Simon Seligman

I mean, at least chuck him out of a window guys.

But only on one day a week, and a free oil field thrown in. How else do you keep the BM heated?

It always moves me that Clark chose to open that first episode quoting Ruskin. Though he was a complex person, and as a man is/was not to everyone’s taste, Ruskin had a genius for writing about art & the world, & a profound belief in the value of seeing clearly & saying what we see in a plain way.

With a strong whiff of ‘how stupid can you voters be’.

Yet another reason to despise the unrepentant, smirking Osborne for the havoc he proudly wreaked on our society. Wretched creature.

Aside from her loathsome politics & self-delusion, I’d suggest that she is (I speak as father of 2 children with ADHD/autism) also plainly neurodivergent. I don’t say this to let her off any hook, but her behaviour looks & feels like someone who just doesn’t read interactions in a neurotypical way.

Economic questions: the John Ruskin question This is one of a series of posts that will ask what the most pertinent question raised by a prominent influencer of political economy might have been, and what the relevance of that question might be ...

Brilliant piece by @richardjmurphy.bsky.social on the ever-more-pressing relevance of the term ‘illth’, coined by John Ruskin, which perfectly describes the unfettered & rapacious Trumpian age we are living in. www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/02...

Bring back the powerful word coined by John Ruskin in the C19th, ILLTH, to mean the opposite of true wealth. Illth describes the greedy, selfish, extractive & exploitative hoarding of money for individual gain. Trump - and those tax-averse billionaires who rule over us - are its living embodiment.

There is such a strong whiff of ‘I was always the last person chosen to be on anyone’s sports team’ about these wretched pasty-white ghouls, isn’t there, with their whiny obsession about who’s allowed to be in their ethnic team?

Very grateful to The Arts Society for inviting me to be one of their monthly 'instant experts', sharing my admiration for the life & work of one of my lecture subjects, the C19th genius Joseph Paxton, the man who put the world under glass in his Crystal Palace of 1851. mailchi.mp/4e5ebf6ff131...

Nothing says ‘I’m in public service to serve others and make my county better for all’ better than using your control of the public’s money to play out a sulking vendetta because you don’t like hurty words. Straight out of Trump’s playbook of course.

Talking of rotten pumpkin…

Agree. And/but if your hunch is wrong, we are truly f*cked and heading towards the gurning, slippery toad Farage as PM.

Lecturing today for The Arts Society Loughborough, on life & work of my old boss, mentor & friend Debo Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, who did so much to transform Chatsworth over 54 yrs. Topical again with popularity of TV dramatisation of her sisterhood’s pre-war life & a future Ch4 doc to come.

It would!

A dream of a job for the right person, in a dream of a place. #chatsworth

YouTube video by Guild of St George 150 years of the Ruskin Collection in Sheffield - Sheffield Museums Trust video for Ruskin's b'day.

2/2..true wealth, and a perfect word for this age of Trump. To mark his birthday, I contributed to this little video short that Sheffield Museums made to celebrate the fact that it is 150 years since Ruskin first shared his art collection with the people of Sheffield youtu.be/93Dc-f0vbjw?...

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin, that complex, far-seeing C19th critic of the dehumanising impacts of industrial capitalism, the man who coined the term 'ILLTH' to describe hoarding, rapacious, extractive & selfish greed/behaviour, the opposite of...1/2

Yes, exactly this. The ignorant lashing out is ugly. And exhausting to navigate.

Brilliant piece. Head in hands with despair.

I’m wishfully remembering Estelle Morris, leaving her cabinet job because she didn’t feel she was good enough, a phenomenon as rare as hen’s teeth in the ego-fueled arena of politics. Starmer could do something profoundly valuable for our politics if he went of his own accord, now, & with apologies.

We benefited from this (their welcoming flexibility for neurodivergent people) hugely a couple of years ago, turning the 36hr visit from an ordeal to a real success & joy. What a pity they’re rolling back on it now, though no surprise in what politicians & media call these ‘over-diagnosed’ times.

I took my kids to the adventure playground at Chatsworth (where I worked) early one Sunday morn. We had it to ourselves until one other dad appeared with his daughter. Even from 40m away, I saw immediately it was Jarvis Cocker. Tried to stay cool. Thank god our children didn’t gravitate to same spot

Nothing justifies it ultimately, but the one realpolitik reason that may have clouded his judgement is the one he can’t of course say out loud, namely that in the Trump sewer he wanted -and got - a rat.

Really enjoyed, if that’s the word given the topic, this essay. Thank you @adamshatz.bsky.social

God knows, we (voters) don’t often reward truth-tellers & much media has become allergic to it, but the loss of honesty in the public debates of our time, from Brexit to Send, is ruinous. If they’d just acknowledge that this is a cost-containing exercise first, we could debate honestly as grown ups.

Their brazen and shameless denial of any involvement in this country’s unraveling surpasses my previous favourite definition of ‘chutzpah’: the man who murders his parents and then pleads for clemency on the grounds of being an orphan.

A lovely Substack from Louis Weinstock about time, to which I contribute, both as a man approaching 60, and as my zoom avatar, cunning fox. open.substack.com/pub/louiswei...

Never ceases to amaze me that with 30 mins free before or after a train journey from St Pancras, you can drop into the @britishlibrary.bsky.social permanent gallery of treasures, for free, & be quietly communing with the Lindisfarne Gospels, Magna Carta, Jane Austen, Beethoven & many other wonders.