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Simon Seligman

@oybat.bsky.social
515 followers 119 following 430 posts

Life Coaching, cultural lecturing, comms for arts charity; proud partner & dad in our neuro-diverse family. Derbyshire Peak District. www.seligmancoaching.co.uk

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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I concur.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The eternal hope of nature.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
As Peter Cook famoudly observed, satire and invective don’t tend to alter world affairs or stop despots in their tracks, but it’s still balm for the nervous system to read Trump’s foulness being summed up with such relish. acgrayling.substack.com/p/date-zero?...
acgrayling.substack.com
Date Zero
Chapeau to South America (South Park as was).
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Precisely.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Not a new work, but Ai WeiWei as timely as ever.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This is, objectively, the funniest UK media headline I’ve ever seen. Utterly glorious. The dog ate his homework too.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Glorious.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
👏👏👏
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Zurbaran at the @nationalgalleryuk.bsky.social Astonishing.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I’ve given lectures in a really wide range of venues over the decades, from damp, asbestos-riddled village halls to swish American museums; I think today’s, at Chester’s Picturehouse, has the biggest screen I’ve ever worked with. Debo writ very very large.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Bravo to all concerned.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Anyone can pre-book time in the print room at the @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social in Oxford. Today, with a group as part of my work, we had access to get up close with works on paper by John Ruskin. Astonishing drawings/watercolours.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
🤞
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Every word of this. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
When does Nigel Farage 'speak for the nation'? When it suits him | Marina Hyde
Compare his response, or lack of, to three murders over the past decade – Jo Cox, Sarah Everard and Henry Nowak, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
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Janine Gibson @janinegibson.ft.com · 28/05/2026
It’s a stupidly high bar but I believe this to be Craig Brown’s finest work
A page of parodic mail online headlines by Craig Brown from the current issue of Private Eye. Buy Private Eye it’s only £2.99.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
OTD 200 years ago today, Joseph Paxton arrived for his first day’s work at Chatsworth, aged 23. It was the start of an extraordinary career that changed the face of horticulture and architecture forever, his Crystal Palace of 1851 being, in Norman Foster’s words, ‘the birth of modern architecture’.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
👏👏😍
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
My sister Tarisha is offering this extraordinary online course exploring, based on her own ongoing 16 year journey with cancer, how song can be both medicine and friend, and give us access to our own inner healer youtu.be/gN0AvnK0SUs?...
youtu.be
Singing Your Way Through Cancer – A Conversation with Tarisha | Healing, Voice & Wellness
YouTube video by Singing Mamas Org
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
The way both these two men/fathers, James Hunt of ‘Stories about Autism’, and @johnharris1969.bsky.social talk about their autistic sons, and their experience of parenting these precious beings, is so beautiful and dignified and helpful. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
theguardian.com
Life with my autistic sons: ‘How do you explain all the worries, the sleepless nights?’
When James Hunt began posting about his boys online, it was a way to describe the emotions and experiences of their extraordinary lives. In sharing his family’s joy and struggles, he realised they wer...
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Brilliant piece by @richardjmurphy.bsky.social on the ever-more-pressing relevance of the term ‘illth’, coined by John Ruskin, which perfectly describes the unfettered & rapacious Trumpian age we are living in. www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/02...
taxresearch.org.uk
Economic questions: the John Ruskin question
This is one of a series of posts that will ask what the most pertinent question raised by a prominent influencer of political economy might have been, and what the relevance of that question might be ...
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Very grateful to The Arts Society for inviting me to be one of their monthly 'instant experts', sharing my admiration for the life & work of one of my lecture subjects, the C19th genius Joseph Paxton, the man who put the world under glass in his Crystal Palace of 1851. mailchi.mp/4e5ebf6ff131...
mailchi.mp
Become an instant expert on Sir Joseph Paxton
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Lecturing today for The Arts Society Loughborough, on life & work of my old boss, mentor & friend Debo Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, who did so much to transform Chatsworth over 54 yrs. Topical again with popularity of TV dramatisation of her sisterhood’s pre-war life & a future Ch4 doc to come.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
A dream of a job for the right person, in a dream of a place. #chatsworth
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin, that complex, far-seeing C19th critic of the dehumanising impacts of industrial capitalism, the man who coined the term 'ILLTH' to describe hoarding, rapacious, extractive & selfish greed/behaviour, the opposite of...1/2
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
A lovely Substack from Louis Weinstock about time, to which I contribute, both as a man approaching 60, and as my zoom avatar, cunning fox. open.substack.com/pub/louiswei...
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Never ceases to amaze me that with 30 mins free before or after a train journey from St Pancras, you can drop into the @britishlibrary.bsky.social permanent gallery of treasures, for free, & be quietly communing with the Lindisfarne Gospels, Magna Carta, Jane Austen, Beethoven & many other wonders.
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Mark Thomas @markthomasinfo.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Don’t Reform leaflets legally have to say *May contain Tories
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Stephen King @stephenking.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
You know who”stayed a little back” in VIetnam? DJT.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
For anyone with any skin in the SEND game, directly or indirectly, bracing yourselves for the ugly reset (& accompanying lies & demonisation coming from Reform/Daily Mail types) that appears to be on its way, this is a really wonderful resource. @johnharris1969.bsky.social knows whereof he speaks.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Very serious and very funny at the same time.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
Last moonlight of the year.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
On our Christmas Day stroll to the pond today, Sophie unwittingly recreated, albeit it with rather more clothes on, Rembrandt’s beautiful painting of A Woman Bathing in the National Gallery.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Wonderful essay, weaving Arcadian thoughts around Austen, Stoppard and Chatsworth.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
He’s right.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
An exquisite tribute 🙏
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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Bloodaxe Books @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
In tribute to the late Tony Harrison, BBC Radio 4 will be rebroadcasting this 2013 feature on v., his controversial long poem. Tony Harrison read the poem in full, and writer Blake Morrison discussed the poem's impact. Tune in at 11pm tonight, 6 Nov, or listen later. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...
bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio 4 - Artworks, v. by Tony Harrison
The controversial poem by Tony Harrison, to mark his death.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
It’s hard to tell which is more hollow.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Brilliantly put.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
I concur.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
I carved this pumpkin in 2020, when America was making its first (and last?) attempt to be rid of the putrefying orange menace. It turns out that rotting carcasses can regenerate after all.
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...
[Scene is the entrance cabin to a NATIONAL TRUST PROPERTY AND GARDENS]

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NATIONAL TRUST EMPLOYEE [inside cabin]: 

Hello there 

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[A young family - two parents two kids - have arrived at the front desk].

DAD:

Hi - do you have an activity trail, for the kids?

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NT EMPLOYEE:

Of course – you’re just in time for the Autumn Gammon Trail!

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MUM:
That sounds fun, doesn’t it kids?

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NT EMPLOYEE [handing an activity sheet and pencils to the kids]:

Every autumn, the Reform Trust gammons flock back to the National Trust for the AGM. Just follow the trail round the grounds, and see how many you can spot!

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NT EMPLOYEE [hearing something in the gardens]:

Listen - that's their call 

[Calls emanating from the landscape]:

tut-tut
woke-woke

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NT EMPLOYEE [showing the family an apparently empty fenced enclosure with some bushes in]:

They are extremely sensitive and fragile...
But you can bring them out of hiding if you put a little sign down mentioning slavery.

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KIDS [pointing]:
There they are! 

[Some little red faced PEOPLE wearing Barbour jackets and gilets emerge cautiously from the bushes. They are creeping towards a TINY SIGN in the middle of the enclosure].

[Little people noises]: 
woke-woke
tut-tut
woke-woke

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[Close-up of the TINY SIGN - we can read that it says]:

Slavery had a bit to do with building this massive house.

[Noises from the little people again as they inspect the tiny sign]:

tut-tut
woke-woke

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MUM [pointing]:
What's that one doing there?

NT EMPLOYEE:
Oh, that's so sweet…

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[We see that one of the people is sat on a rock, with a little laptop open on a tree stump, and they are furiously typing away].

NT EMPLOYEE:
I think he's writing a column for the Daily Telegraph…

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[We see close up to the little person’s screen, it is a word document reading]:

Are National Trust scones secretly WOKE?

[ends]
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
I found this a wonderful read. Fantasy vs Disappointment: a dispatch from the fence. open.substack.com/pub/louiswei...
open.substack.com
Fantasy vs Disappointment: a dispatch from the fence.
1. Sometimes the world feels juicier, more full of possibility, when it’s playing as a private showreel in the cinema of my own mind.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
They’re worse than ‘traditionalists’, some of the Restore Trust folk. They’re highly political, opaquely funded, regressive, entitled whingers, afraid of the rich, complex diversity of our heritage & history. They wish the @nationaltrust.org.uk nothing but malice, and this Life Member rejects them.
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Georgia Harper @mindtheflap.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
"There are no proven therapies or drugs that ‘cure’ autism. Most autistic people and families want research to focus on better understanding and support." Joint statement from the major UK autism charities: www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/about-us/med...
ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk
Our joint statement on the US government’s autism announcement
Ambitious about Autism is the national charity for autistic children and young people. We stand with autistic children, young people and their families to champion rights, campaign for change and crea...
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Beautiful from @olivermantell.bsky.social
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Beautiful.
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Simon Seligman @oybat.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
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