Category: Uncategorized
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Skeptics keep their eyes tight shut

I didn’t know these people existed until last year… The first I heard of them was when their Brighton group fell prey to the ‘thou shalt not question gender ideology’ people in Brighton. They had planned to discuss one of the burning issues of our times, and had invited Hannah Barnes and Helen Lewis to…
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Well done Hastings part 2

Picking your enemy at random is stupid but directing people’s anger onto your victims is downright criminal. Wednesday was great – Hastings came out in huge numbers to prevent trouble on our streets. It worked brilliantly. Trouble turned up, here and there in twos and fours, saw us, said “nah, there’s f**** hundreds of them,”…
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Well done, Hastings!

It’s great to feel proud of your town, your country, your people and right now, that’s exactly what I feel. I was confused yesterday. As just about everyone knows, some twit put out a list of dates and places where, I suppose, they were hoping to instigate race-riots or, as some said, to misdirect anti-racists…
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The Meaning of Everything

Dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive (ie, presenting examples and definitions of how words are being used out in the world) not prescriptive (ie, their job isn’t to tell you what the words ought to mean, or how they ought to be used). What they definitely should not be is proscriptive (ie, they can’t tell…
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Choose your phobia and start shouting

I was working on a piece about feminism and Palestine when the story about women and the Olympics took over everyone’s passions. I did get one blog out about that… …when the race riots in the UK took over everyone’s passions. Oppression Olympics There is no question in my mind, from what I’ve seen, that…
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‘afab’ doesn’t mean female

There’s a change in the world that we need more people to understand. Most journalists don’t investigate anything (there are one or two exceptions. A shout out to you, if you are one of them, reading this). What they do is see what’s trending in social media today, grab a photo or two that have…
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A million birds, two books, one life

Imagine you’ve been swept up into a high-flying flock of birds – a flock as numerous as a gathering of every swirl of starlings ever seen on a winter’s night. Imagine flocks of every species spiralling into one; every colour, every aspect and temperament that birds can display flickering around you as you swoop and…
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Things! I love things!

There we were, all furrowed brows, walking back from a council meeting, and she said, ‘don’t you ever write about nice things? Like, the Library of Things now has a badge-maker.’ She showed me her bag, now well decorated with home-made badges. I had forgotten Hastings had a Library of Things, and anyway was bemused…
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Assembling on the Green

At my gran’s house when I was a kid, getting to know the neighbours was something that mainly happened on the village green. We’d all gather there on Fridays, waiting for the fish-and-chip van, on Morris Dancing days, and for all sorts of other reasons so it’s strange that I’ve lived where I am for…
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Were our kids ever so badly served?

There were always hucksters selling colourful rubbish. For all my life, there have been ‘successful’, big businesses selling stuff to teenagers. Now, under the cover of the internet, kids are being sold dangerous things in the name of authenticity – just how can it be that you have to buy things in order to ‘be…