Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jonathan Potts

@uccellolirico.bsky.social

900 followers 410 following 1K posts

Maybe I'm a Londoner because

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · Jul 15

This may seem strange, but working on policy in the UK Home Office in my twenties and thirties taught me that everyone should have rights under the law no matter how society views them, and that many who society despises are themselves survivors of trauma and deprivation in one way or another.

1 6 38

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3h

Pipeline says it all really. This is Metropolis, or Mao.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3h

I love bassoon concertos. There is one by Stephen Dodgson but I've yet to find a recording of it. I'm a recorder player and there's a great Sonata for recorder, bassoon and continuo by Vivaldi. It's a (surprisingly?) effective combination.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 5h

... and the music playing now is one of her pieces I most love, Dancing with the Shadow

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 5h

Wow! Just turned on BBC Radio 3 to find that Composer of the Week is the wonderful Eleanor Alberga

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 6h

Annoying article by Harris. He might at least have mentioned classical music, where prices for gigs by superb artists are way below the puffed up fees he quotes here

The best gig I ever saw cost £4. Spiralling concert prices are a cultural disaster | John Harris www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The best gig I ever saw cost £4. Spiralling concert prices are a cultural disaster | John Harris

Tickets for big tours have vastly outstripped inflation, while smaller artists and venues struggle. The magic is in danger of being snuffed out entirely, says Guardian columnist John Harris

www.theguardian.com

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 6h

Felt sad seeing this. Erwin James' columns about life in prison were thoughtful and striking and I always looked forward to reading them, back in those days.

Guardian prison columnist Erwin James drowned in Devon marina, inquest finds www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Guardian prison columnist Erwin James drowned in Devon marina, inquest finds

Journalist who wrote column A Life Inside while jailed for murder fell into the sea in January 2024

www.theguardian.com

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 10h

Tory Leadership brilliantly ticking off all the groups they don't want voting for them - people of colour, young people, arts graduates, anyone who values intelligence and imagination ...

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 12h

untimely

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 12h

Was I the ripper or the ripped?

1 1

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 23h

A very good letter. There's a grocer's apostrophe (Hindu's) or maybe that's a bishop's apostrophe!

Reposted by Jonathan Potts

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 1d

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

34 580 1.7K

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 23h

And the Great Barriest Reef is the greatest reef

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 23h

Hmm, I wonder if for Jenrick et al integration while claimed as a good is actually there as a test to be failed, precisely to back up a UAE gastarbeiter model (see also, if less brutally: Singapore).

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 1d

A waste of time surely, they are beyond saving.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 1d

I'd go for that alternative view

Reposted by Jonathan Potts

Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 1d

I've responded to Robert Jenrick's vile comments in @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

I sang Jerusalem with Robert Jenrick at school — he’s wrong about race

The Conservative MP has complained that, visiting Handsworth in Birmingham, he didn’t see ‘another white face’. You can’t judge whether someone is integrated by skin colour, argues fellow Wulfrunian S...

www.thetimes.com

47 180 670

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 2d

Pleased to report that La Cagouille is still lovely (went last night)

2 4

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 2d

It's the proscription that is performative. The point of these protests is to object to the nakedly political misuse of an operational power.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

It's very much a bad thing, yes

Reposted by Jonathan Potts

Mark Watson @watsoncomedian.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve had an email from a hotel saying ‘we are eagerly awaiting you’ which seems a bit OVER-keen if anything. Rubbing their hands in reception, cackling. ‘Here he comes. Any time now.’

37 15 320

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

Absolutely fine with far right extremists protesting peacefully about asylum policy, daily for however long, by standing outside Government offices or Parliament, or the town hall in Epping or Oldham.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

I think I'm pretty ok with not allowing protests (or intrusive media) outside places where people actually live, where children are in school or where people are going for medical treatment. So, not schools, private residences even of politicians, clinics of any kind, asylum hotels.

2 3

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

It's very soothing for people who are not dispossessed to assert that violence is never a positive contributor to political change, but I'm doubtful, and one doesn't have to be an advocate of violence to see or say that.

1 1

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

It is so disheartening. Time to resist, if not too late.

Jonathan Potts @uccellolirico.bsky.social · 3d

What's disturbing, and repressive, is the idea that protests which are not actually intimidating - which clearly the hotel protests are, being physically directed at the residents not the authorities - can be classed as intimidating because some people who are not the target feel so.

1 8