James Vaughan
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equusonthebuses.bsky.social
James Vaughan
@equusonthebuses.bsky.social
Historian of UK-Israel relations, British decline, and propaganda. Hittites. Blues harmonica. Aberystwyth Cricket Club. Just posting stuff that interests me really.
Digging around in the Oswald Mosley papers at the Cadbury Research Library at Birmingham Uni today. I like that they've given him OMD as an archival series designation. I have "Oswald's Manoeuvres in the Dark" stuck in my head now...
February 16, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by James Vaughan
Propaganda during WWI and WWII in fact
February 15, 2026 at 4:23 PM
Spectator article on "Insomnistan" incoming...
Nadhim Zahawi thinks London is now unsafe, because the other day a tired-looking man walked past him during the morning rush hour.
February 14, 2026 at 12:42 AM
All other issues aside, the resemblance - give or take a few medals - is bang on. No need for paternity suits here...
February 14, 2026 at 12:36 AM
Picked up this record today. Mr, Frank Edwards, one of the last surviving blues singers to record before the US entered WW2. He died, on 22 March 2002, aged 93, shortly recording a final session and deciding to get home to Atlanta cos his studio team weren't up for a night out in NC...
February 13, 2026 at 10:39 PM
Kinda funny that Britain is (on some kind of technicality) briefly ahead of Canada on the Winter Olympics medal table
February 13, 2026 at 9:26 PM
A handy 1939 "cut out and keep" quiz for 21st century billionaire tech bros and chemical engineering CEOs...
February 12, 2026 at 6:28 PM
Trust Oswald effing Mosley to spoil the joke...
February 12, 2026 at 1:07 PM
#OnThisDay 1947: David Low on post-war immigration. One for Sir Jim...
February 12, 2026 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by James Vaughan
Radcliffe should remember we immigrants and children of immigrants are here because of British colonisation and make a huge contribution. He moved to Monaco to avoid £4bn tax. His club Man U owes everything to migrant players and migrant supporters. He’s an embarrassment to the club and game.
February 11, 2026 at 10:41 PM
Been wandering through old copies of The Spectator in the last few days. This May 1986 cartoon on the Chernobyl disaster. Wow.
February 11, 2026 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by James Vaughan
Exhibit 12,239 for this theory that the stochastic radicalisation engines we've built have this revolutionary feature that they give the same exact brainworms to the genius billionaire as they do to the drunk uncle at the pub

bsky.app/profile/news...
February 11, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Repeatedly. Over many, many centuries. Quite often by people looking a bit like Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
February 11, 2026 at 6:13 PM
This lad is suddenly unexpectedly popular in my neck of the woods… youtube.com/shorts/L_KI9...
Ben Earl reveals his parents connections to Aberystwyth live on S4C! #rugby #6Nations
YouTube video by S4C Chwaraeon
youtube.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:59 PM
Reasons I love Ystwyth Books #3547. Random sinks.
February 10, 2026 at 7:18 PM
🎶Yes, and if the world goes wacky,
We'll get John to send out Jackie! (you mean Jackie Robinson?)
No man, I mean the First Lady!🎶
("Cultural Exchange", The Real Ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dave and Iola Brubeck, 1962)
February 10, 2026 at 12:46 AM
Reposted by James Vaughan
"Eighty-two years after his execution by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944, the Jewish historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch will be inducted into the Pantheon on June 23... His family requested that 'the far right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony.'"
February 8, 2026 at 7:02 PM
Had a recollection that there was a cracking paragraph on Mandelson in Andrew Rawnsley's Servants of the People (published over a quarter of a century ago). It is as good as I remember, especially the Murdoch line about him being "easy... because he was a star-fucker"
February 8, 2026 at 3:25 PM
Well, England will have got Italy properly quaking in their cricket boots after that... Fantastic stuff from Nepal, mind you 👏👏👏
February 8, 2026 at 1:07 PM
Beginning to wonder if this thing at Twickenham is actually part of a WRU project to create a psychologically disturbing piece of performance art and get a Turner Prize win #EngvWal
February 7, 2026 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by James Vaughan
the perils of being a commentator
February 7, 2026 at 2:51 PM
An early appearance in the archival record from one Peter Mandelson, then Vice-Chair of the British Youth Council. From the FCO's Near East and North Africa Department file series, October 1975...
February 7, 2026 at 3:02 PM
What the hell is going on here?
February 7, 2026 at 2:40 PM
“I just looked at the first part. I didn’t see the whole thing; I guess during the end of it there was some kind of a picture that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either. But I didn’t see it, I just, I looked at the first part…" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Trump says he 'didn't see' part of video with racist clip depicting Obamas as apes
The US president says he
www.bbc.co.uk
February 7, 2026 at 8:43 AM