iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

It's so, so, SO much simpler to stay and pay your taxes, part 2: UK rich explore ‘10 years out, 9 years in’ to escape inheritance tax net - on.ft.com/3FdZT1x via @financialtimes.com

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

"My family is bankrupt" er no they're not mate they're still worth billions. They're a bit less obscenely rich with you dead than they were with you alive. Boo fucking hoo. Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris says ‘Tory incompetence’ forced him to quit UK - on.ft.com/4jHItJ6 via @financialtimes.com

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

#Sebastian is a terrific film, raw & clever & powerful & challenging & uncomfortable & REAL and just brilliantly written and acted – Ruaridh Mollica is extraordinary in the lead, and I squealed at Stella Gonet's all-too-brief appearance. Baffled it's not on wider release; had to hunt it down!

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Bought a pair of jeans this morning in a 34" waist for the first time in about fifteen years, so if anyone wants to ask me for anything – favours, a loan, forgiveness – today is your day, knock yourself out 👖

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Leopard/face: Fascinating and thoughtful piece in @financialtimes.com on why businesspeople back Trump, and their 'touching naivety' in doing so - on.ft.com/4hnoPAG

Black text on a pale pink background reading: Anything he says that seems irrational — tariff wars, or the annexation of Canada — can be dismissed by supporters as a negotiating bluff, or “red meat for the Maga base”, distractions that only hysterical liberals take seriously. Stock-market investors, who voted for Trump with their money, have been bewildered to discover that he genuinely wants those things. His consistent attacks on free trade since the 1980s should have been a clue.

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Me reading Æsop's latest email about what I'm reasonably sure is just a new body wash, but is described in terms more usually reserved for great leaps forward in medical science, or second comings:

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I like my gay men like I like my portraits of gay men:

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Honestly wouldn't blame Zelenskyy, and in fact would quite like it, if at this point he told Trump and Vance to go fuck themselves and walked out of there with his head held high. America is offering Ukraine NOTHING yet expects Zelenskyy to "act all thankful" Trump is a mobster! @financialtimes.com

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

It's a solid 10/10 from me for #BridgetJones Mad About The Boy. Can't remember another film that was both as outrageously funny and utterly heartbreaking. Not to mention HORNY – take a tissue for your tears and a towel for Leo Woodall. I've never seen an audience so united in lust for a character!

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Rest in peace The Aga Khan. Will anything like this be written when Elon Musk dies – something I find myself imagining quite a lot of late? Will history record a single good deed against his name, a single dollar of his hundreds of billions spent in the pursuit of helping those in need?

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Casual Monday evening at the Good Food Guide Awards. Can confirm that Lord Lloyd Webber is an absolute HOOT.

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

I get that it's so that people don't think it's telling the time, rather than, y'know, the actual clock in the corner of the screen, but the blurred clock-faces on the Elizabeth Tower the BBC use as a backdrop are just plain ugly. Surely people can tell that it's a static illustration...can't they?!

BBC political correspondent Henry Zeffman against a backdrop showing the Elizabeth Tower of the Houses of Parliament with the clock-faces blurred out, on a bright blue sky

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Labour's flat-out obstinacy around Europe, including rejecting freer movement & rejoining the customs union, is enraging, especially in the light of this, also in the Guardian, from Lord Kinnock. Labour seem in thrall to Reform, not the millions who voted them in. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Neil Kinnock very wise on this in the Guardian:

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

I have so many questions about this diorama in the window of a funeral directors' in Kennington. So. Many. Questions!

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Especially considering this was in an email I received from @theguardian.com this week:

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

2025 got off to a great start, with a lovely brunch just a couple of days into the year at the charming R&H Café & Gallery in Kensington. I've posted a little review, along with a few pretty pics, here: www.instagram.com/p/DFAdePWI_S...

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

I have however never related so hard to a single scene in a movie as this one

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

#Maria is a very stylish film in which very little happens. It imagines the state of mind of Callas in the week leading up to her death; there's a hallucinatory feel to it – we don't know what's real and what's the drugs she guzzles – and it's low on drama. Angelina Jolie is good but not stellar.

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

#Nosferatu was...OK. Stylish, brilliantly lit and atmospheric, it's a bit 🤷🏼‍♂️ story-wise & it's hard to care about any of the characters. Lily Rose Depp is wooden, Aaron Taylor-Johnson actively bad, Nicholas Hoult very good, Emma Corrin miscast. Wouldn't not recommend, but wouldn't rush to either. 3/5

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

#Babygirl was GOOD! Bordering on great, which it could've been but for a couple of plot points which imo needed further exploration, and an ending which I found cliché. Nicole Kidman is ~magnificent~, and Harris Dickinson can make me drink a glass of milk anytime. Amazing soundtrack too!

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Extremely satisfied with the jollity quotient of this Harry Lambert for Zara sweater (yes it's all one sweater, the yellow layer is sewn in) I picked up in the sale 🧡💚 I don't usually buy knitwear from Zara as it's very rarely pure wool, but this is and it's as cosy as it is jolly! 🤗

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Michaelangelo's David, in the breathtaking Cast Courts at – and my favourite part of – the V&A

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

BBC News - The driver who 'jumped' his bus over the Tower Bridge gap www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Honoured to have been once again entrusted with making the prawn cocktail for Christmas lunch. Bravo to my marvellous mother-in-law for the flawless turkey with all the trimmings and superlative sherry trifle 🦐🥬🦃🍨

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

In praise of the rules-free Christmas cold collation

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Genuinely laughed out loud on the Northern Line at this paragraph

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Grimly predictable that Gregg Wallace is now blaming complaints about his workplace behaviour on 'a handful of middle-class women' – the clear implication being that they just don't get his working-class barrow-boy banter. Not a shred of empathy or contrition on display anywhere. Just blame.

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

It isn't perfect; there are some overlong sequences (though its 160 minutes fly by) & some dodgy lighting (particularly in Dancing Through Life, which you can barely see at times!) but none of this stops it from being a brilliant, beautiful, joyous epic movie which I would, and will, see again 🩷💚

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

After a false start on Sunday, when our screening had to be abandoned after about an hour when the projector malfunctioned (😱) I finally got to see @wickedmovie.bsky.social last night and LOVED IT.

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I have to confess that I did NOT only eat half of what was on my plate and then push it away

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Oh OK so you can only add four photos to a Bluesky post 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Three course dinner at always-enjoyable Bouillon Chartier, with a big bottle of fizzy water and a half-bottle of Bordeaux for @dswest8.bsky.social, €52.80. Total, not each! No wonder we always come here on our first night of any trip to Paris...

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Never let it be said I'm not loyal to my aesthetic...

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Hugh Smithson-Wright @hughsmithsonwright.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

You have @helenafriches.bsky.social to thank for screenshotting and sending me this interaction with @sarahpettegree.bsky.social 😂

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