Starmerism Down Under Anthony Albanese’s Australian Labor Party is competing with Starmer’s for blandness and capitulation — and in doing so, proving the importance of rebuilding international working-class power.

vg article on this from a while ago
tribunemag.co.uk/2025/06/star...

Won the famous Prince George pub quiz for the first time in ages, with @bat020.bsky.social and others

tangentially this has been doing the rounds on twitter recently. are there any chickens here perchance. will they be coming home to roost any time soon. /fin

RT 🔒 >> He also followed that Assaf Kaplan unit 8200 guy (no relation to Ivor) on twitter vefore he even got the ominous sounding 'social listening role' in labour

Liron Velleman's Blog The Marketplace of Ideas at The Times of Israel

the Times of Israel is considered one of the more respectable papers in the entity for what it's worth. this isn't just some crazy guy in the Jerusalem Post.
blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/liron...

Jewish councillor resigns from Barnet Council and leaves Labour Group - Jewish News By-election will be held in Whetstone after the shock resignation

"Sources told Jewish News the surprise move was 'not down to any political reasons', but they remained tight-lipped about what had prompted the development." www.jewishnews.co.uk/velleman-res...

JLM pro-Israel organiser Velleman ‘forced to resign’ as councillor ‘under cloud of darkness’ Right-winger and mate of ex-Israeli embassy fellow councillor out as Barnet councillor with no explanation from Starmer’s Labour Liron Velleman, front. Inset: Ella Rose-Jacobs during her infa…

more details of the chap here. bit of an operator by the sounds of it.
skwawkbox.org/2025/04/04/j...

Tories slam Labour after Barnet councillor resigns "under a cloud of darkness" Liron Velleman quit as a councillor this morning having left the Labour group yesterday reports David Floyd

hullo hullo, looks like one of JLM's senior cadre has just politically evaporated overnight in very mysterious circumstances.
barnetpost.co.uk/2025/04/02/t...

Tesla is hanging by a thread. With collapse in resale market they are toast.

coming soon:

'Starmerism without Starmer'

one bizarre thing about that old Ford/Goodwin book on UKIP is that its data clearly showed the UKIP vote as coming from "ex Labour voters" who last voted Labour some time in the 70s/80s! – ie they would be better described as "ex Tory voters", but their narrative constantly tries to elide this.

the other thing the report doesn't seem to go into is the allegations that HBOS parted company with Reeves when it became clear that she was taking time off to go canvas while claiming she had a dental appointment or something.

some of the details in this BBC investigation of Reeves at HBOS are jaw dropping. this is a regulated retail finance company. every employee has to take a compliance test once a year that covers exactly why this sort of behaviour is a big fat nope. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

quick thread on how Trump's manner is gonna intensify the crises within the US's Western allies. all imho and who the f am I ofc.

have to say I found Candy's account more plausible lol

one funny thing I read on wikipedia is that Bowie says he was on 10g coke a day during the shoot, didn't have to "act" since he was barely on the planet as it was etc; Candy Clark in contrast recalls that Bowie was clean as a whistle and punctiliously professional throughout.

last time I saw it was on BBC2 as a teenager and I was kinda baffled by it so was slightly reassured to find out this wasn't just me being an ingenue.

went to see The Man Who Fell To Earth on the big screen last night and while the shots of New Mexico are amazing and Bowie is a treat, I'd kinda forgotten that pretty much nothing happens in the final third of the film.

the 1976 bbc horror series BEASTS: specifically this episode (= "Baby")

(@bat020.bsky.social posted this image on twitter last year and the hairs on my arms stood up in shock-memory)

Count Dracula (Horror) BBC - British Broadcasting Company -1977 YouTube video by The Made-For-Television Movie

... which is online here!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6TA...

Nosfera³ perhaps.

Dafoe is clearly having a whale of a time.

incidentally my favourite version of Dracula is the BBC 1977 version starring Louis Jourdain as the count with an amazing turn by Susan Penhaligan as a truly terrifying Lucy.

thumbs up for Nosferatu, an atmospheric and original take on classic material. tips over into the hammy at times but hey it is a vampire movie. ending worked well I thought.

read that play for English Lit O-level. loved it.

some context from the other place

this is the Guardian from 2002 reporting on "chaotic scenes" as Le Pen tried to launch his presidential bid at the European Parliament. my mission that day was to take a day trip to Brussels and foment precisely such scenes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2002/a...

seeing as the body of an enemy is floating by – here's a snap of the Anti Nazi League website in April 2003, hand coded by me in HTML using Windows Notepad.

wayback machine link:
web.archive.org/web/20030601...

I wonder if he's just past caring now. there's nothing he can do to stop the rot and there's nothing the company can do to get rid of him.

PSA: commutative diagrams in category theory are MUCH easier to read when drawn from right to left.