If you interrogate a mystery, don’t expect answers in a language you can understand. 🧵

Fascinating! ““Luddite” is, increasingly, shedding its status as a derogatory epithet and instead is being worn like a badge of honor by the counterculture; by activists; by those who reject a future saturated by Silicon Valley’s automated slop and choked by its concentrated power.”

This is what happens when there’s no pushback from the media or mainstream political parties. Reform policies just get more and more extreme. I can only hope that by revealing their true selves as malicious and hate fuelled racists people might finally start to wake up.

Ah yes, I remember the great tea estates of Yorkshire, the strident calls of the peacocks and trumpeting of the elephants in the low mists of dawn. What are people on?!

West Kansas Lean #fineartphotography #blackandwhite #abandoned #rural #crumpled #photoexpressionism

“Palestinian statehood has always existed, and recognising that fact confers credibility on the recognisers, and not the Palestinian claim to their inalienable rights.” An excellent, well balanced piece from @nesrinemalik.bsky.social.

Equinox sign, Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales. #photography

And Yorkshire terriers are the only evidence for the existence of the devil that I’m prepared to countenance.

Ooh! A new Thomas Denny stained glass window. A trip to Oxford is on the cards then.

Recent work from Disrupted Landscapes - chalk and its shadow. The white south coast landscape facing out towards Europe has long fed a nationalist agenda, the chalk cliffs ‘mythologised as symbols of whiteness in an idealised Albion’ (Jane Madsen, for Chalk, 2024). #photography

While my initial reaction is ban councils from banning things, a more considered and constructive response is to agree with Jon Moses “We need a rules-based access system, like Scotland’s, with a comprehensive code that reflects how people use the countryside…

Looking forward to ITV’s The Hack. Promises to be this year’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office and also features Toby Jones. Slightly sniffy early review, but it has to be worth a watch for David Tennant in a Guardian journalist wig. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

my mother's engagement portrait, c.1940 her red hair, the green garden, in my imagining

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney From the series Towards Another Summer.

Clearly we shouldn’t make unsubstantiated comparisons between the Trump regime and the Nazis. So here’s a well evidenced comparison.

Watch and decide for yourself if anyone should have been arrested for this. And then ask yourself where the right wing “defenders of free speech’ were when they were arrested. Then laugh at yourself if you ever believed they were serious.

I’m taking this beautiful redhead that I first met 36 years ago today out for a big meal. Not so red anymore, but still beautiful. ❤️

Sigh. Just join the Greens, kids.

After a few words of condemnation of the far right from Keir Starmer, the government is back to its day job of competitive xenophobia. Aided and abetted by the BBC who apparently think one man going to France is headline news.

Seems Donald Trump has been taking tips from Yvette Cooper. Way to go “centrists”.

Makes a mockery of the far right’s claim to be the defenders of free speech. I’m going to start treating it with the contempt it deserves and laugh every time they claim it. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Bureaucracy. Usually comes out something like burocrasy.

Aditya is back - and how! “Starmer’s one historic role is to stave off the hard right. He is not only failing, he is paving the way for Farage and his crew. The supposed “centrists” are ushering fringe politics into the mainstream and normalising the abhorrent.”

It’s starting to feel like the better parts of the 80s out there. Brian Eno really understands the interface between culture and politics. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A few cyanotype prints from my Jackdaw series. 💙 The text is explained in the ALT.

LOL. The Beeb lunchtime news is treating the Trump visit like a ‘good news royal story’. Instead of an act of national self subjugation to an authoritarian near dictator. And I thought we’re were all supposed to be big on patriotism these days. LOL.

Sound of Harris, 2021 #otd

I had a guinea pig as a kid, it was called Tribble.

Oof! That’s a good analogy.

Terribile reporting from the BBC Wales. They should have asked if the whinging people really want 900 more injuries and 14 more deaths a year, higher insurance premiums, a more expensive NHS and police force.

That’s how to give a welcome to the UK for a dangerous orange fascist. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

That’s tonight’s viewing decided. An oldie from the days when the Washington Post was still a serious newspaper and the USA was still a democracy. RIP Robert Redford.

What’s new?

I guess we have two options, either be like the orange turd-brained manchild we’re rolling out the red carpet for tomorrow, or accept the overwhelming body of expert opinion.

I hate to break it to you that we’ve all been wrong about the equinox meaning equal lengths of day and night. That is actually known as the equilux and occurs about 4 days later. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Timothy Garton Ash is someone I’ve been reading for years, a pretty cool headed political analyst, not given to hyperbole. So I take it seriously when he says “I never imagined I would see fear spread so far and fast in the US”. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's definitely not an authoritarian regime trying to silence dissent. No, certainly nothing like that. All comparisons to Nazi Germany are completely absurd. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

Genuinely amazed to discover that Keir Starmer had a head of political strategy. You’ve got to wonder what he’s been doing in between telling filthy jokes about Diane Abbot?

By far and away the best thing on @bsky.app for the last 192hrs and 31 mins and probably a lot longer.

Just a thought but all these awful, power hungry bigots defecting to Reform might be the best thing to happen to the Tory party since Thatcher. I don’t agree with them, but I’m sure there’s a place for centre right politics in the UK, and then Labour can stop trying to stand on their territory.

Good work Spain. We can’t have fun with people who support genocide. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Listening to the new series of the News Quiz on my walk. One of the panellists talking about Angela Rayner: “I think it’s very progressive for the UK to have its first female John Prescott”. Made me laugh out loud walking down the street.

Here’s a poem called ‘English Roundabouts’.

It doesn’t look that bad to me.

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney From the series Towards Another Summer.

As it’s grim out, I’ve done a seasonal mantelpiece to cheer up the tree - and me.

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney From the series Towards Another Summer.

Interesting and pretty well funded video. There’s something stirring from below while our current leaders fail us. That gives me some hope.

More of this please.