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tobysaul.bsky.social

@tobysaul.bsky.social
245 followers 990 following 327 posts
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This makes sense though, given JRM's Victorian obsession. The Vic English thought of themselves as a mixed people. There were angles and saxons after all. It was in the language too. English was clearly full of French and German words. People in the past were often not what we think.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Reminds me of the John Banville novel The Sea, which followed the Iris Murdoch novel The Sea The Sea, thereby inviting someone write The Sea The Sea The Sea.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
The fact that there's Green Labour, who clearly hate those bastards in Red Labour, has the ring of truth to it.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The Sound and the Annoyance
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
A generation after Duccio, Pietro Lorenzetti's Altenburg Diptych (see fig. 106) demonstrates how the Virgin's sorrowful gaze, as she holds her son in the left wing of the diptych, might look towards his future, as the Man of Sorrows, shown in the right wing.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Starmer should be doing so much more. A statement of unequivocal solidarity with the Canadians is what the country wants.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Just think of all the tax you'd save and you'd only be 15 metres under the North Sea.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
Because he always says yes
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Knew someone who called his cats things like Dave or Pete or Helen. Changed the whole human/cat relationship somehow
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
When you look at an artifact from the past, you come away knowing more than you did before. To deny that to yourself is one thing. But to wreck a work of art so that future generations can't learn from the thing you carelessly threw away, is something I will never understand.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Have they all agreed this is the uniform they have to wear?
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Interesting how many countries have a North/South divide. UK France US Germany Italy Spain India. The list goes on
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
One afternoon, I was walking through Brixton and passed a playground where some primary school-age children were discussing what they should play next. Should it be Bulldog or British Bulldog? At a signal that was invisible to me, they broke and ran. The game had begun.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Tbf Dubai is only copying London when it comes to money laundering
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Kipling. English countryside. Churches in English countryside. Waugh pere and fils. Strand of Tory anarchism they did well, now extinct.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
I once got friendly with a Joyce scholar. Apparently it's a small, esoteric and rather intense world: people who know everything about Finnegan's Wake and nothing about anything else.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Fail to see anything surprising about this. People are concerned about their lives but also have views on the country as a whole.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
You'd think he didn't have much to lose. If it's going to happen anyway, you might as well tell the truth.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
That's right. Whack the tank with the butt of your rifle.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
So the ship's captain says to the guy on the desert island, "but why are there two Party headquarters?" and the guy says "well that's the headquarters where I plan my grassroots mass movement, and that other headquarters, I wouldn't be seen dead in that headquarters."
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Probably doesn't matter at all. Trump and the people around him barely think about the UK and couldn't care less about the ambassador in the unlikely event they're aware of who he is.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
But he'd fuck it up. Like he fucks everything up.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
The wisdom of bombing Qatar is TBD. But the way we talk about Israel is very strange. No curiosity about why Israel bombed these places.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Everything Banksy does is lame
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
I find this consoling
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
This'll be good
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Is Labour strategy to squeeze the Reform vote but do so without actually attacking Reform?
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Fair point. But I do think Labour needs to find a way to tackle this head on. Otherwise, the far right gets to talk about it unimpeded.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
It works. That's a big area.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Next week Congressman Fuckface of Florida grills Brighton & Hove MP about roadworks in The Lanes: "we demand answers"
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
More of this
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
It's the doing stuff that's been proven not to work. How did going easy on Farage work out for the tories?
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Displaying human remains should be treated with care and sensitivity, but there's no excuse for a museum refusing to display an artifact because they disapprove of how the public might react.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Next to a picture of an elected politician.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Exactly. It's extremely important not to cede patriotism to the far right. Tell Musk to get lost.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
I did not know the Bolsheviks operated submarines in 1919.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
It's more important to be able to identify the situations where are child may be at risk and the indications that something is not right. This shifts, but does not solve, the problem.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
I see the attraction but this isn't really comparing like with like. One's a novel political movement, the other's a well established leisure activity. Comparing the two doesn't tell you anything.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Probably true. Then again, there's a danger of thinking these people are somehow above the problems that normie pols deal with. He'll be unpopular, facing huge economic problems largely of his own making and at the mercy of unforseen events.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Get this sort of thing about lot. Do you throw it away? What if it's there for some inscrutable reason? What if you chuck it and get into trouble?
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Interesting to see if it prises farmers away from Reform.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
If I were a wasp, I'd be a total cunt. Even the other wasps would be like "Jesus, Toby, tone it down a bit."
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Tiny military? Back in the day, a big chunk of the population would have had some kind of connection to the forces.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
Tbf Putin is the expert in this
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
In my last office job I had a friend who reckoned the HR department was like the Catholic church in the middle ages. They didn't produce anything but were somehow very powerful and were always there, telling you what you weren't allowed to do.
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Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Not to downplay the fact that so many journalists have died in Gaza and seemingly targeted by the Israeli government in many instances, both of which are things I believe and should be condemned unequivocally, but doesn’t the Watson School claim only 69 journalists died in WW2 not give you pause?
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Alan Owlport 🦉 🎃 @alanallport.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Tens of millions of Britons were upset when they changed Marathon bars to Snickers. I am sceptical about how much revolutionary change they really want.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Harold Pinter
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Know what he means. I can also remember this being said about the 70s. It had started to seem not just distant but strange. Maybe there's a thirty year rule. After a certain amount of time has passed, the weirdness begins to take centre stage.
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tobysaul.bsky.social @tobysaul.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
In my mind I have her supporters claiming it was on the front pages and dominated the news for days. I'm now wondering if my memory is exaggerating and they weren't that bad. I'm just adding another layer of myth. One day this thing will be as long as the Aeneid.
days.im
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