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richardhull54.bsky.social
Richard Hull
@richardhull54.bsky.social
38K followers 69K following 1.9K posts
P/T lecturer 0.2 in Social Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, London, + semi-retired. Views my own. Climate Justice, Stop Ecocide, Critical Management Studies, Solidarity Economy, 💙.
https://www.gold.ac.uk/icce/staff/r-hull/
N🚫 DMs - you WILL be blocked
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richardhull54.bsky.social
That's a great example of #Brandalism so I've added #AltText so that more folk can appreciate it 😀.
Photo of an outdoor advertising panel on the side of a London bus-stop, which has been subverted, brandalised - the large poster in the panel has these words above a picture of Musk: "Imagine having a trillion dollars and still being the world's biggest loser".
November 9, 2025 at 1:45 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That image deserves wider appreciation (and the link is paywalled) so I've added #AltText for you.
#ICE
A photograph of a woman holding a number of grocery bags standing in front of a gate into an apartment block. The caption of the photo reads: "A woman delivers groceries to a family too cared to go outside because of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Chicago. (Ben Strauss/The Washington Post)
October 25, 2025 at 4:28 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
There's also rallies in Europe:
Screenshot of a section of the Guardian Live reporting of the No Kings protests. Headline: "No Kings solidarity protests pop up across Europe. Ahead of the huge No Kings protests expected across all 50 states of the US on Saturday, several protets in solidarity have popped up across Europe. In Berlin, Germany: [Over a photo by Christian Mang, Reuters. A group of people with signs and banners, one with a megaphone, stand in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.] In Madrid, Spain: [Over a photo by Violeta Santos Moura / Reuters. Three signs held up by a group of people. One reads 'Defend Democracy, Madrid'. The second reads 'No Tyrants, No Fascists, No Dictators, No Trump'. The third reads 'Nuestra Diversidad = Nuestra Identidad'.] In Rome, Italy: [Over a photo by Marco Di Gianvito / Zuma Press Wire / Shutterstock. In the foreground is a large pink inflatable of what seems to be an alien creature. Next to it is a sign reading 'Same Shit, Different Hat' with pictures of a Klu Klux Klan hood, a Confederate cap, a Nazi cap, and a MAGA cap.]
October 18, 2025 at 2:51 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
I just wish it was this easy 😔
Cartoon by @tomgauld.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/books/pictur...
Where writers get their ideas. Cartoon showing a hipster man in a park, with a list in his hand, standing in front of what looks like an ice cream vendor's trolley. But the trolley has a sign saying 'Fresh Ideas'. And the vendor is saying, whilat looking into the trolley, "I'm all out of mind-blowing concepts and heart-rending narratives, but I've got an acerbic observation, an unexpected outcome and a couple of amusing notions."
October 12, 2025 at 6:52 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's excellent so I've added #AltText so that more folks can appreciate it.
A sea of faces all wearing the Guy Fawkes masks used in V for Vendetta. A sea of faces all wearing the comic inflatable frog's heads used by some protesters in Portland.
October 12, 2025 at 9:15 AM
richardhull54.bsky.social
🤣🤣🤣
You've just gotta laugh.

Malin Hay in the @lrb.co.uk blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...
On 30 August, the American comedian Tim Dillon took to his podcast, The Tim Dillon Show, to defend his decision to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. ‘I know that people are very upset about it, they’re angry that comedians are going ... Get over it,’ he said. ‘A lot of people are doing it. Like a lot. Like almost everyone. They bought comedy ... So what they have slaves? ... They’re paying me $375,000 ... enough money to look the other way.’ The Saudi government, unluckily for Dillon, was listening. Three weeks later, he released an episode called ‘Fired from Riyadh’. His agent had rung him up: ‘“They heard what you said about their having slaves.” And I said: “I was being positive about it. I was defending them.”’ It wasn’t good enough for the Saudis, who have reportedly paid their headliners up to $1.6 million each with the proviso that they mustn’t mock religion, the royal family or Saudi ‘culture’ – including, apparently, slavery. The festival, which is running from 26 September to 9 October, is part of the Vision 2030 strategy launched in 2016. While the primary objective is to reduce the economy’s dependence on oil, the government also aims to ‘amaze the world again’ – to secure Saudi Arabia’s image both as the ‘heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds’ and as a friendly tourist destination.
October 10, 2025 at 5:53 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's great so I've added #AltText so that more folk can appreciate it.
"World Mental Health Day Isn't like Christmas Day or Valentine's Day It's a day that should be Every day of the year; If it's your birthday, Happy Birthday to you; If you're not okay today Talking and getting help Are the best things you can do. You might not feel like smiling, But you are worthwhile, And you deserve to be here. @AllOnTheBoard" This is written by hand with a board-marker on a Service Information board at one of the stations on London Underground (these boards usually give information, if needed, on Underground train services).
October 10, 2025 at 10:26 AM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's very good so I've added #AltText so that more folks can appreciate it.
Statement from Board of Deputies of British Jews and Jewish Leadership Council. "Tommy Robinson is a thug who represents the very worst of Britain. His presence undermines those genuinely working to tackle Islamist extremeism and foster community cohesion. Minister Chikli has proven himself to be a Diaspora Minister in name only. In our darkest hour, he has ignored the views of the vast majority of British Jews, who utterly and consistently reject Robinson and everything he stands for."
October 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
Seems a bit large for the Mr Men books?
#TrumpLibrary

www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...
16m ago 18:42 BST Richard Luscombe Coming soon to Miami: the Donald J Trump presidential library. Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis and his cabinet voted Tuesday morning to hand over a lucrative parcel of land for the venture, the first formal step towards a building intended to honor the legacy of the 45th and 47th president. The unanimous vote by DeSantis and three loyalists, including the unelected Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, conveys almost three acres of prime real estate in the shadow of the Miami Freedom Tower, the iconic and recently reopened “beacon of freedom” that saw tens of thousands of Cubans enter the US during its time as an immigration processing center. On Monday, protestors at the site, currently a parking lot for Miami Dade College’s downtown campus, highlighted the juxtaposition with a building celebrating a president who has implemented the biggest crackdown on immigration in the nation’s history. “I look forward to the patriotic stories the Trump Library Foundation will showcase for generations to come in the Free State of Florida,” Uthmeier said in a statement following the vote. Eric Trump, the president’s son, celebrated the news in a post to X. “It will be the greatest Presidential Library ever built, honoring the greatest President our Nation has ever known,” he wrote.
September 30, 2025 at 6:03 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's great so I've added #AltText so that more folk can appreciate it.
The top caption reads "The UK steps in. (They sure have a way with words). Underneath is a screenshot of an article, headed with a photo of Donald Trump, and with the the byline "By Oliver Kornetzke August 18, 2025" "Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul—all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn’t but has always been—arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel. It is America’s shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn’t just lose its soul—it sh*ts out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader."
September 29, 2025 at 5:25 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's a great picture so I've added #AltText so that more folk can appreciate it.
🌈
🏳️‍⚧️
An official-looking printed sign reads "If you see a pothole paint a rainbow in it and the state will fix it overnight". This is super-imposed over a photo of a pothole with a rainbow carefully painted within it.
September 22, 2025 at 6:30 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
Excellent cartoon captures the often unconscious fear and paranoia of the other that is one of the legacies of #colonialism. I've added #AltText so that more people can appreciate it.
Two people with dark skins are in the water on the left of the scene, and are looking up and saying "Why do you think that if you let us come into your land we'll rob you?" A suited middle-aged man with pale skin and arms crossed stands above them behind a high wall, next to a St George flag, and says "Because that's what we did when we came to yours."
September 22, 2025 at 3:12 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
That's a great sign so I've added #AltText to the photo so that more people can appreciate it.
A large colourful roadside sign which reads "I LOVE YOU. You're probably thinking, "you don't even know me." But, if people can hate for no reason, I can love."
September 17, 2025 at 11:20 AM
richardhull54.bsky.social
😭😭😭

H/T @adamtooze.bsky.social.

Buy the book here direct from @versobooks.bsky.social
www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

#Anthropocene
#Thanatocene (Thanatos = Ancient Greek personification of Death)
#ClimateCrisis
#PolyCrisis
#WagesNotWeapons
🌍
Thanatocene: "During the Second World War, General Patton’s Third Army consumed one US gallon of petrol (3.7 litres) per person per day. This figure reached nine gallons during the Vietnam War, ten gallons for Operation Desert Storm, and fifteen gallons during the Second Gulf War. Present-day military technologies have reached unheard-of levels of energy consumption. An Abrams tank in the US Army burns four litres per kilometre. A B-52 bomber burns 12,000 litres of jet fuel per hour, and an F-15 fighter 7,000 litres, comparable to the consumption of an average family car in a whole decade. In 2006, the US Air Force consumed a total of 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel, as much as was used overseas during the whole of the Second World War." Source: Bonneuil, Christophe; Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste. The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us (Function). Kindle Edition.
September 15, 2025 at 5:45 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
🧵3/3
The winners in an autocracy have little in common with the losers, but putting on aviator sunglasses or a leather jacket and watching UFC seems to build gender solidarity. It remains unclear whether young men will do better under Trump, but at least they will feel pandered to. Tens of billions of dollars have flooded into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency this year, creating security-state jobs that are being advertised directly to men: a tweet by the Department of Homeland Security asked ‘Which way, American man?’, an apparent reference to the book Which Way Western Man? by the white nationalist William Gayley Simpson. Hungry for these breadcrumbs, men are voting in ways that hurt others, defining an increasingly narrow corridor of people who ‘deserve’ the benefits of citizenship, healthcare, a home. The embrace of politicians and celebrities who have been accused of sexual assault and mistreating women makes clear that such behaviour has few consequences. The disenfranchised men of the manosphere disdain women, and yet women continue to be asked to feel pity and concern for them. Rahm Emanuel, the longtime Democratic Party operative, wrote recently in the Washington Post that the lack of affordable housing affects men ‘with particular potency’, because, ‘like it or not, American men are still raised to believe that their role is to act as providers and protectors.’ Flatter them or they’ll turn on you.
September 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
🧵2/3
As in the early days of men’s liberation, the manosphere could have gone in another direction and rejected the idea of a gendered fate. It’s often pointed out (if not by the red-pilled) that the Wachowskis directed The Matrix as closeted trans women. Elon Musk wants to put a computer chip in your brain and to colonise Mars, yet sees no value in using technology to alter secondary sex characteristics, and is estranged from his trans daughter. That the futurists who want to break the bounds of mortality are the ones most committed to the immutability of gender says something about how useful the concept is to them. Their insistence on masculine hegemony is an insistence on order and hierarchy.
September 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
Really excellent essay review by @embits.bsky.social in @lrb.co.uk on the #manosphere and Andrew Tate. It makes very disturbing reading but it is important we all understand these phenomena.
🧵1/3
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The anxieties Tate addresses are real, which is part of the reason his sales pitch is so effective. ‘The system is deliberately designed to oppress and keep people working jobs which barely pay their rent and everyone is semi-depressed,’ he tells Tahsin and Shea. ‘But it doesn’t matter because the elites get to do whatever they want. So, the rules are for poor people. And when you understand how to break the rules, then you can find a very easy way to become rich.’ It’s not just rules that are for simps, but manners, decorum and kindness too. Some of his power, like Trump’s, comes from his acknowledgment that traditional paths to economic and social stability are increasingly blocked off, and in ways that undermine traditional markers of masculine success. ‘We live in a world where you cannot play fair any more,’ he says. In a recent interview in Jacobin, the anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee described the theories of the manosphere and its female counterpart, the tradwife, as ‘individual escape fantasies’ – a dream that there is some way out of material and social reality, and that the key to comfort, protection and meaning in life is deciphering the messages sent by your endocrine system. ‘It’s sad,’ Ghodsee said, ‘because there’s almost a nascent anti-capitalist impulse here being hijacked toward reactionary ends.’ The clips of young mothers with facial fillers wearing eyelet dresses and stirring with wooden spoons, the thick-necked men discussing their paleo diets and their crypto positions – even the videos of the morning dew on a banana yellow sports car – bely a desperation. If the keys to the good life have been discovered, why this incessant gabbing at the camera?
September 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
This is a good piece arguing for #CommunityUnions as one base and activity for the new #YourParty - other articles in this journal have more varied usefulness.
It’s from these conditions that community unions such as ACORN in England and Wales, Living Rent in Scotland, CATU in Ireland, the Greater Manchester Tenants Union, and the London Renters’ Union have emerged, bringing together tenants, workers, and families organising for a fairer deal for the communities they live in. Like the friendly societies of old, community unions are membership organisations where members contribute a little bit of money and a little bit of time every month in service of building a union capable of defending and expanding their rights through direct action. This direct action takes many forms. If a member has had their deposit stolen, if their rent has been hiked, or if essential repairs are being continuously delayed, then community unions can take direct action by accompanying the member to confront the landlord or letting agent in question. Fellow union members can help issue demands, secure meetings, and negotiate on the tenant’s behalf. They can also occupy the landlord or letting agent’s offices, refusing to leave until the demands for compensation, lower rent, or essential repairs have been met. If a member is being evicted, community unions can take direct action by physically resisting the eviction. On the day of the eviction, union members working in a group can block the entrances to the property, denying access to the bailiffs and forcing the landlord back into negotiations with their tenant. If a member is living in social housing and their block of flats is suffering from disrepair, then community unions can take direct action by organising the affected residents, offering them an opportunity to articulate their grievances and demands, confronting relevant Councillors and departments with these demands, and building pressure for these demands to be met by contacting the press and gaining the support of the local community.
September 12, 2025 at 5:39 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
Verification, from the facebook page of @dailypolitik.bsky.social.
September 10, 2025 at 5:57 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
🤣🤣🤣 Hilarious.
Screenshot of a Facebook post from the account Banksy Art Forever, showing a screenshot of (I think) a twitter post from the account 'Barry Malone', with a photo of the attempt to clean the recent Banksy image on the wall of the UK Royal Courts of Justice. The original image showed a judge holding a hammer over a protester on the ground holding a placard - referencing the UK government's attempts to silence street protests. However, the 'cleaning' entailed just scraping the surface of the wall, revealing a darker shade of stone underneath, so that the effect is a silhouette of the original, very striking, image. Indeed, it now seems very difficult to find images of this online - showing a government deeply embarrassed by their ineptitude.
September 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
From a friend on facebook, reposted from an account called 'Banksy Forever', I think on that other place.
#Banksy
#Liberty
Image showing the Statue of Liberty, her hands in handcuffs, being led away by two menacing-looking, riot-gear clothed individuals with 'Police' printed on their stab-vests.
September 10, 2025 at 4:10 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
🧵2/2
... The message is implicit but unmistakable: play the game, listen to us, and you too can enjoy more of this. The logic creeps into your personal life. You stretch to buy the house that can host the right gatherings. You measure your worth by the standards of a world that equates success with possessions and proximity to privilege. And once you are on that path, it is hard to step off. This is, of course, a simplification of a complex socio-economic and political process. But as someone who came from a council estate myself, I see it all around me in Westminster. And it is not going to be changed by media witch-hunts, the tutting of ethics advisers, or even the occasional burst of public outrage. As Gladstone once warned, “Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” But in our current system, what is morally questionable is too often normalised, excused, and rebranded as “just the way things are.” Real change will only come from a collective decision to choose a different path: to stop outsourcing our state to private interests, to end the revolving door between government and corporate boardrooms, to challenge the idea that the role of politics is to serve vast concentrations of wealth. We can choose differently. We can once again put community, solidarity, and public service at the heart of our political life. We can insist that worth is measured not in the size of one’s house or the company one keeps, but in the contribution one makes to society and the integrity with which one serves. Until we do, until we decide as a polity to hold up those values rather than the glittering prizes of private gain, hese scandals will not just recur. They will define the very character of our politics. https://www.theguardian.com/.../angela-rayner-stamp-duty...
September 8, 2025 at 6:20 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
An excellent Facebook post from Clive Lewis on the #AngelaRayner resignation.
#Labour
#DeputyLeader
#MoneyInPolitics
It's too long even for one image with #AltText so I've used two.
🧵1/2
Clive Lewis MP 5 September at 17:20. An Observation on Angela Rayner and the Labour Government. One cannot help but feel a measure of sympathy for Angela Rayner. I know her well enough to say that she came into politics for the best of reasons: a desire to serve, a determination to improve the lives of people whose struggles she understood from her own experience. But the further up the ladder one climbs in politics, the more insistent the temptations become. This is not simply about individual weakness or personal failing. It is structural. Over the past 40 years, Britain has built a society in which consumption, status, and proximity to wealth have become defining features of the political class. The gravitational pull of money is now so great that even those who arrive in Westminster with the clearest sense of purpose find their heads turned. Angela’s story is not unique. She came from humble beginnings, but the wealth that circles political life today is more concentrated, more brazen, and more intrusive than in the past. The old checks and balances, party rootedness in mass membership, trade union accountability, a press less entangled with oligarchic interests, have all weakened. Where once honour, public service, even a sense of historical duty could command respect, today those values are dimmed in comparison to the pursuit of material position. The mechanism is subtle but relentless. It is not corruption in the brown-envelope-under-the-table sense. It is the slow, almost invisible turning of heads. You are introduced to those who walked this path before you, former ministers who now sit comfortably in boardrooms or on the payroll of consultancies with six and seven-figure salaries. You are invited to corporate boxes at sporting events, to private dinners, to concerts and premiers. Lavish clothes or spectacles can be “within the rules,” provided they are declared. But by then the damage has been done ... [see next post].
September 8, 2025 at 6:20 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
For all those people scratching their heads over why Murdoch's Times newspaper and the BBC are giving so much non-challenging coverage to Reform and Farage ...
No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges. Buenaventura Durruti, 1896 - 1936.
September 8, 2025 at 5:23 PM
richardhull54.bsky.social
No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges. Buenaventura Durruti, 1896 - 1936.
September 8, 2025 at 5:17 PM