Really good to see Labour MPs saying the whole thing needs to go www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We all know that referees have a tough job, but the standard of officiating in the Premier League is woeful. 👎 After correctly awarding a penalty to Leeds, Thomas Bramall completely unravelled at the end of the first half. It was actually quite painful to watch. He looked lost. 😅 #CPFC

Football fans know the easy solution here

He's unearthed an even bigger scandal: food places that eyeball you and micromanage your spice tolerance (wrongly). When will *that* story get the investigation it deserves?

i, for one, am delighted that we finally have a definition of “woke”

majestic

oh just a thought if your plan for overthrowing the Iranian government depends on the Iranian public rising up, you likely shouldn't have defunded the American government run news agency that speaks in Farsi.

Erm... maybe the Greens want to look into *why* he left Corbyn's office before celebrating this too much.

This was policy-based evidence-making used to give the backbenchers a soundbite & a challenge (where are you getting the £10 billion from) on the hope they won't spot it is both in 30 years + just made-up But 2026 immig policy does seem to cost about £7-14 billion by eliminating net migration

Important to seek clarity today on whether Home Office and No 10 will try to defend - or will now withdraw - a false+misleading claim applying settlement reforms to 2022-24 cohort saves £10bn Not just overspinning lifetime saving in 30 years time Gvt policy doesn't save maybe £8-10 billion of it!

My latest for @optaanalyst.optajoe.com on the age breakdown of every Premier League squad:

A party that is resolutely anti-bourgeois while being staffed and supported by the bourgeoisie is an intriguing and inevitably impossible strategy. Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.

I've been meaning to run this analysis for a while: the probability of voting Labour at GE2024 in seats *gained* by Labour was higher for people who were younger, more liberal, on the left economically, more likely to favour immigration, do not think immigration is the most important issue, etc.

Labour lost three by-elections yesterday - all to different parties mobilising disaffected voters on their liberal left flank: Greens (see below), Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru. Starmer/McSweeney strategy of marginalizing the left flank to go after socially con Reform curious continues to backfire

Not surprising Farage hasn't bothered to announce a health spokesperson - his entire team is populated by politicians who broke the NHS. They've also forgotten about a foreign affairs spokesperson, but I guess they will take their orders straight from Trump's White House anyway.

I just saw this posted (elsewhere) with the heading 'The Slug and Lettuce' and I genuinely guffawed.

Overall, we have tallied 4x more protests through Jan 31, 2026 than we had through Jan 31, 2018

Flicking through the sims, model gives us a roughly 50% chance of staying up if we finish on 36 points, roughly 90% on 40 points. Definitely a decent chance of a high bar, model likes our chances of picking up enough points though

Every day some freelance illustrator on here calls for the uk to copy the Irish scheme of a basic income for artists and every time it pmo so bad - like omg dare to dream this should be in place for EVERYONE, for EVERYONNNNNNE

Thomas Frank did nothing to stop the continuing decline of Spurs

Plans to invade Greenland have just been cancelled after this

analytic.football has got some upgrades, pretty much all under the good stuff. There's a whole new ratings model, which you can read more about here: simon.football/p/analytic-f... And a reminder of what you can find on the site 👇

Anton Stach, Leeds 25-26. Midfielder 2.0 radar and shot map.

PS. Not too late to tell the government what you think about their proposed changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain - the public consultation is open until 12th Feb. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Someone tell the BBC Chelsea were doing this under Maresca

This race was such a massive swing blowout that Democrat Taylor Rehmet literally won a city called White Settlement

yet another data point for "the standard case for pragmatic electoral moderation would be more compelling if people stopped insisting that transgender issues are an electoral problem for Democrats"

those people on twitter who share screenshots of 7 arsenal players around the goalie every day

I love Starmerism, it's like "Uh no this guy can't be an MP because people like him. Only people everyone hates can be in Labour." It is so cool and smart.

Mark Carney's speech is now only the second most acute analysis of where the world is at right now:

Absolutely killer chart backing up what we all know - Starmer chasing the anti-immigrant vote isn't going to work

pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things

Trump accepting Machado's Nobel Peace Prize is a great insult to the FIFA Peace Prize committee

Buttons are back. Knobs are back. Dumb devices are back. Own-it-forever software is back. Print is back. Personal websites and chronological feeds are back. Touching grass is back. People keep saying 2015, but it’s not far enough. The entire 2010s were a mistake. We must retvrn to… 2009.

Priceless

I’M LOSING MY SHIT THIS IS SO FUNNY

Innocent people end up in our criminal courts. Completely, terrifyingly innocent. And all that stands between them and losing everything is a fair trial. Politicians would do well to remember this when they tell us that justice is all about processing “criminals” swiftly.

Home Office inadvertently bans historical research about the Dunkirk evacuation.

As you do fewer things at outlier level it gets harder to justify needing to carry a defensive deadweight

Finally got round to writing a methodology for the model simon.football/p/analytic-f...

About to push some decent upgrades to the model at analytic.football Big change is model now uses recent average errors to move future ratings - so less fluctuation in the ratings but still moving as quickly when it is consistently wrong Result is less bouncy ratings (new ones on the left)

British and Australian chemists have discovered a powerful new antibiotic called pre-methylenomycin C lactone, hiding in a well-known soil bacterium. This molecule kills drug-resistant bacteria without triggering resistance. buff.ly/YlXaONo #ShareGoodNewsToo

Every time I see this I believe slightly more that this was the most important survey ever conducted.

spot on

Yes, I think this is what the “it’s smart not to do income tax” stuff is missing. If you remove salary sacrifice on someone’s pension contributions you are increasing their income tax! If you freeze thresholds you are increasing their income tax!