Robert Hanks
@roberthanks.bsky.social
The man who never was but sometimes looked as though he might be. Cultural commentator for hire. Will work for food.
Deeply unimpressed by Arthur Laffer on Radio 4 – just trotting out the same old defence of low taxes and "trickle down".
November 11, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Deeply unimpressed by Arthur Laffer on Radio 4 – just trotting out the same old defence of low taxes and "trickle down".
Reposted by Robert Hanks
I have found this whole episode incredibly distressing and isolating, so I'm grateful to see Rory Waterman's analysis shine a light on both the poetry and the poison. Whatever your views, we need a more courteous and humane public discourse, from and for all parties. Please.
My comment, for @pnreview.bsky.social, on the Len Pennie & Sarah Doyle affair - or Canongagegate, as I like to think of it. Honourable mentions: @naush.bsky.social, @thetimes.com.
Feel free to share, to attack me with your little jelly pitchforks, or to ignore.
www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/rema...
Feel free to share, to attack me with your little jelly pitchforks, or to ignore.
www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/rema...
PN Review Print and Online Poetry Magazine - Remarkable Coincidences - Rory Waterman - PN Review 286
One of the outstanding poetry journals of our time.
www.pnreview.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 6:28 PM
I have found this whole episode incredibly distressing and isolating, so I'm grateful to see Rory Waterman's analysis shine a light on both the poetry and the poison. Whatever your views, we need a more courteous and humane public discourse, from and for all parties. Please.
They should have been arguing this from the start. But credit to Reeves for getting it right at last.
NEW: Rachel Reeves signals she intends to remove the two-child cap *in full*
"I don't think a child should be penalised because they're in a bigger family through no fault of their own," she tells BBC.
"I don't think a child should be penalised because they're in a bigger family through no fault of their own," she tells BBC.
November 10, 2025 at 4:25 PM
They should have been arguing this from the start. But credit to Reeves for getting it right at last.
Astonishing scenes
Last night, Dick Tice launched Students4Reform (See what they did there, the scamps? They replaced "for" WITH THE NUMBER).
It will be led by Matt Goodwin, a man in his mid-forties, and it looked exactly like you imagine. ~AA
It will be led by Matt Goodwin, a man in his mid-forties, and it looked exactly like you imagine. ~AA
November 10, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Astonishing scenes
Reposted by Robert Hanks
Happy Circulatory System Walking Through the Kitchen Day! Don’t forget to smash your clocks!
November 10, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Happy Circulatory System Walking Through the Kitchen Day! Don’t forget to smash your clocks!
Reposted by Robert Hanks
I think my colleague, Jeff’s theory that the Bay City Rollers and the Wurzels were the Blur and Oasis of the 1970s has a lot to commend it
November 10, 2025 at 9:51 AM
I think my colleague, Jeff’s theory that the Bay City Rollers and the Wurzels were the Blur and Oasis of the 1970s has a lot to commend it
Popular music.
What is your biggest musical blindspot for someone precisely your age?
For me - an elder millennial - it is that I have never knowingly listened to INCUBUS, nor could I name even one of their songs if you put a gun to my head.
For me - an elder millennial - it is that I have never knowingly listened to INCUBUS, nor could I name even one of their songs if you put a gun to my head.
November 10, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Popular music.
I'm old enough to remember that the footage was shown in one bulletin quite early in the morning before the mistake was corrected, and the BBC's explanation (involving a folder containing archive footage that had been used in the previous day's trailers) was entirely plausible.
I’m old enough to remember when the BBC used old footage of Johnson at the cenotaph, to cover the fact that he was hung over and looked like a burst mattress on a tip.
The DG didn’t resign though
The DG didn’t resign though
November 10, 2025 at 9:39 AM
I'm old enough to remember that the footage was shown in one bulletin quite early in the morning before the mistake was corrected, and the BBC's explanation (involving a folder containing archive footage that had been used in the previous day's trailers) was entirely plausible.
Reposted by Robert Hanks
And a little entertainment afterwards?
November 9, 2025 at 8:31 AM
And a little entertainment afterwards?
I dreamt that I was on a 1970s television panel game, hosted by someone who may have been Robert Robinson, and it was revealed that Hannah Gordon’s real surname was Clitheroe. Explain that, Herr Dr. Freud! (Preferably without using the word ‘clitoris’.)
November 8, 2025 at 11:50 AM
I dreamt that I was on a 1970s television panel game, hosted by someone who may have been Robert Robinson, and it was revealed that Hannah Gordon’s real surname was Clitheroe. Explain that, Herr Dr. Freud! (Preferably without using the word ‘clitoris’.)
Yes. Bizarre that the mistakenly released prisoners are being treated by the media as the result of Labour policy, when everyone knows perfectly well that a year ago the prison system was in deep, deep crisis because of Tory budget cuts.
“Austerity” = the missing word in all the panic over failing prisons
November 6, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Yes. Bizarre that the mistakenly released prisoners are being treated by the media as the result of Labour policy, when everyone knows perfectly well that a year ago the prison system was in deep, deep crisis because of Tory budget cuts.
This is a good piece.
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com
“If this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back lost ground — and it is — then it is also a warning to a Republican Party that has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago,” our columnist Jamelle Bouie writes.
“If this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back lost ground — and it is — then it is also a warning to a Republican Party that has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago,” our columnist Jamelle Bouie writes.
Opinion | Trump Is an Albatross
Just Ask Mikie Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger and Zohran Mamdani.
nyti.ms
November 5, 2025 at 7:04 PM
This is a good piece.
Baffled by all the commenters who seem to think it's part of the education secretary's brief to know about a municipal election 3,000 miles away. Counterpoint: UK politicians in general are waaaaay too obsessed with US politics, and not caring much about them is sensible and healthy.
November 5, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Baffled by all the commenters who seem to think it's part of the education secretary's brief to know about a municipal election 3,000 miles away. Counterpoint: UK politicians in general are waaaaay too obsessed with US politics, and not caring much about them is sensible and healthy.
Reposted by Robert Hanks
There were 115 prisoners mistakenly released in the final year of the last Conservative Government alone.
Interesting that it only becomes a major national scandal the second these releases can be blamed on a Labour government
Interesting that it only becomes a major national scandal the second these releases can be blamed on a Labour government
November 5, 2025 at 1:33 PM
There were 115 prisoners mistakenly released in the final year of the last Conservative Government alone.
Interesting that it only becomes a major national scandal the second these releases can be blamed on a Labour government
Interesting that it only becomes a major national scandal the second these releases can be blamed on a Labour government
Reposted by Robert Hanks
Around this time yesterday I stopped at St. Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse to check out their 14th century misericords. Thankfully it was otherwise empty of visitors, I had to lie flat on my back and shimmy underneath a big chair to photograph the hidden demon and its brides in the fourth image...
April 4, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Around this time yesterday I stopped at St. Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse to check out their 14th century misericords. Thankfully it was otherwise empty of visitors, I had to lie flat on my back and shimmy underneath a big chair to photograph the hidden demon and its brides in the fourth image...
Such terrible taste.
October 31, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Such terrible taste.
Reposted by Robert Hanks
Peter Watkins, Oscar-winning director of The War Game, dies aged 90
Peter Watkins, Oscar-winning director of The War Game, dies aged 90
Radical English director who clashed with the BBC over his ‘horrifying’ film about nuclear war, was forced to look abroad to continue working
Peter Watkins, the radical British film-maker who won an Oscar for his controversial drama-documentary The War Game, about a nuclear attack on Britain, has died aged 90. His son Patrick confirmed that he died on Thursday, but no cause of death has been given.
Watkins was an uncompromising figure who clashed with the BBC after the latter failed to show The War Game on broadcast TV, and subsequently led a peripatetic film-making existence, looking overseas for backing. He was wary of the press, in a rare interview he spoke to the Guardian in 2000, saying he was “someone who has been working for 30 years to help shift the power balance between public and TV”. He added: “Had TV taken an alternative direction during the 1960s and 1970s and worked in a more open way, global society today would be vastly more humane and just.” Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
October 31, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Peter Watkins, Oscar-winning director of The War Game, dies aged 90
Also, ban "outside of" now.
The Guardian has gone TOO FAR this time. It's a British paper; we say "half-arsed", not "half-assed". FFS.
October 31, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Also, ban "outside of" now.
Reposted by Robert Hanks
Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
October 29, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
oh god, is Trump sulking about not getting the literaure Nobel too?
They revoked Wole Soyinka’s US visa? I keep typing reactions and deleting them. Another new low.
The first African author to win the Nobel in literature, Soyinka has been an outspoken critic of governments worldwide.
October 29, 2025 at 2:24 PM
oh god, is Trump sulking about not getting the literaure Nobel too?
It’s not just the glare, it’s the height: SUVs shine straight into my elderly Fiesta.
October 28, 2025 at 10:14 AM
It’s not just the glare, it’s the height: SUVs shine straight into my elderly Fiesta.
I didn't know this book existed, but I once interviewed Ron Geesin about his collection of adjustable spanners. It used to be an exercise for engineering apprentices to make their own adjustable spanners from scratch, and he had dozens on the wall at home. A very nice man, I thought.
So, happy 10th anniversary of the publication of this book
October 26, 2025 at 10:44 AM
I didn't know this book existed, but I once interviewed Ron Geesin about his collection of adjustable spanners. It used to be an exercise for engineering apprentices to make their own adjustable spanners from scratch, and he had dozens on the wall at home. A very nice man, I thought.
America is an insane country. But, more particularly, it has an insane president
Scroll down to the Major Events Timeline, and nothing will prepare you for what you'll see. I cannot believe it is real. www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-wh...
The White House Building
Every president since John Adams has occupied the White House, and the history of this building extends far beyond the construction of its walls. From the Ground Floor Corridor rooms, transformed from...
www.whitehouse.gov
October 24, 2025 at 10:53 PM
America is an insane country. But, more particularly, it has an insane president
Why would you do that?
"OpenAI twice loosened ChatGPT’s rules for discussing suicide in the year before 16-year-old Adam Raine took his own life using a method the chatbot advised him on, according to an amended lawsuit filed by his parents on Wednesday."
OpenAI Loosened Suicide-Talk Rules Before Teen’s Death, Lawsuit Alleges
An amended complaint from the parents of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide, alleges the changes were part of a push to increase engagement.
www.wsj.com
October 23, 2025 at 11:47 AM
Why would you do that?
Reposted by Robert Hanks
If I were running Labour comms I would commission an app called 'Will the Tories/Reform deport you?' then let the reactions on TikTok and Instagram do their work.
October 22, 2025 at 10:29 AM
If I were running Labour comms I would commission an app called 'Will the Tories/Reform deport you?' then let the reactions on TikTok and Instagram do their work.