Best Of

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?

Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.

But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.

It is understandable. Reform are something new. People latch onto what they like about the something new (like controlling illegal immigration sonehow) and hope they don't really mean what they say about the stuff they are less enthusiastic about (like, say, the Putinism) and ignore the slight unsavouriness of some of the true believers. It was almost exactly the same with Cirbyn in 2017.

The fact that someone appears to be listening is enough to get them a hearing.

Slight unsavouriness? It's way more than that. Just watch the space if you haven't yet seen enough to convince you these people aren't fit to be anywhere near positions of power.

Yeah, well, ditto Corbyn and you could understand that.

I'm not making a case for Reform here. I'm not planning to vote for them. But I can absolutely see why people do. It's human nature to pick on a 'finally someone understands' and choose to overlook the myriad ways the new hope isn't actually as great a fit as one had hoped.

Wow. I must just jaw drop wow...

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar

This is frankly one of the worst things Donald Trump has ever posted, which is really saying something

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1964370370607403086

He looks like the prison guard in Cool Hand Luke.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=greenall+whitney+cool+hand+luke+commercial#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cd8c1547,vid:J46OAfaAu9A,st:0

Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.

Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.

He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......

So that's how you got started, 🫡

Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?

They're not racist and not weird.

You're a card sometimes, Andy.

Some photo evidence:

https://x.com/Joseph_Boam/status/1964401929779577322

That is truly grim. The Farage Youth. Sinister or what.

I just better log off, I think, before my blood gets up any more than it already is. Go read a poem.

The Guardian report on the Reform conference is fascinating

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/such-a-vibrant-feeling-reform-uk-devotees-gather-party-conference

It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future

That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context

It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping

It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read

“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.

It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.

Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.

(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.

If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.

I would say the fundamentals of centrism are:
-Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power
-Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it.
-A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.

...

The Guardian report on the Reform conference is fascinating

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/such-a-vibrant-feeling-reform-uk-devotees-gather-party-conference

It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future

That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context

It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping

It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read

Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong

For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??

There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity

All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.

The Connolly stuff is the aspect of Reform that could turn to the far-right, or the more extreme end of Maga. They are currently poised between this and Farage's personal business vanity project, with the Telegraph and GB News helpfully and partly playing the role that Berluscomi's own TV channels used to in this.

I find it all quite vexing.
I'm the sort of voter who on the face of it ought to be Reform-curious. I'm the sort of culturally-right voter who never felt fully at home with the Conservatives. I'm exasperated with the way we are governed. Hurray that this voice is being heard, for what feels like the first time in my lifetime.
But I don't want Putinism with that. I think the closure of tge North Sea oilfield is madness, but that doesn't mean I hate renewables and love fossil fuels. I definitely don't want antivaxery. I'd like to stand firm against the culture warriors who've dragged us into madness in the last fifteen years, but that doesn't mean I want to be opening new fronts like abortion. I hate compulsory enthusiasm for Pride, but that doesn't mean I want to put the gays back in the closet. Reform appear to have taken a promising niche and extrapolated it far far too far. I don't want to be contrarian on everything.

This post has reminded me of a very funny old sketch by Julie Walters.

"I was very anti-Falklands for example. I wanted to boycott Fray Bentos and leave it at that."

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?

They're not racist and not weird.

You're a card sometimes, Andy.

Some photo evidence:

https://x.com/Joseph_Boam/status/1964401929779577322

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?

Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.

But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.