Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Brendan Loper. #NewYorkerCartoons

Declining. From @privateeyenews.bsky.social

The team at the bottom of the league just took seven points from their last three home games against Arsenal, Villa and Liverpool, scoring in stoppage time in each. Sounds like a pretty competitive league to me.

I’m struck by how every day the admin is like “whoever could have foreseen these consequences?!” when the consequences thus far — evacuations, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rise in gas prices, etc. — are all the literal most obvious consequences.

UK brick deliveries are a useful proxy for new house building starts in the absence of monthly starts data. Deliveries in January 2026 were 7.6% lower than a year earlier, according to the Department for Business & Trade. (1/n) #ukhousing #ukconstruction

Sam’s Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/oulVyqAka7w?...

If you haven’t watched this, do yourself a favour and do so, it’s terrific www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

That’s going to be fun, given that Spain is part of the EU. Does he realise that this would have to - by treaty - result in a collective response? I sort of assume this is mostly blather, & will be gone from his failing mind by Friday, but I also kind of want to see what happens if he remembers.

"We're now down to the guy who appears to be in charge of paperclip supplies for the IRGC, he... *touches ear* him too? Goddammit."

Couldn't get it out of my head, so now it's on here.

This is excellent. I would add that economics isn’t just about statistics but people’s lived experience and that requires ministers to take local government far more seriously than they are doing, because that is the part of the state that people encounter in their everyday lives.

this is the sound of panic setting in

The obvious follow up question: why did he sign off the letter in the first place then?

How effective is the planning system in bringing together all of the actors and agencies that are responsible for the delivery of social infrastructure? What are the barriers to LPAs spending what the HBF now reports to be £9bn in unspent contributions? From the archive: pod.co/50-shades-of...

can't believe 'that shop that's been shit for years? well we've changed the name' has not proved to be a huge success.

#Imps 🔴⚪️

"The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai."

Sam’s Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/iBViC-fEdm0?...

Rayner and McMahon came out so half-baked on LGR. Had all the right language about functional economic areas in there but then … totally ignored that with monsterous quasi-regional Strategic Authorities to meet 1.5m population. Let counties be counties, but most importantly let cities be cities.

Labour council accuses minister of ‘moral bankruptcy’ over children’s social care dispute www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

lol this is an incredible video

Honestly the collective national level of disdain for Brits living in Dubai on all my social media platforms today really is bringing the UK together as one in a way that's hard to achieve in the modern era.

When the mist of imposter syndrome sometimes descends it can be helpful to listen to BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen and remember that it is possible for anybody to do anything.

Sam’s Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/HgaBJcaol0o?...

'UK is going one way...downhill': Ex-Premier League star Jonjo Shelvey who moved to Dubai with his family says he'll now never return because of fears for his children's safety in Britain trib.al/zfvkw4p

Peeling vegetables whilst drinking hipster IPAs and keeping half an eye on the football? There is a playlist* for that. open.spotify.com/playlist/4jd... *Recommended settings: shuffle and crossfade on 6.

Sack Reed, promote Pennycook, create New Town Development Corporations and make money available to local government to use CPOs to promote land assembly.

‘For the discerning obsessive’ feels about right for us

Influencer's fleeing Dubai right now.

One of this ever-more complicated life’s great joys is to spend Saturdays avoiding the Premier League results so as to enjoy Match of the Day the way that nature intended. youtu.be/MEumvfKaL_w?...

Grow up. #WorldBollardAssociation

Football ground no. 149. Ings Lane. www.instagram.com/p/DVTrIWLiAJ...

Saturday's the day we play the game.

I've been watching council planning committee meetings as research for my next short film and it's remarkable how many of them involve a professional woman giving evidence getting bellowed at by red-faced old men.

Regret to announce that we’ve reached Wrong Coat season. Every coat you wear from now til mid April will be The Wrong Coat for the weather

Want to know how long planning applications for new homes take to be decided? I’ve used some new data from PropTech company Searchland to work it out - and how much longer it takes now compared to a decade ago. open.substack.com/pub/longwall...

Sam’s Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/F6Y7lcvubhU?...

Sam’s All-Back-To-Mine Bedtime Banger… youtu.be/zGG4m3oBV2Y?...

Sam’s Birthday Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/FProAvaEOhA?...

Youngest does the same drills every Wednesday night and on a Sunday morning his coach randomly shouts ‘Press’, ‘Switch It’, and ‘Be Strong’ at him.

Clubs in the last 16 of the Champions League: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Arsenal 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Chelsea 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Liverpool 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Manchester City 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Newcastle United 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Tottenham Hotspur 🇪🇸 Atletico Madrid 🇪🇸 Barcelona 🇪🇸 Real Madrid 🇩🇪 Bayer Leverkusen 🇩🇪 Bayern Munich 🇮🇹 Atalanta 🇫🇷 Paris Saint-Germain 🇹🇷 Galatasaray 🇵🇹 Sporting 🇳🇴 Bodo/Glimt

This sounds like it has more to do with interest rates and construction costs than the property market as such - but if John Lewis can’t make plans for 10,000 homes stack up on land it already owns what does that say about rest of market? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Such a mad story. So Mandelson is allegedly secretly planning to flee to the British Virgin Islands and is accidentally rumbled by the bloody Speaker of the House who just happened to be on a visit there! That’s the kind of bad luck that tells you you’ve ran out of lives.

Or rather econimbyism in this case. The better response would be to argue for raising building regs to deliver higher standards (which it has been doing the last few years and FHS will continue) given that’s a controlled / regulatory regime unlike planning

Sam’s Breakfast Banger… youtu.be/-ygb8_VoTus?...

This is an absolutely fantastic quote. It’s one rule for us [i.e. the people who didn’t apply for planning permission and just built anyway] and another for everyone else [i.e. the people who applied for planning permission].

Nothing to see here, just Snoop Dogg pointing at potholes in Swansea.

I’m not saying podcasting is a relatively narrow demographic but two consecutive podcasts I’ve listened to have opened with the hosts saying they enjoyed the **same** Suede gig in Brighton this weekend and neither of them is a music podcast