Rich Messenger

Honestly, it's a decent place! City centre isn't quite what it was 15 years ago, admittedly, but JQ is great, the good suburbs are better than ever and the less good bits are kinda just the same as any other city really. The worst thing is the roads, but there are plenty of nice parks and trees.

OK, it seems like they're not really trying to spin it so much as make up outright lies (paid, bused-in antifa; chants of 'death to America' and 'death to the UK'.)
I guess it's good that with every interaction their credibility with anyone other than a handful of nazis on X is dropping?

Stirchley community coming together; a pint at Attic after a dog walk past the carillon playing Bach; a Mateta hat-trick; making French onion soup; listening to Liza Tarbuck while looking at photos of the joyous crowds in America; it's been a nice day considering I'm on my own for the weekend.

But really I think their main target audience isn't normal people anyway, it's the far right on X and Facebook who will actually donate money to them. They don't really need to spin it for those guys.

Yep, I was there for maybe 45 minutes and in that time it was a strong turnout of mostly people who live close by, and it was all really friendly and good natured. My guess is that they focus on it being a protest against the poppy flag specifically, maybe?

Fun to see an inflatable frog costume in the flesh(?) at the Stirchley thing. It's a good trend! (Also thanks to everyone who said hello to my dog - he appreciated it.)

At least the swifts still seem to be doing ok here. They nest on Bosbury Terrace every year, and numbers were definitely higher this summer than the last few. Always wondered what was special about those houses compared to the similar Victorian terraces nearby - they never nest on Warren or Hunts Rd

Government U-turns on support for bird-friendly swift bricks in new homes Housing minister Steve Reed refuses to back mandating measure, despite giving support while in environment job

I know I'm just repeating myself here, but this is so stupid. The obsession with 'red tape' is preventing easy wins that have virtually no public opposition. It's cheap! It's simple! People like swifts! What are you doing?!

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

So it feels like a bit of a waste that I haven't even opened Photoshop in over a decade. But what would I even use it for in this sad, post-UBB world?
Oh well. The moral of the story I guess is that whatever you're doing now is probably a lot better than you think it is.

Oh wow, I just found some folders of old banners I made for forums circa 2001-2007. Nostalgic, but also when I look at the later ones especially, it's like... what the hell, did I really make that? I never realised they were that good at the time.

I say _should_ be; it does depend on people actually pushing back. I'm not confident that our government will actually do so in any coherent way, and even less so that organisations like the BBC will.

This should be extremely easy to argue against. There are so many examples of hypocrisy from 'free speech advocates', and some fairly obvious examples one could bring up of restrictions on free speech which I think almost everyone supports.

The final paragraphs are important too: X is now just as much of a bubble as Bluesky, and it's quite a lot further away from how the median person in this country thinks. And I mean, at least we're _aware_ that Bluesky is a bubble; I'm not sure that the people still on X even realise it.

Yep, I had to briefly go on there for something specific yesterday, and it's even worse than I'd imagined, far worse than when I left a year ago. There's just no way to get any enjoyment or any use out of it now, so what's the point?

Kinda wish trip hop would make a come back. There's only so many times you can listen to Dummy and Maxinquaye, but nothing else quite hits the spot when you want melancholy but without feeling like you're back in 6th form or something.

Anyway, I'm sure the quotes are all bullshit to cover up a far right agenda. We know that. But even the cover story doesn't really make much sense to me - it would be really quite stupid and naive to think that the flags alone could ever have a positive effect on the country.

There's a bit of an elephant in the room here, and that's Brexit. Ironically I think the best way of bringing back a sense of unity, positivity and making people like me less put off by our flag would be to rejoin the EU. But I don't suppose Bridge is in favour of that for some reason.

But if you want to help bring that back then actually do something positive! Start a band, write a book, make minorities feel more welcome rather than less, boost public spending, support good things that people enjoy. Flags without that stuff are pointless.

...is never going to succeed in bringing back those good times. White middle class liberals don't hate this country! But just seeing the union jack on a lamppost isn't going to raise our spirits when everything is shit. Most of us would quite like to feel some of that mid-90s positivity again, sure;

London 2012 wasn't that long ago, for example; plenty of us felt some pride then, and flags caused no controversy. But flags used as a reaction to negative conditions? Not so much. History has given us plenty of examples of why this isn't a good thing, and simply putting up flags...

...white, middle class liberals actually feel about the country and flag. I think it comes down to this: people, including middle class liberals, generally have no opposition to - and may even partake in - use of the flag in response to positive changes and events.

Lamp-post flags organiser has 'no regrets' over movement Ryan Bridge says despite a mixed response to thousands of St George's Cross flags, there are positives.

Obviously what he says is almost certainly untrue, but even if we take it at face value, I think Bridge shows a real lack of understanding of the set of conditions that gave rise to 'Cool Britannia', as well as about how... [Rant incoming] www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Oh yeah, of course. I just saw some of the videos from yesterday and it looks like the opposition is getting bigger each time though, so that's something.

"That's wrong that is. These woke fuckers are gonna get what's coming to them". (I guess it's possible he was filming rather than talking to himself, who knows.)

What's the deal with these latest ones? Bit of a different theme this time. They didn't seem to please the strange fellow I just passed outside Burger-Me-Up, who was taking photos of them and talking to himself:

Scarecrow II, by The Telephone Numbers 10 track album

This is good. A warm, nostalgic kind of album, and quite a rare one where the slow songs really hold their own amongst the more uptempo ones. 2025 is quietly turning out to be a pretty good year for indiepop, I think!

thetelephonenumbers.bandcamp.com/album/scarec...

...descended from fighting breeds. Writing about the former is fine, if you think that's worthy of attention, but trying to use it as a criticism of the DDA is intentionally misleading and not really understanding what the public is concerned about.

And this year so far, there have only been 2 deaths - if this holds for a couple more months, it would be bettered by only two years since 2001.

As is often the case, it's a failure to distinguish between a nip from a Pomeranian and a mauling from a 50kg dog...

Why dog attacks are still rising - even after the XL bully ban With close to 32,000 dog attacks recorded in England and Wales last year, is there a better solution?

Quite an astonishingly poor article. How can you write so many words on the subject and fail to mention the fact that in 2024 fatalities were down 75% on 2023 (16 to 4), and lower than 2022 and 2021? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Rachel Reeves clears planning blockage amid ‘good relationship’ with developer Exclusive: Chancellor says 20,000 homes were being held up due to ‘some snails that are a protected species or something’

Utterly beholden to lobbyists, staggeringly ignorant and dismissive of the natural world: Rachel Reeves might not look or sound like Donald Trump, but she is behaving very much like him. This government is even more of an ecological hazard than the Tories were.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...