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Carlile Vernon

@markgray.bsky.social
3.1K followers 6K following 1.4K posts

Liberal centrist. 18th/19thc art. DMs=block.

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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Annoyed in that #EarlSpencer interview by the extraordinary irrelevance now of the Diana-Charles thing. I recall the time after her death and hope we're now past all of that fawning, adulatory, medieval Catholicity now - and can concentrate on real lives, not those spent in guilded palaces.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
How on earth does #Eventbrite exist? It's got to be the worst online database app in the world. It can't hold the right location, lists events randomly and creates the clunkiest of ways to hold tickets and send details to your calandar imaginable. How does it survive?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Rather touchingly, the #BBCProms, the great classical music festival of London's summer, celebrates #DollyParton - proof that music transcends all, unites us all. Here's to Dolly. ❤️
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
#America, all over the world we remember 9/11. The bravery of the rescuers, the shock of the attack, the strength of New Yorkers in dealing with the consequences in their midst for weeks and months afterwards. We bowed our heads with you, we stood with you, we didn't forget. We're with you today.
A photograph of the scene of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York after the 11th September attack 25 years ago.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Watching #DavidOlusoga in #Edinburgh pronouncing Wynd as 'wind' and trying not to laugh - whilst hoping he also discusses Horse Wynd...😆
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
A view, might I suggest, uncommon in Morningside, Hyndland and Broughty Ferry...
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Now time to rename the show the Anything But Antiques Roadshow, perhaps?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
It's OK, #London and South East people! You can slacken off! We're going to let t'North do all the work.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Since finding out by chance today that one of my 16th century ancestors was known by the sobriquet 'Lusty Packington' I've felt in need of a bit more energy to keep up the family reputation. [Image: By R. Clamp - www.npg.org.uk/collections/..., Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?...
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I've just been charged eight pounds and twenty pence for a beer. In #SouthKensington. And even for #Kensington, for a country yokel like me that is diabolical. I don't just mean 'bad', I mean something created in the Infernal Regions, aka Devilish 🤬.
A close-up of a large glass containing lager beer.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
That #FRAENG match was played in a spirit of sportsmanship, honesty and joy. Great goals, real skill, touches of brilliance from both sides. Nice to finish with a celebration of #football, and a demonstration of what the game can be when #FIFA isn't playing.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
#Spain, wishing your football team all the very best tomorrow in your match against #FIFA. Sorry, I mean Argentina... I suspect most of the world will be cheering every Spanish attack and every goal! Good luck.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
A #Faberge flower on #FakeOrFortune, assessed by #Bonhams as suspect and - after a whole raft of evidence hugely persuasive of the case for it being right - they DON'T EVEN WANT TO LOOK? #Bonhams, that is pathetic.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
#Google put these two news stories close together on the same page.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Watching #EdithSitwell in the 1959 John Freeman 'Face to Face' interview and finding her strangely absorbing - a Victorian-modern with an other worldliness about her. I'd imagine - if you could get past the likely condescension - an hour with her would have been a delight. Eccentric, but not batty.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
...but an all South American VAR team for England v Mexico was just fine, apparently.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
If only someone were able to overturn it with a phonecall...
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
#FIFA names the referee for the next match #Balogun will now play in...
Donald Trump dressed as a FIFE referee
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Two different stories summarised in the headline apparently. I assumed *both* related to the performance of the #England team...
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Never wanted #Germany to win on penalties before, but...come on #Germany!! Some of the most bizarre refereeing in a World Cup match I've ever seen.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Watching #TheRailwayChildren for the first time in years because that line, 'Daddy, oh my daddy', breaks me everytime. And it did it again. I'm in my 60s.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Battle of the #Royal jams: Duchy of Cornwall Organic Strawberry Extra Jam Preserve via Waitrose £2.95 (340g) Highgrove Organic Strawberry Preserve with Marc de Champagne £4.95 (340g) As Ever (Duchess of Sussex) Strawberry Spread $12 (215g) TWELVE DOLLARS. That's 12 whole dollars. For less jam.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Amazed at the sheer volume of social media from #KeirStarmer and #No10 in the last 36 hours. It's as if they've finally woken up to the idea that communicating your successes might just be important. If his government had aimed to own and push the narrative, he'd still be PM in September.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
#KeirStarmer resignation: gosh that was a hard watch at the end. He's broken. Politics is savage. #Labour, you'll end up missing him. With #Burnham you'll get policy lines that are all over the place, U-turns galore and shiny but ultimately pointless stunt-led politics.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
#Putin on Friday lying his little pants off in a meeting on Friday with troops from his war against #Ukraine. Questions from the troops indicated just how far behind Russia is technically in drone-based warfare.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Rather clever of #Scotland, I thought, to pass themselves off as Holland c.1990.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Maybe it's just me, but I find the #BlombergConnects hopelessly slow.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
This is a screenshot from the #Leave.EU website on 14th June 2016. What's your favourite #Brexit failed promise? Free money (instead of all of us being poorer), reduced immigration (instead of it having risen)? These slimeballs (Tice, #Farage and Banks) now want to govern us. Pah!
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
99% of us AREN'T rioting. News media chasing the #Belfast mob violence as a symptom of political malaise are *manufacturing* a story: even among those who think immigration is too high, the overwhelming majority would not riot, nor threaten life or the police. News media, get over yourselves.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
As in her [Image: Robert Lefèvre - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing at #Wikimedia]
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
To make sense of the #ByrnePortrait you have to reverse it, which raises a question #Janeites worry their heads about in countless forums: 'was she left handed'? No idea. Doesn't matter: this is an image made for an abandoned litho c. 1840 which someone like Hullmandel said a firm 'No' to.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Watching a documentary on the 'Byrne "portrait"' of #JaneAusten, and wondering whether, given (a) the character of the drawing, (b) the fact that the letters on the paper seem to have been written ahead of the pen, this isn't a lithographic image for rendering in #lithographic on a stone now lost?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
It's just struck me how much of #BBCNews journalism now consists of, effectively, sharing Teams meetings. This one even carried, top left on screen, the breathless statement that it was live from Swindon.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Watching a programme about #BernardLevin and trying my very best to get past my teenage sense that he was one of the most self-regarding, tedious, pompous men imaginable - and failing. Fifty years later I've realised: he was.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
It's nagged at me for years. Who does #arthistorian #AndrewGrahamDixon remind me of every time I see him? It's the late actor #DavidBattley. Battley right, Graham-Dixon left, or maybe the other way round. Battley made his name in comedy, so I've always assumed AGD's programmes are comedic, frankly.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Whole morning with JMWT today, my birthday. Pure joy!
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
First, the topics covered by UK legislation to be announced in the #KingsSpeech; then, the topics of concern to UK voters according to recent @ipsosintheuk.bsky.social polling. The level of disconnect is extraordinary.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
And now #Reform are resorting to blackmail. Weird party. Weird times.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Do yourself a favour before you vote. Just search, say, the BBC website for stories about #Reform. Read the reports. They're truly hopeless: inept, divided, racist, misogynistic, clueless. It's your council tax money, do you really want this barrel of hopeless ineptitude in charge of it?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
The waters in the #StraitsOfHormuz - why can't he just...part them?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
During periods of so-called 'mania' #GeorgeIII was often frantic, used lots of words to say very little, imagined himself to be the King of Prussia or talking with angels. His personal hygiene was poor and he made unwanted advances to women. Remind you of anyone, #America?
A close image of King George III showing him in ermine and gold robes, with a white powdered wig on his head.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The Hindujas, Deripaska, Geoffrey Robinson, Epstein, the Millenium Dome fiasco. Sleaze, vanity, deflecting blame. Westminster people, some advice. Never. Touch. #Mandelson. Again. [Image: UKinUSA from Washington, D.C., USA, CC-BY]
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
'The decision [by the FCDO] was that I wasn't to know and nobody else was to know' say Keir #Starmer. In what world does *any* of this make sense? Why would civil servants decide NOT to tell the PM about failed vetting unless the PM was being protected from knowing but approving of Mandelson?
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
I don't know what to make of Mr #Starmer. It's almost as if every week he looks at polling data and says 'How can I make @labouruk.bsky.social 's poll ratings *worse* today? There's a total lack of even the vaguest political nous. That or he's listening to the world's worst political advisers.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
The BBC is showing old #AntiquesRoadshow episodes from 25 years ago. Old AR: 'Look at the sweep of the cabriole legs on this 1780 mahogany neoclassical Secretaire.' New AR: 'So you were actually at this Swelled Puffins gig all the way back in 1988 and Zigg signed it?' Dumbed down. Totally.
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Carlile Vernon @markgray.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I give you the *hopeless* #RAC. My wife - lone female, car failing to start, stuck in a remote location, called RAC for assistance at 1030 this morning. ETA for the superdeluxe service from this bunch of charlatans? 1130 this evening. 'Complete peace of mind' is their registered mark. Idiots!
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