The Joy of Six 1245

"Lots of people left that meeting thinking: 'Fuck him. Fuck the PM. Fuck all this. I’m going to go look for a job.'" Emilio Casalicchio has talked to the people who watched the Conservative election campaign unravel from the inside.

James Graham offers some hot takes on the election result. Impressively, this post was written before a vote had been counted.

"While these accounts can no longer draw on RT or Sputnik for information, as they have been banned in the UK since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine began in 2022, both these Russian influence accounts draw heavily on GB News and its presenters." Peter Jukes investigates Russian interference in the election.

Alison Bagley examines the rise and fall of Northamptonshire's Chief Constable: "He embellished his ‘modest’ Naval career, adding eight years’ service and claimed to be a 'Commander' who had piloted a boat as a Coxwain in charge of junior officers, had been a military negotiator in Haiti – a country to which he had never been – and fought in the Falklands War."

Paul Flynn on why Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy still resonates after 40 years: "Smalltown Boy documents in empathetic, kitchen-sink detail the feelings of rejecting one archaic value system and moving to the big gay city to find your own. The choirboy falsetto of singer Jimmy Somerville, set against the chiming electronics of the musical moment, have resisted fossilisation."

"A meeting of the vestry concluded that Thomas Telford was exaggerating, and only the most rudimentary support was given to the cracked column. On the 8th of July [1788], during a funeral, the bells shook the tower so violently that the church was evacuated. The following morning, the clock struck 4am, the bell rang and the tower collapsed, taking a good chunk of the church with it." Steve Bishop finally gets inside what remains of Old St Chad's in Shrewsbury.