What an utterly repulsive headline

And for those of you with one eye on the World Cup, part one of a two-parter on television's presentation of the tournament, with this part being from 1954 to 1990. Second part next week. unexpecteddelirium.substack.com/p/the-sound-...

This year marks ten years since I wrote Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? Today marks eight years since it was published. It’s the story of my return to the world of birds after thirty years away, and I remain extremely fond of it.

JD Vance: "You know who never, ever gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to disproportionate sentencing? People who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6 protest."

Reform's "line to take" on Farage's Five Million - rolled out again today by Richard Tice on @channel4news.bsky.social - seems to be that Farage was not leader of a political party at the time. But he did own a political party, as the majority shareholder in Reform UK. So hardly a private citizen.

If corruption isn’t impeachment-worthy, I don’t know what is. Just strike it from the Constitution at this point.

Britain, 2335: The budget ceremony begins with the traditional Announcement of the Fuel Duty Rise. Two months later, there will be the traditional Postponement of the Fuel Duty Rise, continuing a ritual begun centuries earlier by Chancellors in the Fossil Fuel era

Nigel Farage’s claim that he paid for a £1.4mn house with his fee from a reality TV show has been challenged by corporate accounts that appear to show that the income remained on his company’s balance sheet after the property purchase. www.ft.com/content/88ce...

⚠️ Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... It really isn't adding up for Farage. https://www.ft.com/content/88ce53de-8994-47b1-86ec-4c49b6b9cb50

This is the former Birmingham Labour Transport Cabinet member, responsible for declaring a “road safety emergency” and reducing 40mph urban main roads to 30mph, now immediately calling for his *own* policy to be reviewed. Deeply unserious and, worse, actually dangerous.

‘Green card for the planet’? Fifa’s World Cup is on pace to be a climate catastrophe

The government isn't forcing churches and community centres and town halls across the country to fly the Ukrainian flag. People are doing it themselves because we see a battle and we know which side we are on. There are lots of ways in which Reform is wildly out of touch with Britain.

Immigration make Britain brilliant

We've had enough. The press is one of the last guardrails against Gianni Infantino's autocracy. But Fifa does all it can to crush the media and prevent us from doing our work. An editorial from @josimarfootball.bsky.social. And please support us if you can.

"I once said I was given £5 million for my security, then a few days later said it was a reward for Brexit"

Must we keep holding our politicians to such impossible standards?

Division beset by incompetence and financial car crashes votes to make it easier to have more car crashes (while sticking up two fingers to the divisions below it). Great work yet again, football club owners www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Self driving cars remain an answer looking for a question.

Yet another (ITV this time) ‘view from xxxx’ where people complain govt have done nothing, mumble about ‘all the same’ and there are no supplementaries to ask what they actually mean, what they actually want and how. Pointless, vacuous reporting.

Beyond magically taking us back to an imagined 1953, Starmer gave Blue Labour everything they could have wanted. And still they wanted more. And now they turn on him as he had the gall to make the case for a microscopically closer relationship to the EU.

💥Big intervention from Martin Wolf in the FT today. UK “elective dictatorship” + First Past the Post in a multi-party environment is a dangerous mix. A system where 30% of the vote can deliver near-unchecked power is not just unfair. It’s a constitutional vulnerability. www.ft.com/content/1a5a...

Bring back proper political journalism at the BBC, like this spectacular example from 1975 youtu.be/Sad7CoNTzjE?...

And although obviously it's significant that Farage tried to hide the "gift", the most important thing about his getting £5 million from a crypto billionaire isn't that he might have broken parliamentary rules. It's a question of who he's working for.

Meanwhile, I'm still reeling from the fact that Richard Tice can't find it in him to condemn someone for saying that Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes.

How @privateeyenews.bsky.social first delved into Christopher Harborne’s background a mere six and a half years ago….

OMG. The cabinet simply don’t know what they or the PM are going to do differently. They don’t even have a line.

To watch Tice smirk, play the victim, and wail about media smears, is utterly nauseating, dispiriting and predictable in equal measure.

We need more of this.

Who gives someone £5m without expecting anything in return? No one, that's who.

One London election vignette: now the Tories have retaken Westminster council, they will take legal action to try and stop the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. Good news for those who like fumes, road danger and a gradually declining flagship shopping street.

At some point on my lifetime we might get a government which recognises that having an entire tier of elected institutions which are just powerless complaints departments for a failing social care system is not a healthy or sensible state of affairs.

The cold light of day thought on UK election results is the near impossibility of sensible democratic politics in the social media age. A global phenomenon which is systematically under played by nearly everyone but because every more obvious.

England today.

Reform are refusing to talk to our reporters at the election counts. Champions of free speech? 🤣🤣

Every day the news bulletin begins "President Trump has said..." Yet we know he'll say something different tomorrow, which is different to what he said yesterday, & that none of these statements is likely to be true. I get the problem for broadcasters, but this model is actively occluding the news

At a No 10 briefing today we heard about the government's commitment to "a whole-of-society response to antisemitism”. Asked if this might involve the government leaving X, where antisemitism is not only rife but monetlised, were were told it is "something we always keep under review." So: no.

NEW: Reform UK are running a WHITE SUPREMACIST in Essex. ❗ A joint investigation by HOPE not hate and @mirror.co.uk reveals all. hopenothate.org.uk/2026/05/02/r...

As far as I can tell the Arts Council does not have an X account, although Number 10 Downing Street does.

UK voters should feel the need to take a shower after reading this unparalleled garbage. I’ve never heard such depraved and corrupt coercion. The product of truly vile minds.

This is grotesque on multiple levels.

Vote Reform. Or we will house *dangerous migrant centres* in your village. And if you vote Green, it will be even worse for you. It's beyond disturbing. The chill wind of threat, thuggery and menace of a kind never before seen in Britain.

Morning Joe put together a supercut of Sen. Blumenthal asking Trump's judicial nominees who won the 2020 election, and each of them refusing to acknowledge that Trump lost

Obviously this policy is grotesque but I think it's also politically stupid. The key voters for Reform are waverers who are fed up with the other parties but not sure about voting for a "roll the dice" option. This might appeal to partisans but not that group.

A lot of people don't realise that as well as leading the Tory Party, Kemi actually runs the investigations units of the FT, Bloomberg and The Guardian.

Always 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Change is coming... #LOFC www.leytonorientear.news

#sotw spratleys.bandcamp.com/album/bloom

#ReissueOfTheWeek spratleys.bandcamp.com/album/pony