You talk about your early Christian relic, I wish you could see mine

Three lovable mop-tops and one less so.

What's the best ever cover version of a David Bowie song? I'll go first. www.youtube.com/watch?v=njRR...

Reading the Palestine Action judgment. This, from Yvette Cooper's statement explaining why PA were to be proscribed, is surprisingly revealing. She says that PA are being proscribed (a) to make them easier to prosecute (b) ...at least in part for non-terrorist actions 1/n

Anyone else keep reading BICOM and thinking BICO, and getting very confused ("I knew they were unreliable...")? #AsSoonAsThisPubCloses

Just seen a passing reference to "Your Party people", and now I can't stop thinking of this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zWp...

University lecturers please copy. 10% of the final mark, whatever.

Niche reference, but I do like the fact that the dodgy character who's just been hoofed from the LP in the HoL* goes by Lord Doyle. *although not, presumably, from his ermine sinecure itself

Ten days later, the spread is: Labour: 10/1 to 8/1 Reform UK: 3/1 to 5/2 Greens: 4/6 to 1/3 I'm not a betting man, but I'd venture to say that for a party other than the incumbent to be polling at 3 to 1 on before a by-election is really quite unusual.

Listening to Dr John's second album Babylon while reading a fan review. "Babylon" - "weird time signatures, kind of psychedelic, Beefheart-esque vocals" check, check, bit lazy but check

The "oh, dear God, isn't he going to say *anything*?" interval seems to be down below five hours, which is definitely progress.

If you want to sing out, sing out And if you want to be free, be free RIP Bud Cort

RIP Bud Cort. Harold and Maude is one of my favourite movies of all time and he’s spectacular in it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t find out anything about it. Just watch it.

So does "performative" mean "ostentatious"? Genuine Q. I only know it as a word for speech acts that perform a function ("I name this ship" etc), but that hasn't been the modal use for a while now.

"and former comms chief" is a nice touch. "I said make it *more* specific!"

Now reading: @qntm.org , There Is No Anti-Memetics Division (itself, rather fittingly, an SCP meme that's broken containment). A small but important element of the plot is pharmaceutical memory removal: take the pill and forget him, or that, or yesterday, or everything. [Whole-body shudder]

Hard core.

Dreadfully sad news, not least b/c he was younger than I am... I didn't know Des well, & now wish I had - I never realised I had a couple of his downtempo ambient house cuts, and I shall be tracking down a copy of the David Bowie album. A great loss. www.beerguild.co.uk/news/much-lo...

Faithful friends who are dear to us Will be near to us Once more She wore Blue.... velvet... I hate hybrid earworms.

OK, fine. I voted Green in 2005, I was a member of the party from 2015 to 2024, and I voted Green again in 2024. Fairweather Labour supporter, that's me - and yes, I'm extremely pleased that McSweeney's gone, at least for now. Before dismissing what people like me think, a couple of points.

Labour's woes are self-inflicted, but they'll never accept responsibility for them. It's painful for me too. My whole family was once staunch Labour voters, but not anymore. #VoteGreen 🗳️

You would think one minor thing they might learn from the whole Mandelson fiasco would be that the culture of "he had a good resignation, let's bring him back in 6 months" should end, but apparently not

Just back from Jean-Luc Godard Was An Utter Twat (In A Good As Well As A Bad Sense), or Nouvelle Vague as it's also known. A lot of fun. May help to have seen ABDS recently, but it's certainly not mandatory. PS There's a good sense? Mais si! gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/a...

Although the Polanski profile in today's Graun actually supports this - and it's always possible, alas, that the S*n wasn't being entirely truthful.

Man, I hate it when a bar isn’t a pleasant place to drink *because it’s too busy*. Like having a complaint that you know will be ignored.

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

Four days later, nobody's giving Labour any better than 7/1. Less change elsewhere; Reform still drifting (mostly at 7/4 now), Greens still tightening. The Greens are up from 4/5 to 4/6, in fact, with one bookie giving 4/7 (i.e. "put down £10, get back £13.64").

Picture 1: Two plain clothes police officers during a search of Peter Mandelson's home Picture 2: Police search Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell's home

"large parts of the Labour Party, spanning generations, are confronting a dependence on this beguiling figure who has led them into disrepute again and again" Presumably the first draft was "What the fuck is wrong with these people?"

Can't stop laughing at Keir Starmer's defence being "I asked the Prince of Darkness 'are you telling me the truth?' and he said 'yes' and now I have discovered that I was LIED to by the Prince of Darkness! The Prince of Darkness LIED to me!"

10th January 2016, I'm telling you. Somebody somewhere needs to take the hit and let that plane crash on his house.

Reading a GQ interview with Nia DaCosta about THE BONE TEMPLE just now, as you do, and this jumped out at me.

Under my leadership of the Labour Party, Peter Mandelson had no role, no influence and no part to play, because I do not trust the man and I do not believe the man.

I'm not sure people appreciate quite what a blow to Starmer's government the acquittal of the Palestine Action protestors is. It both blows apart the whole proscription idea and demonstrates how out of touch they are. This was a jury. Juries represent the public.

New fuck/marry/kill list just dropped

Out of nowhere, I was struck by the question, ‘Lembit Öpik… what was his fucking deal again?’ And was rewarded beyond my wildest dreams.

Westboro Baptist Church tried to make an Anti-Luigi Mangione poster but it just looks like Luigi is threatening billionaires and goes unironically hard af

Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.

Perhaps Trump supporters, while resentful, vindictive and racist, aren't actually Nazis. It's Brimstone and Treacle - people may have wanted to Make A. G. A. and wipe the smiles off a few undeserving faces, but they didn't want... *this*.

Great news; well done those jurors. (Also makes me wonder if the government's restriction of jury trials to more serious cases will have unintended consequences.) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In a sense I guess the cordyceps fungus bursting out of its head does shed light on the ant's neurological fragility, but that's not quite where I'd put the emphasis.

Is this bit news, or did everyone always know McSweeney was Peter’s boy, taking his instructions? Did they know it when they were repeating drivel they were sent by Morgan in the secret wrecking campaign of 2018? Did they know this when they were talking up Sir Keir’s leadership campaign, or in 2024

Sub-topic/digression: what *used to* make you die inside, but doesn't any more for some reason? For me it used to be Uptown Girl - not least b/c the bastard thing would immediately earworm me & I'd have this song I loathed in my head for the rest of the day. Now? It's fine. Nice little pop song.

You do not, under any circumstances, got to hand it to Jeffrey Epstein. However.

Guess who. "I do not, in fact, lie as easily as breathing; I have suffered from shortness of breath for some time and frequently use an asthma inhaler."

Interesting bit of Noticing there, from what you'd imagine was an unimpeachable source (i.e. he's not likely to get his character assassinated by anonymous Labour MPs or be the subject of a sneering column from Fink or Aaro).

FOLK-RELATED FILM OPINION 1: you should see THE HISTORY OF SOUND. It's weirdly paced/structured and overlong, but the first hour and some of the second hour are sublime. Good Paul Mescal (as seen in AFTERSUN and AOUS) is back. Some great singing, too.

A revealing article, but it isn't nearly critical (or sceptical) enough. Can we really believe the the question of whether to attack Reform as a) "the same old Tories" or b) far more dangerous than the Tories is being decided by *what polls better*? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...