just saw two police officers walking through Exeter city centre, and felt fairly sure they weren’t about to ask random brown people for passports or shoot anyone. That’s how it’s supposed to be. The state is our servant, not our master. (yeah UK is not perfect etc etc)

went outside this morning and the sky was a strange colour, ie blue, and it wasn’t raining. Is there something weird going on?

BBC New's BBC Verify with Ros Atkins Prove that President Trump and Kristi Noem lied When they both claimed that Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist As the video evidence which they present, shows otherwise

Daily Express: 'WHAT A BLOODY CHEEK!' #TomorrowsPapersToday

At what age do you ‘have a fall’ rather than just ‘fall over’? Asking for a friend, who bruised his hip and shoulder slipping over on a muddy path on the way back from the pub …

I just happen to be standing beside this at #exeter St David’s station #trump #afghanistan

I'm perfectly aware this is by far not the worst thing he's done, but Trump's constant presence - day after day after day - in the lives and headspaces of hundreds of millions of people (billions?), in the US and outside, is so taxing. Every morning, we wake up and have to think about this asshole.

Northern Lights on the northern edge of #Dartmoor tonight

gawd Chris Mason on R4 PM making a habit of letting analysis morph into comment.

Born in Bristol in 1825, Henry Browne Blackwell (brother of Elizabeth) moved to America in 1832. As an adult he toured the USA with his wife Lucy Stone, advocating for women’s suffrage and the rights of women, arguing that no nation could be regarded as civilised until men and women were equal.

"Most people in the UK think net migration increased last year, when it more than halved". Part of the problem is that "immigration" has been (deliberately) conflated with "small boats", & voters keep hearing those are rising. Throttling work/student visas won't fix that www.ft.com/content/a17f...

The gap between gloom-ridden public perception and reality in the UK has now opened up like a Grand Canyon-style chasm. I personally don't see any way of bridging it. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Lowest murder rate in London since records began.

I wish Trump would do a #parkrun He’d be baffled. Lots of people trying hard, supporting each other, volunteering, nobody pays or gets paid, and even if you come first you can’t crow about it because it’s not an actual race. That urge to invade somewhere just sort of slips away.

Hungry pub dog

I’m sitting in a pub in Devon with six people and only two us got the government’s loud weather alert on our phones, so we are kind of assuming we are the chosen ones

gorgeous if freezing day up #skirrid in the #blackmountains #wales #cymru today

did a pub crawl on New Year’s Eve. Two pubs, home by 9pm. Will try harder next year, or not at all.

Still spaces on this workshop with me on Sat Jan 17. It’s at the #bristol Folk House so will be friendly and as much fun as #editing (fact/fiction/both) can be. No typewriters but, if you’re into them, check out the unusual keyboard on this one. Book now www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/contact-us

The actor Michael Sheen used all his money to start a fake debt collecting business, buy 900 people in Wales's debt, and excused it. If Musk bought ALL $194 billion in medical debt in the U.S. and excused it in the same way, he'd still be the world's riches man by hundreds of billions of dollars.

In the year since the dictator Assad was overturned, 3.2 million refugees have returned to Syria. Many more are waiting for the rebuilding of essential infrastructure, now underway. That’s quite a success story.

Saw a tight flock of about twenty sheep being shifted back and forth across a hill by a small starling formation swooping a few feet above. Each time the sheep shifted, the starlings picked at the exposed grass. Then they’d swoop again, move the sheep, feed on whatever was there, and on it went…

just heard a shop worker in Devon tell a colleague that it’s going to stop raining by 5pm, and colleague reply yeah but it’ll be dark by then.

I got so bored of editing my novel that I took a break and wrote another book, about how to edit your own writing, and now I’ve got to edit that one too.

sometimes, the news is not our friend. This headline could read ‘overwhelming majority of women happy with the service: four out of five like it, that’s a 80% contentment score’

Late night walk through #bristol

Still some spaces on this course, taught by me. It’s at the #bristol Folk House so will be friendly, informal and as much fun as editing can be. Book now at www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/courses/how-...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Pew Tor #dartmoor looking towards #Plymouth

Windycross, and Grimstone & Sortridge Leat, on a sunny #Dartmoor today

reposting these but I imagine you all know anyway. I might print it out and stick it through the letter boxes of people who don’t get it. But I probably won’t.

love David Kynaston’s books and currently into this one. Turns out it was a very important year and not just because I was born during it. Superb read.

Is welfare spending ''out of control''? Total welfare spending in Britain in 2025-26 is estimated to be 10.8 per cent of GDP. That's just 0.8 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen fallen by 1.2 per cent of GDP since 2012-13⤵️ buff.ly/s5mz97u

been listening to #r4today forever but tired of tedious spats like this morning’s nagging by Nick Robinson, and wriggling by Rachel Reeves. I wish she’d said ‘I’ve just taxed private jets and given the money to poor kids you numpty; what have you done today?’ With a proper Peaky Blinders accent.

some of the budget reaction says that if people get a pay rise it pushes inflation up and ruins businesses. But, curiously, this apparently obvious law of economics only applies to the poor and the young. Better-off and older people can get richer without any problem at all.

delighted to see, as the new editor, the latest www.devonhistorysociety.org.uk journal arrive. It’s mailed to our members, and an archive of previous volumes is on our website. Many thanks to our contributors for the depth of their research and quality of their writing. Real history, at its best.

the #nathanhill traitor story has 30 other news articles before it on the Daily Express website, and is tucked away under an item about dodgy flapjacks

A British politician turns out to be a traitor … and to find the report on the Daily Mail’s website you have to scroll past 19 other stories first #nathangill

punching up is so hard that it seldom happens, punching down is a really bad look, and punching sideways is a bit pointless. Maybe the UK’s political parties should just stop promising to punch people.

it’s a pity there isn’t a way to more widely share this kind of good news. Perhaps someone could invent the Newspaper, or the Radio, or Television, and use it to let us know that amongst all the gloom good things also happen .

a lesson in how to be rich

Nowhere in the hysterical pile-on against the BBC in the British press has anyone mentioned that BBC News now has 77 million viewers & listeners in the US and has established itself as the second most trusted news source there.

I’m in the high street and just heard a mum tell her daughter ‘you can’t say that sort of thing in a shop’

A magnificent piece of work. Comprehesive, revelatory & shocking. Journalism this good is always rare & precious but never moreso than at times like this. Latter day Lord Haw Haws being plumped, preened & delivered to your doorstep in plain sight by a Nazi-saluting goon news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

hey BBC you don’t have to all tabloidy regarding where someone’s from when it’s of no particular reference. Your story even says his immigration status has not been confirmed. And as a description, ‘Algerian’ with no other details does not help the public identify him.

superb talk on A Gun Through Time at the Beacon in Bristol last night by @davidolusoga.bsky.social

pure alchemy. How to create a fact from nothing at all.

this is a very mischeivous little book

just had to be done

A rare plug for my other half, who’s just had her paintings accepted by three different institutions at the same time: Penwith, Truro and Forfar. Here’s my favourite (called Fleeting Glimpse of Goldfinches) but of course I’m biased. Follow her at bevcampbellart.co.uk/gallery/7536...