Andrew Purcell

I have done so little For you. And you have do little For me. That we have good reason Never to agree. I, however, Have such meagre power, Clutching at a Moment, While you control An hour. But your hour is A stone. My moment is A flower. -Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot"

I, however,
Have such meagre power,

Clutching at a
Moment,

While you control
An hour.

But your hour is
A stone.

My moment is
A flower.

-Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot"
#everynightapoem As ever.

BREAKING NEWS: Robert Roberson will see his next birthday That should make us all hopeful

Some good news.

That "Texas won't execute a guy who is likely innocent, at least in the near future" counts as good news right now . . . says a lot about right now.

But I'll take it.

clayjak.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

BBC Radio 6 Music - The John Peel Lecture, Brian Eno's BBC Music John Peel Lecture 2015 Listen to Brian Eno deliver his John Peel Lecture on the ecology of culture.

Brian Eno's John Peel Lecture on the value of art is fantastic www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

I found Origin Story podcast on Powell's "rivers of blood" speech v interesting. Tory party and media strongly rejected it/him but he found broad (racist) popular support. Now reverse is true: society less racist, more integrated but 'conservative' institutions are pushing ethno-nationalism.

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

The hypocrisy of Nick Candy How can Reform reconcile that with showing its petticoats to a foreign billionaire who openly wants to interfere in our politics?

"Here's a member of the global elite soliciting another member of the global elite for cash to fund the proud British insurgency against global elites. That’s just the game. Money talks. Shaking things up for the little people is a laugh. Why bother pretending otherwise?"

I sang Jerusalem with Robert Jenrick at school - he's wrong about race • NEW The Conservative MP has complained that, visiting Handsworth in Birmingham, he didn't see'another white face. You can't judge whether someone is integrated by skin colour, argues fellow Wulfrunian Sathnam Sanghera

I hoped that the outrage about this scandal across the political spectrum demonstrated we were finally moving away from such thinking. But Jenrick's remarks show that we are, in 2025, in an even worse place. The comments are a symptom of a new cult of ethno-nationalism, imported from the USA and supercharged by bad actors on social media. Suddenly, a great many people - including, bizarrely, Suella Braverman - are keen on the racist idea that you simply can't be English and non-white.

We all hoped the Windrush scandal would be shame enough. But no. The Tory party plumbs new depths with its vile rhetoric. Nothing good comes from their prejudice. But our communities prove them wrong every day.
Important response to Jenrick from @sathnam.bsky.social

www.thetimes.com/article/3af4...

Rob whistle | Robert Hutton | The Critic Magazine The day had begun with Robert Jenrick accused of racism. This is of course quite unfair. Racists believe in something. Some of us remember Jenrick as a chubby-cheeked fan of David Cameron fighting…

"The day had begun with Robert Jenrick accused of racism. This is of course quite unfair. Racists believe in something." Absolutely fantastic sketch by @roberthutton.co.uk. Every line is a banger:

There would be, but it's filled by Starmer's Labour Party. Or at least, that appears to be the lane they're choosing.

I haven't seen Top Gun

The government want more coercive powers for the state against protests, and the main opposition party wants more coercive powers for the state against migrants.

Our political-media culture continues in a loop where the response to every perceived problem is yet more coercive powers for the state.

Here is a thing that I hear from *almost every British Jew I know* but have barely heard expressed in any of these programmes: No single person has done more to make Jewish people globally less safe than Benjamin Netanyahu.

Many pundits today are pushing the line that everyone who protests the genocide in Gaza is basically either antisemitic or tolerant of antisemitism. But isn't that precisely the conflation of the actions of the Israeli gov't with all Jewish people, which is at the heart of this wave of antisemitism?

"Even more un-British than certain unsavoury people attending certain protests would be a world in which the country saw Jews or the Jewish community demanding that certain rights were disavowed or forfeited."

Sunday Times' Gabriel Pogrund on the weekend's planned protests.

#Newsnight

John Woodcock is an arms industry and fossil fuel industry lobbyist, on a mission to further criminalise peaceful protest.

The UK's anti-protest laws are already among most restrictive in the G20.

Amazon have removed the guns from their Bond posters, giving the tantalising impression that Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan think you’re a wanker.

More than two dozen new committees created by Infantino in last year, positions that will allow more random FA officials from nations that vote for the FIFA president every four years to get paid. Hard to square all this with need to have excessively high ticket prices to fund world football.

I actually think "golden ticket" may be worse than "island of strangers".

Starmer's comms team know it's irresistible to headline writers, they know it's pandering to racists, and they know it's a gross distortion.

They apparently *don't* know they're gift-wrapping an election for Reform.

A peerage can only be removed by an act of parliament. The last time that happened was in 1917.

Our House of Lords is completely unfit for purpose, and the likes of "Lady Mone" can keep her position for life without consequences.

UK to scrap right of refugees to seek permanent residency after 5 years Policy comes as Keir Starmer seeks to toughen stance on immigration and fend off Reform UK

But I was told that Keir Starmer’s conference speech marked a pivot away from imitating Reform and towards a bold new liberal something! I WAS PROMISED!

on.ft.com/4mGqFPF

can never forget that Fred Trump spent his later years totally gaga but surrounded by a gaggle of senility-denial-enablers who drove him to a make believe office where a make believe secretary had him sign make believe papers—which sounds cute til you see the sequel & the secretary is Stephen Miller

‘Little island of hatred’: the mystery activist who defied… An old episode close to my heart is a reminder that today's racist resentments have been simmering for years

I've written something about England, flags and someone who took a stand against the sort of hate and ignorance which resurfaced across the country this summer

The flag-waving is dire, and seemingly getting worse, but they all do it. When Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Boulder in 2008, they handed out the Stars and Stripes to tens of thousands of people in the stadium. I politely declined to wave one.

When I was a teenager there was a bus direct from my hometown in Germany to London - we had a British army base, and this direct bus connection was one of the benefits of that. One summer I went on that bus to go volunteer in an old people's home in Southend-on-Sea. I had just turned 18 and was... 🧵

This drives me wild, whenever this is in the news (which is always 🤬). It is *already very very expensive and onerous to settle here*.

We paid that £14k so we could live here as a family (my wife is Brazilian). And our kids were already British. For a family migrating here it costs £50k plus.

imagine right, you've had to get past the 28k/38k minimum income requirement for a spouse visa, your visa conditions are *work is not a requirement of entry*, you'll pay about 14 grand over 5 years minimum across 3 visas, and you have to also pick up dog poo from the local field or you have to leave

Today’s digital ID announcement yet another example of how X being the main platform for political discourse will inevitably throw the MSM’s coverage off course, because online right opinion is fevered/way off the beat with the public.

Guess who need digital/reliable ID most? Those in poverty.

Would they oppose them on the front page of the Mail if it was a Tory government introducing them? I greatly doubt it. Surely at least partly driven by desire to attack Labour on the front page most days.

I'll be seeing them next Friday in London and this post makes me look forward to it all the more. Their 'farewell' gig at Shepherds Bush Empire many years ago was a moment of joy in solidarity too, although the world outside was less dark.

Extreme weather and extreme politics go hand in hand – Trump and Musk are pushing both Rabble-rousing of far-right demagogues is a reminder that the battle for a fair and habitable planet cannot be fought alone

This opinion piece is elegantly structured and persuasively argued. It's one fight, and we're all in it.