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fresherwinds.bsky.social

@fresherwinds.bsky.social
51 followers 87 following 73 posts
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 10h
“Children’s ice cream, Mandrake”
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Also relative to what it would have graphed as if Thatcher hadn’t uncoupled from earnings
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Not to mention Lord Plant for those with really long memories…
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Margaret Bondfield always deserves more attention! Also Walter Tull
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Sounds like he’s a factor in the Book Lack in Ongar
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
[Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy and Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University have left the Chat]
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
And South Park episode 1
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Back in the 2000s you could have Geoff Hoon for what, £5000?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
In my childhood Ladybird book, the Saxon Wotan *chose* the King, then the Normans imposed hereditary kingship (or at least that’s how it was told to me…🙃). If only the housecarls had held the line on Senlac hill…
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Die Capuccinogruft @thomas.escritt.eu · 03/09/2026
Well that's the beauty of these mystic past cults, no? You can take them in any direction. It can be populist - the King and all the Etonians are Normans; but it can also be cruelly libertarian - the Anglo-Saxons were rugged individualists before those Franco-Papist institutions coddled us
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Just a thought: if Trump wants to use a nuclear weapon on Iran, it‘d have to be at least three. Truman used two, and Trump can’t be less than Truman
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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The world's most notorious custard-pie thrower is dead. What an obituary. He got Bernard-Henri Lévy seven times.
​Known to his army of fans as L’Entarteur or Georges le Gloupier, Godin launched his career as a serial deflator of egos in 1969, when he planted a tarte à la crème on the face of the French novelist Marguerite Duras (“She has a kind of intelligence and cleverness that serves only her own vanity,” he complained), and he went on to “pie” a cast list of celebrities for sins ranging from pomposity to “choosing to function in the service of the capitalist status quo”.The same could not be said of Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France’s “new philosophers,” whose provocative views on sex, frequent appearances on television and penchant for white silk shirts unbuttoned practically to the navel, had made him a cult figure – and one of Godin’s most satisfying victims.

Levy once declared: “I am the most gifted writer of my generation,” and often boasted of his reasonableness and tolerance, but he was forced to endure footage being repeatedly shown on French television of himself, covered in cream, during a visit to the Belgian city of Liège, trying to strangle Godin and shouting: “Get up, or I’ll kick your head in.”Noël Godin was born on September 13 1945 and came to pie-throwing after a rebellious youth in which he scandalised the priests in the confessional by speaking of his “horrible sexual life”, and was thrown out of Liège University after emptying a pot of glue over the head of a law lecturer who had helped write the constitution for the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar.

He found work at Friends of Film, an obscure magazine published by the Belgian Catholic League. It had a tiny readership, which was just as well, as Godin made up most of his articles. In one he claimed that Louis Armstrong had once been a cannibal and had invested in a film called The Vegetables of Good Will in which Claudia Cardinale played a giant endive.

In another he conjured up a fictional blind Thai filmmaker named Vivian Pei, describing her film, The Lotus Flower Will Never Again Grow on the Edge of Your Island, in such convincing terms that an Asian film specialist travelled to Thailand in an effort to track her down.“We’re very careful not to hurt people,’’ he explained. “Well, they are hurt, but always in their amour-propre.”

In 1995 Godin published an autobiography, Cream and Punishment. His other targets over the years included the New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard (who charmed his assailant by hailing the attack as a homage to silent film), the French politician Nicolas Sarkozy, the choreographer Maurice Béjart and the Ryanair chairman Michael O​’Leary. He tended not to pick Belgian victims, he explained, because few would notice if he did.
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Emma Monk @monkemma.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
One of the first "outrageous" claims I saw as Jason Arday's media hounding unfolded was that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days! Wow! What a thing to claim! And the newspapers all suggested there was no evidence he actually did it. Well, they clearly didn't look very hard 🙄 🧵 1/26
Photo after Jason's final marathon taken from his archived blog showing Jason surrounded by supporters in orange charity t-shirts
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I’d need to check Hansard but I’m pretty sure MacNamara stood up in the Commons in the 90s/00s and admitted as much in a debate on why the bridge was still not fully paid for from tolls
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Jan 1966 Hull North by-election won by Kevin MacNamara was the test (not really an excuse) with the Humber Bridge white elephant the sweetener even tho all concerned agreed it would never pay for itself. Plus added Rhodesian meddling to try to stop Wilson
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
May has Lord Buckethead next to her, doesn’t she? (I’ve never tried to correct a FRHistS before…)
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Yes it‘s nicely written up in the Ken Morgan biog
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
But but there’s no Bob “President Kerry” Worcester to warn him off with polling from the marginals before the Ford workers at Daghenham demand their 14% and Jeremy Corbyn starts mobilising NUPE in Haringey and Islington. As HM also said, ”Events…”
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Joe Egerton @joeegg.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
As James Callaghan & Harold Macmillan have gone to their divine reward I repeat HM to JC in 1978 against going early: “You are enjoying all the things you socialists have denied the rest of us. A country house and a town house with staff. A Chauffeur. Private planes. I would not put it at risk.”
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
She did, but many others are ignoring it. And it’s a long way through the piece before she mentions it
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Did you like the parts filmed in occupied Western Sahara, helping sanitise the 50-years and counting oppression? Guardian reported it during the making of the film and wrote it up for the release
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Odyssey: sanitized action movie without any moral depth. Fun in parts. Way too loud (I’ll have to start bringing earplugs to the cinema).
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
See above re: the filming in Western Sahara. You don’t see it get mentioned in reviews
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
“No, *I* am Norman Stone” etc. ad nauseam
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Whisper it but I hear the bidding war on the Grunlegen zur Metaphysik der Sitten was fierce before it got stuck in development hell
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Sounds like a gimmick to me. Vast bulk of local government funding already comes from central government anyway out of the general tax take. What about an ACTUAL local income tax suggested in the 1980s before poll tax. Or simply remove the cap on councils setting their Council Tax rise?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Exactly! For shame, the man had $250mn, could choose wherever he wanted, chose the tax breaks from the Moroccan government in return for sanitising the occupation
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Surely ”ruined by Nolan taking a massive tax break from the Moroccan government to film in occupied Western Sahara despite being asked not to, helping to sanitise Moroccan repression of the Sarahwi people”?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Whatever Burnham does, Russell Kand is saying it better
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Kafka’s Bridge
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
MMP? You want to undo Attlee’s signature achievement in the 1949 Representation of the People Act? Whatever next, plural voting?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Yes shame about Nolan filming in occupied Western Sahara, helping sanitise Morocco’s ongoing repression. Will have to check if it’s mentioned in Autocracy Inc.
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
…and our great national experiment with the first all-state-educated Cabinet comes to an end
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Cue perennial use of the John Cleese Clockwise quotation
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Keep our eyes on the grandkids maybe?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Surely Lord Balls to seal the deal?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Public School Syndrome is now a recognised psychiatric disorder, I think I read somewhere
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Let’s not forget to be angry that Nolan chose to film in occupied Western Sahara, sanitising Morocco’s 50-year oppression, when he had a budget of $250mn and could do whatever he wanted. Some more important things to get angry about
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Alex Says Stuff @alexsaysstuff.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Shame about the filming in occupied Western Sahara…
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Shame on the County Council for the rebrand. OCC has a flying freehold on the library building, it’s not part of the Westgate. It belongs to everyone in Oxfordshire
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Lord preserve us from the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, a Labour government law of blessed memory. Now off to re-read Orwell’s “Coming Up For Air” for the excoriation of uncontrolled suburban ribbon development
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Suez is UK/France/Israel?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
If only the Housecarls had held the line at Senlac we’d all be talking Early Middle English by now
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Sounds awfully like the conclusion of A Very Peculiar Practice…
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
“To put that in context, West Brom’s stadium is the highest in England at 186m” above sea level
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Oxfordshire Central Library. Found in the Westgate Centre
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
🤔
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Seems plausible this is what stopped Streeting previously?
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fresherwinds.bsky.social @fresherwinds.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I’m told it’s too early to tell. Evenements, dear boy, evenements…
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