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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett
@stevieb.bsky.social
650 followers 710 following 1.2K posts
Retired ex-teacher in HE and social worker. Cis gay white male, (like queer as a rejection of norms). Link to Green 🍏 & Black Lives Matter and anti-exclusion. Lover of visual art, the written and spoken word & theatre, ballet, and opera. Left in politics.
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 14h
livesteven.com/2025/10/19/s...
‘… stood kind of hyper’ and ‘itching for some … some fucking … ‘action.’ You know. “Drama”’. Another play to see and to make Geoff think his birthday present to me takes me and him back to Nottingham....
‘… stood kind of hyper’ and ‘itching for some … some fucking … ‘action.’ You know. “Drama”’. Another play to see and to make Geoff think his birthday present to me takes me and him back to Nottingh…
livesteven.com
stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 1d
livesteven.com/2025/10/18/t...
The 2025 Booker Shortlist – My experience & predictions for those I read
The 2025 Booker Shortlist – My experience & predictions for those I read The Longlist blog is still available – and still messy. It is here at this link, if you want to access link to blogs on …
livesteven.com
Reposted by Steven Bamlett
shakethescales.bsky.social
The Scales ⚖️ @shakethescales.bsky.social · 9d
Here's one I did earlier:
bsky.app/profile/shak...
shakethescales.bsky.social The Scales ⚖️ @shakethescales.bsky.social · Dec 21
Decoding what Starmer means:
1. Perpetual growth on a finite world experiencing collapse = a lie.
2. Privatisation
3. Racist/anti-humanitarian
4. Sounds good, if jingoistic
5. Fascism - look at causes!
6. Bullshit: I'm a teacher, you're making it up - there are reasons attrition is so high.
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 3d
My Booker winner
livesteven.com/2025/10/17/a...
A speculative blog on Kiran Desai’s ‘The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia’. My Booker winner.
At one point in the latter parts of The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia two women, Babita and Sonia, alone in separate rooms in a huge mansion from the Portuguese era in Goa, an era established from …
livesteven.com
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Reposted by Steven Bamlett
owenjones.bsky.social
Owen Jones @owenjones.bsky.social · 3d
The Greens have pulled ahead of Labour for the first time.

It's on! 👇

www.owenjones.news/p/greens-pul...
Greens pull ahead of Labour
And both Labour and the British media are rattled.
www.owenjones.news
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 3d
Responsible art is not enough but still necessary
livesteven.com/2025/10/16/t...
Those events within the period if my life that I cannot remember and claim not to be my historical experience need committing to memory more than anything else. How else do we become whole persons and...
Daily writing promptWhat major historical events do you remember?View all responses Geoff and I see a performance of contemporary version of Indian classical dance at Bishop Auckland Town Hall on W…
livesteven.com
stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 7d
Durham Book Festival
livesteven.com/2025/10/13/w...
What happens when artists are asked: “What have you been working on?”
Daily writing promptWhat have you been working on?View all responses What happens when artists are asked: “What have you been working on?” What have you been working on?” is a cat…
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 10d
livesteven.com/2025/10/10/m...
Malevich’s ‘Taking in the Rye’, looks like the dissection of a rainbow! Aim to be lazy!
Daily writing promptDo lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?View all responses I suppose the key word here – the one that should set warning bells ringing is ‘unproductive&#82…
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 10d
livesteven.com?p=31091
The role of expert and intellectual in the politics of social change and trust in the concept of a leadership that achieves the sense of stability conducive to effective change.
The role of expert and intellectual in the politics of social change and trust in the concept of a leadership that achieves the sense of stability conducive to effective change. As I opined about E…
livesteven.com
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 11d
Elon Musk described
livesteven.com/2025/10/08/e...
Elon Musk poses as Success Embodied and looks like the epitome of Shelley’s Anarchy, feeding his lapdog, Yaxley-Lennon tbe bodies of the naive and self-oppressed: “And with glorious triumph, they / Ro...
Daily writing promptWhen you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?View all responses The Peterloo Massacre: flying the St George Cross…
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Reposted by Steven Bamlett
garriecoleman.bsky.social
Garrie Coleman @garriecoleman.bsky.social · 13d
Beyond sinister and downright dangerous how much and how often the Government wants people to exercise their right to free speech and protest on the Government’s own terms, based purely on the subject of the protest. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Keir Starmer calls student protests on 7 October anniversary ‘un-British’
Prime minister urges students not to protest on the second anniversary of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel
www.theguardian.com
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 13d
Looking forward to this
livesteven.com/2025/10/06/c...
Can ‘principles define how you live’, in you live in the world as it is. This blog looks at this by examining a recent (and edited) play text of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’, which ...
Daily writing promptWhat principles define how you live?View all responses Can ‘principles define how you live’, in you live in the world as it is. This blog looks at this by examining …
livesteven.com
stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 15d
livesteven.com/2025/10/04/m...
Maybe we all put off exposure to the moment of disappointment. Is it because we doubt the reality of our espoused passions? This blog tests that view by exposing my anticipations of the Lee Miller ret...
Daily writing promptWhat have you been putting off doing? Why?View all responses ‘Putting off’ is a relative thing. It is as likely that we ‘put off’ even things we know we …
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 16d
No longer see last answer.
stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 16d
I quir when clear the party would sacrifice the vulnerable to who work, and it has got worse since. I stood as a Gren councillor in the last election. My vote higher than all Tories & some Labour but even added together less than the lowest Reform: a party using rhetoric of working people
stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 16d
What a terrible presumption you have MK. Younger men tend to thi k the current bad times are the onlyand sending a tweet the only action they will and can contemplate in politics.
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 16d
Turn as much as you wish, and you will from your safe seat on X achieve nothing politically. To think the last 12 months is all we know of Labour betrayal is naive
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 16d
I think you have no history with the Labour Party. I was in it most of my 70 years of age, and Starmer is a betrayal too far. Not Teflon just bruisable rubber . X CRITICISM IS A RELIEF VALVE AND HAS NEVER ACHIEVED MUCH ANYWAY. but you hav
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 17d
Israel is a pariah state and has created a false image of who Jews are by its illegality and anti-life aggression.
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Reposted by Steven Bamlett
owenjones.bsky.social
Owen Jones @owenjones.bsky.social · 17d
Israel has kidnapped hundreds of people in international waters.

They were trying to break an illegal siege which is starving the people of Gaza.

The flotilla is the best of us 👇

www.owenjones.news/p/israel-kid...
Israel kidnaps Gaza flotilla
Piracy in plain sight.
www.owenjones.news
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 17d
livesteven.com?p=30897
The appreciation of art is not a matter of ‘personal choice’ or ‘favour’; it is a duty. This is so not only for its maker but its reading, for reading is, in part, co-making.
Daily writing promptWho are your favorite artists?View all responses The appreciation of art is not a matter of ‘personal choice’ or ‘favour’; it is a duty. This is so not o…
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 18d
livesteven.com/2025/10/01/w...
What is the worst that might happen? Is it the fear of failure or to hope that you might eventually fail, and to dread failing to fail.
Daily writing promptWhat’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.View all responses What is the worst that might happen? Is it the fear of failure or to hope that you…
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 19d
livesteven.com/2025/09/30/t...
‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out ...
Daily writing promptWhat details of your life could you pay more attention to?View all responses ‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ [1] There…
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 22d
Ethical life
livesteven.com/2025/09/27/h...
Having is less than Being and Being is less than Doing!
Daily writing promptWhat would you do if you lost all your possessions?View all responses I have always felt the words of the New Testament contained the truths by which we could and perhaps ought …
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett @stevieb.bsky.social · 28d
livesteven.com/2025/09/21/t...
‘“Twa Boabs”, the man laughs. “A matching pair!”’ You wait forever for a queer Ayrshire Scottish artist intent on rivaling the phallocentric Robert Burns, then ‘Two Roberts’ come at once. This is a bl...
‘“Twa Boabs”, the man laughs. “A matching pair!”’[1] You wait forever for a queer Ayrshire Scottish artist intent on rivaling the phallocentric Robert Burns, then ‘Two Roberts’ come at once. This i…
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