Alison
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alisonauciel.bsky.social
Alison
@alisonauciel.bsky.social
One day I shall finish my to-read pile*


*no, I don’t believe it either.
The management style at BL is toxic.
British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...
Anna Aslanyan | On the Picket Line
On Monday morning, more than a hundred people formed a picket line outside one of the entrances to the British Library...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 1:46 PM
👏👏👏👏👏
If handing someone their arse, was a video clip
December 12, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Why is there such a vogue for walls that look like packing cases? Or people who think it never rains in this country?
#GrandDesigns
December 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Alison
People, people. What have we said about ragebait?

*class shuffles uncomfortably*

And what have we said about the D*ily M*il?

*class goes very quiet; studiously avoids eye contact*

Thank you.
December 8, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Alison
My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’
This is so disgusting.
December 7, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Quote with your model of masculinity.
December 7, 2025 at 10:30 AM
And he asks me

with both eyes:

why is it daytime? why does night always fall?

why does spring bring

nothing

in its basket

for wandering dogs

but useless flowers,

flowers and more flowers?”
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 6, 2025 at 10:06 PM
“Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.”
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 6, 2025 at 9:56 PM
“There were never strawberries like the ones we had”
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 6, 2025 at 9:55 PM
“Frosty winds bring a chill
And my futon’s the colour of cold.”
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 6, 2025 at 9:54 PM
“it wis january
and a gey dreich day
the first day ah went to the school
so my mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu’ed oan ma pixie an ma pawkies
it wis that bitter.”
December 6, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by Alison
Memorial To A Marriage, 2002, sculpture by New York based artist Patricia Cronin #WomensArt
December 6, 2025 at 6:50 AM
I am in this tweet and I don’t like it.
Fundamentally the Labour Party is like the Catholic Church. You can stop turning up and paying your dues, you can change the entirety of your belief system, but on a deep spiritual level, you can never truly leave the Labour Party
December 5, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Alison
"We should be grateful for those who learn a second language, whether that be Russian or French at university or English in a school or community centre," writes @chrismarshll.bsky.social
www.holyrood.com/comment/view...
We should be grateful for lovers of language - wherever they learn
Among the tributes to playwright Tom Stoppard, who died last month aged 88, was an extraordinary story told by a profess...
www.holyrood.com
December 5, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Alison
My latest display is going great guns. A victory for emotional manipulation.
December 4, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Got nothing to read.
November 30, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Post something random.
November 28, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you have seen in the wild:
Foxes (back garden wall)
Black goth squirrels in Washington DC
Toad (Castle Campbell)
Deer (on the way to work)
Sparrowhawk (in the back garden).
Introduce yourself with five animals you've seen in the wild:

- Absolute unit ginger and white neighbour cat called Buddy
- grey squirrels everywhere
- effing foxes shitting on my garden sofa
- bloody rats terraforming my flowerbed
- several mice brought indoors by Daphne
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you have seen in the wild

- beaver (in Scotland)
- platypus (in Queensland)
- skunk (in California)
- raccoon (in Massachusetts)
- boar (in Italy)
November 28, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Alison
Yes, govt bent to pressure from MPs over the benefit cap.

That's how parliamentary democracy works - and why it's a good thing.

It means a leader has to carry a wider movement with them. There's a counter-pressure to the strategists in No. 10.

It matters that we elect a Parliament, not just a PM.
November 27, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Alison
The thread about the Singing Street; skipping, hopping, dancing and birling through the backgreens and streets of 1950s Edinburgh

This thread marks a double milestone for Threadinburgh, it is the 300th post since the first in September 2022 and the visit counter just ticked past the 500,000 mark!…
The thread about the Singing Street; skipping, hopping, dancing and birling through the backgreens and streets of 1950s Edinburgh
This thread marks a double milestone for Threadinburgh, it is the 300th post since the first in September 2022 and the visit counter just ticked past the 500,000 mark! I'm marking this occasion by finally chalking something off my to-do list that has been there far too long. Perhaps by providence, I recently acquired a little booklet self-described as "a Merry-Ma-Tanzie of Skipping, Hiding, Hopping, Birling, Stotting, Playing and Dancing Rhymes". The Singing Street, to give it its name, was the accompaniment to a 1951 amateur film with the same title. Described by The Scotsman as "a wonderful picture of Edinburgh - as true perhaps as has ever been put on the screen", it turns seventy-five next year. It's all too easy to treat its "astonishingly evocative scenes" as a pure nostalgia trip back to an Edinburgh which has disappeared into living memory, but this was never the intent of the film. It is so much more than just a skip and a hop down memory lane, so let's celebrate it by telling the tale of how and why it came to be and by recognising its importance as a piece of a wider archival work. Once that is out the way shall we step scene-by-scene and song-by-song, back to the streets of 1950s Edinburgh to compare them with the present day.
threadinburgh.scot
November 27, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by Alison
Without discounting the experience of those men willing to talk about their experiences with prostate cancer, be very cynical about this push for general screening from the charities involved. There is not good evidence that the benefits offset the risks.
November 25, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Getting really fed up of #Sainsbury’s continually moving things around esp. ingredients.*
Do you actually want my business?

*rather than over-processed crap.
November 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Alison
observer.co.uk/style/featur... absolutely beautiful piece about Rachel Cooke by her husband.
‘Her amazing smile was undimmed, and I would try anything to summon it’ | The Observer
observer.co.uk
November 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Alison
Plaudits to whoever put this poster up next to the Park Road Tesco in Toxteth.
November 20, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Alison
Lockdown "might not have been necessary at all" seems like a bold claim but, perhaps more importantly, likely helps ensure that if we *do* need it for a future pandemic we won't get it, because the inquiry said we didn't need it. (The qualifiers "might" and "if we acted earlier" will be forgotten.)
November 20, 2025 at 4:40 PM