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16 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Today is my Dad's 74th birthday. Told he was 'stupid', he left school at 16.

Despite this, he LOVES books. though he struggles to read them.

Late life diagnosis? Severe dyslexia:

"Told them I wasn't stupid"

Now he's writing on @Medium. Do please share: mickestevenage.medium.com
He's lived a long and varied life, and it's fascinating for me (as his son) reading some of these stories.

In this one about working long hours over Christmas and helping people, for example, it's weird to think one of the kids he's talking about is ME.

mickestevenage.medium.com/the-heartless-…
He's very chuffed about having somewhere to put his stories now though, and has promised more.

Particularly about Big Ken - i have prompted him for more of these, on behalf of those of you who were asking. 😂 Whatsapp screenshot: ME: "Also Big Ken has been popular
Do please follow, or clap or comment though.

As he told me a while back, he wanted to write (even though he found it hard) because he likes reading 'ordinary voices' himself. He found it interesting AND reassuring that he was doing okay in life.
And that he realised he had his own ordinary voice to add to that.

Not just because he felt he had some great stories to share, but in case someone ELSE who'd been told they were 'stupid' needed a reminder that people were probably wrong about them too.
Oh, and if you want updates via Twitter, just follow his account (which will mostly just be notifications of new stories) here:

twitter.com/MickEStevenage

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More from @garius

John Bull Profile picture
18 Nov
I'm fascinated by how military history shapes language in ways we don't spot. Mostly navy in the UK but army too.

E.g.

Stop and ask yourself: why do so many British football clubs have a Kop end?

Let's talk Boer War battles, Jack the Ripper, Gandhi, Churchill and football /1 Boers at Spion KopLiverpool Kop End.
Let's start where this begins. January 1900. Second Boer War in South Africa.

Britain is fighting the Orange Free State and Transvaal. It's all very 'late Empire'. Grim. Bloody. Atrocities on both sides. "It'll be over by Christmas". Weapons making old tactics outdated. etc. picture of british forces a...
In fact, one reason the whole "lions led by donkeys"/Blackadder image of WW1 is wrong about THAT conflict is because the army learns from the Boer Wars, which ARE like that.

Lots of bad British generals doing generally bad things, while junior commanders try to save the day.
Read 22 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
18 Nov
Oh MAN. About time The Scheldt got more attention. A grim campaign to open up Antwerp. Always lost in Market Garden's shadow.

(Even at the time. Admiral Ramsay had to go over Monty's head to Eisenhower and complain that the Canadians were being abandoned)
You can probably imagine how well Monty reacted to that. But Monty was utterly focused on Market Garden (somewhat understandably) and hadn't spotted how dire the supply situation was.

Luckily Ramsay, the greatest logistician of WW2, did. And realised someone needed to step in.
Eisenhower too realised the danger once it was highlighted, and ordered Monty to divert some focus.

To say Ramsay was off of Monty's Xmas card list after that would be something of an understatement.
Read 4 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
16 Nov
My first year at uni, there was still a grant if you could prove you needed it. But everyone else got loans.

In my halls at uni, 90% of the the kids with rich parents got grants. I had to get a loan.

Sadly, here's what happens IRL when a good idea like this gets implemented /1
So the state (rightly) has to decide, in some way, what makes a kid rich and a kid poor.

You'd think that's straight forward in theory. But it turns out that poverty is like that (almost certainly apocryphal) French judicial definition of porn:

"You know it when you see it."
But of course you can't build a grant/loan system based on "know it when you see it". You need written rules. To keep things fair. In theory.

But you know who LOVE rules?

Accountants.

You know who HAVE accountants?

People with money.
Read 13 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
13 Nov
Because someone was asking for a photo...
And how it sounds.
(Prologue to Henry V, in case you're wondering what I was typing)
Read 5 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
13 Nov
Milton was one of those people you could disagree completely with, but see where he was coming from, and vice-versa. A good man.

I wrote yesterday about Boris always wanting a deputy to do the work. That was Milton early on in London.
His ability to play Warwick to Boris' boy king was critical to Boris navigating London politics and government early on.

And his tragically early death is really the point at which the shine and functional drive started to come off his mayoralty.

He never replaced Milton IMHO.
Milton is why Boris has been so wedded to Cummings. He's been trying to recreate that power-behind-the-throne model with someone he feels he can trust and delegate the actual thinking of government to, ever since.
Read 4 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
12 Nov
Something to remember about Boris: his spectacular laziness is always at war with his fragile ego.

So he hires people to tell him what to do. But eventually gets upset at jokes about him being told what to do. Then fires those people and hires someone ELSE to tell him what to do
There's a couple of stages between the two, but it's relatively easy to see coming.

You just watch for him announcing giant pointless projects. That's normally his last attempt to make people talk about him instead. If they don't get traction, he gets sulky and starts firing.
One of the advantages he had as mayor was that he could just appoint a shitload of deputy mayors to do a lot of the legwork. And they had no political power OUTSIDE of him.

Made binning them as part of temper tantrum nice and easy.

Doesn't work as well with MPs or proper SPADs.
Read 4 tweets

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