When I am King and Emperor, one of my first acts will be to ban ice-breakers, introductory games, rôle play and pseudo psychology from all professional development courses. The introductory dross is particularly bad. Energy is highest at the start. People want to get on with it. Not play games.

To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.

If you think Tylenol is bad for children’s health what until you see what guns do.

Here’s a poem called ‘English Roundabouts’.

This really shouldn't even need saying, let alone agitating for. It is a truism more than a proposition.

If a random Jamaican approached a Trump, a masked ice agent would have stuffed him in a van. Let’s be so for real right now

If I were the UK Government I would simply not route all my communications through the platform whose owner just called for regime change in Britain and said "fight back or die"

Maybe the BBC could do another puff piece on the flaggers?

People say the BBC lack flexibility in the modern digital era, but the launch and roll out of their 24 hour Charlie Kirk News channel in a matter of hours was pretty impressive.

The rubbish of the beast.

The BBC: force out good guys like Lineker, promote Farage-fan-boys like Chris Mason. You’ve lost your way, Auntie

Charlie Kirk was killed for saying things "that used to be simple common sense," says Boris Johnson. Here's a few of those things

OTD in 1966, French President Charles de Gaulle observed the 120-kiloton Betelgeuse nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll. Due to de Gaulle’s reported impatience, the balloon-tethered test proceeded despite warnings of adverse winds, showering Western Samoa, Fiji, and the Cook Islands with radioactive rain.

We rightly reject someone because of his relationship to Epstein, but next week we will lay out the red carpet for someone with even closer ties to Epstein 🤷‍♂️

Gregg Wallace is available

Have had my fill of these idiots.

Will the media find out how FaRage’s partner bought an £800k+ house in Frinton in cash? Will they give voters this transparency? In fact why not examine all MPs property purchases over last 5 years. That’s a story I’d like to read.

After reading the column by @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com yesterday, about her visit to Oslo, this comes as no surprise!

What utter dickheads we are… Rayner fought for workers: sick pay, maternity rights, protection from unfair dismissal Farage and his MPs voted it down Rayner gets binned over £40k in stamp duty Farage dodges £44k, shrugs & strolls on The mega wealthy win again.

RFK Jr. spits out a mouthful of asbestos and takes a swig from his sewage bottle. "I can already see children getting healthier," he gurgles, a bone from a roadkill bat lodged in his larynx. "The spike in measles deaths is a sign their mitochondrial vitality is spiking." His left ear drops off.

I suppose Rayner can now sell her posh flats in Glasgow, her Chelsea mews house and £19m London townhouse, plus her yacht, while she works out how to get the National Crime Agency to unfreeze £75m of her assets. My bad, that's Michelle Mone.

Is it “slightly warmer clothes”?

REAR WINDOW was released 71 years ago today. One of the most enduring Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, and among the most popular films of James Stewart and Grace Kelly, the story of how it was made might give you the feeling you’re being watched… 1/40

I had 7 days of annual leave in August. There were only 4 days during August where the temperature in my garden* did not get as high as 20°c. Needless to say all 4 of those days were within my 7. Ppppfffff. *Not a true temp in the shade, as my weather station records higher temps in sunshine.

Goodness, if the President has a serious health problem I certainly hope he follows the expert medical advice of his Secretary of Health and Human Services

Look, can people stop getting everyone's hopes up just because he has, finally, shut up for five minutes. I need to go shopping and would like to not be crowded out by people panic buying party supplies.

I’m just saying that when it happens I’m jumping out of bed, running to my window, and tossing a coin to a boy to buy the biggest goose in town

Wait until Vance gets his hands on those Oval Office sofas.

Interesting to see who Putin's bought as his replacement tho

And if Farage was held to account for the monumental fuck-up that is 'his Brexit', then leaving ECHR would be seen exactly for what it is - a fanciful 'one trick, fixes all sham' framed to appeal to the racists to gather the votes, but actually intended for more sinister reasons.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Is it wrong to waste my money by paying for a subscription to The Guardian for this twaddle?

The thing about Farage’s “send them back” policy is that’s it’s the equivalent of Brexit not meaning leaving the single market or any of the rest of it. It’s the thin end of a very very disturbing wedge. Starmer & co need to stand up to this right now; they will no doubt acquiesce completely.

The Labour leadership now have nothing to lose. If they mount a full on attack on the fascists and it fails they are no worse off than they are now. They will at least recover their integrity and feel better about themselves. Just hoping something turns up is a recipe for certain defeat in 2029.

In the throwaway world, always nice to keep using something you’ve had for ages- penknife I bought as a child on holiday in Brittany 40 years ago.

If you can't trust a sex trafficker who has just been moved to a nicer prison for no reason, then who can you trust?

Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".

Unfortunately when I chose where to live, 19 years ago, I did not consider that the topography would mean many of my bike rides would have this profile! … and I grew up in an area pan flat… I really don’t like steep hills at all.

Bench of the week. Skelton Country Park, Leeds

Connections Puzzle #800 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 A good way to equal my highest streak

One thing that will not make sense to many other people is walking into a bathroom in a bar, seeing a urinal and saying, “ooo…fancy…”

A lot of modern cars have steering wheels allowing the users to direct their vehicles around these obstacles.

August and good weather should mean Test Cricket.

Deeply shocked by Israel’s deliberate killing of the Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, his colleague Mohammed Qreiqeh and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. Israel has now killed at least 186 journalists in this war.

Trentitalia ETR 521* Rock EMU on the causeway coming into Venice Santa Luca station - 29th July 2025. Photo taken from a Frecciarossa ETR 700 that I was travelling on. (Many prettier photos were taken that day, but the net probably has enough of those, and I quite like the parallel lines!) *I think