This year’s Presidential Christmas card.

4 - Isaac Asimov (The Foundation TV series seems to have worked by just keeping some of the character names and the basic idea, afaict, but who, despite right now being the perfect cultural moment, references the Three Laws?)

Fast growth from a small base is great for a stock price but not much good for a broad existing economy. IMO the investor mindset here totally ignores the legacy operations and commitments of the UK state *and* companies. The Brexit implementation fiasco www.ft.com/content/42b3...

No, the biggest error of Brexiters was not that UK politicians would step up when EU m'ship fell away. It was believing that the people to lead us back to the politics of respect & integrity post-Brexit, were Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Mark Francois, Rees-Mogg, Dorries, etc. etc. etc.

See what he did there; but it does risk reinforcing the conventional wisdom that all those who vote for Reform are the legendary 'left behind' when, in fact, many of them are actually (or actually like) the 'comfortable Leavers' who voted for Brexit in 2016.

Jane Clare Jones’ magnificent challenge to Robin Ince is worth a share here. Naturally he ran away. Probably because he couldn’t square up his atheist position with his belief in metaphysical shite

From the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent

Worth reading this one!

It is just incredible that the people who always go on about immigration and muslims and sharia law in Britain are the first to promote British immigration into a muslim country with sharia law.

What we're seeing is exactly what we saw in the late 1940s, the late 1960s and the mid- to late 1970s: a concerted and hysterical campaign to delegitimise a Labour government, and indeed the very idea of Labour governments at all.

This has got to be one of Gavin Newsom's best...

unbelievable. the canonical example of an illegal order in the Law of War Manual is "an order to fire upon the shipwrecked."

"We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/w...

Several newspapers are mourning the death of "Shakespeare in Love screenwriter Tom Stoppard" which, while technically true, is very much on the level of "Thomas The Tank Engine narrator Ringo Starr".

Feels like a huge political failing of Labour not to have just made a big (costed) list of everything that was broken by the end of the last regime. We can't have honest discussions about paying for stuff because everyone connected with the last regime is focussed on pretending it was all fine.

Today's 70% fall in net migration to 205,000 was not one of the six stories in BBC ten o'clock news. Ta massive assymetry in whether rises in immigration and falls in immigration are considered newsworthy by broadcasters Down by 140k isn't thought to be. Up by 140k undoubtedly would be.

A year and a half (at most) to the next French presidential election and Marine Le Pen's party is well-set to win. The general media ignorance of the continent in favour of American minutiae is a gross disservice to the British public, as well as a distortion of the global picture.

He can afford all the luxury of being an articulate charlatan without having to reap any of the consequences of enacting what he proposes.

Planet Normal. Sounds a great title for a podcast. Who is hosting, who is guesting?

Quiet, piggy.

There were many lessons from this which are being discussed elsewhere, but one of the biggest that isn't being mentioned is the ultimate untouchable rail of politics is trying to cut pensions and pensioner benefits.

'Prometheus' my ass these guys aren't stealing fire from the gods they're stealing money from the people and setting fire to the planet. All for Bezos living out the 'Olympians punish him by chaining him to a rock and having an eagle eat his liver every day' phase of a titan's life tho.

If you need me, tap me on the shoulder. I’ll be happily working all day listening to this on a loop.

Dix ans après une catastrophe écologique historique, la justice britannique a rendu le géant minier australien BHP responsable de la rupture dévastatrice d’un barrage minier au Brésil en 2015. La décision, très attendue, ouvre la voie à des dizaines de milliards de livres de compensations. Lire ⤵️

A man has been found guilty of writing a stream of consciousness novel. He is about to start a 4 year sentence.

This is the sort of small but meaningful thing that helps to tackle a major frustration for one group of people inability to do something as basic as book a driving test furthers their feeling Britain is broken. Sort of thing govt should be leading with not infighting.

How the far-right wins in the UK, part 18,904: defeating Labour is far, far more important to the Greens than defeating Farage.

A point on which I have no special knowledge, but BBC commercial arm has $2.7 billion global revenue (acc Google AI) and I guess much of that is from the USA, so as well as Davie being fed up, maybe the corporation is now in a position where it can be put under pressure from the States?

Another very pertinent fact that I have not seen mentioned ANYWHERE: In 14 years of Tory rule we had 14 Prisons Ministers - six in a single year, at one point - and a total of 11 Justice Secretaries, including Grayling, Raab, and Truss. In 13 years of Labour it was three: Irvine, Falconer, Straw. 🤔

and like I speak to a LOT of gilts investors/analysts and none of them have said this to me. Entirely possible they are talking to other people, who are not in fact in the gilts market, or who are and have different views. Takes two opinions to make a market i guess. 🤔

Today on London Poppy Day, I’m proud to support the incredible work of the Royal British Legion. Our armed forces make immense sacrifices to keep us safe. I know Londoners will once again show their generosity towards our veterans & their families at collections across the transport network.

This has been doing the rounds on planning LinkedIn over the last few days. Viability assessment by a small developer in the south of England.

"Fury as MP spends £5 of taxpayer cash on sackcloth and ashes despite looming tax rises"

makes me weep to think of the gifts robbed from us because unaffordable housing has made it difficult for people to pursue their passions and hobbies

Beth Rigby: "Keir Starmer has changed his top team more than I've had hot dinners." In two years before Starmer we had 3 PMs, 4 Chancellors, 3 Foreign Secretaries, 5 Home Secretaries, 5 Education Secretaries, 5 Cabinet Secretaries, etc. - total 221 ministerial departures. Maybe Beth is on a diet.

In the last 72 hours or so Donald Trump has: • Demolished a large section of the White House • Posted a video of himself dropping shit on the American people • Demanded a $230 million payout from his own Department of Justice Also the federal government is still shut down, but, y’know…

It’s kind of wild that after seven million people were in the streets protesting, the president posted a hallucinated video of himself wearing a crown and shitting on Americans and then proceeded to start demolishing parts of the White House

Reminder: We spent YEARS reading thousands and thousands of articles on the Tea Party and how it was a true expression of the American people's will, and it never mounted anything nearly as big as Saturday's No Kings rallies. [1/3]

My colleagues & I have taken a huge gamble to set up @thenerve.news We’re trying to build a new independent publication from the ground up. Social media is our only distribution for now. Sharing this article in your networks would make a huge difference. Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏

Every A.I. CEO is like “We invented a robot that can fuck your wife so you have more free time to mow the lawn!”

I love how the Isle of Man - and actual Crown dependency a few miles off the coast - is completely ignored, while these guys fixate on petrostates thousands of miles away.

a friend of mine in antifa told me that antifa's headquarters is SHEIN and if the company fell the whole network would fall

Just not sure this is the answer to low UK productivity www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Kemi Badenoch, who was part of a Government that delivered 14 years of economic stagnation and record increases in immigration, says the Conservatives are "the only party that can deliver a stronger economy and stronger borders"

There may be unforeseen costs to downgrading our understanding of the national language

I will not be voting for Lucy Powell for deputy leader as she appears to want to take women's legal rights back decades if not centuries. This is extremely regressive. Women will not stand for it.

President Macron: “We were very naive to leave our public space to social media networks controlled by US or Chinese companies that don’t share our interests and not interested in survival of our democracies.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggN...

If someone as close to Jeremy Corbyn had taken Russian Bribes as Andrew Gill is to Nigel Farage you would never have heard the end of it.

Wow. I am surprised to find myself recommending an article by a Tory MP in a paper owned by someone who cozies up to Trump. But this assessment by Tom Tugendhat is dynamite.

Times says Reform policy to make all of those with settled status apply instead for a new temporary status In case of EU settled status, that is a massive breach of the spirit and letter of Farage's past pledges pre & after 2016. A rapid u-turn is necessary www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...