James Handscombe

Please God get rid of Netanyahu. I know the alternative isn't great but it's better than more of him with Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

Strongly agree. It's not unreasonable of the government to ask grown-ups to give half an hour's thought to what they would want to hand if the power or water went out overnight.

Kansas Dem Sen. nominee Adam Hamilton on trans rights: “I don’t think we should take a small group of people and bully them, pick on them, and hurt them. I understand one thing really clearly when it comes to transgender people, and that is Jesus told me I was to love my neighbor as I love myself”

My latest post attempts to make sense of a difficult time in US-Ukraine relations, in which the dysfunctions of the Trump administration were on full display. Trump’s claims that Putin was ready to make concessions was shown again to be make-believe. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/ukraine-wi...?

Marco Polo described this as Venice of the East - his views on Birminghamare not recorded

A Year in Willerby. The final twenty five copies of our first ever book are now on sale. Last chance to own one. Fifty uncanny short stories, bound with original lino cut, locally printed and sent from the village individually numbered with a handwritten note. www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4...

Butterfly wings beating the night sky on this pair of towers.

He has also recently aced his Glasgow Coma and Apgar tests.

What would happen, you ask, if one were to give a couple of poets access to a hundred thousand labourers? Well, I have you covered.

For what it’s worth, I insist on using his full name: Mr Cosmo Livingstone.

“How dare anyone ever say that the multilingual, the cosmopolitan, the intellectual are citizens of nowhere or do not have the connection with territory that authentic people feel?”

I won't do this often, promise, but if you enjoy my writing you might like my fiction project over at @welcometowillerby.bsky.social

the 'lean' races I would be least surprised to go the other way are iowa going d or kansas going r my 'shit gets weird' bar is dems sweep all the 'lean r' races here, south carolina would be the biggest wtf but darline graham really is completely unqualified I still can't talk myself into florida

Absolutely boomer opinion, but the facility to emoji respond to an email is a pointless confusion - there’s a perfectly good reply function that means everyone is properly notified. I don’t have time to learn a new way of interacting.

This seems obviously correct. I don't think giving royalties to PA is a good idea, or a constructive way to help Palestianians. Members of the organisation have undertaken serious criminal acts. But to call them, and Rooney, terrorists is to abuse the term.

New episode! Are lesson objectives a waste of time? Can you be a good dad and a good teacher? How should we go over assessments? Should we use phone quizzing apps in lessons? Tune in and please share if you can 🙏🙏 open.spotify.com/episode/3pRE...

So much in this that I will need to read it again, just fabulously and provocatively important.

New. What those who find learning easiest can learn from those who find it hardest. I worked hard on this. bennewmark.wordpress.com/2026/10/15/w...

New post: "Drowning in slop" Large parts of the state are being increasingly overwhelmed with complaints, appeals, objections.... written by AI. It's gumming up every process. Britain is particularly vulnerable. How bad has it got and what can we do about it? samf.substack.com/p/drowning-i...

When I started teaching a course on the Mabinogion in September I didn’t imagine it would appear in a newspaper before I’d got through the stories.

I hate this so much. The BBC should be providing good quality, good value programmes that the private market won't cover. You and Yours (which I kind of hate), Thinking Allowed and Free Thinking are exactly the sort of programming that the BBC is i) good at, ii) not haemorrhaging money to make.

The light this morning is incredible, a rosy glow that would make you think you were walking into fairyland if you weren’t, in fact, pacing the endless suburban sprawl of southeast London. (The horse chestnut tree, pictured, is an old friend and fellow-traveler dreaming of the feywild)

My speech from the conference debate on 'Zionism is Racism’ motion

2/n. I have spent most of my career in cat 3 and 4 schools in areas of enormous challenge. It is very very hard. We need greater recognition of how hard it is and less fire and brimstone scorched earth responses to negative judgements. I've seen the hugely damaging effects of this first hand..

#FridayFive is vengeful. 1. Karma Police. Radiohead. 2. Thank you Aimee. Taylor Swift. 3. You're So Vain. Carly Simon. 4. Yes. McAlmont and Butler. 5. The Mariner's Revenge Song. The Decemberists.

Th 'join' numbers are soft. They will change. The tradeoffs are quite stark and the accession process will be really tough. None of which is to say it's not something we should do. But we really shouldn't underestimate how hard it will be to do, and how much public opinion might shift.

Really interesting article about the Bronze Age collapse (and a suggestion that it wasn’t merfolk what done it) www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-really...

Really sick of all the online maths homework tools - all trying to ´teach’ kids how to do specific questions but all doing it in the same way - telling kids to follow their specific procedure. Most of these procedures are divorced from underlying meaning really undermines teaching for meaning

But are they ruined? My mother has recently moved into residential care. She has sold her house and it is v likely the full value will pay for care costs. She is not ruined. She will have a stable situation for the rest of her life. Her father always said " there's nae pockets in a shroud".

They warned us Mamdani would impose Sharia law. Instead, he unleashed the real threat: line dancing in Bryant Park.

Speaking really well without notes is a rare skill to be prized. Speaking competently is largely a question of knowing your facts and having thought through your principles. Thousands of teachers do it more than adequately several times a day.

Thirty six fascinating pages on borderlands and liminal spaces just to set up this joke. Is @lewisbaston.bsky.social the successor to Terry Pratchett?

Today's assembly was inspired by a piece of spoken word poetry that will brighten your day and which I recommend even if you're not interested in how I applied it to study. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8M... But if you are interested - this is the assembly james-handscombe.co.uk/ambition/but...

Today's assembly was inspired by a piece of spoken word poetry that will brighten your day and which I recommend even if you're not interested in how I applied it to study. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8M... But if you are interested - this is the assembly james-handscombe.co.uk/ambition/but...

When you're ticked off and a friend sends you something to make you feel better. 🐑🔊

I have many thoughts about this story but one is that we are extremely blessed in England to have an education system where schools in poorer areas get more money. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/m...

British journalism and polling are both utterly implicated in the Farage funding scandal iandunt.substack.com/p/british-jo...

It's been a busy week - my letter to The Times got published on Tuesday and I've only got round to it today:

Sad to hear of Bonnie Greer’s passing. In thirty years of religiously watching Question Time she was always a stand out contributor. Graceful under pressure but willing to call nonsense. She’ll be missed.

All behaviour contains information but communication is a two-way process, listening as well as shouting. Not all behaviour is listening. Thoughts from @phoenixedsarah.bsky.social’s book launch (I recommend getting a copy for the ECT in your life) www.routledge.com/Questions-on...

Lukewarm take: I feel a lot of pessimism about the present is built on not realizing just how bad the past was. Like if you just read a book about poverty in a first-world country in the 1950s it's staggeringly worse than now.