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silentsweeney.bsky.social

@silentsweeney.bsky.social
94 followers 89 following 197 posts

Pianist for dance and silent film. Citizen of Aotearoa

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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 26m
2. Reform must be blocked by any means necessary in parliamentary terms. What is a repulsive argument is 'oh dear Labour destroying the lives of trans people and immigrants isn't great, but this Green motion is actually far more serious and immoral'
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Chris Williams (dink) @chriswilliams-dink.bsky.social · 19h
Great to see my two favourite cinemas are in the BIFA Cinema of the Year 2026 longlist of 15. Congratulations @hippfest.bsky.social and @filmhouseedinburgh.bsky.social !
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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
THE RAT (1925) is a rather silly British film about the French Apache with the lead played by a Welshman and an American leading lady. It asks the important question: do you want to see a movie that is entirely a vehicle for Ivor Novello's profile? Many people did and do say yes.
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I've talked about this before, but it is very hard when you see how moral red lines are drawn, and the complete gutting of trans people's civil rights is entirely within an accepted norm and barely remarked upon even by many progressives.
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
There's a special kind of trauma from the official national equality watchdog specifically become a high profile campaigner against your rights specifically (and cast you as an oppressor in the same breath), which is then called upon by some still as an arbiter of moral authority on bigotry.
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Jolisa Gracewood @nzdodo.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Let’s go! (Again!) #nzpol Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections Map 6573 kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/coll...
A gorgeous pictorial map from 1889 of railway tours around New Zealand.  It highlights not just the routes but also the many fun activities to be enjoyed at various locations. Includes Mount Cook-Aoraki; Rotorua; Lake Wakatipu; Bluff; Queenstown; hot springs in Te Aroha and Hanmer… so much was accessible by train, let’s go back to the good times!
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The Green party’s anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews how we should think | Jonathan Freedland
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Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Excellent news. The good thing is that Palantir isn’t unique and there are many options, all of which will save the taxpayer money. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
Andy Burnham searches for UK alternative to Palantir
Prime minister’s ‘Buy British’ push triggers hunt to find replacement for controversial US tech group awarded health service and defence contracts
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Justin on eurostar @eurostarjustin.bsky.social · 22/10/2024
How about a thread about a rather special train, the TMST (Trans Manche Super Train)? This was the project name for the high-speed train designed to link London, Paris and Brussels via the Channel Tunnel when it opened in 1994.
A eurostar class 373 train in original livery at St Pancras in London.
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Flicker Alley @flicker-alley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Coming 11/24, we are thrilled to reveal our first 4K UHD title with THE ART OF THE BENSHI, a box set celebrating Japan’s venerable history of silent film narration with 23 audio presentations across nine different titles! flickeralley.com/products/the...
THE ART OF THE BENSHI is the new 4K UHD and Blu-ray set now available for a limited time from Flicker Alley!
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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
5 potatoes cubed is still 5 potatoes because potatoes are root vegetables
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
💯Agree - coming from NZ where there are no land borders and not that many more train lines, I never stop being thrilled at train travel in Europe - you can be on a train and end up in a completely different country, all the while looking out the window and seeing the scenery change
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind
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Luca Tiratelli @lucatiratelli.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I await the first time a politician proposing some nuts new immigration restriction is asked what is otherwise the media’s favourite question: how are you going to pay for it??
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Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The best English film ever made
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Ian Martin @ianmartin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
That fucking shower of human piss reckons it acts for the British people. Let's have a 'this-or-that' referendum then, as with Brexit. - RNLI or - Angry racists with past convictions for violence. When we discover that most of us prefer heroic volunteers to wife-beaters can we bang the cunts up?
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
And if you want to donate the site to do so is here www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/the-cinema... If you want to discuss a major donation please email helpusbuy@cinemamuseum.org.uk
crowdfunder.co.uk
The Cinema Museum: HELP US BUY OUR HOME
After 40 years of uncertainty, we have a chance to secure our home. We need £500,000 to purchase our home and we have five months to do it!
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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yoohoo! The Cinema Museum in London is fundraising to buy its building with a gala show. The theme is movies about movies and it looks amazing. September 30, if you can get to London! cinemamuseum.org.uk/scheduled/ex...
cinemamuseum.org.uk
Extravaganza of Silent Films About Filmmaking – to Help The Cinema Museum Buy its Home – The Cinema Museum
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Michael @michaeljsc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
they should study him in a lab. I don’t think I could write this badly on purpose. still, glad this has higher billing than coverage of last night’s far right escalation
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PaulAJoyce v2.0 @pauljoyce07.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Queen Kelly @BFI splendid introduction from Pamela Hutchinson & ace accompaniment from Neil Brand. So much to say there needs to be a book on it and, luckily there is from PH! Astonishing cinema and an amazing story of three almost immovable objects! ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2026/09/unfi...
ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com
Unfinished empathy? Queen Kelly (1929), BFI with Neil Brand and Pamela Hutchinson
A work of barbaric splendour… LA Times   Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum and I don’t just mean Ed Sheeran here. There was a blea...
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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Just going to casually have this image from the Lucas Museum projected when my students walk into “Women Filmmakers” class tomorrow and see what happens
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It's enormously depressing to see the Lib Dems loyally falling in behind the collective fantasy of our times: that you can cut taxes, rebuild public services & solve the massive problems confronting the public finances by pulling some magic lever marked "increased growth". This is just not serious.
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Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Started watching Sky’s War Game last night where Michael Gove is the PM during the Russian attack and I’m afraid it is just very difficult to watch it without thinking of this, one of the great cartoons ever published
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Missing The Point @missingthept.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
President Trump proposes the world’s first memorial arch that can also kill you.
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
An anonymous donor will match any donations to the Cinema Museum crowdfunder up to £5,000 until Monday night - get donating everyone! www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/the-cinema...
crowdfunder.co.uk
The Cinema Museum: HELP US BUY OUR HOME
After 40 years of uncertainty, we have a chance to secure our home. We need £500,000 to purchase our home and we have five months to do it!
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Pamela Hutchinson @pamhutch.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
QUEEN KELLY in NFT1 tomorrow! Restoration by @milestonefilms.bsky.social plus music by the amazing @neilkbrand.bsky.social and intro and book signing by moi. Ambition and audacity by Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim.
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Anand Menon @anandmenon.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
God I hate this 'people who create wealth' nonsense. Let's see how much wealth we have in a society without teachers, nurses etc......
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"RNLI crew members had been forced to take their permits off their cars after their tyres have been repeatedly slashed. Most of them have been pilloried at the school gates or turned away from local pubs. One man who worked in search and rescue had been beaten unconscious and hospitalised"
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Neil Brand @neilkbrand.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I'm at the NFT on Sunday 2.30 to provide musical support to silent movie royalty Gloria Swanson and Pamela Hutchinson in a cracking presentation of Stroheim's Queen Kelly. A mindbender of a film, the silent equivalent of The Devils! Don't miss it, folks! whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
whatson.bfi.org.uk
Buy cinema tickets for Queen Kelly + intro by film critic and historian Pamela Hutchinson | BFI Southbank
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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
One more time: Inheritance tax *is not unique or even uncommon* in being "double taxation". The coffee I just bought was paid for with wages on which income tax and NI had been levied, but was also subject to VAT. Just stop it.
elen Whately: “One of the problems with inheritance tax is that it's a form of double taxation.
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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I’m just a person on my fucking knees begging the government to use its absolutely massive majority to do something extremely fucking popular: save our democracy.
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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I'd vote for the future where there's the option of a box that pops up when lazy nonsense appears and says "this looks like AI slop. Would you like me to find a piece written by a thoughtful human on this topic - something that's valued by other humans and is actually worth reading?"
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 10/09/2026
If you're in government watching criminal-led blackshirt thugs in balaclavas wage war on the RNLI and you're hedging your bets because you're not sure who the majority of the country will side with, why do you even want to be in government? Why would you WANT to lead people you think so little of?
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Nadine Batchelor-Hunt @nadinebh.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The dark irony of people pearl clutching about the ethnic cleaning statements is if you actually spoke to the average hill top settler they would tell you: yes, we are ethnically cleansing - that is exactly what we are doing
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Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
We've had a "Number 10 spokesperson" briefing to journalists, and reported comments from Burnham in a closed door meeting That's pissweak. If you can make videos about chicken nuggets or whatever, you can make videos about violent fascists
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
What Sam said. Meanwhile, in Denmark, migrants' kids lag 20/30/40 points behind on average -and there are still people here who think *we* should copy *them* on immigration/integration.
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Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
My legitimate concern is that this world leading success story of multicultural integration is being usurped by racist hoodlums and thugs who want to tear it all down, and many in power think that's just dandy.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 08/09/2026
@ stephenkb.bsky.social hitting the nail on the head of course. "the Labour Party has now produced two governments whose response to acts of thuggery and intimidation is to reiterate that perhaps the thugs have a point" - as.ft.com/r/97d33f08-a...
as.ft.com
Labour’s muddled migration policy won’t stop thuggery
A government that can’t distinguish between ‘legitimate concerns’ and open racism is only making things worse
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Me too! It was extraordinary and the first time that I've been able to relate the composer of the orchestral music to the one who composed all those wonderful songs and piano music. The transparency of the textures was stunning made the music all the more impassioned and powerful.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 07/09/2026
If only there were some legal term for where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety.
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 06/09/2026
From the same piece, written a week ago:
- When climate activists block a highway or throw something at a painting in the UK, the country is treated to 500 articles about whether this particular type of protest is the most operationally, tactically, and strategically optimal method of securing long-term policy change on environmental issues.

- When Bazza and the Restraining Order Lads attempt to burn asylum seekers and immigrants alive inside their accommodation, every article spends throat clearing paragraphs noting that of course they’re driven by serious and valid concerns about immigration (and not as basic observation would suggest, serious and valid amounts of cocaine).The difference is that it feels like the right is expected to act as an avatar for the primal wrath of their base, whereas the left is supposed to act as a check on theirs, policing not only the extent to which that base shapes policy but also how it speaks and presents itself.

- Right wing rage is treated as an elemental, reactive force that you get points for performatively appeasing - even if the method of that appeasement sows the seeds for greater anger in the future.

- Left wing rage is treated as a dangerous, destructive force that must be blunted at every opportunity lest the ideas it pushes somehow make the leap from random Twitch streamer to legislation - despite the chasm between those two being a million miles wide.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 06/09/2026
So in one week: 1) Reform get stung for dodgy finances, and the regulators play pass the parcel about enforcement 2) Farage announces plans to largely dismantle independent scrutiny of govt, and barely any press discussion of it 3) Masked thugs blockade a port, with narry a word from senior govt
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Tom Phillips @tom-phillips.com · 05/09/2026
almost word for word
Screenshot of tweet from @InternetHippo:

New right wing thing is describing crimes as generically as possible to pretend like they're not crimes. Someone gets convicted of conspiracy and they start yelling "Wow so it's illegal to make plans with friends now"
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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 05/09/2026
How could an associate professor in divinity at Cambridge be expected to know that lying is bad? thecritic.co.uk/mone...
Ah yes, James Orr. A lot of us had been hazy about what it is exactly that associate professors in a divinity department do all day. It doesn’t seem to involve a lot of work: Orr is often to be seen at Reform events in London, which take up the whole morning even for those of us with offices down the road. Now we know he was also sipping cocktails while discussing ways in which wealthy foreigners might be able to get round the laws that ban them donating to the party.

The associate professor of divinity was filmed explaining to an undercover reporter that so long as everyone kept their mouths shut, there was no way that the authorities would ever find out. Orr spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow in theology, ethics and public life at Oxford, and it would be fascinating to know at what point he developed this theory of What the Electoral Commission Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Them. Perhaps he was off sick the day they opened the gospel of Luke: “What you have said in the dark will be h
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Peter Smith @redpeter99.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Chris Mason watching Channel 4 News.
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This is a good answer to those people who say politics doesn't change anything
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
it does have staff quarters fyi
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silentsweeney.bsky.social @silentsweeney.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Radio 3 has listened to you - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... about the role of the conductor
bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio 3 - Music Matters, Arranging the Air, The Unheard Musician
Martin Handley explores the role of the conductor.
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Silent London @silentlondon.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
On Wednesday 9 September, Museum of Dreamworlds presents Emperor Nero and the Spectacle of Ancient Rome - QUO VADIS? (1913) accompanied by live music at the Cinema Museum. cinemamuseum.org.uk/scheduled/em...
cinemamuseum.org.uk
Emperor Nero and the Spectacle of Ancient Rome – Quo Vadis? (1913) – The Cinema Museum
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The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I’m aware when I’m throwing these stones that the new Justice Secretary is in an impossible position, caused almost entirely by previous governments. But at some point somebody in politics is going to have to consider the idea of not structuring a criminal justice system on the whims of tabloids.
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