23. There are two entirely distinct comic strips about a child called Dennis the Menace in the US and in the UK and the authors had no idea about the other - they premiered on the exact same day.

35. The Muppets’ song Mahna Mahna was originally written for an Italian documentary about the sexual revolution in Sweden

Soft power? Who's she?

Looking at this graph and wonder if something else might be going on beyond 'poor quality leader'

It’s 12 November, so it’s time to mark the 55th anniversary of the exploding whale of Oregon, an attempt to clear a cetacean carcass from a beach which prompted one reporter to say “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds”

This started off life as a question: would you rather govern with no money or no majority? But on reflection, it was a stupid one. Not just because you don’t get to choose, but also because so many UK governments have enjoyed neither. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/keir-starm... My newsletter, out now.

Can everyone please stop referencing Traitors so that the four of us in Britain who don't watch it can actually have an adult conversation about anything?

Right. Frankenstein is about to get to the really upsetting bit. So I am going to bed. The original film did the same to me. Though I was considerably smaller and up too late that time.

Mr D Trump, of Mar O Lago, Florida, writes to complain...

Lots of stuff here that you won't read in most of the legacy media which seems completely uninterested in the backgrounds, associations and possible motivations of those behind the BBC crisis. Why was the BBC having its homework marked by a lobbyist who hasn't worked as a journalist for 20 years?

I have been quite shocked at the reaction of quite a few trans rights sceptical feminists regarding the BBC issue. Not a second of concern for who they are allied with. No regard for facts. Just the report from the partisan reviewer supported their view, they perceive, so the BBC must be wrecked.

'Many on the Left are happy to go along with this agenda because of the BBC’s skewed UK political coverage. That’s a mistake.' Are many on the left happy about this? Not sure, but agree it would be a big mistake

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 18181999: "Write what you know" is limiting advice, which leads to limited writing. Instead, know what you're writing about. That means due diligence: good research, wide reading, specialist help and advice if you need it. Stay curious. Try new ideas. No limits.

Could Andrew Neil become BBC chair? That would be really clever. On the hour BBC 6 Music reports that services PMI shows unequivocally Brexit is working. And his working relationship with Robbie Gibb when they did pre and post-Brexit politics. Exemplary, incisive journalism. Govey and BoJo loved it.

instead of saying this was good strategy, maybe senate dems should say: "the republicans were going to kill people by starving them to death, and because we aren't monsters, we decided to let this fight go. We'll keep fighting. Stop electing monsters."

This is the same Noah Smith who, on arriving in Poland, complained that Warsaw airport doesn't have any escalators, when it has more escalators than the state of Wyoming. I'm not sure he should be allowed to travel unaccompanied; it seems to be too much for him.

Mark Urban. Goodness, gracious me.

Is anyone else also internally screaming about this BBC nonsense? I feel like someone's pumping hallucinogenic gas into my house. Nothing makes sense

Good god. It's actually sci-fi horror.

4 questions: - Should the BoE produce scenarios so close to the central forecast (see chart)? - Should the Fed talk about driving in fog? - Is the Fed alone in having monetary policy compromised by politics? - Is the Eurozone in a good place? My answers in my newsletter: www.ft.com/content/e933...

David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction with Flesh, his portrait of a man from adolescence on a Hungarian social housing estate to the world of London’s super-rich, which the judges described as 'a singular achievement' on.ft.com/3JEEalF

Fascinating. Perhaps unsurprising that in the East End in ??? it is so heavily Jewish in types of food — smoked salmon, fried fish, ‘Jewish’ beef (brisket?) & ‘worsht’. I wonder therefore if ‘collar bread’ is challah? @dranniegray.bsky.social ?

John Le Carre was right about the British establishment and how the alumni of the best schools will sell out their own country for status and money and in particular a desperate desire for American attention

On this day in 1918 the parents of the poet Wilfred Owen were just listening to the church bells ringing to announce the Armistice when a telegram boy arrived with the message that their son had died.

Honestly, most of the Bond films barely even manage an internally consistent narrative. Though if Bond really is supposed to be 95, I’d love to hear from his cosmetologist, his yoga teacher, and from whichever unfortunate doctor has had to deal with his doubtless many cases of the clap

It’s already started - the BBC allows Newsmax boss to opine about bias, suggest some of the Jan 6 mob were merely innocent tourists visiting Congress, without pushback

A subtle one that's easy to miss, but the fact that Andreesen and Musk both use "alpha" as slang for "information advantage" is a clear tell that their mental world is finance, not technology. They try to talk otherwise but they are investors not inventors.

Innocent tourists visiting Congress...

David Cameron's sister-in-law now seems to be suggesting Panorama ought to have balanced the documentary with Trump supporters. Would have been fun to find those who supported him at the time. The ex New York mayor and the rioters he pardoned. Is this actually where we are now?

A surprisingly bad set of labour market stats this morning. The story I was prepared for was "some weakening, but the shake out from the early part of the year is behind us". But it's worse than that - payroll jobs falling again, unemployment now up at 5%. Here is our PN

Trump then pardoned thousands of those involved, including violent offenders who have already gone on to commit more crimes. That doesn’t erase his own record, or the facts of the event. Why is the shadow culture secretary demanding the BBC “grovel” to a foreign leader for telling the truth?

But maybe at root, it's all the fault of John Birt's Producer Choice.

Gibb describes himself as a “Thatcherite Conservative” and was an editorial adviser for GB News before its launch. This graphic is a couple of years old, nearly, but it gives a sense of the web of influence.

NEW: Rachel Reeves signals she intends to remove the two-child cap *in full* "I don't think a child should be penalised because they're in a bigger family through no fault of their own," she tells BBC.

This is extraordinary.

Michael Prescott's report makes vital points about the importance of being accurate, and also how difficult that is. For instance, he describes himself as having been Political Editor of the Sunday Times for 10 years, which is not what the Guardian reported when he left the job.

Objectivity, impartiality and balance are all *different things*, and the lazy tendency to treat them as synonyms, and to use partisan balance alone as a proxy for the others, is the root cause of a vast amount of nonsense.

Stephen really does have the best take on this. It’s not clear that the BBC Board or indeed the rest of the News team really understood the message of the previous reviews, which were about getting detail right. Instead they wanted to know what was ‘biased’ or not like they were blotting out stains.

The BBC: quite a big deal.

These are economic fundamentals underpinned by a tacit policy consensus between PD and FdI that the UK's Starmer government dreams of having

The BBC crisis is arguably an existential crisis for Labour. But they don't see that, do they? So desperate not to be 'liberal', they are going to see a number done by the (loosely?) organised right wing on an already profoundly damaged UK institution. The ITV stuff is important too. Neary a word.

The BBC is the latest part of ‘the public realm’ to feel the wrath of the right. The playbook is wearyingly similar. Underfund them. Hold them (piously) to the highest standards. Pillory them for all errors. And then co-opt, or neuter, them. 1/2

An utter shambles.

John Humphrys has raised the standard for public service broadcasting in the UK. But it's rather hard to flock to it, because lots of the output has been rotten for at least a decade. Utterly adulterated by populism. Even this crazy overreaction is utterly adulterated by populism. What to do?

It’s not at all clear to me how the BBC can do any kind of serious journalism if its top two bosses can be forced to quit over such an obviously confected scandal. There is no substantive error here. How can the BBC report on Trump, or Farage, or anyone else, in these circumstances?

We are so far through the looking glass that the man who tried to overthrow an election becomes president, the people who attacked the Capitol are turned into martyrs, & it's the BBC that gets punished - cheered on by the worst news outlets in the UK & the two most dishonest politicians of our age.

the right winger who was appointed to lead the BBC in the hope of appeasing right wingers has been driven out by right wingers for not appeasing right wingers enough and the BBC has the chance to do the funniest thing ever

Glad that someone has finally taken responsibility for the appalling assault on democracy that was the Jan. 6 insurrection. Slightly confused that it's the Director-General of the BBC, but what do I know?

Likewise the new head of BBC News. The outgoing one did terrible damage to its credibility and it is hilariously ironic that she is leaving because of alleged left-wing bias