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Reposted by Rob Galpin

redcazza.bsky.social

@redcazza.bsky.social

How wonderful to hear a leftwing - actually any UK politician able to argue properly. @zackpolanski.bsky.social is the future.

Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 1h

@zackpolanski.bsky.social wants to introduce a wealth tax of 1% on assets of over £10m & 2% on assets over £1bn & if the super rich want to leave the UK because they are being taxed a tiny amount more then we should wave them goodbye

Thatcherite John Redwood says 1% isn't a tiny amount.

November 26, 2025 at 10:01 AM

Rob Galpin

@robgalpin.bsky.social

Just a short one for #PromptCombo #OnRoofs - loads on this week. Hope to catch up with others later. Thanks Paul @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
#poem #poetry

Church Roofs
“Your church roof keeps out water and prevents the deterioration of your building and its content.” – Church of England official website

Not, note,
to protect
the heads
and health
of the prayerful.

Lead, copper,
split slate
and nails—

all earthly
protections
arrayed

against
the literal,
heavenly water.

November 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #PromptCombo
Out of season & they nest under #eaves, rather than #OnRoofs, but fits, I guess. 😁

#poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#swifts #swallows #NaturePoem #BirdPoem #poetrycommunity #bskypoetry

Swifts, Swallows

Swifts, swallows: ghostly
Doubles meeting at Whitsun -
Sky god’s full-throated

Season echoing the
Abyss. Forebear tongues and
Sagas revelled in

Whirlpools and swallies,
Devoured by the sweeping,
Churning presences

Glimpsed in sky and sea.

Swifts, swallows: ghostly doubles,
Aerial nomads,

Custodians of
Ancient songlines etched with a
Thumbtack of neurons.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

November 24, 2025 at 8:56 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Victoria Spires

@victoriaspires.bsky.social

Apparently, it's #worldphilosophyday, so here are two poems in a (very) occasional series I cooked up with @johnadlam.bsky.social 😁

With deep apologies and great affection to the two philosophers in question.

Open to commissions for other philosophical works 🙃

November 20, 2025 at 5:10 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Hypervisible

@hypervisible.blacksky.app

Not a “gamble,” but rather instagram working as intended.

Mark Zuckerberg’s hate-speech gamble fuels Gen Z radicalization on Instagram as millions watch Hitler speeches and Holocaust denial clips | Fortune

The hottest far-right influencer right now isn’t Nick Fuentes—it’s Hitler. And his videos are appearing next to JPMorgan and U.S. Army ads

fortune.com

November 20, 2025 at 8:45 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

It's apparently another of those pointless Days - this time, World Philosophy Day. So here are some clerihews.

"Potted Philosophers".

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #clerihews #philosophers

Pythagoras asseverated
That the spirit transmigrated,
Leaving the body by a route obscene
(That’s why he never ate a bean).

* * *

Socrates, condemned to die,
Ignored his friends’ advice to fly;
If I ever end up in such a scrape
I’ll be less moral and escape.

* * *

In brutish nastiness began,
Wrote Thomas Hobbes, the life of Man;
Not so, said Rousseau,
Man grew so.

* * *

René Descartes
Was a man of parts;
One part was heir to a thousand ills,
The other haunts academia still.

* * *

Baruch Spinoza, all his life,
Shunned evil habits, sin, and strife.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau though, it seems,
Went to the opposite extreme.

* * *

By the punctuality that Kant observed
Folk set their clocks in Königsberg,
Which is odd considering Kant’s position
That time’s but a form of intuition.

* * *

John Stuart Mill’s dad
Educated the lad;
Although this served to toughen up his brain
He later read Wordsworth, and softened it again.

* * *

Gilbert Ryle
Always wore a happy smile
When suffering from depression
(A systematically misleading expression).

* * *

In metaphysics Wittgenstein
Great depths plumbed and great heights climbed;
I’d follow in the former and the latter
If he hadn’t thrown down the bloody ladder.

* * *

‘Warnock’ claims
A double fame:
Geoffrey is the guy’s name,
Mary is the Dame’s.

November 20, 2025 at 3:35 PM

Rob Galpin

@robgalpin.bsky.social

A chilly start for the chickens in #Wallsend #NorthTyneside

Early morning snowy scene of some bare wintry trees

Early morning snowy scene in an allotment with wintry trees in the background. A street sign attached to the fence round the chicken run says "Chicken Road"

November 20, 2025 at 8:45 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

flyingrodent

@flyingrodent.bsky.social

No way to make this look good, I think

Shabana Mahmood (Responding to a shit Reform AI image showing her wearing Reform pyjamas, in front of a Farage poster) Over my dead body.

November 19, 2025 at 3:56 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Victoria Spires

@victoriaspires.bsky.social

@dragonslayerma.bsky.social for this week's #promptcombo #northstar, I present you with a (slightly cheating) beau présent poem about Kochab, one of the two 'guardians of the pole' that were once believed to be the true north star. It's also the second brightest star in Ursa Minor ✴️

November 17, 2025 at 5:22 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Jeremy Corbyn

@jeremycorbyn.bsky.social

Removing asylum support. Seizing belongings. Deporting entire families, including children.

Labour are not just paving the path to a Reform government. Reform may as well already be in power.

This government has no moral compass — and it should be ashamed of its inhumanity.

November 17, 2025 at 5:34 PM

Rob Galpin

@robgalpin.bsky.social

Here's something for #PromptCombo . #NorthStar really inspired me and I wrote this super quick (although the ideas/connections have been waiting around for a long time). Thanks @dragonslayerma.bsky.social
#poem #Gateshead #Newcastle #Tyneside
write.as/robgalpin/no...

North Star
Defoe followed it, north to Gateshead,
saying, “the empty-handed traveller
will sing in the presence of the robber,”
and, unharmed and penniless,
set up his home on Hellgate,
the medieval slum since lost to fire.

He found the Tyneside air
“pretty cold and piercing”—
and sat down to write Robinson Crusoe.
And as Crusoe found God
amongst the cannibals, so Keiller's
Robinson—lost in space, in England's ruins—
found sanctuary of sorts under
Newcastle's bridges.

I too loved the sureness of the crossing spans,
and spent years inside myself,
suspended—shuttling back and forth
alone, from skinner burn to rabbitbanks,
quayside to the burnt-out staithes.

I followed nothing.
I didn't find God, write novels,
or hermit myself in philosophical knots.
I only remained penniless
and safe, and as much at home
as the calling kittiwakes from the
Tyne Bridge towers—who paint
the streets all summer,
then suddenly leave—for the north,
and the sea.

November 17, 2025 at 3:36 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Athena Kugblenu

@athenakugblenu.bsky.social

Labour: YOU MUST INTEGRATE

Also Labour: we might kick you out in a couple years so don't get to comfy yeah

November 17, 2025 at 9:32 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Gaby Hinsliff

@gabyhinsliff.bsky.social

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

November 17, 2025 at 8:42 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Steve Bullock

@guitarmoog.bsky.social

Look, for fuck’s sake, humans have been migrating continuously for our entire existence.

Every single human in the world is the product of migration.

It’s what humans do. There is nothing *more* human.

That’s never going to change.

Just grow up, get the fuck over it and plan accordingly.

Map showing successive dispersals of humans, homo erectus and Neanderthals from 200,000 to 700 years ago

Overview map of the peopling of the world by early humans during the Upper Paleolithic, following the Southern Dispersal paradigm.

November 16, 2025 at 7:47 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Rob Galpin

@robgalpin.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy

#poem for lost things
#poetry #poetrycommunity #AmWriting
https://write.as/robgalpin/the-memorial-garden

The Memorial Garden

I am, these days, more at home here.

Though perhaps more forgetful.

Beyond the walls, the winds blow cold in the treeless baileys.

I sit as still as I am able. The badger rootles

through the rotting, fallen books.

November 16, 2025 at 7:25 PM

Rob Galpin

@robgalpin.bsky.social

MICHAEL BENTINE'S POTTY TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE #TwoShowsInOne

Lev Parikian @levparikian.bsky.social · 10d

VISION ON THE BUSES #TWOSHOWSINONE

David Quantick @quantick.bsky.social · 10d

DOCTOR WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE
#TWOSHOWSINONE

November 16, 2025 at 5:22 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Graham Perkins

@perki.bsky.social

This man is truly speaking truth to power about the radical changes we need in society. @zackpolanski.bsky.social

Zack Polanski, "The problem is chaining yourself to an economic system that is so fundamentally broken" "You don't get marks or points for just being good, a gold star for doing th...

Zack Polanski, "The problem is chaining yourself to an economic system that is so fundamentally broken" "You don't get marks or points for just being good, a gold star for doing the basics, or even j...

www.linkedin.com

November 16, 2025 at 12:22 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Rachel Burrows

@rburrows.bsky.social

For #smallpoemsunday
#poetry #homophones

November 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Zack Polanski

@zackpolanski.bsky.social

The Labour Government reeling off the same far-right talking points on immigration. And look who is celebrating. The far-right.

There is a political alternative that won’t ever scapegoat those fleeing war, persecution and torture

join.greenparty.org.uk

Mahmood furious over asylum seeker taxi bills.

November 16, 2025 at 10:28 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)

@sundersays.bsky.social

Tommy Robinson is claiming credit for the language/policy being used by the Labour government (about deporting people found to be refugees once their home country is deemed safe)

November 15, 2025 at 9:34 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

LiLBaz

@lilbazza.bsky.social

It's impossible to add anything new that hasn't already been said about this so all I can do is repeat this is fascism that will do nothing to counter the rise of Reform but instead will accelerate their rise & pave the way for their implementing even more vile & extreme deprivations & racisms

Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 10d

“on article 8 of the ECHR in particular the right to family life ..we want to constrain in legislation the way that that is applied in immigration cases” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood tells Sky’s Trevor Philips

Who would have imagined we would ever hear this from a Labour government

November 16, 2025 at 9:49 AM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Zack Polanski

@zackpolanski.bsky.social

For a party that has always, and always will, stand up for refugee rights - join.greenparty.org.uk

No 10 tells labour MPs it expects support for tough new asylum policies

November 14, 2025 at 10:06 PM

Reposted by Rob Galpin

Alasdair Mackenzie

@alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social

To reiterate, this is about making life immeasurably more miserable and stressful for some of the most vulnerable people, in the almost certainly vain hope of winning over the votes of racists.

Anything more shabby and shameful is difficult to envisage.