David Roth

#WarRavagedPortland

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer.

This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Dear Sir Oswald, Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism. I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us. I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement. Yours sincerely, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russel is how i aspire to respond to people

A huge crowd of anti-fascist counter protestors in front of Buchanan Street steps in Glasgow

A crowd of people. Someone holds a placard saying "Scotland is depopulating, we need migrants, ya numpties"

Some fascists. They look gloomy.

Fash overwhelmed by anti-fascists in Glasgow. As always, we're joyful, singing ABBA and chanting, and the fascists are just standing gloomily, not even bothering to chant or sing.

Great news! I hope the government is also putting stuff like this into the news cycle, instead of letting malign actors set the agenda. It matters that people are aware of what the government is doing for them.

HG Wells clearly has no idea how a time machine might work.

The last I heard Wyatt was still boycotting the BBC though.

George Square by Jackie Kay My seventy-seven-year-old father put his reading glasses on to help my mother do the buttons on the back of her dress. ‘What a pair the two of us are!’ my mother said, ‘Me with my sore wrist, you with your bad eyes, your soft thumbs!’ And off they went, my two parents to march against the war in Iraq, him with his plastic hips, her with her arthritis to congregate at George Square where the banners waved at each other like old friends, flapping, where they’d met for so many marches over their years, for peace on earth, for pity’s sake, for peace, for peace.

My seventy-seven-year-old father
put his reading glasses on
to help my mother do the buttons
on the back of her dress…

—“George Square”, by Jackie Kay
LIFE MASK, @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2005

Hear Jackie Kay read this poem on the @thepoetryarchive.bsky.social:
poetryarchive.org/poem/george-...

... plus - a win-win for divide-and-rule media - blame bored young people for the inevitable rise in petty crime

meme via Spotted News UK

Great Western Road Donny O’Rourke Glasgow, you look beatific in blue and I’ve a Saturday before me for galleries and poems, a house full of Haydn, and beneath my kitchen window, tennis stars in saris lobbing backhands at the bins. French coffee, and who knows maybe Allen Ginsberg in my bath! then round to the dairy where scones are cooling on the rack and Jimmy won’t let me leave till I’ve tried one there and then, here, where the new Glasgow started – an old grey city going blonde whose Asian shops are full of fruits we owe to Cap’n Bligh and I’m so juiced I could walk clear to Loch Lomond, past busses stripping the willow all along Great Western Road but I just browse bargains in banjos and pop-art knitted ties, before checking out the crime section at Caledonia Books, finding freesias in the flowershops and in the second hand record store, Bruckner’s Third, The Clevelend under Szell: so sad; like falling for passing students with that black haired, blue eyed look, or buying basil and chorizos… In the afternoon I’ll look at paintings in Dougie Thomson’s Mayfest show, maybe stroll down to the studio to view some archive film, past the motorways and multi-storeys of Grieve’s Ultimate Cowcaddens, the peeling pawn at George’s Cross where, today, everything is redeemable because tonight there’ll be guitar poets from Russia at the Third Eye Centre. And later I’ll cook zarzuela for a new and nimble friend. God Glasgow it’s glorious just to gulp you down in heartfuls, feeling something quite like love.

Glasgow, you look beatific in blue
and I’ve a Saturday before me
for galleries and poems,
a house full of Haydn,
and beneath my kitchen window,
tennis stars in saris
lobbing backhands at the bins…

—Donny O’Rourke, “Great Western Road”
from The Ghost of Liberace: New Writing Scotland 11 (ASLS, 1993)

YouTube video by The Africa News Network Barbado's PM SHUTS DOWN an ARROGANT Journalist Asking a Dumb Question!

Barbado's brilliant PM Mia Mottley educates a journalist who asked a dumb question
youtu.be/BPiwH5vENnA?...

A fairer representation of Gen Z opinion is that just 6% say they support a dictatorship.

If you have seen reports in the last few days claiming a majority of Gen-Z would like to be ruled by a dictator, and thought "that seems a bit iffy", you're not even close.

It wasn't just "iffy". It was utter, unadulterated, cow manure. ~AA

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/just-6-...

Kilmarnock, 60s/70s / Old King Billy / Five foot four. Which I thought was still quite a lot.

YouTube video by Gizago Peter Rosenfeld rides Zip World Fforest Coaster, Wales

@aiannucci.bsky.social
You've seen this right? Real life Partridge.

youtu.be/uLsDpkQY3xo

It is quite hilarious to hear a bunch of adults on BBC R4's Broadcasting House moralising about kids "who won't put their phones down" when what I see in the world looks like a lot of **adults** who can't put their phones down. Maybe the kids are just learning from their elders...

🤣😂☠️

After Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s recent diplomatic debacle with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I thought it might be helpful to contrast the current administration’s approach with that of President Jimmy Carter:

If the UK was really, really smart, it would now plough tens of billions into research centres and take in all the American academics fleeing the US. Spoiler: the UK is not smart. 🇬🇧

Also join a union.

His 'landslide' will never be as big as Obama's.

Pretend to be on the phone and say your dog’s favorite words..

Watch until the end.. 😂

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you da. Have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And since since comes before colour, green great dragons can't exist." - Mark Forsyth, quote from The Elements of Eloquence: How to turn the Perfect English Phrase

Been seven years since I first read this, on the English language's *completely universal but totally invisible* adjective hierarchy, and I can honestly say I've thought about it most days since.

Story

NEVER FORGET AND NEVER GO BACK.

I'm going to be taking part in the London Legal Walk on 18th June, to raise funds for the charity Family Rights Group (FRG), that I used to work for. They do great work, and I would encourage you to follow this link and sponsor me: londonlegalsupporttrust.enthuse.com/pf/family-ri...

#BookWormSat
The Peace of Wild Things - ✍️Wendell Berry

97 year old comic about what would happen if "pocket telephones" were to be invented.