Following an observation about the communication revolution and the benefits it offers like minded individuals operating across borders and jurisdictions.
https://bsky.app/profile/pmdfoster.bsky.social/post/3leyg24wfnk2q
You might call it free movement of would be authoritarian governments.
Happy Christmas and with best wishes for the New Year of 2025 and whatever it may bring!
The death of John Bird at age 86 is very sad news for lovers of satire in the United Kingdom and the world and perhaps particularly for satirists, ‘resting’ like myself, or those still functioning day-to-day.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/28/john-bird-actor-and-comedian-dies-aged-86
Obituaries will do a better job than I can of explaining what and how Bird did what he did, notably in partnership with his long time partner John Fortune and latterly alongside impressionist Rory Bremer.
Do enjoy them.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/dec/28/john-bird-obituary
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-bird-obituary-9dv223tqj
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64108691
Suffice to sign off by citing this particularly accurate two-handed piece about Euroscepticism in the UK. Many of us habe been living the consequences of this in my years.
It is a fate of accurate satire that the jokes, ridicule, joy and recogntion so often go on to come to pass. The warnings can tend to be overlooked.
It’s been the story of our lives since the decision to hold a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.
Donald Trump AND Nigel Farage in the news again? It’s just like old times.
Prime minister Theresa May’s sudden decision to call a ‘snap’ General Election has produced a result that demonstrated just how profoundly split the UNited Kingdom is after the 2016 EU referendum.
The General Election campaign of 2017 has started, officially.
The Prime Minister has also made a rather inflammatory speech with some large claims.
Theresa May speech in Downing Street on 3rd May 2017
Cartoon – Very Well, Alone by David Low
One image that merits the overused and abused term, iconic, is in the news again because of Brexit.
Extracted from Gideon Rachman column in the FT – 2nd May 2017
The acute analysis about ‘Very well, alone‘ offered by Mr Rachman in his column should be supplemented by knowledge of the next cartoon – All alone in the world – displayed by Fougasse aka Kenneth Bird.
Cartoon – Fougasse (Kenneth Bird) on World War Two at Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons
Aside from being funny, Bird’s drawing was a more accurate depiction of the reality of late Imperial Britain’s efforts in the last world war – which ended almost seventy years ago.
I argue that in the murky realm of national mythologies these two cartoons occupy positions akin to yin and yang. the epitomy of complementary or conflicting opposites – emotion and reason – pride and pragmatism.
We have long seemed as a nation to have chosen World War Two as our national lodestar and these two pieces of imagery sum up the nation’s conversation with itself as well as anything else I know of.
My own modest efforts at reinterpretation of Low’s classic are below and are firmly #Brexit related – watching the Conservative Party become UKIP has been a most unedifying watch.
Flirting with Fascism – Matthew Buck at Hack Cartoons
And its consequences following the EU Referendum of June 2016 are becoming ever clearer.
