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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 18h

The Bishop of Birmingham has written to the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick about his comments about Handsworth

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JuneSim63 @junesim63.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed. Here is Richard Murphy on this subject today..

bsky.app/profile/rich...

Richard Murphy @richardjmurphy.bsky.social · 1d

Progress towards a police state www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/10... The US is heading for civil war unless Trump suddenly changes trajectory. How far behind are we in the creation of a police state?

Progress towards a police state

As the FT notes this morning: Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy troops to American cities, intensifying a stand-off with Democratic-led states resisting his ...

www.taxresearch.org.uk

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Scullridge @scullridge.bsky.social · 2d

Remains of #Cromer railway tunnel today... the only standard gauge railway tunnel in Norfolk. Notable not least because it's Norfolk and the railway to the nearby Cromer High station on Station Road ran over the top of it

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks so much, Anne! Still a long way to go to publication (832 pages before indexing).

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Alexis Wolf @dralexiswolf.bsky.social · 5d

Thinking this morning about the importance of writing, reading, creative practice. Not only do the stories we tell have political power, writing allows us to reconnect with parts of ourselves and subverts the noise we've all gotten so used to.

Wishing everyone a quiet moment this weekend.

A typewriter and books on a clear kitchen table

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Rhona Brown @rhonabrown.bsky.social · 5d

It's #NationalPoetryDay! The perfect opportunity to share Robert Fergusson's translation of Horace's ode on the importance of seizing the day. In rich Scots, Fergusson gives us the keys to a good life: staying in the moment and surrounding ourselves with friends and conviviality.
#RobertFergusson

Ne'er fash your thumb what gods decree
To be the weird o' you or me,
Nor deal in cantrip's kittle cunning
To spier how fast your days are running,
But patient lippen for the best,
Nor be in dowie thought oppressed,
Whether we see mair winters come,
Than this that spits wi canker'd foam.

Now moisten weel your geyzen'd was
Wi couthy friends and hearty blaws;
Ne'er lat your hope owrgang your days,
For eild and thraldom never stays;
The day looks gash, toot aff your horn,
Nor care yae strae about the morn.

A close-up of the statue of Robert Fergusson outside Edinburgh's Canongate Kirk, which can be seen in part in the background. The bronze sculpture shows Fergusson, with 18thC hair and dress, looking ahead while holding a book in his right hand.

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 5d

R. S. Thomas, ‘The Bright Field’, from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975) #NationalPoetryDay

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𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇 @taras-grescoe.com · 7d

On Sunday, #Zürich residents voted 52.8% in favor of increasing parking fees for cars according to weight.

The owner of a BMW X2 (Diesel), which weighs 1,675 kilograms, will now pay equivalent of €717 Euros per year to park on a public street. (Before, about €321.)

Direct democracy!

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The British Academy @britishacademy.bsky.social · 7d

Read our response to the Government’s announcement that university maintenance grants will be reintroduced for certain courses, funded through a levy on international student fees
https://bit.ly/4gPz7uO

British Academy responds to government announcement on university maintenance grants

The British Academy has issued a response to the government's announcement on using a proposed levy on international students to fund maintenance grants.

www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 8d

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 11d

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200

pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

New Post: A Railway Memoir in Archipelago

This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in Archipelago, 2.2 (Spring 2023), 152-61. The essay is a recollection of her early childhood years as a station master’s daughter, and an eleg…

pamelaclemit.wordpress.com

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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 10d

The poet Tony Harrison has died. For me, he was the most important poet of my lifetime. He gave speech to the tongue-tied and used the masks of classical theatre to amplify the voices of the working class.

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 11d

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200

pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

New Post: A Railway Memoir in Archipelago

This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in Archipelago, 2.2 (Spring 2023), 152-61. The essay is a recollection of her early childhood years as a station master’s daughter, and an eleg…

pamelaclemit.wordpress.com

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 18d

Worrye not about 'being productive,' for thou art not a product. Thou art a star daunsinge yn a hopeful skye. A signal blinking across centuryes and worldes. Thou art a song performid just once and perfectlye.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 14d

'Even when women were mentioned, the report found they were more often victims than protagonists, with the women murdered by Jack the Ripper more likely to be taught in lessons than the female code breakers at Bletchley Park during the second world war 1/2

School history lessons minimise the role of women, report finds

Campaigners say key stage 3 curriculum plays to misogny and teaches a ‘false version of the past’

www.theguardian.com

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 16d

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (d. OTD 1832), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 16d

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (d. OTD 1832), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 24d

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

Rue

Rue Jo Cox, Députée Britannique, a street sign in Burgundy reads, Assassinée pour ses convictions.

No British road is named after her, I found on returning home, for fear it could have proved controversial.

I remembered in Shakespeare rue even for ruth, called 'herb of grace' because it was used in exorcisms,

by the angel to clean Adam's eyes, and Gulliver back home for his nose against the smell of his countrymen.

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Nicholas Allen @dedalusdenaries.bsky.social · 24d

New England is quite like old England

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · Sep 7

Truly remarkable, a hidden history of an idea expressed by such obscure, forgotten figures as Auguste Comte, Benjamin Constant and François Guizot…

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SeaWindowCraster @seawindowcraster.bsky.social · Sep 4

4th September 2025 19.08

Layers of light and cloud reflected on the sea

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · May 3

Anarchy in the UK: OUP hoists its standard for radical polymath #WilliamGodwin, author of Political Justice, 1793, & Caleb Williams, 1794; & (in timespan of this volume) Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century, Of Population, History of the Commonwealth of England; & many more works. At press.

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · Aug 16

Many thanks, Colin! Yes, now on the long and winding road to publication. First proofs due in late September.

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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · Aug 15

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (b. OTD 1771), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

This oil painting by Edwin Landseer (1824) depicts Scott seated at his desk, looking up from the act of writing. He is surrounded by books and papers. The sword of Montrose, one of his most treasured historical relics, is lying over the manuscript sheets in the foreground.

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · Aug 11

& harvest all but over, warmth of the dry in colour of stubble, in the lightness of bales that will inform the winter of what has passed; skies brood but do not break, corvids rustle themselves in groups to glean aftermath

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