if only we had a media and culture secretary @roberthutton.co.uk

Latest odds on Nadhim’s man who looked like he may be violent & hadn’t slept for a week: The artist formerly known as Prince Andrew 2/1 John Inman 3/1 Lee Anderson 4/1 Ronnie Pickering 5/1 Thomas Frank 7/1 Me 7/1 Sir Jim Ratcliffe 8/1 Ann Widdecombe 9/1 Rylan 9/1 Chris Mason 20/1

a stat i always cite is the number of anti-trans articles in the press went from 60 in a year, to 7,500

And here we are again. Trump makes "ceasefire" proposal. Ukraine accepts it. Russia rejects it. Trump blames Ukraine. This is now the 8th time.

Anyone who had genuine concerns about youth gender medicine would staunchly and wholeheartedly support social transition. Let kids explore their identities to see what works for them! The fact that this movement opposes even pronouns and haircuts shows that it's just bigotry all the way down.

Imagine if there were regular polls on "diabetic issues", as well as breathless news articles on "diabetic ideology" and politicians giving speeches about the "diabetic agenda". Healthcare is healthcare, period.

TFL could have a *very* ill-judged "Don't be a Gooner" campaign.

Just want to point out as well that SF has quite possibly the best anti-fare dodging ad campaign based on their baseball team’s fiercest rivals being the Dodgers.

the rollout of the mRNA vaccines was one of the greatest public health triumphs in history and the end result has been the all-around triumph of the antivax movement and I will never get over it

A good example of how strangely unpolitical this government is at times. The Economist is fretting that trade union laws have been tilted (sharply!) back towards strengthening unions. But is the government making an argument around this to progressive voters? No. economist.com/britain/2026...

"For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career...cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism." (gift link)

I mean!!!!

Breaking news: Kettle has strong thoughts about blackness of pot

going through some old photos and found this from years ago that i took in richmond. what a building!

Whether it’s right wing billionaires turning America’s most important media institutions into outlets for right wing propaganda or the Oberlin student council condemning the use of racial slurs, both sides seem to have lost interest in free speech.

Wes Streeting saying on Today that Mandelson is ‘not the man we thought he was’ but the trouble is, he is exactly the man we thought, just on a much worse scale than almost anyone thought. And there is an alternative world where none of this is this govt’s problem, because they never gave him a job

The only trans people mentioned in the epstein files are victims. Hundreds of known anti-trans people are in them, though, either rubbing shoulders with the rape-cult, an active part of the clique, or trying to gain access. Are you getting it yet?

Simon Jones is the BBC's Mr Versatile. One day, enthusiastically counting dinghies in the Channel. The next, reading out partially correct and misleading Buckingham Palace press releases about a former prince and a paedophile.

Good god. We've spent a decade with the British media - including the BBC - claiming that the 'gender critical' movement wanted to 'protect women and girls'. And it turns out Jeffrey Epstein was funding part of it.

JK Rowling's team invited Jeffery Epstein to the deathly hallows play and to a Harry potter dinner. www.justice.gov/epstein/file... www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

Good time to remember 👇

There were some fairly terrible defences of Chomsky during the last tranche of Epstein docs – “he’s not simping to Epstein like the others” was a genuine line of argument. Hopefully we can put those behind us now?

There is a strange misconception in the U.S. government that the war in Ukraine is about the territory of Donbas. They believe it because... putin said so? They just cant stop repeating nonsense about giving up Donbas, right? It is not a war for Donbas. It is a war to destroy Ukraine as a state,

Increasingly hard to ignore how British anti-trans-human-rights extremists appear to be putting Trans+ lives at risk far beyond the UK "elite figures have copied the western right-wing playbook..[].., spreading the same anti-trans, anti-liberal, anti-woke and anti-secular agenda"

Anti-trans-human-rights campaigner and conversion-therapy-abuse advocate Barnes is furious that the vast majority of Trans+ youth prescribed puberty blockers graduate to a hormone replacement therapy plan, live healthy and happy adult lives, and fail to suffer the regret she appears to want for them

Just the Greens teaming up with Reform to oppose housing. www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/ne...

Just stop and think about this for a moment. A double strike. After the first attack, rescuers arrive to save people — firefighters, medics, volunteers. And then russia strikes again, targeting them. This is a deliberate, cynical war crime.

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible. It leads on "sharply contested narratives" It has a dramatic skew to the US government It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

I feel like we should all take a moment to remember that Ukrainians are still dying and this guy is just spitting bilge about fucking Greenland being "unprotected" from Russia.

Cat wandered in front of the camera during the #aurora long exposure

OTD in 1932 the Soviet Union signed a non aggression pact with Finland. We preferred one with the Nazis that had a secret clause cos 7 years later we invaded Finland. But please trust us over treaties now. We've honored them all since then, just ask Ukraine, Georgia & Moldova.

The Prime Minister of Belgium speaks:

It will be fun to see them print Nigel or Boris tomorrow saying "Actually, can we just kneel down comfortably and..."

Look at this and reconsider Trump’s claim that Putin wouldn’t have dared to invade if Trump were president. He clearly would have. Putin isn’t afraid of Trump because Trump is weak and compromised

There is no off-ramp with him. The only off-ramp is to remove him. Europe spent a year trying to appease him, and it only made things worse. At this I believe that the average American citizen who is also sick of this crap will also appreciate it if we start to be more confrontational.

What makes this so much worse of a betrayal is that there is a war raging in Europe. Trump looked at this and decided that this war made us Europeans weak enough to take advantage of. We should never forget that.

Trump's cheerleaders said he would be a "global peacemaker" who would make the world "safer and stable" and mocked all those warning about the threat he posed as being "hysterical". Why Trump's apologists need to apologise for their own role in the calamity now unfolding

11th January 2026 Vs 18th January 2026

Reform's opponents need to keep punching this bruise. It's a real problem for a would-be nationalist leader when they start looking like the lapdog of a hostile power. This did a lot of damage to Oswald Mosley in the 1930s, and it could become a serious issue for Farage.

Government accounts just post like this now and that’s how policy is made

The best time to build a Navy bigger than the second and third largest in the world was 1889, the second best time...

Gender criticals treated the Cass Review as the word of God, and cast anyone disagreeing with it as dangerous/unscientific/not fit for polite society. But now the entire GC movement is united in opposing a puberty blockers trial, despite it being something Cass called for. They are not honest people

Farage says "a well-known Labour figure" will join Reform next week. Labour aides scramble to see if it's too late to get Maurice Glasman's wife to have sex with him.

ah

The idea that Russia - a state that has spent almost four years throwing everything it has at conquering its neighbour, and failing - is remotely capable of invading Greenland, or is going to be in the foreseeable future, is ludicrous.

A huge chunk of our political class has "book-you-see-in-an-airport" brain. Just no interest in rigour.

Always a good time to revisit @michaelhobbes.bsky.social and @notalawyer.bsky.social's delightfully excoriating deconstruction of this particular bullshit artist and his signature text...