That speech was quite light on specific Green policies but it’s clear that Polanski is a *much* more effective public speaker than Starmer, Badenoch or Davey, & possibly on a par (albeit v differently) to Farage. It’s no wonder Labour are privately pretty worried about possible losses to the Greens.

I, like many of you, got an official response to the nearly 3 million strong petition against digital ID cards. Predictably, it was the stupidest shit imaginable. It's to stop illegal working - but there's already checks that are no different, and digital ID didn't stop it anywhere else. Hopeless.

Reminder that @theguardian.com has a partnership with OpenAI, and has of late published a spate of asinine articles that are uncritical in framing, and just read as press releases for the company and for "AI" in general. The headline/implicit framing of this article seems consistent with its biases.

People recognised as refugees fleeing persecution & granted the right to live in the UK to be denied the right to be joined safely by their spouse & children. This Labour govt is a moral void, a stinking darkness, an empty hollow of cowardice & contempt. #r4today www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Happy National Poetry Day to all those who celebrate. This year’s theme is ‘play’ so here’s a poem which plays with some letters. It’s called ‘The Problem of Writing Poems in the Shape of Deciduous Trees’.

American Christians deciding the Pope doesn't know the Bible because he said immigrants are human is the perfect summary of the evangelist movement

I was at a conference on exams last week where someone told me about the absolutely extraordinary amount of cheating on *driving theory tests*. ...Which you can take infinite times and don't impact your job if you fail first time. The lowest stakes exam for adults and the cheating is still unreal.

Jeez, I thought I was (totally and completely) anti-AI, but The Daily Show are really coming out firing.

#Florida woman wins Mortal Kombat tournament playing with newborn baby in arms. You know, like you do. www.dexerto.com/mortal-komba...

Okay, this one's actually pretty amazing by the end.

Book Cover of the Day:

Holy fucking shit. Someone moving off the island just handed me, for free, an ENORMOUS bag containing, plus inflator… Wait for it An entire full-size working water slide bouncey castle. My kid’s 7th birthday party is this weekend. Holy fucking shit.

[me doing my new 7-figure political consulting gig] I advise that you surrender more, that will probably work

Wife brought her 100 year old film camera to that pirates game from a few weeks ago and she got this shot that's just perfect

So Labour's general secretary... 1) doesn't know what the Green Party's policies are, they're strongly pro- MANY things that right-wing voters will certainly not like, and 2) still thinks "all things to all people" is a winning strategy in 2025. Hopeless, utterly hopeless.

The lovely youtube channel feeding birds in slow-motion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI3S...

Over 620k signatures already. Gotta hand it to Labour - just when you think they’ve peaked, they always find a bigger rake.

I promise I'll get back to posting fun things from corners of the internet, but the past week has been a *lot* in politics and I'm more shouty than I've been in a while.

As Wes Streeting talks to *Mumsnet* of all places and doesn't hide the transphobia (not that he was before), a reminder of what I said before the election: "You do not want Wes Streeting, Reeves, Cooper, Phillipson, Liz Kendall, Lisa Nandy etc making ANY decisions about your life at all".

This has been true for the last decade of UK politics being obsessed with appeasing racists: Intolerance of immigrants is highest in the areas which have no immigrants.

They've lost the 9yos

It goes without saying that every statement from this asshole is a lie or designed to damage, but thalidomide is the *reason* that there is now incredibly rigorous regulation for releasing new pharma. We can be sure of safety precisely *because* of what happened with thalidomide SIXTY YEARS AGO.

Weird how this keeps happening.

Just to be clear: - Paracetamol does not cause autism. - Sadiq Khan is not introducing Sharia law in the UK - We do not have a massive free speech problem here. - Britain is not on the verge of civil war. These are not controversial subjects or contested, they're just not true.

So all that State Visit nonsense we just did, that shouldn't have happened and demeaned the PM and everyone else, that achieved... nothing. Absolutely none of what he says here is true, by the way.

This is the clearest, most effective messaging I've seen from a politician in years. Hits every point calmly but with a goal that's energising and hopeful.

To be clear: this entire “we’ve got to run more pro-lifers” insanity is because literally a week ago polling showed that Democrats would prefer politicians like AOC and Mamdani over Jefferies and Schumer by, let me emphasize this, a 20 point fucking margin. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

I've got a Darkroom page where prints for my absolute best photography work are available, in white-bordered poster format. Lightning, supercells, national parks, mountains, fall foliage, wildlife, aurora, everything you see and more - go check it out at the link in my profile! #photography #art

So today I learned that there were tie-in novels for THE DOLLARS TRILOGY that went beyond the movies and boy do they have some amazing titles.

No one is making you be a writer if you can’t do it and also don’t enjoy doing it. If you’re larping a job for clout I’d probably pick surgeon or Nobel prize winning diplomat, stealing valor for from isolated weirdos at their laptops is like shoplifting from the landfill.

And I am telling you right now, absolutely right now, if they bring in digital ID they will pay billions to one of their tech buddies to deliver, late, a system wide open for abuse that doesn't even work. After the Horizon scandal you would be fucking insane to submit to the UK government IDing you.

Gonna be honest, I didn't expect to see "Cooking with Wolverine" in the cookbook section.

Luckily, Sinclair has a helpful database of all their stations, so you can see if they're operating in your area and respond accordingly. sbgi.net/tv-stations/

Disney is MUCH more scared of people spending less money in the parks than on Disney+. The whole of Disney+ streaming doesn't touch the food money from the parks. Disney+ is only recently even profitable.

Times births column today

When I was about 8, Pete Murray was who I wanted to be when I grew up. As for @joanarmatrading.bsky.social being on BlueSky and only having 305 followers … Come on, people!

I think what is most upsetting right now is that this administration has not had the skill to do much of anything they are trying to do. They crumple and scurry away when people stand up strongly to them. And most of the richest & most powerful people in this country just rolled over like cowards.

I don’t know when it’s going to pop for a lot of normies that they are living under an authoritarian regime, but the cancellation of popular TV shows that make fun of the administration might do it www.vulture.com/article/abc-...

Look, folks, SNEAKERS is in the LEVERAGE ancestors list. it’s a must see, and a true pleasure, unlike some influences that are necessary for context but haven’t aged well.

Here is my shining light for the day: The Childe is upstairs in the bath FULL-CHEST singing every song from Labyrinth. EVERYTHING I’VE DONE I’VE DONE FOR YOU! I MOVE THE STARS FOR NO ONE!

The change in the quality of national-level Green campaigning in such a short space of time has been incredible.

Yes. What Kirk did is a simulacrum of discussion & debate, constructed without any of the good faith that might give it meaning or impact. It was a show -- humiliating liberals &, by invoking liberal values like "civil discourse" -- fooling them into playing along with it.

It is amusing to think that 40 years ago we had a nationwide panic to stop kids from playing Satanic RPG's that would warp their mind, when what we should have been doing was hunting down and destroying high school debate clubs with the ferocity of a Butlerian jihad.

From Rachel Hurley's page

Episodes of top 80s Henson show The Storyteller now up on Youtube: youtu.be/FBgxIcMhDns?...

Charlie Kirk was killed for saying things "that used to be simple common sense," says Boris Johnson. Here's a few of those things

You are under no obligation to mourn the death of people who would’ve celebrated yours.

Simply the best slide I have ever seen in a powerpoint presentation care of @premeemohamed.com’s talk at @banffcentre.bsky.social re: Putting the Science in Science Fiction

Said it before and I'll say it again: I do not think a legal profession that venerates the Supreme Court has a clear way of dealing with a Supreme Court justice as dumb as Brett Kavanaugh. This is the jurisprudential equivalent of him writing his name at the top in crayon with the "E" backwards.

See? When the man in uniform demands, "Papers, please!" simply pull out your passport or birth certificate that we all must keep on our person at all times as American citizens. This is normal and fine!