What is a storm, anyway? Congratulations to Gary Lineker! Bias in the media … well, in the BBC? Much ado about an influencer!

Over the last day or so there have been floods in St Ives in Cornwall and unusually high tides in Blackpool. Here the thunder which had been forecast for the best part of a week finally arrived yesterday mid-morning and rumbled on and on until late in the afternoon. One of my nodding acquaintances told me this morning about watching lightning strike in her driveway. We had torrential rain throughout a good part of yesterday and most of the night. The wind is blowing the trees around at a furious rate. And yet nobody is talking about a storm. Just what constitutes a storm? That’s what I would like to know. 

Earlier this year Gary Lineker was criticised, indeed reprimanded by the BBC, for speaking “out of turn” and expressing his support for Palestine. As a BBC employee he was deemed to be bringing the corporation into disrepute! All the furore led to his resigning from his job as presenter of Match of the Day, where he had seemed like a permanent fixture. 

Just hours after leaving BBC studios for the last time he posted this poem by Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill about a Palestinian health worker who this week lost nine of her ten children in a single Israeli airstrike.

A mother on duty 

caring for her patients 

receives the remains 

of nine of her children. 

We are told to ignore this.

'A child who can barely walk 

struggles to find safety 

through flames in 

the aftermath of a bomb, 

unable to breathe. 

We are told to ignore this.

George Orwell once said

'The party told you to reject 

the evidence of your eyes 

and ears. It was their final, 

most essential command.”

We must refuse to abdicate our duty 

to each other and see the truth 

for what is before us.' 

Gary Lineker was nominated for Best TV Presenter at National Television Awards and, lo and behold, yesterday we were told he had won!

"It's OK to use your platform to speak up," he said in his acceptance speech

Three cheers for Gary Lineker.

And now the BBC is beginning to be criticised for the amount of attention it pays to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. I had begun to think this was just a personal bugbear of mine. However, a study by Cardiff University bears me out on this. Their analysis showed that his party featured in a quarter of all News at Ten bulletins over a six month period. Reform, with four MPs to my knowledge, featured in 49 bulletins between January and July this year, whereas the Liberal Democrats (72 MPs) featured in 17.9% of bulletins, with 35 references.

As early as 2018 Nigel Farage was setting records for appearances on the BBC’s Question Time, with his 32nd appearance in February of that year, his tally only matched by former Chancellor Ken Clarke. He’s appeared a lot more times since then. 

Liberal Democrat Ed Davey must not be outrageous enough for the BBC at present.

Meanwhile, the media is still giving lots of attention to the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the USA. There has reportedly been some fuss at the European Parliament as its President Roberta Metsola rejected a proposal from Charlie Weimers, an MEP from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, to have a minute’s silence for Charlie Kirk. Metsola apparently suggested it as a symbolic measure “to declare that our right to freedom of speech cannot be extinguished”.

Headlines announced: 

“Uproar as EU Parliament declines to hold minute of silence for Charlie Kirk

Right-wing lawmakers pushed for a tribute to the U.S. conservative influencer who was shot dead.”

I suspect that most of us on this side of the pond had not heard of this “conservative influencer” until his untimely death made him into an international figure. 

Is all that reporting hiding some other news we’ve not heard yet? 

Uh! Oh! Am I in danger of becoming a conspiracy theory believer? 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Autumn coolness. Scandals, sackings, shootings, repression of protests, moving again in Gaza.

The mornings are getting cooler: 10° this morning as against 17° or more just last week. Someone told me when I was out and about earlier today that there was frost at 6 o’clock this morning. It may be getting cooler in the morning but I don’t quite believe tales of frost just yet. 

I could almost feel sorry for Keir Starmer. Will his people stop letting him down? Now he has had to sack Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. Can Mandelson be ‘unlorded’? I wonder. I’ve long been suspicious of this business of making people lords and dames, sometimes seemingly at the drop of a hat. When they let you down and are revealed to be mired in scandal, is there a way of taking their lordship or dameship away from them?

There’s a possibly rather idealistic bit of me that says that politicians and clerics and kings should be pure as the driven snow. After all, even if they have no skeletons in their cupboards someone will surely invent them. So if you have ambitions to become important in some public arena you need to be sure that there no scandal attributable to you.

I read that the choir of Bangor Cathedral has been suspended for performing an “entirely inappropriate” piece protesting about job losses during holy communion. It seems there has already been scandal attached to the cathedral because of “a culture of excessive drinking, sexual promiscuity, bullying, bad language and inappropriate banter”. Goodness! 

The choir sang a specially composed “Canticle of Indignation” as clergy distributed wafers and wine during communion. At the end of the piece, the choir silently walked out. This was provoked by the cathedral announcing that five out of eight members of staff were at risk of redundancy due to financial pressures. The music director’s hours also were to be reduced. Not a happy church then!

The author of the “inappropriate piece” wrote on Facebook that he was “honoured to be in the same position as Banksy in having my art publicly censured”. He added: “There is a long history of protest through art, even through church music … and I am proud to be part of that. One of the clearest signs of tyranny is its desire to silence dissent and opposition, and that can never be tolerated.”

Well! Well!

The Banksy art in question, by the way, has been reduced, after much scrubbing, from this 

to this 

Some people have commented that it’s reduced form is a new and better artistic expression of repression. 

In the USA someone I have never heard of, Charlie Kirk, was shot dead yesterday while addressing an audience at the campus of Utah Valley University. It turns out he was a right-wing political activist, author and media personality (the latter a dubious ‘occupation’ if ever there was one!) who defended the right to bear arms. So it’s perhaps ironic that he met his end that way. 

Mr Trump says flags should be flown at half mast in his honour. Both Democrats and Republicans have condemned the shooting. Another USA citizen I’ve not heard of, Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congressperson from Arizona, who was shot and suffered a severe brain injury in 2012 and is now a passionate advocate for preventing gun violence, said: “Democratic societies will always have political disagreements but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.”

It may be too late for that wish.

Meanwhile the violence and the forced movement of large numbers of people in Gaza continue. Here is a link to an article in which the Guardian’s reporter in Gaza describes the dilemma facing her family and others, many hungry, penniless and without transport. She describes at one point how her father set off on his bicycle to see if he could find a place for his family to move to. During this search he stayed with a friend in southern Gaza, the area where people from Gaza City have been told/ordered to move to. She tells us: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/10/israel-is-forcing-us-to-leave-gaza-city-we-know-they-might-never-let-us-return

“But within half an hour, four heavy airstrikes hit a couple of hundred metres away, in the eastern outskirts of the “humanitarian area”. These attacks filled my father with fear. How can the Israeli army tell us to evacuate Gaza City for our safety while it bombs the very places it wants us to go?”

Her question is one we cannot answer but it keeps being asked! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Some stuff about Palestine protests, in memory of a protesting friend.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of an old friend. Always a fighter for justice and equality, she was still standing regularly outside her MPs surgery protesting about the Palestine situation until only weeks before the cancer that killed her made her too weak to do anything much. So most of today’s post is a sort of tribute to her.

First of all, as I’ve not quoted him for a while, here’s a piece of Michael Rosen poetry: 

 

In Gaza

whatever happened before

is not as bad as 

what is happening now.

Wherever you start on the graph 

is not as horrific

as what is happening now.

Whenever you start with now

and work backwards

you can see that

what's happening now

is worse than

anything happening before.

Wherever you look now

is worse than

whatever was there before.

However you tell this story

what's happening now

is worse

than what's come before

And here’s some more poetry, dating back I think to 2013 and therefore not directly connected to the present conflict situation, but still relevant to the world situation:

Mimesis  by Fady Joudah

My daughter

                       Wouldn’t hurt a spider

That had nested

Between her bicycle handles

For two weeks

She waited

Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said

It will simply know

This isn’t a place to call home

And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others

Become refugees isn’t?

Here’s a picture of the Sumud Flotilla, the hundreds of ships which set to sail to Gaza with humanitarian aid. It’s not an actual photo but an AI picture but it gives an idea of the flotilla.

And here’s a painting by a Palestinian artist, Mohammed Frey..

Breaking news yesterday: A bomb was dropped by a drone on the lead boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla in Tunis. I’m not sure that the mainstream media made much of it.

Here’s a more peaceful piece of artwork by the Palestinian artist, Rawan Anani:

“Hills of Jerusalem”. (2025)

Banksy’s also been busy leaving art at the courts of justice. There was some outcry about his defacing a historic building and now I am told it is covered with a metal barrier and there’s a security guard. 

Someone suggested that next time Banksy needs to paint the actvist as old and disabled for a more accurate depiction. Indeed! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Blood moon. Hair dryers. Arms for sale. Arresting people. Combatting the painting of England flags.

Last night there was an eclipse of the moon … which we didn’t see because there is a huge great hill which prevents us from seeing early evening celestial events like that. I am told the moon was red - another thing we didn’t get to see. However, on the two previous nights, late at night I looked out and saw a splendidly bright almost full moon shining through the trees. In it’s way as impressive as the sights we missed. 

I’ve learnt a new expression today. Somebody writing about a teacher who berated his class for failing their mock GCSE science exam said that the teacher gave them the “hair dryer treatment”.  This changed his whole attitude to studying, persuading him always to put in 100% effort. 

I looked up the expression. It goes back to Alex Ferguson, when he was manager of Manchester United and would give his team the “hairdryer treatment” in the dressing room. It is defined as “the explosions of rage that led to the "hairdryer" tag, so named because of the way Ferguson would stand in front of his victim at such close proximity and shout so hard it resembled a blast of hot air.”

I remain unconvinced that it is the ideal way to manage people but perhaps it works for some. 

Here’s a little item from this morning’s newspapers:

“Fifty-one Israeli arms makers and the US defence giant behind the F-35 fighters used to bomb Gaza are among the 1,600 exhibitors at the biennial DSEI trade show that begins in London’s Docklands on Tuesday.

Their presence will be the focus for hundreds planning to demonstrate outside the four-day arms fair, at which the defence secretary, John Healey, is expected to speak alongside senior British military officials.”

There we go, quietly endorsing the arms industry again!

Meanwhile I hear that over 800 people were arrested this weekend at a  demonstration against the banning of Palestine Action. Among them were pensioners, vicars, retired respectable folk - clearly hoodlums all! 

Here’s a photo of what used to be a fifteen storey building in Gaza city!

As some people insist on painting the England flag on roundabouts and crossings, here’s a response to such painting in the form of a Battenberg cake: 

And finally here’s a cartoon to remind us to look at things from more than one perspective:

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!