Operation stop acting like Scandinavia is a socialist utopia just because they have good maternity pay

Onlookers: "Trump won't do illegal unprecedented unjustifiable thing!" (Trump does the thing) Onlookers: "Trump had a very good reason for doing illegal unprecedented unjustifiable thing. But he also won't do it again" (Trump does it again) Rinse and repeat, for ten fucking years

I understand that London pubs are struggling horribly and I feel for them but the next place that automatically adds a service charge with no transparency and expects me to pay it when someone's simply pulled a pint can do one

Starmer's response to the Green Party's emphatic win is emblematic of his entire premiership. In that it's self-important, self-defeating, overly defensive and weak as fuck. Petty-ass bitchery doesn't constitute political savvy!

From this moment on, I only ever want to read political analysis as it pertains to women fancying cartoon Robin Hood

But seriously, it might be a good time for columnists and politicos to stop ignoring the fact that young women are moving far more significantly towards the populist left than men are towards Reform, and maybe pay a bit of attention to the fact that one in three now say they intend to vote Green?

You got to feel for Matt Goodwin. Sorry missed a word. You got to feel contempt for Matt Goodwin.

I think I care more about Matt Goodwin having his arse handed to him than I've ever cared about anything ever

The Gorton and Denton by-election result will be analysed ad nauseam - what it means for Starmer's leadership, Labour's direction, Reform / Green party electoral chances, local election outcomes, etc. But if it comes down to a few hundred votes, are we overextrapolating? theweek.com/politics/gor...

hate this in general but also what is Labour doing to reopen women's shelters? what is Labour doing to make sure conviction rates for rapes start going up again? what is Labour doing to make sure women feel they can trust the police? what is Labour doing to stop sexual harassers?

Feels like Kemi Badenoch is playing with some extremely dangerous and toxic forces today at PMQS. And doing so in a way that will make MPs, including of her own party, physically unsafe. Incredibly silly and reckless stuff.

A medal please for the Economist subeditor who came up with this headline #puntastic

Incredible dur-brained moment where I simultaneously think it's 2025 and 2026

I am 100% not ready for the deluge of "five years since the start of the Covid pandemic" and "ten years since the U.K. referendum what has Brexit done to us" content coming over the next few months

Because they've done such a great job of fighting institutional bias in the Met?

I fear senior management is starting to regret giving me a podcast

well now!

Spoiling a lot of takes but begging a large number of other questions... "Worsening graduate fortunes, it turns out, are a particularly British problem" www.ft.com/content/649d...

Yes! Or do like Ireland and exempt artists from income tax! So, *so* many people around the world would be upping their creative output if they weren't so busy just trying to earn a living

I think about this at least once a week. Particularly as I know actual serious intelligent journalists who made this argument with a completely straight face

The Guardian is covering this film more than Brexit jfc

www.ft.com/content/93a0... Once reviled, now celebrated, London’s Southbank Centre is a genuine civic wonder.

Margot Robbie's costumes were ultimately distracting (she did not need to be bedecked like Christmas Anna Karenina), Jacob Elordi was wooden as f (even when licking stuff?!) and Martin Clunes stole the entire film out from under it, was the rest of my review. Bonus points for constant howling wind

Feel very confused by Wuthering Heights. Was led to believe I'd be getting a horny body-ripping romp across the moors, ended up getting a visually stunning (albeit feverishly OTT) period romance?

On a serious note, if you ask the average 30-year-old man if / when he wants kids, you'll get some combo of panicked face, "errr not sure, hadn't thought, maybe in a few years, maybe when I have a property, maybe aged 40...?" Like don't put all this on women when the sperm donors can't commit

They keep telling us the falling birth rate is women's faults and we should be having babies younger but have you ever actually tried asking the average guy in his thirties to impregnate you?

Happy Valentine's Day to me

The proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful, but we also shouldn't forget that the manner in which the proscription was enforced was blisteringly stupid. Continuing to arrest grandmothers for holding signs was a massive waste of police resources and did nothing to deal with the supposed threat

The Hillsborough law is a noble, popular and bold idea: to make it a crime for the state to lie. The problem is it may make for a less honest and open state. My note this week on good intentions and unintended consequences www.economist.com/britain/2026...

This piece in The Spectator by @shippersunbound.bsky.social has an absolutely mad detail that I was not previously aware of spectator.com/article/auth...

This is both an insane compliment to @roberthutton.co.uk and a testament to how bizarrely poor a politician she is

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Hey Siri how many United players are immigrants

The costco rotisserie chicken is literally cheaper than making it at home.

Martin Wolf absolutely on the money here. Declining fertility rates are about structural changes in society- more equal opportunities. Reform and voices on the right want to turn back the clock on women's opportunity. Progressives should give it short shrift. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I don't believe in IP necrophilia or trying to franchise every perfect damn thing into endless enshitterations but I do wonder if this would heal me

This can be the site for breaking news, if journalists choose to break news on it. It is as simple as that. And that is not utopian. It is precisely what has happened the last week or so. If you weren't on BlueSky, you were late to each development.

so i talked to one of the bushes at the super bowl www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/...

Much the same as with Karen Pierce and the US ambo appointment, Starmer actually had someone who could have been director of comms, Steph Driver, who gave years of hard work and professionalism in opposition but then got a succession of people promoted over her for no apparent reason

I see we're back to "Johnson resigned because of a party" and not because he employed a known sex pest, lied about what he knew, and more than half his cabinet resigned as a result.

It's because fascists don't make good music! Joy, pride, passion, flair - all things that fuel great art, all things they lack

Will Lewis and Morgan McSweeney resigning on the same day, by Christ I know they both shit the bed we have to keep lying in but still it's like Christmas for female journalists!

It's f ing embarrassing for Starmer to have come out swinging for McSweeney all week only for MM to be the one to actually do something. I wonder if that delay was a, "if I'm going down I'm taking you with me" thing? Or a "you're finished anyway so I'd rather walk than be blamed" thing

Extraordinary reporting. And a window on the two Londons - the one we live in and the phantom city of the online rage economy

Finally

The big lesson for the media and political classes from Mandelson is to stop putting these banal characters on a pedestal. And here we are, with Cummings, saying nothing more interesting or insightful than the average X alt-right shit-poster. On a pedestal. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

so a month ago I was reading @markpackuk.bsky.social’s speech on Twitter in the lords and there were obviously fake stats the government used to justify Twitter’s UK reach and its continued importance to British audiences Rob has now found the source of the data was… Twitter

Still tickled by idea of George Osborne as US ambassador, which would have been crackers are different reasons

Surely, *surely*, either McSweeney goes or Starmer. This is unsustainable and frankly painful to watch

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world