Michael Merrick

Away for the night. No Shaboozey. Bliss.

Can't resist the old Ladybird books - January, by Ron Lampitt

Western Motel - Edward Hopper, 1957
Source : Yale University Art gallery, New Haven (Connecticut) 🇺🇸

I have tried, Ben. Lord knows I have tried. And Oasis, and the Verve, and Travis, even went as far as Del Amitri. Nothing. Might have to go full hog and break out the Corrs/Savage Garden combo

After what must be the 15th repeat of Tipsy by 'Shaboozey' just today, I have reluctantly concluded we made a huge strategic mistake in having Alexa devices dotted about the house. Initial high hopes of the kids choosing solid content - Cash, say - have proven naive. Intervention required.

It needs to scale up to trust level. At the minute it is competing in that space where LAs or Trusts should be, but the real gap in the system is system level Trust diagnostics and support. If a MAT inspection framework is to come in, I can't see how this gap can remain.

...or complaining unis are 'woke factories' whilst insisting all teachers/nurses/social workers etc have degrees.

Brook didn't paint Cumbria much, but when he did, you just knew it'd be a drizzly mist

Photo of a sculpture in Wood resembling a person swimming from the front view with arm raised and bent and head hidden in small wave splashes

'The Swimmer', wooden sculpture by contemporary New York based sculptor Stefanie Rocknak #WomensArt

Well, because we bought the lie that we must meet certain career, wealth and asset thresholds before having children, a very novel idea and one that afflicts wealthy societies most acutely.

Road to Snowdon, 2022, painting by Welsh artist Sarah Evans @sarahevansart.bsky.social.

Print featuring a calm lake or pond at sunrise or sunset with three ducks, on the shore is a silhouette of three trees, all under a golden sky

Contemporary printmaker Alexandra Buckle #WomensArt

And how has that worked out? With a political mess and people getting legitimately angry because folk seem more interested in issuing footnote trivia than recognising the size and scale of the injustice. In truth, the well ackshully position is rarely a sign of getting to grips with an issue.

Just not sure we can give it the well ackshully to a whole bunch of people now lumped with a lifetime tax that wasn't really made terribly clear to them beforehand, and all to get the credentials that the state insisted they have to do the jobs the state needs them to do

To Mass.

The Calling of Simon and Peter, Caravaggio

Sure - I appreciate it

Have respnded to that o the thread. And no the biggest predictor is education. But since low-income is a reasonably secure predictor of poverty, it also doesn't really allow too much space to quibble for nuance.

Is the suggestion here that income and education level need controlled by age? That makes sense, though the overlap is across the age phases - so younger working class without a degree also included, though a smaller cohort obvs. My hunch is (eg) those putting flags up weren't Green voters

What damage has been done this country by those performatively showing they're respectable actually and nothing like that brutish working class lot over there. The old English class-consciousness has not gone away and it's as toxic as ever.

Non-negligible reason the status-conscious educated classes detest Reform is to distinguish themselves from the low-status opinion-havers who primarily reside there

Interesting that after 10 years of the two main political parties squabbling over who best represents the working class, the working class themselves are having none of it.

Anyway if Deep England whimsy is more your thing, you're just not beating Chris Dunn. Too many to choose from. Love it.

Out of Egypt I Have Called My Son, Dalí

A lamplighter’s long day in Chris Dunn’s enchanted world

Social conservatives in the 2020s are in a similar moment of liberation to the revolutionaries of the 60s - the moral authority of the ruling caste is broken, the social penalties for defying it much diminished, their reaction only serves to make it worse.

The Magpie, Monet

Miner and his family, Rhondda Valley, Wales, 1931, photo by James Jarche of the Daily Herald.

4pm Freezing with a Beautiful Sunset, Brook

Well if it helps you get through them, know that this kid thought you were unbelievably cool in what must have been your late 30s!

Fab - cheers Steve. You well?