Scrapbook: Week 37

September 6-12, 2025

SATURDAY 6 The Socialist Worker is typically snide about Angela Rayner’s political plunge.

Rayner pledged to build 1.5 million houses. Her efforts to buy them has led to her downfall.

There is no question that she had to go. The timing was important. Only after an official judgement, and not squeezed out by the baying mob. If she stays loyal to the Starmer project, even as a critical friend on the back benches, she is tipped to return to Cabinet in 12-18 months. Her vanity always came in for a vicious mauling, but in mishandling her tax affairs she walked straight into a black hole. Which reminds me that I must read that letter I just got from HMRC.

📌 For reasons I’m still not quite sure about, Jo Chard, who does really complex academic research at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, invited me to another one of her zany talking-shop events. Titled “Disrupting and De-centring In the Arts Institution” , this one was a Long Table dinner party, “where conversation is the only course”. I felt way out of my depth surrounded by academics talking theory in jargon, but eventually I settled in and made some points about disability and co-production. It was fun and I left feeling not too humiliated, saying I was on a “date night”, to meet my wife and go see a talk about the Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980, courtesy of two quite expensive free tickets from Martine, who couldn’t attend due to illness. My Long Tablemates thought it hilarious that I considered the Iranian Embassy Siege a “date”.

📌 For logistical reason we weren’t able to attend the first game of the season for the Arsenal Ladies WSL (Women’s Super League) at the nearby Emirates stadium. But surprisingly the very well-attended game against the independent London City Lionesses was on the TV and it was a thriller. The thrill being in the anticipation of when Arsenal would score another goal. They won 4-1.

SUNDAY 7 Our internet is out of action and won’t be fixed before tomorrow at the earliest. The big idea was to weather the hiatus by bingeing on the Alfred Hitchcock complete DVD collection that has sat at the bottom of a cupboard for about 10 years. However, when the moment came, I’d forgotten how to work the DVD player. We were forced to watch episodes of Sister Boniface and Silent Witness.

📌 There is an unusual amount of sympathy and support for Angela Rayner. If for no other reason that she is a colourful character, large swathes of the commentariat want her back asap.

MONDAY 8 Two new stitchworks finished and ready to join the portfolio. Each was a challenge and an experiment in its own way. The portrait was a pure step into the unknown, putting iPad painting, printing, stitch and stupid mistakes into one piece. The fish skeleton is one of Sam’s drawings stitched in gold metallic thread, which is hard to work at the best of times, but infuriating when trying to get the kind of microscopic detail Sam puts into her work.

📌 My wife had a long conversation with a woman at Plusnet and we got our internet back. So while she was out at choir practice I took a sneaky 5-minute look at The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix and pronounced it essential viewing for sometime soon.

TUESDAY 9

📌 Paul Mason is squealing with delight that the UK government has just published a new defence strategy that basically puts warfare at the heart of its plans for economic growth.

Labour is signalling the MOD must clearly prioritise investment in UK production. It will aim at partnerships with global defence giants that bring a higher percentage of work here.

WEDNESDAY 10

📌 I carved up the morning suit my wife acquired through a contact in her sewing group. The tails and the trousers became single pieces of fabric I will use to stitch pictures. The jacket is now a bolero in waiting, onto which I will stitch fine metallic thread pinstripes in different colours. The waistcoat is still a waistcoat, awaiting a big idea for transformation. Dawn tried on the bolero at Stitchers and it looked great. Julie suggested doing the metalic pinstripes in a Sashiko running stitch.

📌 According to the capitalist CapX site, Britain is the new France.

📌 At St Luke’s, Alain, 76, told me that when his doctor asked him how he manages to stay so healthy, he told her that he works out in the gym every day and smokes neat marijuana.

📌 We finished I Fought The Law, starring Sheridan Smith, via our super new Plusnet router, which my wife installed in a trice while I was out in the afternoon.

THURSDAY 11

📌 Mandelson is toast.

FRIDAY 12 Today’s media topic is Keir Starmer’s poor judgement (first Rayner, now Mandelson, even though the two departures from government have nothing in common other than a door marked EXIT). On BBC Radio 4 a Labour-supporting pensioner interviewed said he was old enough to have seen all this chaos before when a new government arrives and screws up lots of decisions before settling into a groove. Still, we can expect the hectoring vibe to continue because that’s politics. In the Guardian Simon Jenkins makes an observation about what we expect from our leaders…

A lingering legacy of empire is that Britons expect of their rulers a running commentary on world affairs. I am not aware of Swedes or Italians expecting the same.

He goes on to concoct a thoughtful essay about defence but concludes that Starmer’s new strategy (war as an economic driver) is a big exercise in global showboating…

Britain’s home soil has not been under serious military threat since the second world war. All else is a staggering waste of money.

📌 It’s hard to avoid the glee with which sections of the media are unearthing details of a friendship between a known homosexual (Peter Mandelson) and a convicted peadophile (Jeffrey Epstein).

📌 The stitchwork of Sam‘s wonky platform shoe (which existed previously at the end of her wonky legs image) is well underway. I am tempted to do the ankle cuff in metallic silver, but worried it might end up looking like the kind of police tag criminals released on curfew are required to wear.

📌 At the Barbican, the beautiful music of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings was ruined by the children’s author Michael Morpurgo standing up occasionally to read some dreary stories he’d written for the occasion about trees and animals behaving as if they were humans. Good job we were able to get discount tickets. My favourite was the Shostakovich, but all the Kanneh-Mason popular classicals were full of feeling.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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