Sign in

James Harvey

@keepof4worlds.bsky.social
505 followers 578 following 4.2K posts

Liberal. Gay. Green. Countryman. Living in Ebernoe, Sussex and Kennington, London. he/him

PostsRepliesMedia
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Very much showing my age - it’s all the games I played in my 20s and 30s that have a real echo for me… My 9 games #My9Games my9games.net/
Total Annihilation, Doom, Delta Force, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Mechwarrior 3, Master of Orion II, Star Wars: Jedi Academy, Star Wars: X wing, Populous.
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Something like this?
Tighter crop of the above
100
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
And yet fallen hugely…
Graph showing defence spending falling from 11% of gdp in 1952 to 2.2% now.

Source: https://www.jmfinn.com/our-thinking/guns-versus-butter-how-uks-perception-defence-has-changed/
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
It’s just a predominantly hazel hedge that has always been there, but which had got very overgrown and gappy at the base. Here’s a competition hedge in hawthorn
BeforeDuringAll downFinished
120
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Good to see hedgelaying getting traction! Here’s one of mine…
Hedge before layingHedge after layingHedge after regrowth
241
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
RP with your home river. For me just has to be the tiny brook in the valley behind the house I grew up in in the Weald… Not sure it even has a name.
Bridge over a small brook
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ah, Kyoto in the fall…
Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto - view from the temple on to a path leading away through autumnal leaves
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Pickups get a bad rep, but my god they’re practical…
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
What a fabulous joint it was. Some pictures taken after the smoking ban, when it was possible to see inside. Even at the time we knew it couldn’t go on forever.
Regulars at the WenlockMain bar at the WenlockJazz at the Wenlock
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
And, oh, how we miss the pre-hipsterised Wenlock Arms, with its old jazz blokes, Blackmaninov on the Joanna and the little old ladies still drinking port and lemon…
Jazz night at the Wenlock Arms in 2011
140
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Jack Mann, veteran of the SAS and SBS and last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...
The crew surrendered but they tried to be friendly, claiming that they were all Anglo-Saxons. Mann retorted that he was a Jew, ordered them to cut off their swastika badges and had them placed in the local prison. There they were made to clean a local building of faeces left by the occupying German forces.
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Bigger bang
Civil war reenactor firing a small cannon at the same event.
030
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Yay!
Tina Turner
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I still think as a whole it’s been a huge turnaround.
Waterworks river in Stratford before regeneration in 2005. Very run down old warehouses and 1960s social housingThe same view about 20 years later with new housing and a clean river
100
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I mean, I’m no fan of Westfield Stratford on a Saturday afternoon. But it really was a bit of a shithole before.
Old Ford lock on the River Lea, choked with floating rubbish prior to 2005
230
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
My word this is a wonderful pub - proper old school. I’m am amazed that I haven’t found it before. Proper Sarf Lunnon.
The Lord Clyde in Southwark London. It is lit beautifully to display its traditional Truman Hanbury Buxton & Co tiles
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
We unroll a 40 quid shade cloth from Amazon on our glass roof. Without it interior temp is +4C vs the outside. With it: -9C on the outside. We through ventilate through the night to get the starting temp down. It really works.
Shade cloth on glass roof
041
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I’m not remotely serious in this analysis… Mind you if I were trying, Jar-Jar actually went down very well with 7 year olds. TPM was *massively* the blockbuster film of its year. It’s “failure” as a movie is a retrospective take…
Box Office mojo for 1999, showing TPM in first place, making $250m more than the number 2 film
120
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
As soon as we arrived in France, there was this sign in a very traditional bistro in Lille:
Sign reads “Toilettes avec urinoirs & cabine. Chacun choisit l’espace ou il est le plus a l’aise”
030
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
My proposed minister for AI
Avon from Blake’s 7
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Even the DT poll isn’t showing the result they want…
Was Farage right to trigger a by-election?
• Yes, let the voters judge his conduct
No, he should've waited for the investigation to finish
Total votes: 13,535
26%
74%
0111
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Whenever the dreadful leadership of the police comes up, I’m reminded of this passage from Max Hastings account of his time as editor of the DT from about 30 *years* ago:
One day in 1990, for instance, I was invited to address senior policemen at the annual ACPO conference in Preston. I talked about a subject close to my heart, the breakdown of the traditional relationship between the police and the middle class. I sat down to muted applause, to put the matter politely.Chief constable after chief constable then stood up, to denounce my views. It was not true that public confidence in their forces was declining, they said crossly. It was monstrous to suggest that police evidence was less readily believed in courts. It was time people like me understood that sporting shooters in the countryside (for instance) caused a lot of trouble. The chief constables' protests were deeply depressing, because they highlighted the gulf between reality as the public knew it, and the delusions cherished by policemen. I often talk to service audiences, and seldom go home without being impressed anew by the quality of senior army people. It is dismaying to notice the contrast with police leader-ship, much of which is conspicuously inadequate. Most chief constables would not rise above the rank of sergeant major in the British army, and they display the warrant officer's limited perspective.
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The Anglo-Saxons 3/2
Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, probably designed and executed by Anglo-Saxons…
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Vaillant aroTHERM plus 10. Sound power level 60dB apparently. Anyway, we can’t hear the thing, so we must be deaf.
Vaillant aroTHERM plus 10
With a SCOP of up to 5.03, the aroTHERM plus is extremely energy efficient.
With a nominal output of 10kW, this model is suitable for many mid-sized houses.
ENA Registration Number: VAILL/09872N1 Heating SCOP at 45°C: 4.13
Sound Power Level: 60.0 dB
Nominal Output: 10.00 kW
Proposed flow temperature: 45°C
Actual Output at 45°C*: 10.56 kW
*at outside design temperature of -1.7°C
100
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Oooh another pointless political survey! Cannot resist! 🤪
Your Results
69% Woke
31% Chud
64%
Techbro
36% Neo-Luddite
56% Hopepilled 44% Doomer
86% Davos
14% Dubai
YOUR CLOSEST MATCH:
Ezra Klein
く
britmonkey.com
...
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Our 30 quid sun shade cloth on the outside yesterday + a bed sheet outside the windows reduced our temperature gain inside to about one degree C over the course of the day (outside:10C)
Glass roof draped with a big silver cloth
120
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Heh
Liberal Despot with antlers
020
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Can we grant an exception for the gloriously obscene England fans please?
“He’s fat, with piles. He’s in the Epstein files”. England fans chant
110
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Quite. Charterhouse (1611) is currently £60,000. It’s one of nine Clarendon School and one of the seven 1868 Public Schools Act schools (Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Winchester). There is *no world* in which it is not one of the most upper class schools in the country.
Charterhouse. It looks like Hogwarts.
450
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Defence Secretary retreating from the burning hulk of Bismarck owing to lack of fuel. Heavy Cruiser HMS Dorsetshire finishing her off with torpedoes.
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SWIA OAA
Thursday 11" June
nine Minter,
It has been the privilege of my life to serve this country, first in uniform and then in government.
I have said that there are issues facing this Department that do not lend themselves to easy answers, and that there needs to be agreement throughout the government about the scale of the challenges we face. It has become clear to me that the change I had pushed for is not going to come. Given the situation, I have decided to resign as Minister for the Armed Forces.
We face a more unstable and dangerous world than at any point in recent decades, and having spent most of my adult life in uniform, I understand what public service in such a moment demands.
It is for this very reason I cannot continue.
I have watched, as a Marine, what war looks like now. I have spoken to those who have seen it up close in Ukraine. The lesson is uncomfortable and it is unambiguous. The character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with. We are still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one. Platforms that cost billions can be defeated by systems that cost thousands. Any serious Defence Investment Plan has to start from that reality.
While I had no hand in the Defence Investment Plan, that distance does allow me to say plainly that it is not built for the threat we face. It is neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded.
We are asking our Armed Forces to operate in a more dangerous world on a budget written for a calmer one.
I have sat in the rooms, seen the assessments, and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less,
and I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and detend a
level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task. A serious country funds its defence to meet the threat it actually faces, not the threat it wishes it faced.
The same instinct, that serious problems can be managed rather than f…I set out the changes I believed were necessary, and the lines which I could not in good conscience go beyond. Those lines have not been accepted. I have run out of room to argue this case honourably from inside government. A serving minister cannot ask fellow veterans to trust a process he no longer trusts himself.
These two failures are the same failure. We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it's done. We are failing on both.
The same failure of seriousness runs through how this country treats the people it asks the most of, in uniform and out of it.
Too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right.
They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes, and still feel one setback away from trouble. Public confidence in our institutions is weakening, and politics increasingly looks performative while everyday life gets harder.
The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take days, take months. Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it. We are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one, and the gap is now showing in the things that matter most.
National resilience is about more than defence in the narrow sense. A strong country is not simply one with capable armed forces. It is one where working people feel economically secure, public services function, energy is resilient, communities are stable, and young people can see a future worth working towards.
If my resignation accelerates the transition towards resolution, then the impact will far outweigh the act. We need a new way of governing and we need it now.
For my own part, I will keep arguing for a politics rooted in resilience, seriousness, and national renewal. For a country where working people can once again feel secure a…
021
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Ser Bronn of the Blackwater from Game of Thrones
010
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Crystal Palace SubwayCrystal Palace SubwayCrystal Palace SubwayCrystal Palace Subway
020
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
The open day for the Crystal Palace Subway - it has been gloriously restored!
Crystal Palace Subway - before and after picturesCrystal Palace Subway - before and after picturesCrystal Palace Subway - before and after picturesCrystal Palace Subway - before and after pictures
161
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Other examples from the Moomins and (gloriously weirdly) Snoopy Kabuki!
Japanese job advert using Moomins character.Snoopy kabuki.
1161
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
If I may quote from the doyenne of woodland academia, the fabulous Oliver Rackham (“Trees and Woddland in the British Landscape”)
What is there about trees and woodland (and the landscape gen-erally) that makes them specially, perhaps uniquely, productive of canards? Authors confuse the history of woodland with the history of woodland folk or the history of what people have said about wood-land. These are very different things. Landscape changes through natural causes and human default as well as human action. People notice the sudden felling of trees but not their gradual growth; they may put on record the grubbing-out of a wood as an investment, but not the making of a new wood by neglect, which costs nothing; they take far more notice of oak than of hornbeam.
Historians forget that trees and woodland are living things, and have lives of their own independently of what men do to them. They are not mere artefacts, and are not wholly predictable. As living things, trees are very unlike us and unlike each other. They are much less anthropoid than dogs or codfish; an ash is less like a pine than a dog is like a fish. Each species has its own behaviour, and we do not understand them fully. A huge inverted pyramid of argument has been built on the belief that trees die when cut down - a factoid which flatly denies the whole basis of woodmanship as practised over the last 5000 years.
120
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
And of course you can’t reference that film without posting this picture
Sean Connery in Zardoz. He is dressed only in red chest straps, a red jockstrap and black leather thigh boots.
100
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I can never see that grave without thinking of…
Zardoz
110
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
The Day Today “War” episode
060
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
The point would also stand up much better if anyone could point to any instance where the Labour Party has stood aside and put country before party to, say, enable the election of a Green or a LibDem. Here’s Labour putting party before country given the opportunity to unseat Jeremy Hunt, for example
2024 Godalming and Ash general election result. Conservative majority over LibDems 891, Labour vote 2,748
2155
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
My result: Progressive Nationalist (Not sure how my Sovereignty score *really* pegs me as a nationalist!) Economic: centrist Social: progressive Sovereignty: cosmopolitan Military: hawkish Authority: leaning libertarian Constitutional: reformist Take the quiz: quiz.jmoxley.co.uk
🇬🇧 British Political Spectrum Quiz

My result: Progressive Nationalist

Economic: centrist
Social: progressive
Sovereignty: cosmopolitan
Military: hawkish
Authority: leaning libertarian
Constitutional: reformist

Take the quiz: https://quiz.jmoxley.co.uk
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
No surprises here. I seem to be drifting economically leftwards as I get older…
Survey results indicating Liberal Progressive
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Pick a Bond from photos you already have on your phone.
Sexy bloke from Hook Norton beer festival in 2005
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
I’ll just leave this here…
East Surrey council results with the Tories losing 34 seats to the LibDems
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
The sheer entitlement of the eternal Labour “we are the only progressive option - any vote for someone else is a betrayal” mentality is coming back to bite them. They are a party of the 1920s. They’ve had their day.
Greens wipe out Labour in Waltham Forest
020
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
My old borough…
Greens win Waltham Forest with 31/60 councillors from a base of zero
110
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Winning with Kemi… East Sussex FFS!
Conservatives lose 24 councillors to leave a total of 3/50 - fourth largest party
000
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Indeed, and I think this vast broken trunk in his mortuary temple is the inspiration for the poem.
Broken statue of Rameses II in Luxor
110
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Clive James’s review of this when it was on TV is one of the funniest things ever. It starts like this…
In The Cassandra Crossing the TransEuropean
Express has been hit by a plague of bad act-ing. NATO attempts to shunt the train off into Poland and isolate it there until all the bad actors have either died off or recovered, but its plans are foiled by Richard Harris in the role of a famous surgeon, Sophia in the role of his estranged but adoring wife, Martin Sheen as a drug-addict mountain-climbing gigolo, and numerous others. Some, although not all, of those mentioned are good actors in normal circum-stances, but even Martin Sheen finds it difficult to turn in an Oscar-winning performance when he is pretending to be a drug-addict mountain-climbing gigolo with plague.
220
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Basically, Warren Buffett FTW
Warren Buffett’s entirely normal suburban house
100
James Harvey @keepof4worlds.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
We rented bikes: I’ve always wanted to see it - I think there was a photo of it in the Roads section of my childhood book on the Romans
Cover of “The Romans” from MacDonald’s “People’s of the Past” series in the 1970s
242