pat sheehy

I just think it's neat that Shakespeare decided to cap off his career in the theatre by writing the only honest poems ever written

The first cowslip of spring💛 A Welsh name for cowslips is 'dagrau Mair' - Mary's tears - meaning that it is one of the many wildflowers named after the Virgin Mary💛 #Annunciation

This general preference for a genteel sense of dignified and composed behavior was long characteristic of Anglo culture. It extended even to religion, and even in the colonies The Virginians were famous, in their hostility to the Puritan mold, by wanting "a parson who can carry his religion, as he should his liquor, like a gentleman!" For example, a colonial-era ad trying to entice a man of the cloth over to the colony, the Virginians said they wanted a parson who was: "And as in words and actions they should be neither too reserved nor too extravagant; so in principles should they be neither too high or too low: The Virginians being neither favourers of popery... nor of presbytery. ... They must be such as can converse and know more than bare philosophy and speculative ethicks, and have studied men and business... as well as books; they may ... . be facetious and good-humoured, without too much freedom and licentiousness." Men were expected to be religious, just as they were expected to grieve at funerals. But not to overdo it, and be undignified. The same was true of everything. Dress should be sharp and aesthetic, but not gaudy. Comments can be biting or praising, but not vulgar. Humor should be dry. Descriptions should be understated. Such made for a generally more pleasant and less temperamental world

I can say with 100% authority and experience: had my phone been stolen when a SpAd (not in no 10 or as Chief of Staff to PM) there would have been a hell of a problem and multiple records of that problem. This stinks.

My grand-parents, grossly impeded by Victorian clothes, lack of money, initial lack of know-how, water, drugs etc etc went to live in the undeveloped Central African bush at the end of 19thc and survived. They were sensible enough to get themselves hats and stout shoes of course.

On the "rural England is racist" charge: it shows the limits of "racism" as an explanatory concept. What ppl mean is that rural England is overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative, & that old implicit norms hold more sway, such that it *feels* more difficult for newcomers.

You almost never hear a workman whistling any more and demonstrators seldom give voice to any decent choral songs.

Five years ago, hundreds of Islamists protested at the gates of Batley Grammar School all because a teacher showed a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad during a Religious Education lesson. Within days, he was forced into hiding. Threatened with death. His family targeted and children forced to miss school. Five years on. He is STILL in hiding. Still living in fear. In Britain. And what’s changed? Instead of defending free speech, Labour are now debating new definitions of “anti-Muslim hostility” and appointing a tsar to police it. This amounts to blasphemy law by the back door and it will have a significant and chilling effect on how people live. Labour councils in the north of England have issued advice to teachers warning that children’s drawings may be deemed “idolatrous” under sharia law. That music and dance lessons might breach religious expectations. Teachers are effectively being told to be careful. Children risk being labelled blasphemous for drawing a nativity scene. 
 No religion should be above the law. No belief should be beyond criticism. The Batley teacher was cleared of any wrongdoing and an independent report said he was badly let down. But it didn’t matter. His life was already torn apart. His children forced out of school. His family still in hiding. So ask yourself, if this happened again today, would anything be different? Or would we fail him all over again? We must stand up for our teachers.
We must defend children. 
We must say no to extremism and no to blasphemy laws in Britain. We MUST fight for free speech.

As a London teen, I fell in love with architecture after saving up to visit Chatsworth & Blenheim. Nothing would have dissuaded me faster than this interview. Why? Because I define myself by what I love not what I look like. Art craves emotion not ethnicity. The NT is a disgrace.

Today is the feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, 'Lady Day'. In England it was once the spring quarter-day, when contracts would begin and servants took new jobs, and until 1752 it was also the start of the New Year. A day for new beginnings, new life of many kinds.

It's not just phonics: Schools have failed to teach reading because they ignore 50+ years of findings in cognitive psychology that reading depends on general knowledge. ED Hirsch has been banging this drum for a long time but Ed Schools shut their ears because the whole idea was unromantic & had a vaguely right-wing aroma. Now he joins with Dan Willingham to make a strong case that kids can't read if they don't have the background knowledge that makes sense of the rarer vocabulary, allusions, and understandings that allow us to read between the lines - which all reading requires. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…

It’s common place in designy circles to criticise “fakery” but it seems to me fakery should be welcomed in principle if well executed. Nearly everything in these 4 photos is trompe l’oeil, cost-effectively bringing joy to a service corridor in an Italian government building. Good

@WillKnocker @SamaHoole Now that you mention it ... 😀

@SamaHoole @LateAgitations What does 110% mean? It's mathematical gobbledegook...

Britain is 110% self-sufficient in lamb. Let that sink in for a moment. Not "pretty good." Not "mostly fine." One hundred and ten percent. We grow more than we eat and export the rest. We have done this on permanent upland pasture that cannot be used for anything else, managed by farmers whose families have worked the same ground for generations, using animals that have been optimised for these conditions over centuries. 85% self-sufficient in beef. 100% in milk. 90% in eggs. The animal products on your plate, if you're eating in Britain, are almost certainly British. The supply chain is: farm, abattoir, butcher or supermarket. Measured in miles. Sometimes in tens of miles. Now. Your January strawberries are from Egypt. Your year-round peppers are from Spain or Morocco. Your salad leaves are from Israel in winter. Your green beans come from Kenya. Your blueberries are from Peru or Chile. They travel by refrigerated air freight, which is roughly fifty times more carbon-intensive per kilogram than road transport, to sit in a plastic clam shell next to a small flag and the word "fresh." The environmental argument against British animal products is not an environmental argument. It is a geography argument made by people who have not checked where their food comes from. Check where your food comes from.

Went to a National Trust house today. It was laughably bad. Dumbed-down, naff, all the beauty stripped out. Target audience seems to be 12 yr olds with ADHD and the politics of Zack Polanski.

Our dog, Golden Retriever, is a lovable dufus. Ideal family pet as you don’t have to set it multiple elite special forces tier challenges a day to stop it gnawing its own brain. Whereas, Border Collies are closer to Arthur C Clarke’s famous dictum about sufficiently advanced technology. And this kind of stunt isn’t even the breed’s selected for core skill set. Millions of humans will lose their jobs to AI before one comes close to replicating Border Collies.

A stunning Catholic Holy Week procession in Spain 🇪🇸 Spain is Catholic! Video: Hdad. Ntro. Padre Jesús Nazareno-Tarancón-

c. 1902, Looking Well J. J. Clarke spots a well-dressed woman sweeping along Sackville Street (now O'Connell St.), cutting refined silhouette against Catal Ua Broin's newsagent, full of headlines, a group of boys linger at the kerb. Irish identity and commerce quietly assert.

Very good piece and chimes with many of us who have been ministers. A little story. One Friday night as we were emerging from the pandemic I got a call from my private secretary. I was a junior transport minister. He said that the driving test site which had just re-opened had crashed. If you remember, driving tests couldn't happen during Covid, meaning that people couldn't drive at all - including those who had to get re-tested (older people, HGV drivers etc). There was a huge backlog of people desparate to get tests. Well obviously once it opened, so many people logged on it couldn't cope. The transport secretary had been dealing with it all day but by 10pm he had enough and as the most junior minister I was asked to take over. MPs were shouting at us because their constituents couldn't get tests, couldn't take up jobs, were losing income, etc. I said to my private secretary, get me the Chief Exec of the Driving Test agency on the phone to brief me and tell me what he's doing to fix the problem. "Minister, I can't do that" "Why not?" "Its 10pm on a Friday night". Silence. More silence. "Can you ask him to get on a call with me?" "Minister, we have asked, and he's not minded to" Gentle expostulation on my part. "But I'm working at 10pm on a Friday night. I am certainly not minded to, but it is his agency that is causing us the problem?" "I know minister. But I still can't get him on the call". Cut to the end, I pushed through. He came on the call an hour later. I got him to brief me with regular updates starting at 7am Saturday. We got the thing open and working by lunch time. But really! Without being rude to many of my former colleagues, I know many of them wouldn't have bothered. But more to the point, as a minister, why should you have to! If people were doing their jobs as they should, they should take ownership of precisely these problems. Small story, but repeated time and again. Side note - its not just the core civil service that are the problem but the myriad of ALBs (arms length bodies) and NGAs (non governmental agencies) that are even harder. Civil servants themselves have no control over what those guys are doing let alone ministers.

This is an ancient marble gravestone for a dog named Parthenope, 3rd century AD. The epitaph reads: “Here an owner has buried his playful dog, Parthenope, in gratitude for the happiness and mutual love that she brought him.”

Been 9yrs since PC Keith Palmer was murdered by Islamic terrorist Khalid Masood. Although unarmed, he single-handedly stopped the knife-wielding jihadist from entering parliament and killing MPs. Despite this, Starmer & his Labour government IGNORED the recent anniversary.🇬🇧