All of the companies that make the software I use are increasing their prices, to account for an "investment" in AI. I'm sat here imagining how my clients would feel if I added 30% to each invoice, because I "really got into gambling".

Labour bearing down on immigration will fix this any day now.

On the late, great, Steve Cropper who most people probably remember from the backing band in The Blues Brothers. The HBO documentary on Stax Records (currently on NOW TV) is well worth watching both to understand his contribution and why, to me at least, America is such a strange place.

Dear specialists. Do we know who was responsible for the design of the rear sleeve of Rubber Soul? ie. Who chose the photos and decided the layout.

Became a bit obsessed with this theory so fell down a well and compiled a playlist of songs where Roger sounds like a weird cult leader, sociopath, serial killer or deranged itinerant preacher with blood upon his hands. Apologies for Spotify. Tidal is f-ing up. open.spotify.com/playlist/7lz...

As it happens, the very first article in did in my @thehousemag.bsky.social column was on how rebelling does not help MPs. You rise or fall with the party. Working your butt off in the constituency might help a bit. Rebelling makes not a jot of difference. www.politicshome.com/thehouse/art...

Great article from @amyborrett.ft.com. But it does make me wonder again why there was zero national media coverage when the University of Brighton closed down its big, decades-old campus in Eastbourne. Now of course, it would make a great case study for a journalist of the economic/cultural impact.

This evening you can see Richard Attenborough's Pinkie.

Grim news and vacuous messaging from Essex: 200 academic posts (in unspecified subjects) to go this year & 200 professional staff posts in the next 2 years. Closure of Southend campus will be a blow regionally as well. The vision and ambition that saw Essex et al established is sorely needed now.

This is absolute insanity. One of the few areas in which the UK is a world leader is being allowed to die. It will harm the economy, lessen our innovation capacity and reduce our soft power; and all because of the government's fear of how meaningful investment in higher education would be covered.

RIP Tom Stoppard “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting” the rare literary reference that highlighted the value of election administration

How much do I love teaching Jaws? Let me count the ways

Keeping the British end up, in my contribution to this multinational melodrama overview: www.bfi.org.uk/features/aro...

I feel you, ancient Mongolian ceramic hedgehog. I feel you.

Part 218 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg dnd Ceramic hedgehog dated to the Neolithic period found at the Hamin archaeological site near Shebotu Town in Inner Mongolia, China

A massive and resounding fuck you to Channel 4 for Benefits Street, still fuelling reactionary resentment a decade after it was broadcast en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit...

Enjoyed the launch for this last night. OK, so the book's not published yet, but still: it was great to see so many election nerds (and non-nerds) there. Thanks to the panellists and to @ukandeu.bsky.social (and @robfordmancs.bsky.social) for organising and @britishacademy.bsky.social for hosting.

Anyone enjoying the current re-runs of vintage Call My Bluff on BBC Four might like to check out the show's cameo appearance ten minutes into this barking mad NF Simpson parody. I remember watching this in 1973 and being flabbergasted.

Glasman: 'We will keep fighting the 1955 general election until you give us the RIGHT answer!' The newspaper of British Conservativism: 'What a necessary voice!'

Likewise 'if that means closures of departments and programmes limit students' choice of area and location of study'. Student choice, the mantra of days gone by, is being killed by a thousand uncoordinated cuts.

I fucking hate budget polling. Might as well poll if everyone wants to eat pies, kebabs and cakes all the time and exclude the consequences of possible heart attack.

Andy Sparrow. Sensible, wise, smart. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Does the government perhaps understand that this is very bad for Britain?

I highly recommend this entire thread, not just the initial link.

Supporters of the Labour government would do well to read this and take it on board

Ooh @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social is now on Freely 😀 www.cordbusters.co.uk/talking-pict...

Looking at newspapers during the 1918 General Election campaign. Daily Mail...

Brilliant post about the electoral suicide that Labour is committing. It is no rocket science that making your opponents‘ topic important, well, is not exactly a winning strategy. 🤯

FFS

Shout it from the rooftops @philipjcowley.bsky.social www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

Latest piece for the @thehousemag.bsky.social, on the island of strangers speech and similar. Also ft Bob Hawke. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

This is every fucking bit as bad as it sounds. Also, even the AI fuckers themselves are starting to dump their shares in their own shit but Labour are somehow still shackled to the fucking mast of the skynet titanic.

This week is Road Safety Week & a chance to talk about Barbara Castle! Barbara was Transport Minister for three years yet she was able to introduce the Breathalyzer, a proper integrated transport strategy & more! This was done despite fierce opposition. 📸 Photo from the Parliamentary Achieve

Reminiscent of the old Johnny Carson joke about the mudslides putting out the wildfires

Nice that Trump has finally found an Oval Office guest he *doesn't* want to embarrass.

We begin today with a content warning: this dispatch from history is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you wish, do please join me for the tale of the Sun King’s anal fistula and the three-hour operation performed on it without anaesthetic on this day in 1686... 🧵

"It is terrible that Shabana Mahmood faces overt racism for being a high profile Asian woman" = good argument "The key to ending overt racism against Asians in Britain is that we must Stop the Boats" = a very bad argument indeed, on so many levels

"don't unpack yer suitcase, Paddington" - Labour

Doesn’t matter. “Starmer and Mahmood wanted to take jewellery from asylum seekers” is a mark those two will never be able to wash off and which the party as a whole will have to put in onerous work to remove.

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

I've never felt more ashamed of being a Labour supporter. Not even during Iraq, where at least we had cabinet members resigning in disgust. Now: just jostling for position. If I wasn't already turning my back on the party I've backed my whole life, I would be now. #ImmigrantsWelcome #NotInMyName

Labour MPs should be treating the removal of Blue Labour from the party leadership every bit as urgently as the removal of the Hard Left

Fascinating that the cause of collapse of both major parties has not just been basically identical (cost of living and service failings creating unpopularity, chasing radical right tail on immigration fuelling in-bloc schism), but that doubling down has persisted long after failure became clear.

You are not going to be able to pull together the anti-Reform coalition if voters don't see you are meaningfully different to Reform. Mad reaction from the government given an increasing threat on the left.

How have Labour watched the Tories spend 2-3 years parroting Farage then lose an election badly and conclude a similar strategy is the best course of action? I. Really. Genuinely. Do Not. Get. It.

Late to this, but if the Sunday Times is correct that Morgan McSweeney spent one and a half hours last week with Lord Glasman then he isn't fit to fill any senior position in government.

The Prime Minister said in September that we are at a fork in the road. These asylum proposals suggest we have taken the wrong turning. The idea that recognised refugees need to be deported is wrong. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Sharp as ever from @philipjcowley.bsky.social but delightfully with added sass this week

“Where’s your fucking turkey!”

psychologically this destroys any idea of refuge, rest, escape you'd be trying to make a new life in a fundamentally hostile country, itching to discard you totally inhumane, and economically illiterate, however they spin it so just far right appeasement, staring at polls while in actual power