Current Affairs
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 →
🇮🇪 “Ireland’s peacekeepers in Lebanon are putting their lives on the line. I know – I was one of them”
Since 1958, Ireland has sent troops to global conflicts on almost every continent. We have had a peacekeeping battalion with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) in south Lebanon on a continuous basis since 1978. The relationship is so deep-rooted that in the Irish area of operations, close to the border with Israel, there are local Lebanese people who speak English with broad Irish accents.
Senator Tom Clonan, in The Guardian.
Friday, October 4, 2024 →
👋🏼 Don’t let the door hit you on the way out…
West Ham owner says non-dom crackdown is driving wealthy from the UK:
David Sullivan, the British businessman who co-owns West Ham United football club, has cut the asking price of his London house by £10m and has blamed the promised crackdown on non-doms for rich people leaving the country. Sullivan, the chair and biggest single shareholder of the Premier League club, has reduced the price of his 21,000 sq ft town townhouse in Marylebone to £65m as he said he had to be “realistic” about market conditions.
Thursday, October 3, 2024
🗺️ Oh, they appear to be at it again…
The graphic appeared on a 1 minute 25 second video clip which featured Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attending the UN General Assembly in New York last week. Under the caption “global challenges rebound on us at home”, a map of the British Isles …
Friday, September 27, 2024 →
Oh. Maggie Smith. What an incredible talent. We were lucky to have her. RIP.
Tuesday, July 30, 2024 →
🇮🇪 Nice to see Ireland on the Olympics medal table. An incredible bronze medal for Mona McSharry in the 100m breaststroke.
Saturday, July 27, 2024 →
🥇 New post: An Olympic effort
To me, it was such a refreshing change to have the ceremony away from the enclosure of a stadium. Why wouldn’t you use the beauty of Paris - one of the most stunning cities in the world - as your backdrop, when you know the world is watching?
Tuesday, July 23, 2024 →
📺 Aaaand…. that’s enough news about elections for today. I’m out.
Monday, July 22, 2024 →
🚨 Finally, they’re going to investigate the fraud committed during the pandemic.
From The Guardian:
Chancellor understood to believe £2.6bn of public money lost to fraudsters during pandemic could be recouped
Wednesday, July 17, 2024 →
Disappointed to see no mention of “banning speakerphone in public” in this morning’s King’s Speech to parliament.
Time to start a petition, I think…
Friday, July 5, 2024 →
📸 The morning after…
My Apple Watch tells me I got four hours sleep last night. And that wasn’t event a solid four hours, but split across the whole night. And it shows!
No regrets, though - I got to see history in the making. And now? More coffee…
Friday, July 5, 2024
So my plan to stay up night to watch the election failed miserably 🤣
My last memory is of about 2am and I woke up again at 5:30am. That said, I’m waking up to some amazing news.
Not just a Labour victory - an overwhelming one - but some delicious results and the exit of some of the nastier and …
Thursday, July 4, 2024 →
🗳️ I’ve brought my duvet and pillows out onto the sofa so I can keep watching the election results. I’m going to attempt to power through for a couple more hours. I have drinks and snacks galore and I’m enjoying a delicious Majorcan beer to celebrate the exit poll.
Thursday, July 4, 2024 →
So, I’ve finished work for the week and I’m not sure what to do with myself between now and 10pm, when the exit polls are published.
Too wound up to have a nap (yes really!) and I’m all caught up on my favourite podcasts. Maybe some comics for a bit of escapism…?
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Honestly. I’m quite literally counting the hours until I can vote in the general election and then sit back and watch the results come in. It’s been a long 14 years of chaos and mismanagement under a series of weak and ineffectual Tory governments - despite their sometimes massive Commons majorities …
Tuesday, July 2, 2024 →
🗳️ After a quick scan of the news headlines, I can only conclude: Thursday can’t come soon enough.
We need to bin these desperate, lying, ineffectual grifters. Vote!
Thursday, June 27, 2024 →
🗳️ I missed last night’s political debate between Sunak and Starmer, opting instead to enjoy dinner with friends.
Rather than getting frustrated with an evasive, prickly and out of touch Tory laughing stock spreading outright lies about the Labour party’s plans for government, I enjoyed a delicious tasting menu at ‘Six by Nico’ and tales from my friends' recent cruise on the Queen Mary 2 back from New York.
I think I made the right choice.
Friday, June 21, 2024
I watched last night’s Question Time special on the BBC, where each of the four main party leaders were grilled by an audience of the public. Four very different performances. John Swinney from the SNP was calm but fighting a losing battle with a largely English audience. Ed Davey was human, polite …
Friday, June 21, 2024 →
🗳️ It’s like a game of fascist bingo…
Nigel Farage has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.
Of course.
When asked to list the best leaders in the western world, Farage named Hungary’s rightwing leader, Viktor Orbán, a “strong leader”, and his “friend” Donald Trump, the US presidential candidate.
The Guardian: Farage said Andrew Tate was ‘important voice’ for men in podcast interview
Thursday, June 20, 2024 →
☀️ Successfully avoided another game of international kickball. Popped in my Airpods and lay out in the sunshine on my balcony. The streets below were deserted as everyone went in to watch “Ingerlaaaand”…. draw with Denmark.
Ahem.
Thursday, June 20, 2024 →
And politicians wonder why the public has lost trust in them?
Another Tory candidate has allegedly placed a bet on the date of the election. And her husband is the Tory head of campaigns. Who has just gone on a ‘leave of absence’…
Tories gonna Tory.
From The Guardian:
The Conservative party has confirmed its director of campaigning Tony Lee took a leave of absence on Wednesday. His wife, Laura Saunders, is being looked into by the gambling watchdog over an alleged bet on the general election date.
Tuesday, June 18, 2024 →
We’re two weeks out from a general election, but at 6pm, instead of the news, the BBC is showing (wait for it) football. Turkey vs Georgia, to be precise. This country’s obsession with football is something else.
Tuesday, June 18, 2024 →
🇹🇭 Congrats to Thailand for recognising marriage equality 🏳️🌈
Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality. Country on track to become third in Asia – after Taiwan and Nepal – to legalise same-sex marriage
More here…
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
With a little over two weeks until the general election, I’m feeling a real mix of excitement and worry. I’m excited at the very real chance that the Tories will be decimated and kept out of office for the foreseeable. I’m worried that indifference and overconfidence will keep many away from the …
Friday, May 3, 2024 →
🗳️ These local election and by-election results are giving me life this morning.
Schadenfreude? Absolutely. I’m hoping the assorted thugs, bigots and idiots in Downing Street had a very, very sleepless night.
Next up: Sunak calls a general election and we wipe the Tories off the map.
Saturday, September 16, 2023 →
Oh. It looks like the Tories are going to fuck up another infrastructure project. What a surprise. Sunak knows he’ll never have to depend on public transport. He’s above such things. He just hops in a helicopter…
“Ending the line at Old Oak Common is pretty much the definition of a railway to nowhere.”
HS2’s Euston station at risk as Old Oak Common emerges as potential London terminus
Friday, July 21, 2023 →
Just spotted that Tony Bennett has died
During a career that spanned seven decades, the crooner sold millions of records and won 20 Grammys, including a lifetime achievement award.
I was lucky enough to see him perform live at the Royal Albert Hall many years ago and was blown away by his energy and his sense of humour. He was a giant of popular music.
Wednesday, July 12, 2023 →
Spotted on my walk around Shoreditch this morning…
Friday, July 7, 2023 →
I don’t know where to start with this.
Of course these reactionary Tories are against anything that could improve working lives. They spread an over-simplified, fear-based message and propagate it with dark money from fascists in the US.
A rightwing lobby group that doesn’t declare its donors is spearheading a campaign to undermine the spread of the four-day week in the UK.
Rightwing lobby group campaigns to undermine UK four-day week, The Guardian.
Thursday, June 29, 2023 →
Picturing Suella Braverman weeping into her coffee this morning:
“The court heard from UNHCR that Rwanda had a record of human rights abuses towards refugees within its borders, including refoulement – forced removal to countries where they are at risk – expulsions and arbitrary detention. The refugee agency warned that the Home Office would not be able to guarantee the safety of asylum seekers who were deported to the east African country.”
Full story here, from the Guardian