Профиль

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented so far! It's great to see this resonated with quite a few people.

Incidentally the Brighton large street bins have signs on them telling people not to sleep in there; I wonder whether this is unique to us?

Since I posted about English town decline, if anyone is interested in a literary depiction of this, the best I know is in Hollinghurst's Our Evenings; it's beautifully handled, an elegy for twentieth- and twenty-first century small-town England that is truthful, sometimes ugly, profoundly moving.

Just catching up with the news from my childhood hometown, and the big story is that the former BHS building (one of the biggest retail buildings in town, prominent central location) has now been derelict (and looks it) for a whole decade. This in a generally fairly prosperous town.

Now I understand why people romanticise the cavalry's role.

One of my most centrist views on US matters is that Maggie Haberman seems like a good journalist; her reporting on Trump is insightful (and unflattering as accurate reporting on him inevitably is). I‘ve been hearing for years that she’s a pro-Trump stooge but still baffled by this popular view.

Exactly this - Fascists have always been fascinated by human possibility even as they destroy it, and by (what we might euphemistically call) exploration of new territories in both spatial and technological senses.

Given the nature and scale of the crimes this sentence is inadequate. This was an attack on human dignity comparable to an atrocity in war or the degradations a serial killer might apply to victims. Should be no route back to general society for such a person. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Hull funeral director who left bodies to rot in mortuary jailed for 20 yearsMore than 80 loved ones spoke of horrors of learning about Robert Bush’s crimes, including mother of a miscarried babywww.theguardian.com

I’m not a Burnhamite and the honeymoon won’t last - but I do think how much more competent he is has made hardcore Starmerites look pretty silly. Like holding on to a chef who keeps setting the kitchen on fire and blaming others, after getting in a competent person those who opposed look even worse.

Funny to think a couple of weeks back I was in front of a direct descendant of someone named here.

I'm biased, but I think this articulates something important.