Reading the excellent ‘Everything We Do is Music’ by @elizabethalker.bsky.social on the train and came across this passage which really caught my imagination - seems like a fine idea to me.

The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee has been forced to make a statement, declaring that the prize cannot be transferred. It's hard even to comprehend how stupid this has become

Wee birds on a frosty morning. I’ve just refilled the bird feeder, so I imagine they’re waiting to descend once they feel it’s safe. @mooseallain.bsky.social reminds me of some of your work. #birds

#NewYear A guid New Year tae ane an aa, An mony may ye see! An durin aa the years tae come, O happy may ye be!

#deliveries An announcement for Royal Mail, Evri, Amazon, DPD, Yodel - I don’t have a “delivery experience” to rate. My parcel either gets here in one piece 👍 or it doesn’t 👎 It’s binary. I’m not going to fill in your stupid survey every bloody time.

#NewYearWishes A beautiful song for the New Year. After 2025 these lyrics say it all: “May this next year go easier on your soul May the next year go easier on your soul” youtu.be/0YQ0dtDgYUY

#TateBritain Excellent visit to the Turner and Constable exhibition at Tate Britain. I’d always thought of Constable as being a bit “chocolate box” for my taste but there are some wonderful works of his here. Also insights into Turner’s approach. Definitely recommended.

Ciaran Jenkins and I have recorded another Channel 4 News/BBC News long-distance musical collaboration for Christmas. This year we play The Coventry Carol. To all who are celebrating, wishing you a happy, peaceful Christmas.

Golden Christmas Eve sunset in Merstham, Surrey.

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

#ChristmasBaking Christmas baking by my wife today. I’ve. Been testing cinnamon coated almonds, marzipan lined mince pies and cranberry and pistachio shortbread cookies, half coated in dark chocolate. It’s a hard job, but somebody’s got to do it!

#Cooking #Winter Out all day in the West End of London at the cinema (Muppet Christmas Carol followed by Casablanca) but I got up a bit early and put a sausage, veg and chickpea casserole in the slow cooker. 1/2

#gardening First snowdrops have appeared in our garden

#RugbyUnion #GlasgowWarriors Wow!!! Glasgow Warriors 28 Toulouse 21, Toulouse having been 21:0 up at half time. Well done the Warriors indeed.

#FolkMusic #ChristmasMusic Watching this again, as I do every Christmas. I recommend you do the same if you want to get into the Christmas spirit. youtu.be/vWAsUuXws_Y

#Photography #Nature Jeweled spider webs on a misty Merstham morning (which is surely the first line of a folk song)

#FolkMusic #ChristmasMusic At Union Chapel for @jonboden and @elizacarthy.bsky.social Christmas Wassail.

#ChristmasMusic We are off to @ tonight to see Jon Biden and Eliza Carthy’s Christmas Wassail - looking forward to seeing and hearing this live. If you’re looking for something to get you in a Christmas mood, try this - just gorgeous. youtu.be/QnWMIbwt-7Q

@jonnelledge.bsky.social My ‘Secret Santa’ from the company Christmas party on Monday. Looking forward to diving in.

Started laughing thinking about this again so am contractually obliged to repost it. Written by @quantick.bsky.social

It's being reported internationally. In the UK, mostly, silence. "Representatives from the crypto industry have held meetings with Reform feeding into the party’s strategy... Farage has championed several industry causes since including picking a fight with the Bank of England over regulation." ~AA

@katerusby.bsky.social Thanks for a wonderful gig at the Royal Festival Hall tonight. Christmas has begun for us now.

#ChristmasMusic At the Royal Festival Hall for Kate Rusby’s Christmas Tour. Loads of the traditional Christmas Carols as sung in the pubs of South Yorkshire in prospect. A fixture by our seasonal calendar for years. Jon Biden and Eliza Carthy at Union Chapel coming up on Friday.

"Hezekiah Moscow, the man himself." New trailer's out - Series II #AThousandBlows Historical consultancy by myself and Hallie Rubenhold. Streams 9th January 2026. I won't be banging on about this series as much as the first. Too busy writing a book about the lads 😅🥊 youtu.be/e0FBRcf40FM?...

#Glasgow #Farage Given Farage’s latest racist outpourings on languages spoken by Glasgow children and the sainted Stanley Baxter’s forthcoming 100th birthday, my mind went immediately to this youtu.be/T_Lk7qivXbw

As we are in December, it is time to remind folk that the wonderful BBC 4 Christmas Session is available on YouTube youtu.be/vWAsUuXws_Y Bellowhead, The Unthanks, Belshazzar’s Feast, Thea Gilmore, Lisa Knapp, Jim Moray and all compèred by the late, much lamented, Paul Sartin. What’s not to like?

#Fraud The EU have just agreed the 3rd Payment Services Directive. Included is a provision that Online platforms (e.g. Facebook) will be liable to banks who have reimbursed defrauded customers if they are informed of fraudulent content on their platform and fail to remove it. 1/2

Just booked tickets for Bellowhead at the Royal Festival Hall for November 27 next year. Something to look forward to. youtu.be/bn0Ff83spQw

Just used our Nectar points at Sainsbury’s to buy the items listed on the reverse advent calendar published by our local foodbank, Loveworks. irp.cdn-website.com/a23f8f1c/fil... If you’ve got any supermarket points that you don’t need or use, this is a great way to help out.

🇺🇸"The BBC removed part of Rutger Bregman's Reith lecture, where he alleged Donald Trump was the most openly corrupt president in US history" 🔇"If the national broadcaster can't air defensible claims, what hope is there for any of our free press to effectively challenge power?"

At the Sam Wanamaker Theatre at the Globefor ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (in November - we saw 2 productions of Twelfth Night in the middle of the summer). As someone once described it “A jewel box”

"Farage repeatedly... said Hitler was right and 'gas 'em', and that was frequently followed by a 'sssss'... the sound of escaping gas. "He said Farage's words had "hit hard" because his grandparents had escaped Nazi Germany and much of their family had perished in the Holocaust"

Just finished listening to the first of @rutgerbregman.com Reith Lectures. Even with the BBC’s cowardly censorship of his line describing Trump as “the most openly corrupt President in US history” it is a brilliant exposition of where we are. Thoroughly recommended. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

But I suppose it's good that they've left in the line a moment later about media networks bending the knee to Trump

every time someone goes on the Beeb, no matter what topic they’re there to talk about, they should add, ‘oh, and Donald Trump is the most openly corrupt president in American history’

On Bregman, I was there in the audience and I can’t see what the BBC have gained by removing this line except more bad publicity. I will say that no such edits or censorship occurred when I gave the Reith Lectures and free-speech defenders might want think about whether this is the world they want.

Was listening to Rutger Bregman’s Reith Lecture on the way to the gym this morning and made a note to listen to the whole thing. I now see that the BBC has censored it, by deleting the bit where he describes Donald Trump as ‘the most openly corrupt president in American history”. 1/2

Open day at the late Norman Ackroyd’s studio in Bermondsey. A reminder that nobody, in my opinion, could capture light on the water in his etchings like Norman could.

Empire by @davidolusoga.bsky.social on BBC2 is precisely the sort of history that Reform don’t want taught in school. The section in the final programme about “Operation Legacy” which aimed to destroy records that could incriminate or embarrass the UK was particularly enlightening.

Last night I saw the greatest Scotland goal of all time and I can't decide which one it was.

A great way to fight back against AI taking away work from creatives is to buy art by actual humans. (Reply to this post with your own art/website etc. But only if you’re an organic life-form). www.worldofmoose.com

To Everyman, Reigate for ‘Choral’, a lovely, poignant, funny little film. Writing by Alan Bennett and excellent performances by Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Alun Armstrong & Mark Addy (amongst many others) and a cameo by Simon Russell Beale as Elgar. I mean, what’s not to like? youtu.be/EYMIhLwiHVs

Alert for any Scots in the area. The butchers at Priory Farm in Nutfield has their handmade Scots Pies in again. Pie and beans is just the job for lunch on a dreich November Saturday. We’ve got a couple in the freezer too. #RedhillandReigate

#AutumnColour Afternoon visit to RHS Wisley (and visited the craft fair there too).

School pupils are to be taught how to tackle conspiracy theories, spot 'fake news' & root out misinformation. The Daily Mail, ajudged by Wikipedia to be an unreliable new source, is furious. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out why.

To St Martin in the Fields a talk by @michaelrosen on his experience recovering from being in an induced coma for Covid back in 2020 and the work of the NHS. Funny, heartbreaking and inspiring in turn. He finished the talk with this poem.

I really hope they win this, slapps are one of the ways by which the rich get away with whatever they like