When I worked in a rickety old hotel on my ski season circa 2010 we decided to tackle this blocked drain in the kitchen with a cocktail of products. It melted the pipe and dropped through two floors into the cellar like that scene in alien!

This is a fun set of replies immediately. Skills are hard.

Aside from the hypocrisy of saying this whilst having recently served a government committed to that goal, why would you publish this take unasked for *in this weather*

Like this is the exact way to reclaim the symbol from the racists.

Consider myself a man of tools and I have been humbled by this excellent thread.

Brief stay of execution for Camden area alpacas.

This is his time

Every lifelong football fan I've ever met is like "I think players are supposed to serve their suspension" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states handballs are mandatory."

These are all great.

Four-year-old just told his toddler sister “it’s time for the hunt” and they both left the room. Not my business

liquid Starmerism: going out on a big announcement about tough choices the party has to make, but the amount of money announced is somehow both more than he’s actually funded and less than it needs to be. he’s competitively useless

Well they're not going to be on bloody low alert are they

Puss just made a one way trip to the vet. A rescue cat we've had for three years. Pretty sad will miss the little arsehole.

Welsh Labour backstory: speak a bit of Welsh, respect the legislation PC backstory: sent my kids to Welsh school Welsh Tory : learning more Welsh is not a priority Welsh greens: I value Welsh, but worry climate breakdown is more urgent Welsh Reform: I speak Russian

Banning children from social media?

Another of those "Chamberlain said this, went great for him" / "then what happened? Keep reading it's probably on the very next page" in the wild.

Everyone on X and elsewhere who called for a violent response should be charged with incitement. Everyone involved in the pogrom should be locked up with exemplary sentences. Govt should make it clear that will be the response in future anywhere else. Enough.

Like, rarely, sometimes, for a political party, the national interest, their political interest line up on a project that is essentially free, and they just don't do it. I simply do not understand why they refuse to make the political weather here.

Just think the better question always is "is it good?" If a writer was assisted by AI or not they are responsible for their output. AI will not produce a masterwork alone it's always derivative. We can just skip the "did they use a newfangled type writing machine" stage and focus on the quality.

Big let down, to be honest

Think this is true far beyond the US. I don't think distance from the soil or whatever has basically anything to do with it though. I come from a farming community (very different political grouping to the US) who have some of the worst climate change takes I have seen.

Thinking about it you could actually argue he will have more of a mandate than most mid term PMs, given that he is facing the Makerfield electorate, not his party, on an explicit ticket of "If you vote for me I will be PM"

I do not require people to understand how the world works. Imagining the incredibly complex supply chains and the expertise across different domains far beyond that of anyone, to produce with intimidating efficiency simple household items, a biro, a fork, is a game I sometimes play.

We have one party leader who's been willing to persuade people and unfortunately it's Farage.

It would be great if the government could spend some time trying to solve the many, many real problems facing the UK – instead of imaginary ones. UK retail operates on *tiny* margins – averaging around 4p in the £1. Supermarkets are cheap and efficient: food is expensive because inputs cost more.

It's so boring. Like I do try, but it's just more virtue signalling isn't it (scolding, not doing the alt text)

I find led by donkeys a bit (very) tedious like a lot of liberal virtue signalling but this might be the best thing they have ever done.

Replace with council of your choice

You've heard of vibe coding, right? This is vibe governing

The core of the problem with Starmer is he doesn't think there is anything wrong with the Blue Labour approach, he thinks things are going badly because he hasn't implemented it properly

We need to agree on a threshold at which point "The Lettuce of State" is wheeled out and left to rot. The current incumbent then has that long to settle their affairs.

One of the interesting features of a lot of commentary on British politics is the elision of working class with working people, when these are not the same thing.

It's a shock to those of us who grew up in the information age- common truths are disappearing and instead we have contested "truths" and unreliable narrators. Like many, I hoped this would all go away. But it hasn't so what choice do we have but to fight for *the* truth as *a* truth?

It doesn’t.

A new post on the election everyone's talking about today: the 2011 AV referendum! There's probably going to be talk about changing the voting system soon, but there's a right way and wrong way to sell this. Here is an ad showing how NOT to do it. Why is a young ZP in thumbnail? Read to find out!

Reform poses an existential threat to the Welsh language; its policy (I use the word policy in the loosest sense of the word) amounts to opposing the use of Welsh in schools, local and national government and the public sector ✍️Richard Morgan

I would simply express national pride by identifying good things about the country as it is right now.

OK, so Dad has just been to dinner with a submariner former member of HMS Trump's ships crew, her ship's bell having been presented to Donald Trump by the king. Perhaps predictably known as the "Fighting Fart" within the navy at the time.

For me it's the fact there was a rebuke to the American legislature in there about checking executive power.... And they cheered like simpletons. It's not just Trump's head some of it went over.

Americans very sad about this article but people are people and I think it just shows how we must fight for an actually good media and social media environment. Some shared facts are absolutely essential. Be really good if we had a culture secretary in these time, ey?

Terrific column this:

The Welsh Christian Party want to get rid of indoctrination school classes like RSE

re Labour leadership - there's three years to the next general election, and the "controllable" that will have the biggest impact on Labour's fortunes will be how well (or badly) they do at running the country. So just go for the person you think will be best at running the country for three years.

I am absolutely shite at recognising when someone is flirting with me. Like, comically bad at it. My mates would mock me about it. But something happened today that made me so happy. 1/?

I think from her POV resignation ASAP is the best possible play. Two alternatives. 1) hang on. You ride this out. Now you are hitched to a dying administration, your signature legislation gets smashed up by a back bench rebellion. You never get near a ministerial role in Rayner/Millie and govt. 2)..

Ok this is a great thread about the process and overturns some assumptions I had made about how it works.

I had an idea, cos this keeps coming up and it's daft. Grid solar, as opposed to micro schemes, anywhere you have to faff connecting it up to grid, are basically built in sheep fields right? So why don't we redesignate it as agricultural use, in the same way I can farm barley I am now farming

🔥 Incredible footage of Ukrainian Yak-52 crews in action. Pilots of the 11th Separate Army Aviation Brigade “Kherson” clear the skies of Russian drones.