jmbarnard.bsky.social
40-something Hertfordshire-based Bid Writer. Centre-left. ‘Doctor Who’ fan. Local theatre participant.
136 posts
136 followers
371 following
Discussion Master
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Or do it this way… m.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUe...
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“Losing job opportunities due to their race and gender”. Really?!Losing job opportunities to people better qualified than they are is the point - what reasonable organisation is really going to hire or promote an underqualified candidate from any demographic if there’s someone better in easy reach?
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Yeah - it sometimes gets attributed to Mark Twain but I’m not sure that’s right. Bierce seems more likely, but if you don’t remember it from your research… it’s a great quote anyway, isn’t it?
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I loved that book!
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“Nobody knows what I’m going to do …
Least of all me!”
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I actually don’t think any of the characters mentioned would really have just stood there and let them blow away - whether out of kindness or toadying, who’s to say? And let’s face it, the image of a prime minister picking them up is preferable to an image of a prime minister standing and grimacing.
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Judging by the footage of him sharing rather sneery moments with Meloni and Carney whilst Trump was in the vicinity, I’d suggest Macron, for one, isn’t that bothered about upsetting Trump.
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I suppose it’s just possible that the photo was taken before his chosen career as a boxer took its toll on his face?
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Patrick Ryecart is really pretty awesome here, maintaining subtlety and nuance when everything around him *isn’t*. I especially like his quiet sip of tea between realising Kiv is unwell, and actually moving to help him.
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“So I’m a wrinkly, crinkly, set in my ways
It’s true that my body has seen better days
But give me half a chance and I can still misbehave…
One foot in the grave!”
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Ruth Rendell
Terry Pratchett
PD James
John Grisham
Beryl Bainbridge
Kazuo Ishiguro
Margaret Atwood
Peter Carey
Ian McEwan
William Boyd
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“Lost souls, lost souls
Wandering, wandering.
Lost souls, lost souls
Pondering, pondering”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s had that lodged in back of their minds since the early 90s.
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“Team building exercise”
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The cynic in me wonders if some people will even notice it *is* an error message rather than the solution they’re expecting, and blindly use and publicise it anyway. Much like the tale of the road sign that was actually an out of office message because no one in the Welsh Assembly could read Welsh…
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Brilliant! You’ve made my morning!
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I was going through a bit of a tough time when it was published, and my abiding memory of it was what a tonic it was. It may well have been made up of several disparate ideas, but the joy was in the telling.
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Festival of Death would make a brilliant Novel Adaptation. I’d be intrigued by one for The Tomorrow Windows, but I guess the issue is how contemporary it was - its world has gone, and setting the adaptation in the year it’s released, with Sadiq Khan instead of Livingstone, somehow doesn’t sit right.
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“So Charlie and me had another cup of tea and then we went ‘ome” … without checking whether their gaffer survived a ceiling falling “on the top of his dome”!
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Well, that’s surprising.
I was convinced they already had.
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That picture, and the news article it’s from, brought a huge smile to my face. A joyful series, and it’s so good to see all four of them so obviously up for the reunion.
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I thought you may have done but didn’t want to assume in case you hadn’t. I enjoyed them very much at the time!
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Didn’t the show’s version of Greg Dyke - Phil Cornwell channelling Michael Caine - sometimes finish his monologues with “Oi, Yentob” followed by something incongruous that they were going to be doing together?
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If only Roach had told Monroe *why* he needed to get out of the station! That punch, though..!
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It’s getting so hard these days to sift the real news from the parody news. Then I thought how unlikely it would be to find “bland, unremarkable people” in Texas, which suggests this is a joke. Albeit one that may well come to pass in the next few months.
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I was going to say “that’s no way to tell about RF Kennedy Jnr” … and then I decided it absolutely would be.
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I’m reminded of the final episode of Drop the Dead Donkey after newsreader Henry let a Chris Evans proxy know what he thought of him.
SALLY: Of course he’ll never work again. Not after he used the “f” word on live television.
JOY: I know. The “f” word, the “b” word and the “f”fing, “b”ing “c” word…
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The paradox is the subset of migrant groups that vote for parties pledging to cut migration, hoping it’ll make things hard for future migrants. I remember the day the EU referendum was announced, the BBC interviewed a Polish guy who’d just got British citizenship, affirming he’d be voting to Leave.
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I concur. And what if you took the obvious casting choices and… reversed them? That would be quite something.
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I was going to say, a “highly credible explanation” for staying in a time and place mind-boggling distances from where you grew up is not “running off with Tony Selby”, is it? It’s a good thing the show, and its spin-off media before it, managed to overturn that.
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That’s pretty much my take on their new councillors: they’re going to be v disappointed to find their remit doesn’t extend much beyond potholes, bus stops and homecare. As much as I disagree with them politically, if they do get to grips with mundane issues, they may deserve some credit. Grudgingly.
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I can only imagine the “discussions” involve telling her to pipe down lest she add an air of incompetence to their general air of unpleasantness.
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I’m delighted this scene, and the ep & story it came from, is getting the plaudits it deserves. Jean Marsh was a powerhouse, and it’s a moment that’s stayed with me since I devoured The Hartnell Years 30+ years ago! It’s magnificent. They’re magnificent. We’re so lucky that 60s Who was so eclectic.
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‘The Crusade’ is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories and this scene is a key reason why. I love that the programme was eclectic enough to even think about putting a storyline like this in, and the sheer verve of Marsh and Glover’s performances are breathtaking. She was phenomenal.
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“No, YOU defy the world with your POLITICS!”. That’s a scene that’s stayed with me for more than 30 years. Amazing actress and writer.
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You’re too late, sis… I’ve already bought it and started it earlier today, and have got well past the first chapter. And very impressive it is too!
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Once in a century?
What’s that phrase? “… Hold my beer!”
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I love an “exact words” scenario!
Just think how much you’ve helped out the Cappadocian economy over the last three and a half years!
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Looks brilliant. I hope it feels like it’s been worth the time and stress you’ve had to go through to get there!
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Something to do with Musk’s South African heritage meaning a kind of tribal rivalry? Who knows with this administration?
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I did… but via Facebook posts shared by Quaker friends, from a collection of much smaller news sites. The mind boggles - I can’t understand the justification. Suffice to say, few in history who have been on the opposite side to the Quakers have turned out to be the good guys.
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I dunno, give it time. Remember it’s still nighttime over in the US…
It does occur to me that the Bonnie Tyler classic might actually make a little more sense if it was about an “Apocalypse of the Heart”.
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Another interesting thing here is that, while the 84% of Green Party voters who support Net Zero is obviously high. But for a party specifically set up to advocate sustainability-related activities, the 9% who don’t support it, and even the 7% of “Don’t Know”s seem incongruous.
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Second was the staff putting on a DVD of ‘Ronin’ as in-journey entertainment. They turned it off 10 minutes before the end; we wondered what we’d missed, & what was in the suitcase that everyone wanted. We watched it later - no spoilers, but we really hadn’t missed anything by not seeing the ending!
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I have two distinct memories of that coach. One was being put in the front two seats, which meant I could see every pothole in the roads and was too anxious to sleep!
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I thought similar when Michel Barnier briefly became Prime Minister of France!
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My wife and I spent a couple of days in Capadoccia the fortnight we stayed with her sister in Istanbul, in 2010. I’m really enjoying your posts about the place! We skipped the balloon ride though - no time as we needed to get the night bus from Goreme. Good times!