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Robert Hanks

@roberthanks.bsky.social
441 followers 358 following 2.8K posts

The man who never was but sometimes looked as though he might be. Cultural commentator for hire. Will work for food.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Getting ready for Friday night
Photograph from the set of F.W. Murnau's 1926 film Faust, showing actors astride monstrous animals as they prepare to play the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Top @pamhutch.bsky.social content on Radio 4 right now.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Trump unaware that he runs a country.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I gave up reading the Economist a long time ago, when I got bored with reading articles that, whatever the problem, prescribed the free market as the solution. Has it evolved in recent years?
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I accidentally spent £17,700 on 400 subscriptions to the LRB for Home Office staff and now the Life in the UK test is asking applicants to rank Derek Jarman films from most to least emotionally resonant?
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s a mark of the corruption of our whole way of thinking about the world that trying to meet a planetary emergency is routinely described as “ideological”, while continuing to accelerate it is presented as “pragmatic” and “economic”.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Isn't this just a joke? (And if it is, is the quoter inadvertently showing that she's more stereotypically Bluesky than the original poster?)
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This is what happens when you let a WOMAN write cartoon strips.
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Alex Morris @asjmorris.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Now seems as good a time as any to post the plasticine Frank Muir that I built for the ‘Amateur Frank Muir Modeller’ Viz ad back in 2006.
A plasticine model of Frank Muir.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
But let's hear it, too, for Bryan Pringle, who won the Bancroft Gold Medal at RADA in 1955, when the competition included Peter O'Toole.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
(Also, and not insignificantly, bigger cars.)
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Hey, @johnclegg37.bsky.social, this you?
Mannequin that is part of the Mary Queen of Scots exhibition at Peterborough Cathedral. It wears a mustard yellow Tudor jerkin, if that’s the right word, and has wild blond hair and beard.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Why can’t any of these people grasp the really easy truth that the reason traffic has got worse is more cars.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Why won’t social media accept ads for a Musk documentary – billionaire solidarity or just cowardice?
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I’m in Peterborough, which so far isn’t nearly as bad everyone said.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Get my broker on the phone – I want to go large on shares in private ADHD and autism clinics. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
theguardian.com
NHS bodies in England impose two-year minimum wait for ADHD and autism assessments
Patient groups decry ‘scandalous’ delays as four integrated care boards take step due to soaring demand for diagnoses
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Verity Holloway @verityholloway.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We had a prison officer come in to scare us off crime. Tiny Scottish dude. Gave us detailed instructions on how to kill a man with a sock and some batteries and how to make a shank from a toothbrush. For the girls, the message was, avoid prison because "you'll come oot a dyke".
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
youtu.be/_tUctFu46_c?...
youtu.be
Tomorrow Belongs to Me - Cabaret
YouTube video by Sean Scott
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
As I'll keep saying till they finally get rid of him, worst BBC political editor – no, I'll go further: worst BBC political journalist – of my lifetime. My theory is that Laura Kuenssberg lobbied hard for him to get the job because it would make her tenure look retrospectively amazing.
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Stephen Kinsella @stephenstroud.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It’s impossible to read this about the police still wasting huge resources attempting to convict people for peacefully walking slowly and then begin to comprehend the craven police inaction over Tommo and his violent masked thugs. Can anyone explain it?
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A lot of people slagging off Eggers for getting the history wrong, but my guess is this is just bad reporting, and he's actually talking about using authentic Shakespearean pronunciation. (And now I'll be proved wrong, as per.)
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Darned Earl Spencer, making me agree with Piers Morgan
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Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
i have no words. it is all so absurd
theguardian.com
Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism
Theatre told that Facebook and Instagram filter out ads mentioning ‘social topics’ such as civil rights or feminism
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Goldfinch liker @ruudboy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It was just down from Jimmy Tarbuck Medical School
Sigm on a building for Ted Rogers School of Management
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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Rarewaves currently has a big ol' 2 for £16 Blu ray sweet deal on a bunch of cool labels, including the great Second Run. Here are some of my favourite bangers they've put out over the years... (Post not sponsored by Rarewaves or Second Run, but it should be) www.rarewaves.com/collections/...
My Second Run Blu ray collection
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
What I briefly thought might be a major malfunction in my boiler turns out to be a helicopter on the television in the next room.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is what us newshounds call a "scoop".
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Nagihan Haliloğlu @nhaliloglu.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
fascists and AI are inevitable, my public broadcaster tells me
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Radio 3 news bulletin refers to the AfD having won a “landslide victory” in Saxony-Anhalt recently. But they didn’t get a majority! How is that a landslide? Why this careless boosting of the far right?
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Last year I subsisted for weeks on apples I picked at my local community orchard. This year, not only are the apples mostly small and hard, a huge proportion of them have suffered insect damage.
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Good letters in The Times on Canada’s moves towards the EU. Seems we’re far happier to discuss the strategic sense of Canada rethinking its allies and trade arrangements, than we are to discuss our own not-so splendid Brexit isolation. Looking very foolish again, UK.
EU suggestion of Canadian membership

2 of the letters 

Sir, Gerard Baker is right ("Grin and bear it, Andy, and stick with Trump", comment, Sep 18)……

….The problem is that the US is neither as reliable nor as reliably friendly as it once was. If it is willing to impose tariffs on friends, that economy becomes rather less reassuring. If the US prevents the UK regulating to protect our children, those new industries are not as positively transformative as we may have thought. And if Washington no longer thinks European security is its concern, then all that military might counts for little as far as we re concerned. Ultimately, the UK has little choice but to try and limit its dependence on a partner that is far less reliable than it was, and to do so, in part, by working more closely with its European neighbours. Managing this without further irritating the US president must be the ambition.
Anand Menon
Professor of European, KCL; director, the UK in a Changing Europe

Sir, Mark Carney's address to the European parliament was
extraordinarily impressive. It was a vision of what politics can be when it looks beyond the next poll, election or headline. Carney spoke of Europe and Canada building something together based on democracy, freedom, sovereignty and resilience. He offered both a dream and a practical route towards it: co-operation in defence. energy, critical minerals, technology, Al, trade and education. What struck me most was the clarity and scale of his thinking. He spoke of the challenges confronting western democracies but did not simply complain about them: he asked what could be built in response.
His metaphor of the forest was particularly memorable: a single tree mav be brought down by the storm. but a forest will endure because its roots are interconnected. I am 80 and I cannot remember recently hearing a western political leader speak with quite this combination of ambition, seriousness and intellectual clarity.
Thomas Kendall
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
And why isn't this leading the news?
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Another idol with feet of clay.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I get the impression he quite likes it.
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Captain Howdy @captainhowdy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Each day stranger than the last.
The Distracted Boyfriend meme, but the boyfriend is now Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, his girlfriend is a furious Hitler and the object of his attention is Ed Sheeran.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The bottom half of this is bizarre: seems to have overlooked entirely the outright corruption of Cameron's Greensill lobbying and the bizarre postures Truss has adopted to tout for cash from the American far right.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I was really not on Ed Sheeran's side over this whole Macklemore thing, but I see that Roger Waters has called him a "little prick", so now I don't know what to think.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Astonishing, vile. This is now mainstream Republican thinking, apparently. (And I checked: genuine tweet www.snopes.com/fact-check/b...)
snopes.com
Texas GOP candidate Bo French called for deporting several Native Americans
His campaign said he didn't call to deport all Native Americans, but rather only the ones in the photograph he posted with his comment.
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Robin Johnson @robinjohnson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
BIFFO: I wish circus clowns didn't wear such big shoes!
CLOWN: And I wish repulsive bears wore any shoes at all, but we don't always get what we want
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
But the *best* way to get rich in the United States is to build a product that you can either sell to the government or get subsidized by the government. That way, the American taxpayer will never know they're being defrauded.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Wow. Hyperpolitics is both a tendency and a "gravitational pole"? And linking = distantiation? This is impressive stuff.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Small irritation: why did #BBCPM, in quoting Trump's remarks about a "STRONG AND SMART (HIGH IQ) PRESIDENT" leave out the part in brackets? The effect was to make the sentence sound just that bit less loopy; and I think listeners need to understand the full insanity of the man.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just been alerted to the surprising sequel to Krakatoa East of Java.
A WhatsApp message reading “Sindlefingen South of Stuttgart”.
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
They think there’s such a thing as an autistic dog?
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Farage levels of disingenuousness here.
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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Susanna Reid: "what does anyone expect in return for £72m?" Kevin Maguire: ".. funnily enough Reform doesn't have anybody to speak on social care.. but it has a very detailed policy on crypto currency.. & it would coincidentally make these billionaires even more money" #GMB
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Honestly, if the government could just keep rolling out this level of sensible, useful stuff, it would do a lot to bring the national temperature down. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
Rail passengers get automatic right to switch operators for free when trains are cancelled
‘Commonsense change’ looks to end current confusion and put ‘passengers first, not shareholders’ when services are disrupted
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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
You think I haven’t asked?
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KateW @kateweb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
A collection of Nancy Banks-Smith's columns, being published early next year! (She was the Guardian's TV critic for many years, and brilliant.)
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