Fortuna Desperata

Painted artwork of a stylised female figure, a white woman as a queen with a crown and golden robes holding a red rose and surrounded by heart motifs, organic lines and a dashed border

Queen of Hearts, 1909, by Margaret Macdonald, one of the defining artists of the Scottish Arts and Crafts Movement #womensart

WE RAN OUT OF TIME FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

says Fiona Bruce at the end of Question Time

*Green Party bingo cards explode across the nation*

"That your babies not be degenerates" 😨

By the 1920s Neosalvarsan ('the new arsenic [compound] that saves"), Ehrlich & Hata's 'magic bullet', was fortunately available as an effective treatment. Not sure British public health information would have been as explicit and blunt.

Unmarried women over 25 used to be called ‘Catherinettes’ and parade in exotic hats once a year.

I just mistyped ‘which’ and auto-correct offered me ‘feuchtwanger’. I’m not even joking.

Georges Hagnauer, un miroitier aux multiples talents | Gazette Drouot Le passage en vente publique de trois vitraux de Georges Hagnauer réalisés pour le siège du journal Le Petit Parisien en avril dernier à Drouot a mis en avant...

A stained glass window for the offices of the Petit Parisien newspaper, showing it rolling off the press

www.gazette-drouot.com/article/geor...

Received an email today inviting me to vote in the deputy leader election, which I did. Have never been a Labour Party member, but belong to a union which is affiliated. I don't recall ever having been invited to vote in a Labour Party election before, though.

'This is what farming with climate change looks like': England endures second worst harvest on record New analysis confirms three of the five worst harvests on record have occurred in the past five years on the back of extreme heat, drought, and rainfall

That England has had its three worst harvests on record inside the past five years really should be being treated as a much bigger cause for concern than is currently the case. www.businessgreen.com/news/4520171...

It was the London Eye of its day, the tallest building in London 1964-80, with a revolving restaurant and a viewing gallery, which closed in 1971 after a bomb attack. I remember it being something to wonder at on childhood visits to London in the 1970s.

#moon #trees #photography #fullmoon

Sweden Quran burnings: How the Kremlin benefits – DW – 08/08/2023 The Swedish government is dealing with increased terrorist threats sparked by repeated Quran burnings. Now Russia appears to be instrumentalizing the issue.

The authorities in Finland & Sweden see public Quran burning as serving Russian disinfo campaigns in the Islamic world, as with the action outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm that derailed and delayed the Swedish application to join NATO. See Deutsche Welle in 2023 www.dw.com/en/sweden-qu...

They lionised a woman for calling for hotels full of asylum seekers to be set on fire. Now they're lionising a man who set fire to a Quran in public.

The far-right, whether it's Reform UK or Conservatives, are championing the cause of those who will violently tear our society apart.

Reprehensible.

Is Jenrick being Putin's useful idiot here?

Sweden Quran burnings: How the Kremlin benefits – DW – 08/08/2023 The Swedish government is dealing with increased terrorist threats sparked by repeated Quran burnings. Now Russia appears to be instrumentalizing the issue.

The authorities in Finland & Sweden see public Quran burning as serving Russian disinfo campaigns in the Islamic world, as with the action outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm that derailed and delayed the Swedish application to join NATO. See Deutsche Welle in 2023 www.dw.com/en/sweden-qu...

Robert Badinter, who ended France's guillotine era, enters the Panthéon Robert Badinter, the lawyer and former justice minister who led France to end the death penalty, will be inducted into the Panthéon in Paris on Thursday – 44 years to the day after the abolition law…

www.rfi.fr/en/france/20...

The French Republic awards its highest honour, interment in the Paris Pantheon, to Robert Badinter, death penalty abolitionist, 44 years to the day after the law he introduced ending executions in France took effect. A very different civic culture from that of Westminster Abbey...

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that Tim Stanley went to boarding school.

Psychologically both Reform and the Tories are now in a “border poll” headspace for NI - see Suella saying if leaving the ECHR was an issue for GFA there should be a border poll

Scottish independence will be next as what they will accept to get the england they want

Agreed. There was a pretty strong pushback against Welsh and Scottish devolution under the Tories (Gove and his muscular unionism) and English devolution doesn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

One correction - devolution doesn’t remain unchallenged

Alex Burghart said at the conference that the Tories will roll back Welsh and Scottish devolution because it’s “failed”

The UK is in collective denial about the damage a populist nationalist government could do given thd absence of checks and balances in our system. Not sure why, since we had a pretty close run a few years ago.

The Dog that Caught the Car: Britain's 'World-Leading' Internet Billed as a “world-leading” child-protection law, the UK’s Online Safety Act has instead normalized surveillance and ID checks. “Tech policy wonk" Heather Burns writes that the model is spreading acro...

(ahem)
internet.exchangepoint.tech/the-dog-that...

I'll be in my "I told you so" yurt. It's an imaginary yurt. But it's a yurt.

UK watchdog monitors Tricolor and First Brands collapse for private credit risks Failures of two US companies reliant on asset-based lending prove ‘useful case studies’, FCA says

it's fine it's fine nothing to see here

www.ft.com/content/fa7b...

There's certainly no guarantee that experience will produce effective ministers. (Look at Chris Grayling). But the same individual will almost certainly be better qualified to govern with experience than without it.

Ed Miliband...

And look at Wilson. In Attlee’s cabinet in 1947, chair of the PAC, shadow chancellor and foreign secretary before he even became leader in 1963.

Rishi Sunak is clearly a talented man. But he went from new MP to former prime minister in 9 years. By the same stage in her career, Margaret Thatcher was Shadow Minister for Transport, having held a series of junior ministerial and shadow roles!

The decline in participation in groups (note also the decline in memberships of Rotary, the Masons, WNCs, social clubs and even pubs) is possibly a reason why people end up being potty online.

Man working at Leicester Station (looking down at the tracks): I can’t see it.
His colleague: What?
Man: Her shoe.
His colleague: Whose shoe?
Man: The lawyer’s. It fell onto the tracks this morning. She had to go off to court wearing one shoe.