The office manager was supervising me very closely today.

Out in the county yesterday evening. Beautiful light, cold air.

Breaking news from England: the electric blanket is now on the bed 😆

Taiwan: [exists] Beijing: Stop provoking me! Useful idiots writing in the Times: Yeah, stop that. ampleroad.substack.com/p/a-sense-of...

This should have been a moment of profound national learning - about the corruption that serves our elite - but the Cabinet Office which ran the VIP Lane sought to close the discussion down and Labour unaccountably let them. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Beyond grotesque greed from this mafia organisation, the Mountbatten-Windsors. As ever, creaming off huge financial support from taxpayers and dodging paying any tax back. A truly disgusting and shameless family. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Why translate from Taiwanese to Gaelic and back again? Here, @drhannahstevens.bsky.social and I try to give an answer on #Taiwan Insight. Do read the other essays in this special issue as well (from Elissa Hunter-Dorans and Lisa MacDonald, with the final one soon to land from Naomi Sím).

Enjoying some late September sunshine in Leicester ❤️

Taiwan Insight, the in-house magazine of the Taiwan Research Hub (@UoN_TRH) regularly outs out very interesting articles from new angles and perspectives. recommend subscribing to read pieces like this: taiwaninsight.org/2025/09/17/g...

These men are utterly demented. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This little kidney bean 🫘

Trump Spends Entire U.K. Trip Trying To Figure Out Where He Knows Prince Andrew From

Sex offender Donald Trump and the English mafia family having dinner and being the thoroughly awful people they are. We are in hell.

1/ Palantir signs deal with UK government & will "invest £1.5bn" in UK defence sector. This on the same day that @amnesty.org calls on all states to cut ties with #Palantir in view of its close links to Israel's genocidal war machine. uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/us-firm...

Keir Starmer has just announced a £1.5bn deal with Palantir. The immoral defense company linked to Peter Thiel Palantir is linked to mass deportations, surveillance and the genocide in Gaza There's always money for bombs and billionaires, but not for children and public services

Delighted to see this All the Aunties paneer cheese in Tesco today.

We hope the Hillsborough Law will be enacted – and usher in a new era of accountability and honesty in public office. But the threat of more consequences will have to bring about a huge change in the culture of governance in the UK. We’ll believe it when we see it. https://bit.ly/4pHOM3t

“These waters should be the cleanest in the country, yet they are treated as open sewers by profit-driven water companies and poorly regulated industrial-scale agriculture” A new report has found that river pollution is twice as bad inside national parks as outside them: https://bit.ly/3K7l2wo

Still very much enjoying this little joke, though. I am unappreciated in my time 😭😂

And in other sickening news from England: here's sex offender Donald Trump sat alongside the head of a mafia organisation, Charles Mountbatten-Windsor (also known for protecting his sex offender brother through the institution he directs) being processed through the streets in a golden carriage. 🤮🤮

"From 2011 to 2015, the UK was considered the safest place in Europe to be LGBTQ+, according to an annual ranking known as the Rainbow Map. This year, the UK was ranked 22nd out of 49 countries, a fall that campaigners say is down to the decline of trans rights and increasing anti-LGBTQ+ violence."

“If we had not continued to burn fossil fuels over the last decades, most of the estimated 24,400 people in Europe wouldn’t have died this summer.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/17/human-made-global-warming-caused-two-in-three-heat-deaths-in-europe-this-summer-analysis-finds

In Leicester Daniel Lambert is considered a city deity. And, as such, you can find shrines to him in some of the local pubs and hostelries. Taiwan friends may consider the closest equivalent to be Cheng Huang Ye. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_... www.godsoftaiwan.com/Cheng-Huang-...

Delighted to have this published on Taiwan Insight, written with my collaborator @willbuckingham.com. It's the first in a series about our @windandbones.com book, Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic. taiwaninsight.org #Taiwan #Scotland #fiction #translation

Delighted to have this published on Taiwan Insight today, written with @drhannahstevens.bsky.social — the first in a series about our @windandbones.com book, Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic. taiwaninsight.org/2025/09/15/t... #Taiwan #Scotland #Taigi #Gaelic #literature #translation

Wes Streeting has defended Lord Peter Mandelson’s relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein after it was revealed the Labour peer called the convicted paedophile his 'best pal'

I know this is the narrative, but Starmer doesn't even believe in growth. If he did we would rejoin the single market. He believes only in holding power. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

📣I am very pleased to announce my book "VIP Lane" which covers 5 years of investigation uncovering the previous governments PPE procurement scandal + much more is now on sale. 👀 Buy a copy here: viplanebook.com 🚨Now the subject of a major ITV documentary hitting the screen next week. 🧵

Over 14,000 people have message Reform to tell them: Stop exploiting women’s safety to fuel attacks on migrants Will you join them? https://bit.ly/3IhW9NV

It’s Ghost Month in Taiwan, a time when the gates of the underworld open... Read more from the fabulous Albert Wu and Michelle Kuo to find out who these ghosts are and the do's and don'ts to keep yourself safe 👻👇 ampleroad.substack.com/p/what-do-th...

✨Paging all poetry fans✨ Garry MacKenzie's beautiful poem-essay 'Glacier' is available as a beautiful PDF digital download from my Indie Press Wind&Bones Books here 👇 books.windandbones.com/product/glac... 📖

Getting postcards to England from Taiwanese friends who have visited China 🥰

The psychological whiplash of living in these times is off the scale. Trying to hold on to the most basic standards of decency and humanity while all around absolute lunacy, barefaced deceit and brutish criminality is allowed to run riot.

It’s only taken a century or so, but would you look at that, some badass women have invented a better solution to the speculum (which is essentially a torture device). www.brightvibes.com/lilium-specu...

Leicester's old orange bricks looking good in some September sunshine.

This report confirming what any of us with any sense already knew: Boris Johnson is a con artist and charlatan, a person without morals, out to enrich himself. And all whilst he let people he was supposed to be protecting die from Covid. Beneath contempt. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Leonard Cohen on the antidote to anger and the meaning of resistance www.themarginalian.org/2024/07/18/l...

Palestine Action are not seeking to end democracy in UK (or anywhere). They are not trying to terrorise a vulnerable minority. Their ultimate aims are shared by millions of British people. They are part of a wider movement for democratic change in policy.

My grandfather died of polio in 1956. He was 23 and never met his daughter, my mum, who was born in early 1957. His name was Victor and I was named for him. And RFK Jr is a lunatic.

I only recently learned about Mary Jones having read about her in "A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States" (@sunypress.bsky.social) when what do I find in the new "After Dark" podcast but an entire episode dedicated to telling her story. Give ear: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

My current housemate, Gatsby the dog. With his cuddly toy.

It's been the most hectic (and fun) of weekends. Here are some photos of a quieter while between the mayhem ❤️😅

"Farage has given two contradictory versions of the purchase. One that he bought it and the other that his girlfriend owns it. If the second is correct then he has ­engineered a massive saving on stamp duty, larger than the one that forced Angela Rayner to resign." www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...

I have loved this series of workshops and working with these fabulous humans and writers from #Taiwan #HongKong and the #UK ❤️

Seriously considering if now is my time to begin raising orchids. I am 40 next year after all. Taiwanese friends are strongly supportive.

86% of the world’s genocide experts have declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel made its genocidal intent clear from day one. It then committed genocide in full view of the world. Nobody with power or influence can say they didn’t know at the time.

This is how dictatorships behave

Israel’s own military database indicates that only a quarter of Gaza detainees are fighters. Civilians are the vast majority, facing extreme torture, hunger, rape, and violent deaths. These are Palestinian hostages.

"Polling shows that opinion on immigration tracks tabloid coverage much more closely than actual immigration levels. People become more concerned not when the number of immigrants rises, but when the press fearmongers about it more." www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/709...

Taiwan food culture comes to England.