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Squeezy John

@johnspiers.co.uk

2.8K followers 140 following 25K posts

John Spiers. Squeezebox player with Gigspanner Big Band, Bellowhead, Spiers & Boden, Peter Knight & John Spiers, Jackie Oates & John Spiers … Folk music, allotmenteer, socialist, half a century old.

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Reposted by Squeezy John

Derek @derekdesanges.bsky.social · Aug 15

with your help we can change this

the wicker mang @mangmangmang.bsky.social · Aug 14

People are always rightly pointing out that Warhammer contributes more to the British economy than the fishing industry, but the problem is that there just aren't very many folk songs about Warhammer

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 3d

I think it’s more sinister than that “not pretty” is in the eye of the beholder … but graffiti like this has its roots in black sub-culture … and that is what Vance is objecting to … if you look at his pronouncements there is always some kind of embedded racial implication.

Reposted by Squeezy John

Brian Moore @briantrumpet.bsky.social · 4d

Everything he's reported to have said in this BBC piece sounds like he's desperately trying to distance himself, knowing that the connection is real and toxic. If the press were investigating Farage with the same enthusiasm they went for Rayner, he'd be done for.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Nigel Farage 'stunned' ex-Wales Reform leader Nathan Gill took bribes

Nathan Gill has admitted taking money for pro-Russian statements as a European Parliament member.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 3d

Is that actually set properly? I’ve never achieved that!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

You’re welcome to as many as you can carry!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

I mean, that is basically what membrillo is … but I might have a go given the 250 quinces left on the tree!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Hmmm. I doubt they would have been edible even cooked before refined sugar was widely available! You’d need a hell of a lot of honey to overcome the astringency of a handful of quinces!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

If you want something unusual and amazing, get yourself a chilean guava.

Not 100% hardy and quite slow growing ... but the little pink berry sized fruits taste like some kind of artificial strawberry sweets with hints of mango and tropical fruits. And they ripen in October/November!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Yes ... this is me as peak curmudgeonly gardener ... but I do love quinces. They look majestic in a fruit bowl and smell nicer than any potpourri or disgusting chemical air-freshener. The medlar is a very pretty little tree, but of little culinary interest.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Yay! Weird heritage fruit season is here!

There's a reason we moved over to apples and pears!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Quinces are the proof that if God exists then he's taunting us something rotten!

Huge crop of large, beautiful fruits with a fragrance to die for.

Even when fully ripe, they're rock hard, zero sweetness, more acidic than a pickled armpit!

A fully laden quince tree with beautiful big yellow pear shaped fruits

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

The only way the medlar becomes edible is for it to be "bletted" which means basically rotting slightly. After picking in October and being bletted in controlled conditions it becomes soft enough to eat in Nov/Dec when the fruit yields a small amount of sour mealy flesh among the huge pips.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Almost as useful as the other heritage "apple family" fruit tree, the medlar, which is an attractive tree that makes fruits which are bullet hard and taste of nothing. The name medlar means "open arse" because the fruit's morphology resembles a rather extended sphincter.

Some medlars, a medium sized fruit about half the size of an apple with an enlarged calix which resembles a dog's anus.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Only rendered edible by peeling, removing the core (most of the fruit) and then boiling for 2 hours and adding a metric shit-ton of processed sugar.

The internet only has one recipe to make a weird condiment called Membrillo which is only eaten once a year with a specific type of Spanish cheese.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 4d

Quinces are the proof that if God exists then he's taunting us something rotten!

Huge crop of large, beautiful fruits with a fragrance to die for.

Even when fully ripe, they're rock hard, zero sweetness, more acidic than a pickled armpit!

A fully laden quince tree with beautiful big yellow pear shaped fruits

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 5d

He was also convinced that the Nestles chocolate factory in Hayes was pronounced "nessles" ... because that's what everyone in London called it! When Nestlé chocolate began advertising its proper pronunciation it blew his mind.

We don't call Paris "paree" ... nor Munich "münchen" ... good!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 5d

My grandad was born and bred in London over 100 years ago ... he pronounced it Marley-bone ... yes we all know now that it comes from Mary-le-bonne or Mary-le-bourne meaning a Norman French inspired Good Mary or St. Mary next to the (Saxon) river.

But fuck that ... it's Marley-bone.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 5d

Idiots!

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 5d

Yes a song is in 3/4 4/4 or 6/8 or whatever ... but also songs go naturally in 4 bar, 8 bar or sometimes unusual numbers ... but you can't just change that and expect people not to notice that you're a fucking philistine.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 5d

I know most of you probably won't have noticed but when video editors, advert producers and TV people think they have found a way of editing down music to a given time limit and they clearly have no fucking idea what music is as a concept it makes me so fucking cross. It makes no sense musically1

Reposted by Squeezy John

I Am Incorrigible @imincorrigible.bsky.social · 8d

Integration - some facts that will never cross the racist Robert Jenrick's lips.

#CPC25 #C4News

bsky.app/profile/omar...

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 8d

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

Reposted by Squeezy John

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 8d

The UAE is an authoritarian autocracy, a petro-state with no income tax for citizens, to bribe them for the lack of democratic voice or free speech

It is 85% migrant, a segregated society with a ban on integration in principle and practice, few rights, equal opportunities, nor voice for incomers

Reposted by Squeezy John

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 7d

I'm never actually going to need to write another comment piece again am I?

The right wing shit rags are just going to keep recruiting for us.

Folks - want a better country?

Join.greenparty.org.uk

The party even more dangerous than Starmers labour - UK's answer to Putin's communists

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 7d

Have you seen the recent polling? The political/media class pretty much dictates what the British people vote for.

Squeezy John @johnspiers.co.uk · 8d

Given how badly Kemi Badenoch is doing her job here, she’d be wise not to talk about the validity of other people’s jobs!

LBC @lbc.co.uk · 8d

"So you're laying waste to people's jobs, but you don't know how many?"

Kemi Badenoch plans to get rid of 'quite a lot' of civil servants.

She doesn't have the exact figure, but she assures Nick that she's 'looked at it'.