September 27-October 3, 2025
SATURDAY 27 There’s a picture of Bruce Springsteen in the current issue of Time magazine in which to me he looks very like John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten).
📌 The New Statesman has a big, long interview with Andy Burnham, the premise being that Burnham thinks he’d make a better prime minister than Keir Starmer and that what Starmer lacks is the fluency of being “one of the lads”, something Burnham seems to handle so well. That may be so, but what the article also hints at is that the politics of the two is not very far apart at all and that they are not really opponents at all, just two people who have a different view about how to do the same thing.
In his demeanour and language Burnham embodies what Labour, in its heart, would most like to be – the party’s sense of its best self.
SUNDAY 28 Listening to the audiobook of A Christmas Carol, I discovered where The Icicle Works, a band I knew back in 1980s Liverpool, got their name from. It refers to Scrooge reflecting that on a cold Winter’s night his mechanical clock might have an “icicle in the works”.
📌 All the news reports depict Andy Burnham revving up to make leadership manoeuvres in the light of Keir Starmer’s Donkeygate predicament.
MONDAY 29 I wonder if in a few years time we will be able to ask Americans “What took you so long?” when the penny finally drops at the failings of Donald Trump.
📌 It doesn’t look like golf is a sedate sport anymore.
📌 A writer on the Open Democracy site says that the #donkeygate revelations about Keir Starmer have backfired because the truth of his involvement with his mother’s donkey field in Kent is that it shows the real Keir Starmer as a man and a politician, something he has so far been unable to pull off in public.
TUESDAY 30 Hours before Keir Starmer’s make-or-break speech to conference, Labourlist has an interview with Neil Kinnock about his own make-or break speech to conference in 1985. It starts by Kinnock reflecting that he became Labour leader more than 40 years ago almost by accident.
If Tony Crosland hadn’t died, if Shirley Williams hadn’t deserted, if Tony Benn had not become messianic, I wouldn’t have even had to think about ruining my forties.
📌 Meanwhile, a lot of commentators say Andy Burnham has already overplayed his hand.
📌 An item buried at the bottom of today’s Sensemaker claims that the government intends to bring back support grants for students from low-income families. The standout revelation for me is that it will be funded by a tax on overseas students.
WEDNESDAY 1 The Richard Osman book The Last Devil To Die offers a top tip on how to enjoy New Year’s Eve, usher in a fresh start for the next 12 months and still be in bed by 10pm. One of the residents of Osman’s fictional Coopers Chase retirement village manages to hook up the communal TV to a Turkish station, which is celebrating the new year three hours ahead of the UK. All the singing, dancing, drinking, eating and fireworks go off as normal, but in a timescale that allows the Coopers Chase partygoers to be slumbering contentedly by midnight.
📌 In his big speech yesterday Keir Starmer pitched himself directly against Nigel Farage as the best person to be UK prime minister. According to polling taken afterwards his naming a common enemy in “racist” Farage appears to have worked, notably among the voters he had already lost to the Greens and the LibDems.
I think it’s a mistake to pretend this isn’t the fight of our times.
📌 The Zidane/Materazzi stitchwork is finished. It’s a bit grubby, but I’m just glad to have done with it, and it’s good enough for the archive.
📌 To Milton Court to see the snooty orchestral Britten Sinfonia, only because of a guest appearance on piano by the amazing Jeneba Kenneh-Mason. A load of the musicians piled into the pub (the Two Brewers) afterwards. The Mozart and Schuberts were too long and ultimately tedious, but the modern works by Elena Kats-Chernin’s and Robin Haigh were exciting.
THURSDAY 2
📌 I’ve not had a top score in Waffle for several weeks…
FRIDAY 3
📌 I bumped into Big Graham at the doctor’s and on the walk back he told me that Ralph is still a hopeless junkie and that Graham has given up on him. He said also he’d been given some back pay on his benefits. He spent most of it on a new kitchen and the rest “paying for my funeral”.
📌 At the St Luke’s Dickens workshops I was kippered up by Holly and James (the actor/writer running the A Christmas Carol workshops) into being the play’s Narrator, which I will be filmed doing before the big performance on November 21, when I will be on holiday on the island of La Palma. My intention is to do it in a stereotypical Liverpudlian street-urchin accent, but James might object. If he does I will flounce out in a fit of pique proclaiming “How can I possibly work like this!?”
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 