You know, I think I preferred it when we all agreed child sexual abuse material was bad

Funding local government properly is the closest it gets to a silver bullet. Potholes. High streets. Social care. People will think the country is broken if the street outside their house has a pothole and everything on the high st is closed

A reminder for newer joiners here: you can find all* the Lib Dem MPs in this Starter Pack: go.bsky.app/CUxDzcc There's also this list of them: bsky.app/profile/did:... And/or if you are more into polling: bsky.app/profile/did:...

Starter pack here of Lib Dems who were active here in the Before Times

Listen, if there is one guy who knows about managing worthless banks under water it's matt ridley.

So you're going to stop using it, right?

The traitor will be the tiredest, so look for the person drinking extra coffee, says Rachel, while holding a mug full of coffee #TheTraitors

Absolutely disgusting we have to wait until tomorrow for the next episode of #thetraitors

In a first for the series, someone is going to get thrown from that turret. #TheTraitors

And is this counter-misinformation in the room with us now, Tim?

I don't think the leader of the Green party, with 56k followers, should be instigating a dogpile on a random Labour cllr with 356 followers. Just proper dickhead behaviour (although as it happens I think he's right on the substantive issue)

Derry Girls

It's also weirdly, excessively online. Lots of people in the UK knew who Nick Griffin was. Absolutely no-one knows who Curtis Yarvin is. Why not let it stay that way?

Poor Stegosaurus 🌺

... This evening, in the flat "Keir darling, shall we have mash or roasties with tonight's tea?" "Every minute that we're not talking about the cost of living is a wasted minute"

Marie's determined posting through it is probably my favourite thing about today, exemplary public service

This thread is excellent but I'm also stuck on how unprofessional Ovendon is being here. I would never, ever hire someone who publicly slagged off their old team mere months after leaving, especially not if they were forced to resign for sending sexist/racist messages in the work chat!

Could be worse I guess

Interesting how the secret traitor twist is making the traitors lose their minds - in reality it adds an element of randomness to their decision-making so could strengthen their position if they play it right, but them getting angry and obsessive over it will lead to mistakes #TheTraitors

"I'd like to order 100 coffins, please. Oh, and make sure they float." "That sounds a little suspicious, not sure if we can do that." "It's for The Traitors." "Oh, that's fine. Do you need some headstones too?" #TheTraitors

I think this handwriting looks female, maybe?

My four year old is scared of dogs and most people are great at keeping their dog back from the clearly terrified child but a meaningful number of people seem to think that what she needs is uncontrolled exposure therapy and it's their job to provide it

It's like being stuck in a conversation with someone (i) who *hates* Jeremy Corbyn (ii) and *hates* New Labour and just watching them ricochet around attempting to reverse engineer a platform, manifesto and electorate consistent with that.

I made the Nigella crack biscuits and they are, as you all said, like crack. Starting the year the way I hope to continue it: on the sofa in a biscuit and cheese-inducded coma

This thread is really good. I think I'd add that anger comes a bit from the expectations-reality gap. This govt set the expectation that they could fix things and it turns out they can't, because they mostly don't have a plan and tied their own hands with the tax pledge...

Feel free to bookmark this and hit me with it later. But a few more summers like the one we just had and I wouldn't be surprised if this starts to turn around a bit. You couldn't pay me to go to Spain in August in a heatwave but I bet the sea in Skeggy was great.

Stood next to Mitchell and Webb while waiting to order at a pub bar. They both had beers. I too had a beer.

A friend of mine had a superpower: she used to work in the bar at the local lodge. So she knew which councillors and which local bigwigs were members. And, well. It was a lot.

This is one of those rare days when Jacob Rees-Mogg, writing in the Spectator, said it best (Yes, I'm taking any excuse to repost this one partly because it's really well-written but also because I enjoy how much it breaks people's brains On Here)

Citizenship stripping has become a political tool for authoritarians to signal their credentials. No matter how abhorrent someone’s tweets, or views, the idea REMOVING THEIR CITIZENSHIP should be the response is deranged. Philp & the right in general have lost the plot. #r4today

Getting a LOT of Xmas photos still popping up on the BookFace ana genuinely, what do the Christmas pyjama people do with their matching pyjamas for the other 364 days per year?

My mum just offered me some mints that expired in 1996 and which still have a label on them in Francs.

If only there was a popular 1940s movie that had given us a widely- used word to explain why this is abusive

TIL Carol of the Bells is Ukrainian

Starmer's electoral problem, summed up in one seasonal video

I reckon Best dinner: Davey Most likely to start an argument: Kemi Most generous gift: big Ange Stingiest gift: Johnson

This government has an uncanny ability to absorb all the flak from a decision only to u-turn when everyone involved already hates them and it's way too late to get any credit

Gotta be done

I'm reading Show Me The Bodies, about the Grenfell Tower fire, and it's as harrowing as you'd expect but an absolutely essential read. I knew most of the cladding elements but hadn't realised quite how shambolic the fire brigade response was, and having it all laid out is just astonishing.

SHE'S ALIVE!

Prediction: some Lib Dem somewhere is going to put this chart on a leaflet in some Labour stronghold where we came sixth last time and there's a good chance they'll win it

True Labourism has never been tried

My main thought on the white-men-in-the-employment-market paper is that given what happens to women's careers post kids, the promotion potential for the ones who do get hired is probably better than it was pre-diversification, so forgive me if my sympathy is limited

There's a lot in here to like, but it's frustrating that it seems to (as far as I can tell) completely remove the incentive to local authorities to have local plans in place, while not actually streamlining planning for areas that are in local plans.

Takes like this massively let the government off the hook. Streeting didn't need to give the doctors much to avoid these strikes, but he took the piss and then went out and gave a bunch of quotes to the press that couldn't have been better designed to annoy them if he'd been doing it on purpose.

This is also horrible for the LDs FWIW. Not getting any benefit at all when Lab collapse is really bad

Been reading quite a bit of reddit lately and there seem to be a lot of people selling flats in (mostly) London at a big loss, and combined with the falling immigration numbers and rising unemployment... I'm not an economist but it doesn't feel optimal, does it?

Who'd have thought that a stream of insults about resident doctors in the press would not, in fact, make them more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt?

Me at the arrivals gate in any US airport after providing my social media accounts: