Muggins here spent a decade in an instrumental band.

Why are there so few Your Party supporters in the big investment banks? I demand an investigation.

Listening to a BBC Five Live phone in where 70 something comfortable suburbanites are ringing in to tell the nation how kids deserve to be poor.

A must read, particularly for anyone in politics. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no...

If the right gets their way, Sam Matterface will be the lead commentator on the World Cup Final for the rest of your life. Think about it.

Looking forward to every Brit sending Donald Trump £14.45.

The EU has a new expert committee on political advertising regulation enforcement. It's the sort of thing I should be interested in, but it's of unknown scope and commitment, and unpaid, so I guess it's only for academics and companies who want influence. ec.europa.eu/transparency...

Trends tracks 120,000+ online political advertisers across 60+ countries and more than 1,000 parties and groups. All data updated every day. Now with new logged in features, a big design/usability overhaul, and lots more to come. Very, very proud of my colleagues for putting it all together.

After many months work, we launched a major new version of our Trends political ad tracking platform this morning. Take a look (and let us know your feedback - we'd love to hear from you): trends.whotargets.me/reports

At £5.9bn a year, it's clear the BBC is woefully underfunded given what we expect it do to. E.g. the main three streaming platforms (Netflix, Amazon and Apple) seem to spend about $45bn a year on content production, none of it at all important to democracy. It's time for a £10bn BBC.

Morning! Lovely light out.

I think the bit between DC and Newark can be very low. I did it last year during a busy evening and we never got the seatbelt signs off, you could clearly see cars driving on streets and it felt very slooow.

The Telegraph's Instagram post to launch the story did big numbers.

First time Farage mentioned the BBC story at all is an hour after the resignations. With stuff like this, which seems such fertile ground for him, his operation doesn't seem quite "on it". If he'd "asked questions" a bit more in the last week, he could be running a bit of a victory lap tonight.

So who should the government appoint? Waheed Alli seems like a good choice to me. Commercially minded, fierce defender of the Beeb, energetic etc.

Another huge victory for mad shrieking about irrelevant rubbish

Trying to get the kids out of the house.

How did "ufo spotting" become a VC funded thing?

Heard John Whittingdale talking about the BBC "bias" last night and boy are the British right excited to have a little support from Trumpland. Absolutely thrilled, particularly given how thin the actual examples of bias are.

Posted to Twitter eight minutes before it was copied and pasted onto bluesky

By my reading, it's hard to remember a more scandalous example of a social media company being negligent in their responsibility to users. It's so so bad, and deeper investigation and regulatory action must surely follow.

I have no idea what being able to "adjust your feed dynamically" would actually do in the real world.

Radiohead stage show giving off "WWF Hell in a Cell" vibes.

Mamdani is great, and it's great that he won, but the thing about the Democrats is that there's always a Mamdani, right out there at the far end of the bell curve of charisma, talent and attention. If you try and make everyone be him, you get a lot of this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl6N...

There's an argument that Meta and Google pulling out of political ads in the EU was a good thing because it de-fanged a bit of the Orban propaganda network in Hungary. But I don't see how that works faced with moves like this. Seems to me there's now even less space for opponents to make their case.

Oh no, they did what to some Trump quotes? It'd be such a disaster if he were to see us making changes that stroked the hell out of his ego.

Pretend to be their friend, go undercover, infiltrate their network, get their names and report to Prevent. Donnie Tesco.

I don't think all the ideas in here are quite right (a bit too forced), and "how to make Keir Starmer a social media star" might sound like an unnatural task, but it's important to expand the universe of what's possible. peterhyman21.substack.com/p/how-to-mak...

Which word comes up a lot in US political focus groups?

Each time I see a clip of something like 60 Mins, I'm just astonished by how poorly served Americans are by their flagship journalism. Trump says "I don't know anything about the Binance guy I just pardoned" and then just talks out the question without follow up. What?

The Lib Dems are getting incredible value for money from their digital advertising budget right now (unfortunately for them, I don't believe this approach will scale).

Farage is going on about crypto. It's disqualifying.

Is there nothing the people of Britain can do for America?

Who makes vaguely nice clothes for middle-aged men these days? Since becoming a country bumpkin five years ago, I've worn things out faster than I've replaced them and I'm now starting to reach the dregs of the wardrobe too quickly.

Here's a thing that's true: My wife went to school with the Kardashians.

Another thread in the incestuous AI investment web: Lobbyists paying Meta for ads to try and astroturf public support for a new data centre.

Can $400k of digital attack advertising (and millions more on TV) stop the Mamdani juggernaut?

And who is to say that isn't the plan?

Went to the official "this website" tie in restaurant last night and it was as mid as some of the opinions on here.

Of course, the far right doesn't mind using AI to insert a specific image of black and Asian people into its marketing material (these examples from Geert Wilders' current election campaign).

Early election result from Ireland: My daughter just got elected class rep. Good omen I think.

Next time your EU flight is delayed, INSIST on your fax messages. (Someone should set up a fax number that anyone can send to when this happens, then write a book about the messages they get).

We've a new piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on the decision by Meta and Google to ban political, social and issue-based ads in the European Union. It's a seismic shift for European campaigning, but there won't be any winners: www.techpolicy.press/meta-and-goo...

50/50 country.

Is this enough to buy Tim Stanley and get him off the media?

"Southeast Asia traditionally uses longer TTLs for DNS" is a really fascinating statement of econo-technocultural anthropology.

Big day for American exports - it's Canada vs Japan for baseball's crown.

It's this building over here (not saying this isn't laden with symbolism, but it's not exactly iconic either).

Obviously AWS East-1 going down the weekend after the No Kings thing is a show of establishment force. The revolution will not be internet-ed.