October is here. That means Streatham Festival is just around the corner! Check out the full programme here: streathamfestival.com

Streatham Festival kicks off next weekend. Have you seen our festival banners yet? streathamfestival.com

Dear the Edstone - All is forgiven

This is properly embarrassing

Steve Reed’s aide blocks members’ vote on Mandelson scandal A meeting in the Streatham and Croydon North constituency was this week banned from discussing a motion that called for an investigation into how the Blairite peer with a paedophile pal came to be …

Steve Reed's aide blocks members' vote on Mandelson scandal insidecroydon.com/2025/09/28/s... #Croydon #Streatham #Mandelson #McSweeney @left-foot-forward.bsky.social @labourlist.bsky.social @fisherandrew79.bsky.social

Mrs R: "There was a woman on the ward today who didn't want to take paracetamol. We've had to explain that we're not giving it to her because she's got a fever and we want her to feel better, but because she's got a fever and if we don't get her temperature down then her baby is going to die."

YouTube video by Ton Har Blasphemers' Banquet - Tony Harrison BBC

"Voltaire, me, Molière, Omar Khayyám, Lord Byron, and that - that's Salman Rushdie's chair."

The Blasphemers' Banquet, of 1989

Remembering Tony Harrison

Background: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bla...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p19s...

Sad to hear Tony Harrison has died. In The early days of the Indy I suggested we print all of V in the paper, so that people could read what they were being told to be outraged about. Didn't reach the end of the sentence before Andreas Whittam-Smith said yes. Never proof read anything so carefully.

The great Tony Harrison has died. With others such as Raymond Williams he represented a post-war breakthrough that the philistine assault on education threatens: the possibility of being working class while storming the heights of the most elite culture and transforming it

Tony Harrison RIP
I taught Long Distance, his beautiful & honest poem about bereavement to my students for decades.
Eventually, it provided consolation to me as well.

Tony Harrison V.

RIP

Lambeth Lib Dems Raise Urgent Concerns as Streatham Police Teams Move Out Amid Rising ASB Lambeth Lib Democrats have expressed deep concern over the decision to relocate the Streatham Wells and Streatham Common & Vale Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs) from their base at 326-328 Streatham Hi...

A curious story of musical chairs for local policing in Streatham.

Hard to believe five Streatham neighbourhood teams cannot fit into the police base in The Dip now there is no "front counter" there.
@insidecroydon.bsky.social
@brixtonbuzz.bsky.social

www.lambethlibdems.org.uk/news/article...

Charlie Kirk, Not In His Own Words: We Honor The Right-Wing Activist By Making Up Quotes That Sound Much Better, Given The Moment

This Week's Onion Magazine:

Carter-Ruck: the libel firm trying to cover up that they'd acted for the $4bn OneCoin fraud Libel firm Carter-Ruck used the threat of legal action to protect one of the world's largest financial frauds, OneCoin, which stole $4 billion from investors. Carter-Ruck's client, Ruja Ignatova, is n...

"Libel firm Carter-Ruck used the threat of legal action to protect one of the world's largest financial frauds, OneCoin, which stole $4 billion from investors.

"Carter-Ruck's client, Ruja Ignatova, is now one of the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives."
open.substack.com/pub/taxpolic...

TURNER PROFIT The arrival of GB News presenter and unhinged conspiracy theorist Bev Turner in Washington, where she is to helm a late-night programme for GB News, could cause havoc for Number Ten. The White House is rolling out the red carpet for Turner, already anointing her as Donald Trump’s favourite reporter from across the pond. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the show’s launch party, declaring: “GB News is going to be bringing a lot more common sense to the great people of the United Kingdom.” She may follow up by handing GB News the BBC’s coveted seat in the White House briefing room (currently shared with Newsweek magazine). BBC hacks would then be left shouting questions from the rear of the room, along with other outlets dismissed by the administration as “legacy media”. Trump is beguiled by Turner, as Starmer witnessed during the president’s July visit to Ayrshire. After flying to Turnberry aboard Air Force One, she was granted multiple opportunities to question Trump as the PM squirmed alongside him. Turner’s questions about the PM’s handling of immigration, inheritance tax on farmers, and overblown US claims that the Online Safety Act is choking free speech in Britain, allowed Trump to vent his hostility towards key UK government policies. GB News is open about its determination to turn Turner’s programme into open mic night for Trump insiders. “We need as many as possible of you… to appear on our channel,” co-owner Paul Marshall told the assembled Trumpists at the launch. “We need to Make Britain Great Again… we need you to come and save us, to rescue us.” Given his urgent need to stem the channel’s financial losses, he may also hope US viewers sign up for GB News subscriptions and rescue him from yet more rivers of red ink.

GB News risks beating the BBC out of its place at White House press conferences, according to Private Eye.

It's hugely loss making - but vying for influence. And bringing Trumpism to the UK.

Every day it's becoming clearer that GB News is a far-right political project.

(Excuse pic - see alt text)

Google maps of walking route from Therapia Lane tram stop to Anspach & Hobday brewery taproom.

Isn't the Anspach & Hobday taproom considerably closer to Therapia Lane tram stop than to the Ampere Way stop near Ikea?

Reform's contempt for the rule of law is very obvious

🚨Read and repost!
Peter Thiel’s ideas should never be normalised.

Good grief

The turn to censorship/cancel culture is actually an opportunity for liberalism. A chance to get back to its philosophical roots, having been too censorious for too long, and a chance to be subversive again, too long ceded to the populist right.

*THIS SUNDAY*
Just a few tickets left (£5) for my 2pm walk around Streatham's Secret Garden

@heartstreatham.bsky.social @insidecroydon.bsky.social
@streathamstuff.bsky.social
@streatfest.bsky.social

Despite the bucolic scene chosen by the bot, I don't think this afternoon's delays were due to sheep on the line between Norbury and Thornton Heath.

Shame on Downing Street for going along with this. So much for being committed to a free press

Once again, it is the political satirists I feel sorry for.

Streatham has a free film festival on that looks extremely cool. The Outrun! Hundreds of Beavers! cc @juanincognito.bsky.social freefilmfestivals.org/filmfestival...

Make sure to put October 18th in your diary, and invite your friends to Streatham for a day out.

*THIS SUNDAY*
Just a few tickets left (£5) for my 2pm walk around Streatham's Secret Garden

@heartstreatham.bsky.social @insidecroydon.bsky.social
@streathamstuff.bsky.social
@streatfest.bsky.social

The drift of Conservative politicians towards outright racism is quite extraordinary.

Susan Hall has always had some unusual views - but this is still radicalisation compared to last year.

This just makes me want to scream. Quickly throwing up tower blocks of "luxury apartments" so badly built they have to be evacuated less than 3 years after they were finished is not going to solve the housing crisis. It's such a waste of land, money &resources

Does anyone think that a new era of building deregulation to meet Steve Reed's "Build, Baby, Build" agenda is going to guarantee better results than this disaster???

The 7pm screening is preceded by live folk music from 5.30 and Lucknow2London tiffin.
Please share news with anyone who likes Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet, Indian Street Food and/or seeing inside Victorian Gothic churches!
@heartstreatham.bsky.social @brixtonbuzz.bsky.social @streatfest.bsky.social