You will hear people say that there is no common European culture, but I think we're seeing here evidence of a continent-wide love of shithousery.

While my sums are not as precise as Owen's, by my (back of a fag packet) reckonings, over the past century the average ministry has only lasted about three and a half years...

France v. Senegal is, for me, a footballing madeleine, conjuring memories of watching the first game at the 2002 World Cup while revising for my GCSEs. The rest of you are watching Nicholas Jackson, I am experiencing a Proustian rush...

The @sweeperpod.bsky.social, I think, commented on the fact that a poll had shown that the match fewest people were interested in was DR Congo v. Uzbekistan. Personally, I can imagine no fixture more exciting... ... though I am sort of ambivalent about this World Cup as a whole.

Will confess that I did not have "Belle and Sebastian do a World Cup song" on my bingo card.

As this is doing the rounds again: a few months ago I dreamt the entirety of a (non-existent) @themountaingoats.bsky.social song. When I woke up all that remained was the title: 'Alice and the Coconut'.

When I still taught in a Politics department - fifteen years ago now! - I ran a session with students that thought about the merits of electoral reform, and was regularly told that PR was "a nice idea in theory but will never work in practice", as if, say, Denmark or Spain did not exist.

I have been a Wolves fan for thirty-odd years. Yesterday will count as one of the better days... #wwfc

You have to hand it to Ojeda: Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun really does sound like a deep cut from a John Peel playlist.

🎶 Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962 / When I last saw you alive... 🎶

A point that students on #ThatcherBham are probably bored of me making is that, whatever their other faults, both the Thatcher and New Labour governments had a theory about how the world worked and what that meant for policymaking. I am not persuaded you could say the same of any government since.

I was right to be excited about this; very probably the best book I have read all year.

Registration for MBS2026 is now open! Registration link and the conference programme can be found here: www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

I suspect this is true - for me, at any rate. I have been on some form of social media since Usenet* in the '90s, and if this place doesn't survive I am probably done. * Ask your dads, kids.

Two days of marking has not made for a fun weekend, but it has been an excuse to listen to a lot of records...

The fact that cricket offers a place for the likes of Rakheem Cornwall is, in my opinion, one of the best things about the sport.

Mr Cube has a lot to answer for...

Obviously not the main story in the team selection, but France's substitute tighthead is named Régis Montagne - "King Mountain" - and if that isn't a perfect name for 132kg prop then I don't know what is...

The good news for Rosenior is that, even if he does not make it until 2032, he has already outlasted the mere ten minutes that his dad spent as Torquay United manager on 1 June 2007.

While I suspect these threads are of interest only to me, I find them useful to help track what I have read, so for 2026... Book 1: Lina Munar Guevara's Imagine Breaking Everything.

Am seeing out 2025 with a bottle of Pomona Island's If Only I Had A Hammer (from the 2021 release, I think).

Always nice to see Iñaki Williams telling it like it is.

As @themerl.bsky.social might say: would you look at this absolute unit.

I am ending the week with a @verdantbrew.bsky.social Don't Fear The Cherryman.

I don't really post about #ThatcherBham on here, but I think it would be news to my students that the mid-1970s were a "safer, happier" time.

I am once again asking you all not to be so bloody weird.

Friday.

Quite apart from the fact that this is, as E.P. Thompson might have put it, unhistorical bullshit, does anyone seriously believe that Jenrick has been in an away end in his life?

We are delighted to announce that MBS2026 will be held at the University of Birmingham, 3-5 June 2026! Papers may consider the opening day's theme of 'Polycrisis', but we also welcome all submissions related to modern British studies. For any questions please contact [email protected]

Worth noting, in the context of some of the stuff in this interview, that Shelvey was once banned for racially abusing an opposition player...

The Nobel committee clearly love a stuffed whale (and rightly so).

There are no way there will be any #ThatcherBham students on Bluesky, but if there were...

The next step, of course, would be that you have to wait for the ad to finish playing before the door unlocks and you can get to your cheese...

While I enjoyed this from @nickmiller79.bsky.social, I am a little disappointed that Wolves being the first (and as far as I know only) Premier League side to go through a full game without committing a foul did not make the cut...

Am always pleased to see @wolvesfc.bsky.social involved in projects like this. There is a lot not right at the club at the moment, but they are getting this stuff right.

When I looked for the full text of Nye Bevan's comment about sending the Foreign Secretary "naked into the conference chamber" last week, Google AI helpfully told me that there was no record of him attending any international summit in the nude.

If any broadcaster would like to test this theory, I am available for a modest fee.

As someone who reads in public quite often - on trains, in pubs - I want to confirm here that I am doing it, not for attention, but because I want you to leave me the fuck alone.

She's one hovercraft away from being a full-blown Jeremy Thorpe tribute act...

If you know me even a little bit you not be surprised to learn that I loved this, from @pelliclemag.com, on the interconnections of Dublin's craft beer and football scenes. I went to Richmond Park (and Rascal's) last year and can confirm that "ramshackle charisma" nails it. A great little ground.

Of course, Kane is hardly the first footballer to venture into breakfast foods: ex-Stoke City striker Mamady Sidibé used to run a patisserie.

Of course, as much as I love the original Spitting Image - and #ThatcherBham students have no doubt tired of me pointing out - this was true more broadly. A lot of the jokes about Thatcher were, at root, "the Prime Minister is a woman".

I endorse any and all recommendations to visit Nantes, which, on top of everything in @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com's piece, also has a spectacular craft beer scene.

A credible claim. I bought that record when it came out in 2003, and I swear it gets better with every passing year.

Very little better than an afternoon of football at Cadbury Athletic followed by a pint at Attic Brew Co.

Of course, as @whyoutloud.bsky.social will be all too aware, this has nothing on some of Mrs Thatcher's recipes...

The striking thing about this shift is that the Thatcher-era adverts that @stephenkb.bsky.social cites in the article were part of a wider (if flawed) attempt to articulate a vision of Britishness that included non-white Britons. Whereas the current party is actively trying to write them out...

The most striking thing about this entire piece is that the author - and several of his interlocutors - do not seem to understand what historians actually do...

A brilliant piece, this, and quietly fascinating...

🎶 I was lying in my room and the news came on TV... 🎶