The American election experience could benefit a lot from learning how we count votes in Britain. In a provincial sports centre on a Thursday night, all by hand, no running tallies, and most people are home by 5am.

Badenoch's commitment to mirror-avoidance is certainly something.

The place that would never serve the teetotal student me a soft drink, for reasons unknown.

Classy Nige throwing his parliamentary staff under the bus. The buck stops with you, matey.

I see some of you have the Northern Lights. We have the Northern Clouds.

An Osprey seems to be starting a nest at base of a scare owl on top of a Universal billboard.

The premise of everything Kemi says and does is “if Labour are doing it, it must be bad”, and everything else is about her making intellectual pretzel shapes around that.

American Antiques Roadshow. Invented suspense to fit around the ad breaks. Unwatchable.

X is paying Reform UK MPs while its AI produces sexually explicit images of children and women, the public deserves answers. Will they return the money they’ve earned from the platform? 1/6

How big of a deal the Millennium was.

Taylor's now in her Class 756 Era. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

my theory: social media has whipped up impatience, scorn, hatred, anger, polarisation and frustration with anything other than immediate results

Sharing this because everyone I’ve told about it had never heard of it! No council tree collections in your area? Don’t want needles all over your car taking it to the tip? This charity organises tree collections, & volunteers will collect & recycle it in return for a donation: just-helping.org.uk

Their whole ethos is "You'll do what I say, and I'll do what I like".

It seems surprising that the Shadow Attorney-General Lord Wolfson is able to combine being on Roman Abramovich's legal team in such a high profile case about the frozen assets of a key Putin ally, while also attending the Shadow Cabinet (The Times)

Hour-long videos that could be podcasts that could be 500 word blogs.

The Fellowship of the Ring is a Christmas movie.

Unexpected message this year.

traditional at Christmas to post (entirely genuine) June 2012 photo of Liz Truss campaigning for Ely North upgrade in breach of best safety messaging, but here it is ..

Merry Christmas to all except the people on Facebook who’ve discovered how to use AI to add fake snow to photos.

Almost time. www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-n...

I’m sure this room’s even smaller than last year. It’s less pink in person than it appears. #duvetknowitschristmas

The Willcocks "Word" chord is the choral equivalent to the opening of A Hard Day's Night. #carolsfromkings

Can confirm the North Cumbrian Sloe Gin is an excellent vintage this year.

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

For your collective delectation this holiday season: Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!) loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...

Can recommend turkey dinner aboard TfW Rail’s loco-hauled service. As good as the reviews foretold.

Tractors on the move.

Perusing this year's Christmas Radio Times and quickly coming to the conclusion that it won't be a vintage year for TV over Christmas.

I guess this is full-throated Badenochism.

Might be worthwhile to expand here. So a cursory glance at a Westminster order paper will tell you that there are a /lot/ of votes at Parliament. That's part of why parties have research teams and whips offices, among other things they literally figure out how your MPs should vote on /everything/

"Ah but independent MPs don't have whips!" Au contraire - their whips just aren't other MPs. As I discovered when I did it for six months.

the twelve days of christmas - and I cannot emphasise this enough - are 25 December - 5 January. we are not currently in a day of christmas. marketing departments stop it. STOP IT

“Here’s looking at you, great-grandkid.” from the beloved sequel, Cas4blanca.

I spent one of my first election campaigns (aged 3) following my Mum round on the #labourdoorstep asking where “the party” was. It was three Labour Gains, so we had a party.

And the specifics of the K-T Extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs (the asteroid impact) were first discovered when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. David Attenborough’s Life on Earth, first broadcast in 1979, states “We don’t know exactly what wiped out the dinosaurs”.

Has there been a better script doctor than Barry Watson? What, you don’t know Barry Watson? Oh, that’s because he’s Tom Stoppard. He also did a bit of work on a film called Revenge of the Sith - if only they’d let him rewrite the whole thing. creativescreenwriting.com/indiana-jone...

Wow - this guy must be really, REALLY bad with money if an extra £208 per month will “ruin” his retirement. Let’s take a look at his situation based on what he told the @Telegraph Because this does NOT add up! No, this is not a “poor pensioner” scrabbling around for pennies… 🧵1/9

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, get AI to do it for them.

PSA - Waterstones has triple points on from now until Monday if you spend over £100.

The Lakes Express running under the Nordmann fir.

Nearly 5 years ago, we had to up sticks and leave Richmond (the cheap(!) end) because the rent levels were just insane. We moved 300 miles, from a 2 bed flat to a 4 bed house, almost halving the rent. The old flat was nearly 2.5x the value of my parents’ house. We may in fact have a housing crisis.

New Lizardman’s Constant just dropped.

Black Friday *week*.

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu