Trends are impossible to spot these days, just go with vibes. Me for the Times www.thetimes.com/article/10e4...

Another delightful ICYMI - the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace get a new lease of life - great piece here from FT mag on the history of this crazy Victorian project (many hours of my SE London childhood spent staring at a muddy member of the troupe) www.ft.com/content/2451...

Extremely fun piece by Ben Parr on the Christmas mummers' play tradition - it is Boxing Day after all - love the bit about the quack doctor acquiring the name Dr Squires who knows why www.ft.com/content/25f1...

Political books round up by me for @ftweekend.com - for the truly insanely last minute present-buyers among you - 2 on Blair, 1 on Starmer, 1 on Nato and one on a truly grim character in the long history of cash for honours - Merry Christmas folks - www.ft.com/content/dd0f...

if you're running out of family dinner conversation may I suggest hitting them with some fun cardboard facts from our big cardboard story? 📦🎁📦 as.ft.com/r/e9673efd-f...

Enoch Powell sharply criticised Queen Eluzabeth II's Christmas broadcast of 1983 - featuring a trip to the Commonwealth summit in India - which may "suggest she has the affairs & interests in other continents as much, or more, at heart than those of her own people" & too concerned for newcomers here

Aaaaand ... the first PR email about "Twixmas" has landed ... kill me now

Morning all - most read on the FT website today - words of the year series hits an undoubted high/low note with 6-7 the bane of the adult world in 2025 www.ft.com/content/3b2e...

Political books round up by me for @ftweekend.com - for the truly insanely last minute present-buyers among you - 2 on Blair, 1 on Starmer, 1 on Nato and one on a truly grim character in the long history of cash for honours - Merry Christmas folks - www.ft.com/content/dd0f...

'New Labour, New Britain?' by, er, me has made it into the best new politics books list at the FT! Many thanks to @greenmirandahere.bsky.social for the kind words. (1/2) www.ft.com/content/dd0f...

The time I greeted the Archbishop of Canterbury as a chum and other instances of mistaken recognition - its parasocial innit - word of t'year - www.ft.com/content/2b66...

So many utterly insane people on the radical left and utterly insane people on the radical right in Britain seem to just copy and paste their ludicrous opinions wholesale from America. The obsession with guns is always a dead giveaway.

Very likely to be the truest measure of voting intention today given their Methodology and the expense of doing so / record at the general election. Reform surge real, labour collapse at worse end of expectations, big gains for liberals and greens. Tories at higher end of polling

If anyone would like me to speak about the Blair govts at their local bookgroup, bookshop or Labour Party (etc.), just DM or give me an email and we'll talk! Happy to help, just doing my job etc.

How does Bjorn from ABBA have more clarity on this than a nontrivial proportion of European leaders

House of Lords dispatch from Alison Wolf, today a slightly cross cross-bencher: delays are the govt's own fault and show proper scrutiny is going on - and on - and on ... www.ft.com/content/f49a...

I read somewhere that the secret key to postwar British history is that in any incident, meeting, whatever, there’s a high chance that most participants are a bit tipsy and someone round the table is absolutely steaming drunk.

delighted to see this - let's hope this case proves a watershed and we can clean things up www.thetimes.com/article/80cd...

Anyone else so knackered at this point that they are starting to feel like Bjork in her operatic period? www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOsd... Seriously inspiring make up choices here btw. WHITE FOREHEAD? FESTIVE!

This is amazing from HTSI - the Lucy M Boston house in the fens that inspired the Green Knowe books www.ft.com/content/e356...

All the photography in this week's Economist Britain section is by Martin Parr

Doom? gloom? not so fast says @chrisgiles.ft.com www.ft.com/content/5aff...

Meanwhile: the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium has been hearing from these excellent scientists who want more focus on solving the mysteries of lobular - we are in the minority and it's a bugger to see and recurrs differently www.sabcsmeetingnews.org/special-sess...

🌟 We are hiring - seeking a great new Publicity and Marketing Manager for Biteback Publishing’s exciting range of non-fiction books. Details below jobs.thebookseller.com/career/28506...

As so often, great piece from @robertshrimsley.bsky.social and truly sensational illustration by Ellie Foreman Peck - 🎶REACH (beat) for the stars (ti tum ti tum ti tum ti TUM) 🎤🎵

Just 167 new members are needed by Sunday for @manchestermill.bsky.social to hit their target of 1000 new members and deliver these six pledges

Migration Advisory Committee report on fiscal impact of main work migration routes. Key table: they estimate 2022/23 cohort (those arriving in 2022/23) will over lifetimes pay about £47 billion more in taxes than they "cost" in public spending. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/693810...

Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

It took about 2 months - more possibly - to get a home visit jab for my mum - and in the interim she was HOSPITALISED FOR 5 DAYS AND NEARLY DIED. Someone needs to look at the jabs strategy - it's chaos at the school as well, a consent process with an app that will have cut the numbers by a large %

This was excellent

New post just out: "The most neglected problem in Britain?" We have a guest post this morning from @robblackie.bsky.social looking at the prevelance of sexual offences and how police forces can do much better in tackling them. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Good weekend? prolong it with this. Bad weekend? make it better with this. Singing along loudly is necessary for it to work properly. open.spotify.com/track/2LAZn3...

At a time when visual literary couldn’t be more important, art history is in danger of becoming extinct in British schools. @helenbarrett.bsky.social makes the case for a subject that is too often seen as the preserve of the privileged.

extraordinary things you didn't know about until today, turn to page 94 - @elainemoore.bsky.social on the Etsy witches and the difficulty of buying spells online www.ft.com/content/f293...

USE HEADPHONES FOR FUCK SAKE YOU SAVAGES

Fascinating if depressing on the Ukraine talks - What claims to be diplomacy looks like a marketplace. Settlements negotiated through such channels will collapse. www.ft.com/content/fb80...

Apparently I'm only 75 so that's nice #spotify

"Our first print run is 5,000 copies, with plans to publish quarterly and increase circulation with each issue."

As someone who is still here five years later and had this type of chemotherapy for BC, and has looked (through my fingers) at the stats, in a very real sense ET IN ARCADIA EGO - an absolutely wonderful letter about how the human mind makes creative connections

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Book 76, “The Nuns Escape to the Chalet School”

Should you be yourself at work? Rachel from Leeds asked us last Sat in the @ftweekend.com magazine so I looked into it for her - short answer, don't let it all hang out if you want to be a leader and also (depressing this) people prefer if you fake authenticity www.ft.com/content/1407...

Interesting to see TeamNigel’s back catalogue getting belated scrutiny that was absent at the time from the broadcast media.

Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a puppet politician whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else.

Annotated: the full text of Trump’s 28-point Ukraine-Russia peace plan on.ft.com/3XtPapn

Prosecutor Mark Heywood has today told the Old Bailey: "It is clear that he read from the script he had with him." Gill sent a YouTube link to his speech to Voloshyn and wrote "V should be pleased by this". He was then asked to "encourage other MEPs" to take a similar stance

Here's what appears to be the result - Gill and two other MEPs making strikingly similar comments to the European Parliament, following a trip to meet the pro-Putin TV channels

Definitely worth it! manchestermill.co.uk/lp-3/?referr...

Worse still, the increase in time spent alone has been especially steep among this economically and socially dislocated group. *Seven hours* of daily free time spent completely solitary in the most recent US data. My column from last week in full: www.ft.com/content/bd61...