Yea speaking as person who does polling: the Lib Dems should absolutely ignore this. Hard to think of a question with more social desirability bias than "should the leader spend more or less time bungee jumping"

Adding James to the "people who have also read Neil Postman recently" list. Magnificent and deeply troubling piece.

Cillian Murphy plays a guy who keeps getting mistaken for JD Vance but is too stubborn to change his look

I'm a history and international relations graduate and I think not enough young people study history or international relations

This shouldn't annoy me as much as it does but a) although he has a private plane, the plane he's arriving on isn't private b) maybe I'm overestimating it but I feel like people probably know what Air Force One looks like (they've seen films) and know it doesn't look like that

Reaction to Rayner on Gogglebox is interesting

I love this chart, just the needless drive-by on It Ends With Us. It's very "chart showing the comet destroying Springfield, specifically Moe's bar"

On some issues yes. On others Labour voters are closer, public opinion is complex and there are plenty of issues where both are way off from the median voter.

Kind of disappointed not to be in any of the "look how many cyclists there are" pictures in stories about the strike given that they all seem to be taken on my commute route

Mandelson gets sacked and an hour later there's a thunderstorm over Downing Street...

I increasingly wonder if this is down to so many government people still using X and mistaking that for an actual measure of public opinion. Poll after poll after poll has shown that British voters don't like small boats but they hate street violence and open racism much more.

I can't resist a good "actually they're more like guidelines"

Look, I know lots of people are dunking on this headline but you have to understand that it's because it's a really silly headline

20 minutes into Thursday Murder Club and I'm 100% on David Tennant's side

Always important when preparing slides to think about whether they're meant to be read or presented, and in what kind of room you'll be in when you show them

Three tricks I've learnt: 1. "See if you can survive on the free food" is a young man's game. Unless you can't afford it, take periodic breaks and go out into the actual city to get food from where normal people get it.

Strong agree, I actually like the Lord Cameron /Douglas Home precedent of treating it as a retirement gig for former PMs

Every single time I go to look at Twitter there's about 20 notifications and it's mostly Tommy Robinson. I don't follow him, I don't follow any of his admirers, and yet that's who it wants me to see. Astonishing that the UK government's position on this platform remains "it's fine"

Monbiot is right to point out how “the centre” has been redefined. This isn’t just political drift, it’s what happens when discourse is shaped by systems that reward outrage and performance over verification.

I think there's a direct link between how unpalatable something is and how much attention is paid to how popular it is even if it is objectively quite unpopular.

My version of this: every time I see the Britannia International I think that even asylum seekers who have escaped war torn countries probably think it's a bit shabby

Sunder is again performing an important public service in providing an evidence-based record of attendance at protests and counter protests across the country.

I can

Genuinely thought someone was being murdered outside then remembered that my new downstairs neighbour is a Man Utd fan

Really enjoyed Weapons but in hindsight I'm not sure it's a spoiler to say that town has the dumbest set of cops since Police Academy

My piece on racism for @theobserveruk.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

I remember immediately thinking "Labour's going to lose the next two elections" and technically I was right

I remember being in a focus group some years ago and a participant saying "just give us the facts and figures about Brexit and we'll decide!" and an observer commenting, "all we do is give them facts and figures and it doesn't work!" What voters say they want and what works are two different things.

Rewatching Andor (like any Le Carré it's best on a re-read) and in hindsight can't believe they use Canary Wharf as the ISB headquarters when the MoJ has one of the all time great sinister looking buildings

Hats off to the District line driver just now explaining that the delay is because of "two drunk people having a fight on the platform at the next station". Detailed information makes such a difference!

That if you get all of a human being's blood vessels, take them out and lay them down end to end across a field, they'll die

Weekend trivia: Who is the worst Lords appointment each leader has made? Miliband: Glassman Brown: Strong second by Alan Sugar but it's got to be Digby Jones

Increase a band Horses

My new commute takes me past TfL's greatest sign

I really want to poll this, pit British people's bone-deep need to ban things against their belief that buildings and pedestrians are merely things that get in your way when you're driving

Every Apple TV+ series that's 9-10 episodes should really be 7-8 episodes because we've just hit the filler ones with the otherwise great Your Friends & Neighbours, just like we did with Bad Monkey and Silo

Gonna start using that Douglas Adams line about "we may only be 10% of the market, but it's the top 10%"

ICYMI: British Future is recruiting for 3 posts: 1) Senior Researcher on a new project on race equity; 2) Manager for a new ‘South Asian Bridgers Forum’ to strengthen inter-faith and inter-community solidarity between British South Asians; 3) Events and Parliamentary Networks Manager [1/2]

I don't disagree with Alan but "the political class" also includes news organisations with a direct financial incentive to trigger emotional reactions. This is arguably anything but failure

Love that he's standing outside a Spoons

Mine is also Signs, there's a really little jump scare in this scene made worse by a woman in the cinema properly screaming at it. Then an audience wide stress relief chuckle youtu.be/aO7yO24g-Xs?...

Always good to discover some until-now hidden part of the hoover that it turns out you should've been cleaning for the last 3 years

Today's your last chance to pick up a 25% pre-order discount from Waterstones on the definitive book analysing last year's general election - coming this autumn!

Flashback to when The Independent Group was forming and struggled with the question "why not just join the Lib Dems?" and then later most of them joined the Lib Dems.

Adding this to our trap question bank

The only reason I've ever thought about doing telephone interviewing is to test the hypothesis that British voters won't even let you finish saying what we're talking about banning before saying "yes"

The striking theme for me in this piece by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social is how far our institutions are unable to keep up with (let alone counter) the online aspects of the information environment which often galvanises and underpins disorder on.ft.com/4lKmp1T

I don't think the public are going to be that shocked by self driving cars when headlines like this have been pretending they exist for decades.

An AI slop factory apparently tried to rewrite our article about AI not replacing workers en masse, but hit the paywall... so just summarised the paywall. If this is the robot that takes my job I'll be v embarrassed

This is true, how else do you think they ended up with "Change UK: The Independent Group"