Davenant 📸

Fare dodgers targeted as train ticket refund rules are tightened In a bid to clamp down on ticket fraud that costs the railways millions each year, the government has quietly changed the rules on claiming refunds for unused train tickets.

DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE!
On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules.
Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel.
If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets.
www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...

If photography and an exhibition don’t trigger an emotional reaction from the viewer then we have to ask ourselves what the point of it is. I’ve no idea how this exhibition is going to go down but that’s what makes it exciting.

The exhibition will include the video ‘A Sound of Thunder’ which looks at protest through a number of different lenses and explores the underlying reasons why people protest. Protest is a divisive and polarising subject so I’m expecting strong reactions to the exhibition and video.

Poster with a photo of a Red Rebel against a bright yellow background. The poster has the words: REBELLION! "It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion" Oscar Wilde, 1891 Exhibition 1 June to 31 August 2026 Newcastle City Library 33 New Bridge Street West Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8AX

The Rebellion! exhibition opens in June at Newcastle City Library and will be there for three months. It is an exploration of protest as an essential part of our cultural identity in the face of draconian anti-protest legislation.

ICE protest posting. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 28 February 2026

Artichoke. Photo: Robert Gumpert 14 February 2026

There are some interesting reads and a few shots from my archives. Come see at: robertgumpert.com

Yes. I’ve been looking at Affinity for a few years. It used to 150 quid. Now free. Certainly worth a try. My subs fee to Adobe is doubling this month. Might tell ‘em where to stick it. xx

Screenshot of an Affinity design software screen with a portrait of a Red Rebel in the middle

I’ve been looking to dump Adobe for a long time and just started using Affinity which is great so far. The surprising thing is that it’s also free which seems unbelievable. Definitely worth giving it a go if you are sick of paying subscriptions.

They always make for a good photo

Just seen this, love it, and from where else but Bromley, the spiritual home of English Punk! Well played people, well played.

How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail    I would rather  eat Quavers that are six weeks stale,  blow dry the man bun of Gareth Bale,  listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail,  than read one page of the Daily Mail.    If I was bored  in a waiting room in Perivale,  on a twelve-hour trip on Network Rail,  halfway through a circumnavigational sail,  I would not read the Daily Mail.    I would happily read  the autobiography of Dan Quayle,  1001 Things You Can Do With Kale,  selected scripts from Emmerdale, if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail.    Far better to  stand outside in a storm of hail,  scratch a blackboard with a fingernail,  be swallowed by a humpback whale,  than have to read the Daily Mail.    If I was blind   and it was the only thing in Braille,  I still would not read the Daily Mail.    Brian Bilston 

Today’s poem is called ‘How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail’.

‘He was the victim of calculated political murder by the British state’

My long read in @heraldscotland.bsky.social on the life and death of Scotland’s greatest socialist revolutionary John Maclean

Here is a taster

And here is a link to the full article www.heraldscotland.com/news/2589654...

That’s what I thought but it has an opt out on the data so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Very tempted - will check it out. Thanks!

Still Lightroom for the photos but I’m definitely switching to Affinity for design

Screenshot of an Affinity design software screen with a portrait of a Red Rebel in the middle

I’ve been looking to dump Adobe for a long time and just started using Affinity which is great so far. The surprising thing is that it’s also free which seems unbelievable. Definitely worth giving it a go if you are sick of paying subscriptions.

Wet Plate experiments with Samuel Mark

4x5 Tintype

The Birth of Photography and the Death of Letters: Virginia Woolf on the Fate of Every Technology An elegy for the triumph of commodity over creativity.

'At its dawn, every technology — like every new love — is aglow with the exhilaration of endless possibility. Its dark sides and eventual demise are unfathomable to the wildly optimistic psyche of the besotted, and besotted we invariably are...'

www.themarginalian.org/2026/02/28/v...

Early stroll. The horizon’s pale forehead. A sleeping taxi dreams of long distances, empty roads. That daffodil’s piece for solo yellow trumpet. A cat runs towards Tesco. A bike light on the hill teaches me about distance and perspective.

Working on a poem for me and ace artist Paul Digby’s Fish and Chips project.

Labour must stop channelling Reform and unite with progressives. That’s the lesson from Gorton and Denton | Sadiq Khan The threat to the party in some parts of our country is now existential. But we can progress, as we have in London, by being bold and strong in our core beliefs, says London mayor Sadiq Khan

"Trying to compete with Reform not only feels inauthentic... but a betrayal of what Labour is supposed to represent. We must address the concerns and fears of voters, not play on them."

Damning stuff from Sadiq Khan

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A creepy-looking police officer holding a video camera

Police filming young children without parental consent, climate strike, London in March 2019.
At the time I thought it was creepy and unsettling. The filming was later ruled unlawful by the Information Commissioner’s Office. If you give the police additional powers one thing is certain, they will

A boy sits in the ruins of a house clutching a stuffed toy, his expression a mixture of shock and defiance

A boy clutches a toy in the ruins of his parents’ house, London in 1945 by Toni Frissell.
In any war it is always the children who suffer most.

It’s no coincidence that ‘advisors’ in these political parties seem to get bank rolled by large, right wing billionaires who run companies that provide these types of technology

Not one I’d come across. I’ll check it out. Thanks!

YouTube video by tik tak Dick Gaughan - Ballad of '84

Covered by The Mekons on their Heaven and Hell album.
Don't know if you're aware of Scottish singer songwriter Dick Gaughn, he did a whole album of miners songs "True and Bold"
Great collection of songs of working class resistance
youtu.be/XhVNgoKEWlw?...

Trump being awarded the FIFA war prize

Early stroll. The epic art of white lines on the road. The footpath sign points to the horizon. An archipelago of puddles. The bus shelter recognises me and I recognise the bus shelter. A black scarf draped over a black metal fence.

Toni Frissell said of this photo “I was told he had come back from playing and found his house a shambles—his mother, father and brother dead under the rubble…he was looking up at the sky, his face an expression of both confusion & defiance. The defiance made him look like a young Winston Churchill”

A boy sits in the ruins of a house clutching a stuffed toy, his expression a mixture of shock and defiance

A boy clutches a toy in the ruins of his parents’ house, London in 1945 by Toni Frissell.
In any war it is always the children who suffer most.

The song was written by Ed Pickford but this version by Bob Fox and Benny Graham is in my view the definitive performance of what is a very emotive and poignant song.