Saturday, September 05, 2026

The Joy of Six 1572

"How did a former lawyer-turned theologian become Reform UK’s lead ideologue and political heavyweight on so many issues? To understand that, you have to follow a covert combination of faith and finance, of evangelical doom-mongering and disruptive tech and media, from the two real kingmakers in right-wing British and American politics – the deeply religious and deeply wealthy owners of GB News and Palantir: Sir Paul Marshall and Peter Thiel." Peter Jukes and Nafeez Ahmed map the strange rise of James Orr.

Elaine Craig has researched family carers' attitude to the use of restraint in mental hospitals: "A mother discovered her son was restrained 33 times in six weeks. Another was told her distressed daughter is 'aggressive' as six staff pin her to the floor and inject her with medication. Through tears, families describe images they cannot forget: bruises, broken bones, loved ones left sitting in urine-soaked clothes, isolated and afraid."

"Students in England’s least deprived areas are three times as likely to enter GCSE PE and drama as those in the most deprived areas. There are also large disadvantage gaps in music, food preparation and nutrition, design and technology and the separate sciences, with the pattern continuing into A-level subjects such as geography." Jabed Ahmed reports.

Garrett M. Graff on the 17 minutes before America changed: "The earliest moments of the 9/11 attacks did not unfold in the way you’ve been taught to think of them: a plane striking a tower, a city looking up in horror, a nation gripped by panic. Instead, for the briefest of windows, the unfolding drama of September 11, 2001, wasn’t yet a calamity but merely a strange accident."

Greg Cwik celebrates the "gleeful terror" of Tim Curry's Pennywise.

"Several residents had paid the considerable sum of three guineas for the privilege of accompanying the celebrity aeronaut on his ascent. As Coxwell now battled to complete his preparations, some of these passengers decided to vent their disapproval at the delay by climbing into the basket and staging a protest. According to Coxwell, one passenger, using 'gestures and foul language', even proceeded to incite the crowd still further by telling them that the aeronaut was refusing to continue with the display." Margaret Brecknell discovers Leicester's balloon riot of 1864.

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