Bill Bankes-Jones

I’m enjoying the general Bluesky ballyhoo while at the same time feeling a struggle to keep up, especially with reciprocation of follows. If you’d like us to follow each other perhaps we should start with a conversation through posts? Or am I being presumptuous? Here for the fun of it, anyway. 🥰

The crude savagery of the USA never fails to astonish. Two states where there is *no* minimum age for marriage. Words fail. 🤯

Trump betrayed Ukraine for this.

He was only 14💔 A russian strike on Vyshhorod killed a Ukrainian schoolboy. His body was pulled from the rubble of his family’s destroyed home. His parents are now in hospital. His sister survived.

I have walked along the cliffs on the postcard.

Why is each if the £36,000,000s exactly the same amount as the other? 🤔

Neoliberalism has ravaged the UK Workers’ share of gross value added down from 71.9% in 1975, to 59.7%. 1.23m workers are on zero-hour contracts. 4.4m jobs pay less than the real living wage. Poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of income in direct/indirect taxes than the richest 20%.

The ability of the rich and powerful to harness the anger of the poor and get them to direct it at the wrong people is breathtaking.

Eunoia will perform Catherine Kontz’s ‘Meng Sprooch, Deng Sprooch, Seng Sprooch’ at the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival in London on Sunday @teteateteopera.bsky.social @catherinekontz.bsky.social www.tete-a-tete.org.uk/event/making...

🤬🤬russians just hit the very center of Kyiv. A shahed struck near Lobanovskyi Stadium - right in the heart of my city. The stadium itself was not damaged. I keep hearing explosions. After the nightmare of last night, russia is still attacking us.

Conversation with a young person a few weeks ago: Me: What’s your name? YP: Loofah. Me: Sorry? YP: Loofah. Me: [unspoken] WHAT were his parents THINKING?!? Me: [aloud] That’s a cool name. How do you spell it? YP: L - U - T - H - E - R.

Thinking now about how everything has to be driven by ‘data’ (by which people mean statistics, as it’s never qualitative).In a culture where politicians obsessively dodge or pass on blame, is that why they’ve no moral imperatives and data drives all decisions? When things go wrong it’s data’s fault?

'...freelancers subsidise them via low wages, poor conditions and working thousands of unpaid hours.' - Lyn Gardner- theatre critic and associate editor of The Stage. Read more here: www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/for-... #FreelancersMakeTheatreWork

We are in such a mess. BBC #R4Today on and on about building more prisons - Badenoch this morning - but no talk of how to steer people away from getting themselves into prison in the first place. 😶

Given the state of my lungs it’s quite triggering to hear that Andy Burnham has said that he will “hit the ground running…and provide breathing space for people.”

So depressed by Burnham. Everyone is after short term wins - journalists above all, but also voters (at least in the minds of the politicians) - but someone HAS to sort out the bigger long term issues - climate crisis, global conflict, nat debt and that is not going to be a network of metro mayors.

What a horrible shouty person Laila Cunningham on BBCR4 Question Time is, talking shoutily over others and asserting ferociously that the people of Clacton should speak on behalf of ‘The British ‘People’. Sarcastic, nasty, aggressive and desperately fighting to hog the limelight, voilà Reform! 🤷‍♂️

On my way, Clacton.

This pathetic faux-innocent “but it was before he was an MP”, when said by actual MPs, who should know the rules, is breathtaking. Any gift in the previous 12 months is potentially declarable. Stds commissioner can take into account Farage’s behaviour during the inquiry. 🧐

At @rcmlondon.bsky.social for five new student operas, a collaboration with Tête-à-Tête @billbj.bsky.social - my review will appear early next week

Fucking hell, Lisa Nandy has actually done something, and it's good. However, she ought to be explicit that the platform promotes abuse, misinformation and hate as a deliberate decision, and she ought to be announcing an inquiry that can lead to criminal charges for its owners and management.

It's obvious to point out attacks against Muslims get ignored - but still needs repeatedly calling out. An Antisemitic attack should be reported and action taken. But where is the same media outrage, cobra meetings and calling of national emergency when 5 Muslims are attacked?

This is truly horrifying, especially given that it’s all just Willy-waggling. 1,380,120 lives. 🤯

TRUMP NEVER SUES ANYONE WHO SAYS HE RAPED CHILDREN

Has anyone found a link to the ‘slouch pouch’ onesie £76 online?

I am absolutely happy to share any toilet with absolutely anyone regardless of sex or gender with the exceptions of Netanyahu, Trump and Fartage.

Record number of UK people turning to crowdfunding to cover rent and household bills. Average real wage hardly changed since 2008. Millions rely on food banks. Healthy life expectancy shrinking. Record number of billionaires. 1% have more wealth than 70% of the population combined.

Wealth of 157 UK billionaires now equals £670bn, 22% of GDP. Return on wealth (dividends and capital gains) is taxed at lower rates than wages. Extreme concentration of wealth facilitates political power, corruption, economic control. Wither democracy.

So this is ok but “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” is not? I really don’t understand what is going on in London.

A LONG day of steaming, photography and cataloguing - but we're halfway there! It's staggering to see this all come together, even before the patches are sewn together into a quilt - the of courage, love, and beauty in these squares is a privilege to experience. Thank you! More tomorrow

Interesting how Andy Burnham can’t be Labour leader without becoming an MP while Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green Party without being an MP.

ANY politician who says they "will deliver." Instantly loses my confidence. I want plans, not platitudes, vision, not vapidity.

Absolutely ENRAGING hearing Liza Nandy on BBC R4 WATO affirming Starmer and how much Labour has done for working people. The answer is absoutely ZERO if you are one of the three million self-employed. Where is our Freelance Champion, and all the other manifesto promises that have yet to be started?

Awful starmer speech. How dare he talk about all he has done for working people when three million of us self employed were promised so much before the election TWO YEARS AGO and have so far had NOTHING. NADA. ZILCH. Of course we feel you're not hearing us.

Hearing the r4today presenters relentlessly picking away at the bones of political carcasses is both so awful and also gives me a little hope as it’s so clearly not sustainable, it has to have an end point. Hmm is that really hope? 😬

This is the end result of Shabana Mahmood’s nasty immigration policies… more votes for Reform and so, more racism scaring and dividing our communities. Not sure how Labour can justify this, politically or morally. It’s so far from what we’d all hoped. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Well now Lise Doucet, no less, is talking on BBC R4 Today about Iran’s “four hundred and forty grammes [sic] of enriched uranium”, there really is no point at all any more in listening to the news.

Given Starmer’s propensity to blame and fire people when things go wrong, surely now he has to go?

Interesting Screenshot on Radio 4 about Amelie. I absolutely HATED IT for the kitsch over-girly coquetterie of the central character and couldn’t get past the first few minutes. This is not giving me any urge to try again.

Demoralised by BBC Radio 4’s celebration of Reform and attempts to annihilate Starmer - not that I won’t be sorry to see him gone. But where can we go for gentler, factual, detailed and up to the minute reporting?

As these things go - and it obviously won't impact on his diehard fans - this, from the Tories, is actually quite an impressive effort.

Anti-semitism is absolutely abhorrent, of COURSE. So is government interference in the arts. Concerned about who is being called in to Downing St today.

'Farage has pulled out of Kuenssberg' is a mental image I don't think any of us needed.

“After 10 years, Brexit has inflicted serious, lasting harm on the United Kingdom. That is not opinion. It is fact, documented and measurable…Not one of the glib, deceitful promises made by the leading Brexiters has been fulfilled. None of them ever will be.” observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

‘A good day to bury awful news…’?

Well, I’m very glad I don’t work for Keir Starmer.