Strange crime novel that starts out with the plot of Crime and Punishment then completely changes course

How can this Darren Jones be PM when nobody knows who is?

Irony is dead.

Shopping list has veg steamer, which I keep reading as Veg Starmer

Wouldn't be surprised if they all burst out into spontaneous gospel music or something.

If, like me, you like politics and you like the 90s I'm sure you will also enjoy this image of Andy Burnham and his wife in their uni days (image via @thetimes.com)

Head boy ran round the building like a school crier shouting 'Wilson resigned'

Thanks for the birthday 🎁 Kier but I can't say you shouldn't have

Karl Blossfeldt Art Forms in Nature Aspidium filixmas, Common male fern, young unfurling fronds

Is binning expert correspondents in eastern Europe a good idea at a time like this? Disinformation on the rise, Russia interfering in many countries, threatening several and actually at war with one? Well, BBC News management seems to think so. It's disposing of me and 4 of my colleagues.

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday

Just fell asleep for an hour and I think we should introduce siestas all summer now we have the weather for it. Only way to survive

Weather on Sky has a green French bulldog with an evil grin

The Art of Arranging Flowers: A Complete Guide to Japanese Ikebana Shozo Sato, 1965

Great pity Dumfries doesn't play for Scotland

Roll of film in late relative's house - mainly fuzz except for this one. No idea what it is

American soft power latest: Today’s front page or an Italian right-wing tabloid reads “Trump is a dickhead”

Chris Mason rushing to explain away Reform loss, assuring us they would still win a GE and every other constituency outside Manchester. Doesn't mention Aberdeen

At least Burnham seems to enjoy politics. Starmer always looked as if he'd just swallowed a wasp

Pub's unflushed toilet bowl water is safer than River Trent

SIOILIIICITIOIRIS

"The Girls is many things at once. It’s a comedy but it's also a portrait of an England of down-at-heel seediness, where flower shows, dirty coppers and the serial killer Dennis Nilsen are part of the same social fabric." Me on John Bowen's 1986 novel The Girls, reissued by Vintage and McNally:

Wendy McMurdo, the McShining

Only football on the news, just as well there's nothing else happening

Botanics

In 1908 the Lancet called for an 18+ age limit on reading in bed for U.K. children.

The UK Government has moved faster to destroy the online communities of teenagers than it has to limit the power of a foreign white supremacist to launch race riots in the UK's cities and spread child pornography online

Scotland in the World Cup brings back memories of the chief sub on Times Business shouting 'Christ, the sweaties are ahead'. Well, who needs a madeleine

RSA summer exhibition - Morris Minor estate with stained glass, ballpoint drawing of lichen on silver birch. Free

The three genders (nonbuynary)

My unasked-for contribution to the Hockney commemorations: when I was about 6 I was given a copy of the Grimm’s fairytales he illustrated, and I didn’t sleep for about a month. Beautiful, beautiful etchings. NOT GREAT FOR SMALL CHILDREN

RIP

At the Nevill Holt festival in the grounds of the house owned by David Ross (co-founder of car phone warehouse), and look what I’ve found. Great plan, just a stupid way of advertising it.

A second defence minister has hit the Starmer

Joan Eardley at Edinburgh's Modern Two - small but free

BBC Scotland choosing to centre Reform on the riots

Hero's GF sunbathing with bottle tops on her nipples - burny hot metal, I don't think so

Some news: 🇺🇦 Next month I'm driving to Ukraine. 🇺🇦 I'll be delivering an evacuation vehicle, specially modified for saving lives in areas of the highest danger. But that's only possible if I can fundraise enough - £3,500. I'd be so grateful for any support you can give. donorbox.org/johnoxleydu

Happy Pride to this Caravaggio self-portrait that made one man so gay he had to go to the hospital

Excited to see the lesbian witchcraft apocalypse befall the United States in a couple of days’ time.

Only took three hours to find another plane

Stuck at Stansted after storm ⚡ this morning

Matt Frei lost it about NI there on C4news, saying Robinson wanted to unite Loyalists and Unionists

Zurbaran still lives, perfect

Sound of Eriskay, 2020 #otd

I have no comment on this except that the past tense of Scooby Doo is actually Scoobie Did and the title should reflect that.

The argument for the BBC appears to be that we need a hypothetical BBC to protect against the risk of getting the kind of media which the BBC actually is

Good news for everyone who followed me on here because of me dragging Olga Tokarczuk for using AI, here's more of the same. On reflection, I'm even angrier than before. secondspace.beehiiv.com/p/drag-your-...

And then he'll post about it on a website rigged to help Nazis and post non-consensual pornography.

Youngest playing at a brewery festival, launching a sour IPA in a tempest. With one ladies lav