Often actor, sometimes director, always geek.
Also on Mastodon: https://t.co/Br99Athsct
Mar 27, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I'd take Sunak's crusade against teenage 'loitering' more seriously if his party since 2010 hadn't closed more than 800 libraries, sold off hundreds of playing fields, cut arts funding by a third and local authority grants by 40%.
Young people need cheap, interesting things to do
(Mind you, the sale of playing fields has slowed down. Between 1979 and 1997 the @Conservatives approved the sale of around 10 000 of them)
Sep 15, 2022 • 15 tweets • 8 min read
“Humans can’t", said T.S.E.,
“bear very much reality.”
At times like these, when all at sea,
We need a televisual cup of tea.
And so here’s #ACGAS; I forsee
delights autumnal and carefree
To add to Thursday night TV
As downward falls the mercury.
Apr 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Katharine Birbalsingh says that fewer girls chose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy… There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do… The research generally … just says that’s a natural thing."
Katharine Birbalsingh is the government’s social mobility commissioner.
So that's you told, girls. Get back in the kitchen and don't bother your head with hard sums. It's not natural. theguardian.com/education/2022…
Apr 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Oh Oliver. Know your #Shakespeare, especially on his birthday.
The speech continues: “this England… is now leased out …bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”
This from a former Culture Secretary. Honestly. It’s government by fridge magnet
Apr 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The way much of the world has handled COVID is pretty depressing.
In large so-called democracies like the US and UK, short-termism and the patchy adoption and early abandonment of easy stuff like masks proved we were governed by clowns who would rather be popular than right
Meanwhile we hoarded vaccines and their patents, ignoring the fact that no-one is safe till all are safe and leaving us open to long COVID and more dangerous variants.
Horrific news. Our orchestras, theatre and dance companies are some of the finest in the world. Now the Government tells us “music, dance, drama and performing arts, art and design ... are not among our strategic priorities.”
Presumably the government feel that arts cuts will play well to their base before the elections. A new front opens in the culture war.
But we don’t train artists or musicians based on where they live or how much their parents earn. Because talent is no respecter of postcodes.
Dec 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A very happy Christmas, and good morning from the Millennium Bridge at sunrise, 8:04am. All that mighty heart is lying still!
The first sun caught St Paul’s a few minutes later
Dec 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The ability to get lost.
In the 90s, with the aid of a map (a MAP!), you looked at the landscape and tried to find yourself within it. Now you know exactly where you are and the world is arranged around you. Big difference (and not necessarily an improvement)
Now that the Director General of the BBC has explicitly adopted an alt-right trope by saying employees must avoid “virtue-signalling”, can we at least stop parroting the idea that the state broadcaster is institutionally left-wing?
It’s worse than that, though. The things regularly called “virtue-signalling” by the right (feeding children, stopping people drowning, believing in equality, taking the side of the marginalised, the powerless and the dispossessed) were traditionally covered by the word “virtue”.
Mar 18, 2020 • 15 tweets • 10 min read
I heard it was an emergency, so I emerged.
As an actor, I can’t do much without face to face contact. But I can read verse. If me reading a particular poem would make you happy, let me know and I’ll post it on @SoundCloud. I’ll try and do at least one a day x
Thanks for your myriad brilliant suggestions. I’ll post the first ones tomorrow.
Meanwhile, if anyone needs a bedtime story, this might be useful for dealing with extra tantrums. You know what adults are like.
The first sun caught St Paul’s a few minutes later 
