This morning the garden is so lovely that I've accompanied breakfast time with Vaughan Williams on the hi-fi while reading Keats (something Mr Head, my old English teacher, would never have believed I'd do voluntarily.)

Just spent several minutes watching this thing of beauty on a loop.

More #NoMowMay lawn. Really pleased with results this year. Management mimics a traditional hay meadow - mown closely from July till Easter to imitate grazing. Many years of collecting the arisings has helped deplete soil nutrients (and feed the compost bin), which promotes plant diversity.

You literally identity as a flipping lion

I am a liberal and I am against this sort of thing.

Easing sanctions on Russia is a betrayal of Ukraine, a relinquishing of Britain's leadership role and a complete failure of leadership inews.co.uk/opinion/star...

Very kind of Robert Jenrick to perfectly tee up Max WIlkinson. 😎

This week in clouds. #MentalHealthMatters 💙

Lots of (often very good) pieces about this weekend lamenting Britain being ungovernable/too fast turnover of PMs. I think “why do we keep getting ineffective/bad PMs?” is a better question than “why do we get rid of them?”

Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂

If you totted up the sums for every financial scandal in British politics (£2k per parliamentary question for cash-for-questions, £200k for Johnson’s No 10 renovation, the cost of that very nice campervan) even with second tier stuff like Rayner and Polanski, would you get close to £5mn *in total*?

To take an apposite South African example, you could fit several Jacob Zuma Nkandla ‘security upgrades’ scandals into £5mn (going by the sums he was ordered to repay).

Why are these Raise the Colours thugs allowed to behave on British streets like this with impunity, harassing and attacking locals like this? Almost a year of this! Oxfordshire banned them from spreading their flag measles. High time Birmingham followed suit. It's just monetised racist thuggery

So I will get a Hot Take out there and see how well it stands up. First, I think Burnham will win Makerfield. If he can’t, then he’s probably not the right candidate for PM and they’d do better to go with Milliband.

Democracy in Kent is under attack from a Reform administration that is clearly terrified of scrutiny. They are moving to quiet the opposition while prioritising songs and prayers over policy discussion. It is a bizarre and anti-democratic shift for our county. 🧵 1/6

Does that include the £5mn?

Cocteau-Thompson Quadruplets.

This letter is incredibly unusual for a ministerial resignation in that it actually spells out in plain English why Phillips is resigning, and why she thinks Starmer should go. With worked examples. Genuinely quite refreshing.

I keep telling everyone that with our excellent craft beer, variety of ethnic restaurants and temperate summers that never go above 40°C we are like Italy with better food and weather.

I see Starmer loyalists claiming the crisis is made-up by Westminster bubble media types. Labour did not lose 1500 councillors last week in the Westminster bubble, but in communities across the country.

I failed to spot this anniversary, and now I’m sad about it. Remembering lying in bed reading “The Salmon of Doubt” out loud to my wife.

An estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia. This is unlawful and wrong. We are co-hosting the High-Level Meeting for the Return of Ukrainian Children. Alongside Ukraine, Canada, and EU countries, our goals are clear ↓

This is many things, but it does not set out a project for renewal Labour seem to have a PM who does not have an agenda for change and cannot or does not want to persuade people what he wants to do with power And these questions aren’t being asked of any replacement either

Meanwhile radio keeps replaying clip of David Lammy saying ‘you don’t change the pilot during a flight’ and loyalists I think you need a metaphor that doesn’t immediately conjure up images of crashing into mountains

To celebrate Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday please do enjoy this clip of the legend himself meeting a quite incredible bird guy. Happy Birthday, Sir Dave! Here's to another 100 years!

Surprised at how little comment this has generated. Trump appears to be running out of places from which to launch military operations.

I am absolutely not going to hand it to Georgia bloody Meloni but "not interested in what Donald Trump says” is exactly the right line to take, because the way to deal with the GOP/MAGA in future is to make clear how much weaker they have made the USA.

IMPORTANT: Nigel Farage said he would buy a house in Clacton a year ago. He then angrily stated “I’ve just exchanged contracts on a house in Clacton, what more can I do?”. He then stated his girlfriend Laure Ferrari had bought it.

A poll finds that more British Muslims view Jews favourably than unfavourably and the greatest share see no difference form anyone else. Most are concerned about Islamist extremism too. But what does our media select from it? It’s almost as if they don’t want to ease community tensions.

Like a gut punch, this quietly spoken sentence from Lubaina Himid who is representing the UK at the Venice Biennale www.ft.com/content/2a58...

Would you like this notebook? Know someone who would? 😍 Shares appreciated, thank you!

A poem and drawing for the evening. The poem is from today, and the drawing from several years ago. They feel to me like they go together.

This is well worth a read.

Thanks @nixonsimon.bsky.social for pointing out that Cameron's much mocked warning of war in Europe as a consequence of Brexit was uncannily prescient, and how the Times shameful front page mocked for speaking the truth open.substack.com/pub/nixons/p...

Don’t forget Georgia, under assault from Putin’s puppets. Georgia is European. @annagvarish.bsky.social

The thing with the Green Party is not that it's full of antisemites. It's not, and all parties attract cranks. The issue is that the party has expanded too fast for its structures, and the latter were always overly tolerant of crank policies.

Policymakers and the UK public need to be clear that this is a sustained campaign that's being going on for years now; that it's part of a much wider campaign against European societies, using the same methods and with the same objectives; and that it's not going to go away.

It takes some doing to make the mid-70s look like an era of good taste abd restraint.

This is really damning. The whole report was so shocking to anyone who knows anything about the asylum system.

My brother shared this in the family whatsapp so coming to a work place near you the best email ever

Having mulled this over, it points up why I think Starmer is getting too much credit for his foreign policy. It’s not that he’s terrible, or that the fundamental problem is of his making. Still, the article points up that the current crisis has been brewing since 2014.

New post just out: "Where's the centre?" I have an exclusive new poll which challenges conventional wisdom on one of the biggest questions in British politics. It turns out median voters aren't actually in the centre. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

They said Europe wouldn't hold. Then Ukraine would collapse this winter. Macron: same voices, wrong twice. Ukraine held, recaptured territory. Europe built its first-ever coalition of the willing. Being wrong about Ukraine is a pattern.

"Your brother was released from captivity and is now in the territory of Ukraine." The words families pray for and hope for. 📹: TSN

Couple of parochial points about relative performance stand out to me. 1. EU 27 per capita produces less renewable energy than the USA, despite the latter's reputation for gas guzzling. I imagine the larger land mass and smaller population density helps, but worth noting.

This is hilarious. The US doesn't need British help, but will have a big sulk that they didn't get it And how will "reviewing the US position" affect British control of the Falklands? Big fat nothing, because Britain won the Falklands War. The US "war fighters" should try winning a war some time.

Today I learned...

Excellent and important article here (and while the Green Party are rightly in the spotlight here, the same criticism can be made of other parties, including elements of my own Liberal Democrats.)

The pink streets of Uzhhorod, Ukraine are unbelievable. As sakura blossom season comes to an end, the city is blanketed in pink petals — and for a moment, it looks nothing like a country at war. But it is.