If this doesn’t make you smile then I worry for your soul.

happy 9th anniversary to the day we watched Zendaya fall madly in love with Tom Holland in real-time

Voted. Done. Least worst option chosen.

Each year, I reward myself when I finally get all our annual contracts signed off for the year (only five weeks into the FY, a new record!). This year, I've decided on a nice bottle of Macallan as a smooth alternative to my usual Islay peat monsters.

"Hey police officer, I think that guy over there is filming those young kids with his nonce glasses and I really do think you need to go seize his computers to see what videos he has stored on it."

Make Hate Weird Again.

Today is a planning day. No meetings, which means I can have the radio on in the background. @mrjamesob.bsky.social’s show on election day is always an entertaining difference. I wonder whether a 3hr Mystery Hour would spook the producers too much.

My last comment on this. I will vote. Please go vote. Just do it. Find the time. Make the time. Even if you end up staring at the damnable paper and putting your mark in the least worst credible option. The alternative is that the angry lot will all turn out and you’ve just helped them win by not.

Suffolk council’s adopted anti-littering campaign for years was “don’t be a tosser”. (Go search if you’re not sure) This picture goes quite well with that campaign.

Voting day today and for the first time in my life I have no firm idea who I’ll vote for. Really lost on this and fed up with the state of the whole thing. My gut is suggesting Lib Dems may be the best to beat Reform here, but they’ve made absolutely no effort and it’s noticeable. 1/2

Poor wee thing.

I remember Michael Howard, when he became Tory leader, making a speech about the "scourge" of the BNP. Cannot imagine a Tory (or even Labour) leader being that openly antiracist.

I agree entirely with this. It took until the late 1990s to break the back of the BNP, and a bit longer to remove them as an electoral problem. Since the Brexit campaign, racism has been appeased, tolerated, and chased for votes by people who should damn well know better.

Folks, seriously, write things down. It seems to be a theme of 2026 so far that folk I meet are complaining that an outcome is different to what they thought they'd agreed, but it's not written down anywhere. If you won't learn to keep receipts then maybe you need a more junior job.

GP Reimbursement scheme finance explained watch here for the full details: www.youtube.com/live/nSBPRnB...

This, to me, is where the Lib Dems have just gone wrong. 15-20 years ago, I could rely on the Lib Dems' local vote rallying on what they'd do for me in my patch for council elections. This year, the sole election stuff I've had from them is "vote for us because we're not Tories or Labour".

Said it before and I'll say it again, you don't need to agree with Zack Polanski's politics to call out what is quite clearly in my view, antisemitic caricaturing. And no, saying this doesn't lend him any political credibility. It just means we should critique his views and actions not appearance

24 hours until our council vote and I’ve no idea who I’ll vote for. Doesn’t look like Lib Dems or Greens have bothered much here despite them with a credible chance. Labour are in the long weeds and will be 5th (of 5) It’s most likely that Reform will win on nowhere near a majority. FFS.

I went on LinkedIn this morning to look for something and decided to have a read of what else was there. It's full of AI generated slop, people passing off awful AI generation as their own and acting as if it's quality content we should adore. Folks, at least try to edit it to a better standard.

Council election flyers received so far: 3 from Reform 1 from Tories That’s it. In a seat Reform held by a Tory defector, was previously held by a Lib Dem and has had a Green borough councillor. A genuine target for all four, yet only Reform seem to be bothered with the challenge.

A responsible government who weren't terrified of ranty xenophobes would go "Done! Bargain! Where do we sign, and when can we start?"

The dehumidifier is saying it may be a bit sticky today at 86% humidity.

Folks, you don’t have to”legitimate concerns”, it’s racism and/or xenophobia in exactly the same way it was when you flirted with the BNP in the 1990s.

There is a phrase used in teaching about World War 2 and the Holocaust, which says "it didn't start with camps". Intolerance, dehumanisation, and the indifference of the majority, lead down a path, and on that path are atrocities. Today, Reform announced their plan for migrant detention camps.

Our plans for the NHS include a voucher scheme for private treatment if you have wait for services. It works like this: -issue voucher to go private -cost comes out of NHS budget -reduces funding for NHS even further -services deteriorate -perfect excuse to privatise NHS -job done

EDF have a thing where if you shift electricity usage to off peak to a target they sent then they give you free Sunday electricity. A whole day of it today meaning the washing machine, tumble dryer, dehumidifier and clothes rack all going a lot earlier on a Sunday than we’d normally consider.

Reading the news this morning, I think my summary of the week’s news is that it has been far more difficult than it should be to get a fair understanding of what’s going on because almost everyone has corrupted the news to suit their narrow agenda. I think that’s the right word as well: corrupted.

One self inflicted problem here is that the EU is going down digital sovereignty borders of its own and we could end up taking other people’s rules rather than having a say in what they are. Another Brexit “benefit” right there for us.

The Green Party suffer from the same problem as Reform in that once you get beyond the headline leader, there's quite a lot of folk that are wildly unsuitable to be councillors/MPs. It shows the state of Labour, Tories, and Lib Dems that they just can't exploit that for votes.

Absolutely this. I’m about as core Labour voter as you get. I’ve voted Labour my entire life except for one election and have been a Labour member twice. My membership card went back last year and I’m not voting Labour again until people like her are at least not in a cabinet role.

It has been a long time since I got the vomit comet train back from London on a Friday night. A lot of very stressed livers on this train tonight.

This one is pretty damned clear to me. If you have politicians going on about Britain being "a Christian country" then they can't sit back and take no blame when violent extremists take that literally and act on it. www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/art...

The more I travel outside of the UK and speak to other countries’ locals the more I realise how damaging the years of insane small boats media rhetoric has been for the UK. It has been totally over-inflated, portrayed as if we are a tiny island that has been overrun by a huge “invasion”

If you interview someone with AI then you don’t give a damn about your employees. You’d rather spend money and time on a gimmick than actually spend the time getting the right person. I would severely judge any company that uses AI to hire or fire any employee.

BREAKING: The PM will address the nation from Downing Street in the next few minutes

@support.bsky.team A request. If you're going to change the mandatory scripts, can you please announce them in advance? The site just seemed to go down on my browser this morning until I allowed the 2nd script to run and then it was fine. Some of us are paranoid types who block scripts.

I doubt you'll find a more stereotypically British news headline.

A couple of weeks ago someone pointed out that I'm the longest surviving at-scale NHS provider CEO in our ICB, and not by a short measure either. That's led to lots of looking back. A couple of key reflections: - each year has seen the NHS do its best to self-destruct; and - I do love my job. 1/3

Second personalised posted Reform flyer delivered today, and one hand-stuffed flyer from them. One from the Tory challenger. Nothing from Lib Dems or Greens, despite this surely being an area that's winnable based on previous elections in Suffolk. @zackpolanski.bsky.social @eddavey.libdems.org.uk

NHS employers, here's some NHS Pension stats for you that should be raising your eyebrows: 19% of NHS Band 5 staff are opted out of the NHS Pension, compared to 9% of Band 9. 16.5% of 20-39 year old staff are opted out, compared to 6% for 50-59 y/o. 1/4

In 2009-ish, we had a fancy new sixth form school built near us. It is an outstanding building with facilities that were way beyond anything I’d seen elsewhere. (I got a tour before opening). Then 2010 came along and Gove cancelled the national school building programme as one of his first acts.

I’ve been quite open on my Mounjaro journey to date so why not this one. I’ve discovered I’m wildly intolerant to 12.5mg, but 10mg is perfectly fine with no side effects.

For me, this is rank idiocy from Labour. Do they think this is why people voted for them in 2024? Chasing the racist and xenophobe vote just makes lifelong Labour voters like me not vote Labour.

Y'see this? Rank igornance. The NHS Pension scheme generates a net surplus each year to the government. Between the employer and employee, the government gets over 30% of the employee's salary for pension access. www.thetimes.com/money/pensio...

A letter in from Halifax saying that any previous overpayments to mortgages would be reassessed into the mortage in July, removing any ability to underpay in future. Not sure why they're doing this as I know a few self-employed folk who do it to give them space if there's a lean period.

The biggest error in NHS strategy: everyone wants more resources; nobody wants to focus on making the existing resources more effective: www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh...

Back in the early 2000s, my boss wouldn’t sign anything off in the office. To get him to countersign large projects I had to take him to the pub for lunch and he’d then sign anything once he’d heard it out over a pint or two.

A week off ends today, it was nice having nothing to do at home beyond what we felt like that day. I had to replace quite a lot of my clothes because I've lost so much weight. Really not a fan of clothes shopping, but an afternoon out at Braintree Shopping village wasn't that bad really.

It's been 10 years since we voted for Brexit. Many people who voted for it will have died. Those of us left know all too well what we have lost. We are smaller, poorer, weaker & more vulnerable because of it. It's time we acted like adults, admit our mistake and #Rejoin.

First British strawberries of the year today. Saw them in the local coop. A big annual sign that we’re getting closer to summer. These were far nicer than the usual first ones of the year, normally the first ones are rush grown and not that sweet.