Opinion | The Chancellor’s indefensible decision to make us wait until late November is dragging out the agony 🖋 @wallaceme.bsky.social Read more: trib.al/LRaYqML

Hallowe’en trends this year: - South West London’s mums are leaning in heavily to Mexican day of the dead face paint - South West London’s dads are leaning in heavily to bringing beers (or even glasses of wine?!) out on trick or treating duty

Make Russia Small Again.

It’s the age-old story: Boy meets girl,

There’s always a Larson cartoon.

Ah so *now* the NYT comes crawling for forgiveness

Exclusive: Lord Hermer is a defendant in a civil suit he drafted and represented until weeks before the 2024 election, which implicates the previous Labour government in complicity in torture www.politicshome.com/news/article...

The search for growth is *the* top political quest in an embattled UK - legendary economist Art Laffer has committed his new book to helping us find it www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

My latest column for @theipaper.com is on the remarkable surge in grassroots members joining @zackpolanski.bsky.social's Greens and Farage's Reform - what's happening is something distinct and new, and it's good news for our democracy. inews.co.uk/opinion/vote...

I do not understand why the leader of the largest country on Earth needs a few more kilometers. This war is not about land, but about our independence, Zelensky said about Putin.

#SpoliaSunday leads into the vicolo dell'Atleta in #Trastevere in #Rome, where a piece of #sarcophagus front with the familiar #strigilate curves that represent the ripples of the river #Styx was reused in the C14 as the side wall of an entrance, now walled up. #AncientBluesky 🏺

“Go home”? The Ukrainians already *are* home. This war stops overnight if the Russians, and the Russians alone, go home.

I and @fleetstreetfox.bsky.social will be back with the next bout of #skypapers at 11.30pm

I think it’s fair to say that sadly this piece has aged very well inews.co.uk/opinion/chin...

“If the SDP was the hare, Reform is the tortoise.” A well-argued piece by Mark Littlewood on why the common comparison is a misleading error substack.com/inbox/post/1...

“What I did on my holidays. Day One: Trepanning.”

“The surgeon told the court that she could not tell whether her daughter’s hand had been on the drill applied to the patient’s head.” I’ll be honest, it’s not the most reassuring defence that I’ve ever heard.

BREAKING: new book reveals Alec Douglas-Home once had a threesome with Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. It doesn't - and there's no evidence for it, because I've made it up. But buy my book anyway. Seems to be how it's done. www.amazon.co.uk/Smallest-Roo...

Stop pretending a wealth tax is a serious idea takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/wealth-tax...

Spooks on the BBC: “We have to climb onto the roof, through a skylight and plug this thumb drive into the Chinese server.” Spooks on Chinese TV: “We’ve just bought the British data centre. Job done.”

The AI minister says the digital ID announcement is an e.g of where gov must up its online comms game: “To be able to make sure that when a significant thing is happening, like an announcement on digital ID, we're winning the battle of ideas and arguments…” he tells @zoecrowther.bsky.social

Surprised to be informed this morning, by the First Officer of a British Airways flight from London to Edinburgh, that “we will shortly be entering Scottish airspace”. 🧐

Who doesn’t love a suggestively shaped vegetable? This week’s shopping, very much putting the 🍆 in 🍆

My favourite alternative universe: the hotel was an unsuccessful entry in the comp to design the Treasury. The winner, in white Portland stone, was copied in govt buildings the world over. Imagine a universe in which Whitehall and Whitehalls worldwide are red brick gothic revival.

Thank goodness the hostages have been released at last. I can’t begin to imagine what their families have been through.

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

One of Britain’s world-leading sectors is ludicrous sports: today is Surbiton’s annual Ski Sunday, where people with blocks of ice strapped to their feet compete to race fastest down a plastic ski course covered in washing-up liquid. Love it.

My opinion is that maybe Pakistan shouldn’t have funded and aided the Taliban for years?

Yes! #makerussiapay www.bbc.com/news/article...

Thank goodness. We have no blasphemy law in this country any longer, nor should we. I dislike book burning instinctively, but plenty of things I might dislike are nonetheless rightly legal. Mr Coskun should never have been convicted for an act of free expression. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just a reminder that marches featuring a political uniform are illegal…

Hmm. Are there no checks between these “younger producers” and the script airing? I recently encountered a younger producer who insisted (via TikTok) that gold top milk was a newly invented superfood. But neither I nor the presenter then said it on air…

Britain must resist unwinnable subsidy races and instead fix its foundations ✍️ John Caudwell

🚨OUT NOW 🚨Panic (on the streets of Manchester?) Join @alaintolhurst.bsky.social inside Tory conference as he talks to James Cleverly & Mel Stride, pollsters Allie Jennings & Patrick English, the IfG's Tom Pope, and academic Rob Ford about whether the party can recover podfollow.com/politicshome...

"I dislike book burning instinctively, but plenty of things I might dislike are nonetheless rightly legal." Exactly.

Laughs in vampire.

That isn’t what he said - he’s referring to the principles displayed by the Laureates as the basis for the committee resisting and disregarding external pressure.

Also somewhat alarming how often people on The Traitors just go for anyone who’s in any way different. Look a bit unusual? Traitor behaviour. Dress eccentrically? Traitor behaviour.

Italian version of Taskmaster looks shit

Thank goodness. We have no blasphemy law in this country any longer, nor should we. I dislike book burning instinctively, but plenty of things I might dislike are nonetheless rightly legal. Mr Coskun should never have been convicted for an act of free expression. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Can't wait for the tense identification parade scene where a terrified witness has to point at the culprit.

Errrr…

Habeas Corpus, another brave Hungarian peasant girl like her cousin Magna Carta…

Primer Suspect

Amid many speeches, the best speech I heard this week - indeed one of the best I’ve ever heard - was by a Ukrainian former university professor, now an officer in the Ukrainian army’s Azov Corps. They are opposing barbarism with mind, body and heart. A remarkable nation. #cpc25

That’s very kind of you to say - I very much enjoyed taking part in it

Farewell, Manchester - my favourite party conference venue - after another hectic, rewarding week. Dozens of top notch Total Politics fringe events, great reporting from @politicshome.bsky.social + ConservativeHome, and networking with politicians, activists and clients. See you again soon! #CPC25

Mere days after a fatal terrorist attack, this is being paraded in Trafalgar Square today. For shame.

Oregon, 1939. “Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Note Social Security nr. tattooed on arm.” Nr. 535-07-5248 belonged to one Thomas Cave, born July 1912, died in 1980 in Portland, OR. Which would make him 27 years old when this picture was taken.