I hope you all get to have a Matchmaker and a nice sit down

I wonder what people would've watched at Christmas if streaming had been available in 1979? England had a whole culture and sense of 'the world' built around what was on the telly in the 1970s and now there is no chance of that happening ever again and I don't think it knows how to handle that

Blimey. That's been a year of work. Last newspapers of 2025 are off to print. I spent the year selling advertising in them. We increased our page count, sold enough ads not to go under AND brought our communities thousands of news stories in print and online. Ask me anything about local newspapers

I think the MCU is a very expensive way to give the soap opera experience to people who maintain they don't like soap opera

We hope everyone is able to be their authentic selves over the festive period, but we know this isn't always possible 🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Whether or not you change your behaviour or how you dress, please know that your identity is still valid and you're not to blame for any anti-LGBT+ abuse you experience.

Barry Cryer Diana Dors David Frost Alan Whicker Bernie Winters (and his dog) Tony Slattery Ken Campbell Mike Yarwood Wendy Richard Frank Bough Micheal Winner Lew Grade Mary Millington Mary Whitehouse Mary the punk off of Eastenders Dean Sullivan

I wonder what would happen if bbc news paid for 30 second unskippable news broadcasts as YouTube adverts. Kind of like pathe news at cinemas.

c.7000 elderly people, many with dementia & confused were given “eviction notices” with 28 days notice from care homes in 2024 because of changing care needs/they could not afford to pay A 200% increase since 2018 I saw it happening in my brother in law’s nursing home www.msn.com/en-my/news/o...

AI is often sold as 'do something you already know how to do more efficiently' but is often bought as 'do something you don't know how to do with no idea if you are doing it efficiently at all'

You know it may be just me but I’m starting to get the feeling that most industries are full of men who are sex pests, rapists or just pathetic enablers.

🎶In the doldrums 🎶It's the place where we're depressed 🎶In the doldrums 🎶Try to make myself get dressed 🎶In the doldrums 🎶Miscellaneously stressed 🎶In the doldrums 🎶(In the doldrums)

The British Medical Association appears to be fed up with Streeting and his TERFy nonsense: www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-s...

"He thinks he is More interesting Than the world But buying cigs Puts him in a whirl" #fallfriday youtu.be/z6oFtDJ623g?...

Kids don't belong to their parents anymore than anyone else does. Your family will only fall apart if your kid is trans or gay or bi or anything else because you make it fall apart. Gender affirming care isn't a threat to anyone's family. It's only a threat to people's rigid idea of what family is

I'm fascinated by way so many attack lines and strategies from the Tories are literally just recycled ones from the last decade had previously been put to the Conservatives. 'The government is out of ideas' might make sense at the end of a decade in power, not now. Political statements as a style

This is a version of what I call 'the racist uncle problem'. In the UK, white working class folks know what left wing ideas are up against because we've always rubbed up against those who have very right wing ones. We've not swam through life with extreme right wing ideas as a abstract

Michael Wolff keeps stressing in 'All or Nothing' how Trump world is filled with people with no reputation to lose. I think about this a lot. The last decade of public life has been dominated by such monsters and they want this shit pile to continue forever as it's the only place they could flourish

When I interviewed Spinal Tap and Marty DiBergi this summer, none of them broke character, for the whole hour. Except Rob Reiner, once, losing it when Michael McKean's David St Hubbins talked about minimalism. I didn't use this in the feature and hadn't published any audio, but this is joyful.

Hello. I would like to celebrate the lost art of the compilation album as an eye and ear opening path into pleasures previously unknown. It might be a sampler, it might be a mix album but it's a person's singular vision of a particular genre or theme. Thread below of some favourites

Hello. I would like to celebrate the lost art of the compilation album as an eye and ear opening path into pleasures previously unknown. It might be a sampler, it might be a mix album but it's a person's singular vision of a particular genre or theme. Thread below of some favourites

I'm going to advance the view that people who make really fun things for other people to enjoy often do really care about bad things happening in the world, that's why they make fun things not because the bad things have somehow escaped their notice.

I wish people would include what the explicit images are actually of when discussing stories like this. If I am looking at a picture of a bicycle I want to see a bicycle not a vague miasma.

"All your life you've been embarrassed and ashamed to really roll in the shit and indulge your own worst instincts. Vote for me and I'll roll in more shit than you ever could and I'll say it's amazing and then we can all roll in the lovely shit together. Thank you for your attention in this matter"

Hello. I would like to say that 'A Word of Science' by Nightmares on Wax is an incredible album youtu.be/k_KSTXfXzIE?...

I feel like the appleification of the idea of tech might be stronger in US than elsewhere. Consumer tech is really cheap even first hand if you're not thinking that high end is the only end.

Imagine Donald Trump was on a visit to the UK and Mr Blobby proper went for him.

Will I know what's happening if I haven't heard Party Fears One?

Thinking about how much 'of the old world now passed' is the idea as you get older your home will get comfier and nicer and more secure. Ever increasing numbers of folks have seen their living space get worse, smaller, more insecure. How much of Christmas notion is 'here I am in my favourite place'.

"Paranoid man in his late 30s Reaches its summit.. Male, mid 30s, white, paranoia Serial Number 54129 Going down to the dance Going down fast Leather jacket, baggy black pants Very clever Not as good as it was at 2:30 This afternoon Nostalgia Spangles" #fallfriday www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNKR...

Carry on at Your Convenience

'Gamergate was to the John Birch Society what Birth Of A Nation was to the second Klan' is a sentence that makes sense to me. When will this suffering end

Yessssssssssss!

Hello. Is there a book that looks at the ways that 'scale' as the metric for investment in tech has had real world and unpleasant impacts? Because where I'm sitting AI is looking like a 'scale' for investment boom that will turn into a 'revenue to repay' massacre of infinitely rising consumer prices

Always baffled by the Conservative thirst to declare 'the past was fucking horrible and we were fucking horrible and I still remember every single horrible thing and that's why we should just continue the way we are which is fucking horrible and that's that isn't it?'

What's that, Judge Cal you say? I remember posting a while ago that somehow the popular culture of the 1970s and 1980s will eventually vanquish the Trump administration in some kind of magical action, but it really does feel like an administration made from 1970s and 1980s spectacle. Retro fash

I am not sure the present era of British politics 'make up policy so that an angry bloke somewhere in America reading about it nods and doesn't spam the comments with racism' is quite the way to go really.

Critics of disability benefits largely frame it as a concern for government spending but beneath it, there’s often a clear prejudice: disabled people should have miserable little lives (unlike hardworking, normal people).

As the trans community have known for a while now - the definition of activist is someone who dares to state they exist

I dunno, religion as something that offers support, acceptance, meaning in adversity and community in fellow feeling and absolution doesn't sound too bad, which can be a byproduct of diagnosis. But hard agree below is a very lazy argument that dresses in pseudo profundity 'those people are silly'.

I ADORE Patchwork. If you're looking for a two player game that just feels nice to play, even while it has massive opportunities to do each other dirty, Patchwork is one of the most mint

I think there's an interesting thing to be written about the ways that the England has ended up hugely discriminating against trans people because some of the voices to do so came from within the historic tent of progressive movements rather than outside of it, and from 'known' faces within them.

There's a thing that always happens with business in general of selling one thing of value without having to account for the costs incurred by society resulting from the thing of value being sold. I think back to this Paul Carr article from 13 years ago Travis Shrugged share.google/awxIpkICHMl7...

George Buday continued creating many illustrations for The Radio Times amongst other commercial publications while living voluntarily at Netherne Hospital, working from his studio in an old summerhouse in the grounds, which was apparently full of cigarette smoke & blaring classical music

"Growing social security bill' not "welfare bill". Gerrymandering diagnosis looks like 'oh we are just considering all of the clever people points about mental ill-health that people love to debate at dinner parties' as well as pleasing the 'we never used to die of things in the old days' crowd too

www.bbc.com/news/article... Recent research by @hspandler.bsky.social (Professor of Mental Health), a leading historian of Psychiatry and LGBT+ health, suggests that [aversion therapy through electroshock] was far more widespread than previously documented

"Check the record Check the guy's track record He is not appreciated" #fallfriday youtu.be/KiDSoT5vy-I?...

Always amused (not amused) at how regularly the idea that there is a 'right' amount of mental ill-health in British society and that we must somehow return there. Declaring the correct amount of mental ill-health based on what you are prepared to pay to mitigate its effects isn't how reduction works

Always amused (not amused) at how regularly the idea that there is a 'right' amount of mental ill-health in British society and that we must somehow return there. Declaring the correct amount of mental ill-health based on what you are prepared to pay to mitigate its effects isn't how reduction works

I wonder what life in seventies and eighties UK would have been like if there had been machinaries in place for every little racist shit to turn their hate into a cottage industry and rake in the money? We're certainly finding out what life is like in the 21st century when those machinaries exist

Me too! It was mint. I watched a film on the making of The Snowman three times on a loop, saw the world's largest pencil and that someone had used the free pencil they give you as you go in to correct all of the punctuation and grammar on the display signage.