#gavin williams

[sportstalk2]

[conniesmlb]

[sportstalk2]

[conniesmlb]

Kyle Manzardo's walk-off home run ⚾ April 29, 2025

[adamwatchesmovies]

Await Further Instructions (2018)

Unfortunately, Await Further Instructions was released in 2018 when its message was neither shocking nor revolutionary and certain elements of its horror now have unintended meanings. It means you’ve almost certainly seen a better version of this story elsewhere. Despite this, its effectiveness while it plays is hard to deny.

After distancing himself from his family for three years, Nick (Sam Gittins) agrees to bring his girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik) over for Christmas dinner. Things do not go well. The couple decide to leave the next morning but find that a barrier now encircles the house. No one can leave, the internet is down and their telephones cannot send or receive calls. Suddenly, a message from the authorities appears on the television. Though father Tony (Grant Masters), mother Beth (Abigail Cruttenden), Nick’s sister Kate (Holly Weston), her husband Scott (Kris Saddler) and Grandad David Bradley) insist on following the TV’s instructions, Nick and Annji are unsure whoever is sending them has good intentions.

Imagine bringing your significant other to meet your family for the first time and having your worst fears confirmed: they’re still narrow-minded, stupid and racially biased. Christmas is ruined. It goes from bad to worse when you realize you can't leave. In this film, it's not a snowstorm keeping everyone inside. It's something else. Stuck in the house with everyone already on edge, resentment and paranoia build and are amplified by the mysterious text that appears on the TV. Now, our protagonists are stuck in a mental asylum. Everyone else is crazy but them. Is the right choice to pretend like they're one of them or try to talk some sense into everyone else? What this movie does right is put you in the shoes of Nick and Annji. The racism Annji faces is obvious but it’s not ham-fisted. It’s a mispronounced name from mom, an assumption from dad or Kate and side comments from Grandad that tell you this is a bad place to be. You don’t like Nick’s family. Even mom, who has a chance of changing her ways, is such a doormat that you resent her even more than Tony, who is trying to be this big man by forcing everyone to follow the TV’s orders. His insistence on being a leader while taking orders from someone who - as far as Nick, Annji and we can tell - has no real authority and no proven good intentions towards the family would be hilarious if it weren’t so frightening. Every time the message on the television changes, “Await Further Instructions” tightens its grip around your throat.

You’ll be scared. You'll sweat. The picture’s message about not following orders blindly is good… but this is also where things get muddled. We never - not for a second - believe whoever is sending messages through the TV is the government. There’s something sinister going on. What that is, I can’t say without giving too much away. Ultimately, the movie is about holding onto your beliefs even when authorities (in this case, the television or the "government" sending messages through the TV) tell you to do something you know is wrong. To some viewers, that might include not vaccinating your children, which is an unfortunate message. As for the TV thing? It’s a little too late for that. For this kind of message to work in the 2010s, it needed to be people’s cell phones giving them the instructions, or QAnon conspiracy-theory loonies feeding bad info. Things get even wobblier when our questions are finally answered. Not all of it holds up. It doesn’t mean it isn’t chilling but this needed another pass through the keyboard. It’s almost as if writer Gavin Williams didn’t know what to do with the ending until it came time to submit it to the studio.

A story's flaws are always amplified when they come in during a movie’s last act and unfortunately, Await Further Instructions drops the ball at the worst time possible. Is it enough to toss away the whole thing? I don’t think so. The tension built up as the family turns on each other, the discomfort Annji and Nick feel, the fear as the trickle of revelations come in are all expertly done. I don’t expect anyone who sees Await Further Instructions to be compelled to watch it more than once or call it a favorite. That’s ok. (November 27, 2020)

[baseballjerseynumbers]

Gavin Williams switches from 63 to 32. Last worn by Zack Collins in 2023.

[baseballjerseynumbers]

Gavin Williams takes 63. Last worn by Will Brennan in 2022.

[eaglesnick]

101 Things You Should Know About the UK Tory Government

Thing 27

Bullying, and the acceptance of bullying, can sometimes seem the default setting for Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet personnel. We know that Gavin Williams was forced to resign over bullying allegations, and now Dominic Raab’s behaviour is under intense scrutiny. Less well known is the acceptance of bullying by Grant Shapps, Sunak’s new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

In 2015, when Shapps was Chairman of the Conservative Party, he was forced to resign after it was revealed he had turned a blind eye to bullying within the party than may have led to the death of a young party worker.

“Grant Shapps, a former Tory chairman, has resigned from the government in disgrace in the wake of revelations that he had been warned about bullying in the party before the death of one of its young activists." (Guardian: 28/11/2015)

Earlier in the same year it was reported in the Guardian (15/03/15) that “Grant Shapps admits he had a second job as ‘millionaire web marketer’ while MP,” despite having repeatedly denied he had used the pseudonym of Michael Green.

The Guardian article went on to reveal that:

“Prior to this concession Shapps had gone to extraordinary lengths to insist he had never been Michael Green after being elected in May 2005.

Last November the Tory party chairman used legal threats to force a local constituent and ex-Labour councillor to delete an allegedly libellous post on a Facebook group about his use of the pseudonym and replace it with an apology that explicitly states that he was not using the Michael Green pseudonym when he was an MP.”

This revelation prompted one commentator to describe Grant Shapps as a "lying liar who tells lies," who was totally wrong “to use money and libel law to bully critics into silence.”  ( Bloggerheads: 17/03/15)

No wonder ex-Tory Prime Minister Theresa May once described the Conservatives as the Nasty Party.