the way to school, radio pressed to my ear. He said, “Did it help?” More than you knew, Dave. RIP

Intelligent kuratierte, mit Leidenschaft gestaltete Musiksendungen - dafür steht @robertrotifer.bsky.social mit seinem "Heartbeat" auf @fm4.orf.at schon seit Jahrzehnten. Listen to the current edition, herbstlich getönt, vielfältig und wunderbar. fm4.orf.at/player/20251...

Recording tonight’s @fm4.orf.at Heartbeat, on air & stream from 22:00CET/9pmGMT, brought tears of middle age to the DJ's eyes, one of those where my job was mostly to get out of the way of the tunes. Pic: Stuart Moxham back in July at the Water Rats. Playlist link: www.instagram.com/p/DQCeJihjEC...

I've written something for @fm4.orf.at about Youknowwho's travels to Youknowhwere. Auf deutsch, as usual. fm4.orf.at/stories/3050...

The BBC are accidentally running the subtitles to Mrs Marple over the Mercury Prize, and it’s rather wonderful. A few of lines could plausibly have been written by Jarvis.

Hmmm… “UK British far-right activist Tommy Robinson on Thursday visited Israel's southern border with Gaza, where he was warned by his host, a Likud cabinet minister, that if the United Kingdom did not address the threat of radical Islam more forcefully, ‘I'm not sure there's gonna be a Britain.’”

Pretty sure I remember the time, about two years back, when collective punishment was seen as a war crime. Now it’s just a “test” in a “fragile ceasefire”. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Ah man RIP D’Angelo, the very best to do it. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was on the Black Messiah tour, at Hammersmith, the band just killed it, 15 minutes of Sugah Daddy was not enough.

In this life I will never stop getting annoyed at there being no page number on the first page of a chapter.

In case you missed: really good, intelligent and critical sum-up of the Israel/Palestine situation by Hiba Husseini and Daniel Levy on R4 Today just now. Starts at around 8.13’30”

Trying to send bandcamp order to the US, Post Office saying they’re not accepting it “because of the stuff that Trump is doing”. Anyone got a solution for this?

Mentioned this in last night’s FM4 Heartbeat show, but need to say it here as well: While it was Edwyn’s very last UK gig, he is still going to take a last lap around Europe with THREE gigs announced for Austria in late Jan: 28/1 Vienna, WUK 29 Linz, Posthof 30 Dornbirn, Spielboden

I haven’t been, and don’t think I could go, but what Ben Ratskoff says about the immersive Nova exhibition rings true to me. thediasporist.de/schlock-and-...

Truly wonderful @robertrotifer.bsky.social show incl. an extended tribute to Danny Thompson (RIP). Feat. Railcard, Yardbirds, Kate Bush, John & Beverley Martyn, Nick Drake, Clara Luzia & The Quiet Version, The Hanging Stars, Coffee Time, Donovan, Trimdon Grange Explosion. fm4.orf.at/player/20251...

More than half of tonight’s @fm4.orf.at Heartbeat from 22:00 CET/9pm GMT is dedicated to the session work of Danny Thompson who we lost the other week. And I couldn’t even fit in Talk Talk. A joy to put together this show. What a sound that man made. Playlist here: www.instagram.com/p/DPekpARDOL...

Board of Deputies doing the right thing there, except the problem, of course, is not that Chikli is “diaspora minister in name only”, but that the position of an Israeli diaspora minister is a paradox in itself, there to speak for people he doesn’t represent. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

When predicting what this government will do next just ask: What might be the absolute worst option? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Well it’s only a very blurred image of Dennis Bovell, James Kirk, Steven Daly, Vic Godard and Paul Cook at RFH on stage with the fantastic Edwyn Collins for the very last time.

Well it’s only a very blurred image of Dennis Bovell, James Kirk, Steven Daly, Vic Godard and Paul Cook at RFH on stage with the fantastic Edwyn Collins for the very last time.

I tried to explain to the waiter why I found it funny, and it quickly became awkward.

Bonus track for my Holding Hands in Petrópolis album writing itself. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

This Israeli government decision to host Tommy Robinson will widen the growing gulf between the Netanyahu government and the British public, including the broad majority of Jews in Britain (3/4 of whom dsapproved of Netanyahu, before this new link to this anti-Muslim racist UK far right convict).