What’s Christmas without a bit of brass band music?

Michelle the cat enjoyed this present from my brother

Realising now that my dad's musical taste was basically Radio 2's Christmas Day output and the Hippopotamus song by Flanders and Swan.

Happy Christmas! 🎁🥳 Proud dad moment this morning was setting up T(13)'s record player.and showing him how to use it. So much easier than setting up a PS5...

He isn't "losing" this money. This is called "paying tax like a responsible citizen and not hiding your money offshore" and we need to start recognising and applauding it.

This is lovely. 🥰💜

I do not shy away from criticising the Palestine solidarity movement when I think it is wrong. But such criticism makes no sense and has no credibility whatsoever when it ignores the rampaging elephant in the room.

My position on the debate on "From the River to the Sea" is that it should start with the party that is actually advancing this vision not only through chants but also through genocide and ethnic cleansing - the current Israeli government.

The Liberal Democrats held 82% of seats they defended in Council By-Elections in 2025 #ByElectionsWrapped 1) LDM (82%) 2) GRN (67%) 3) RFM (60%) 4) CON (32%) 5) LAB (28%)

The Liberal Democrats won 106 Council By-Elections in 2025, more than any other party #ByElectionsWrapped 1) LDM 106 2) RFM 104 3) CON 45 4) LAB 36 5) GRN 24

Massive Sinkhole (In a Shropshire Canal) should be a Half Man Half Biscuit song

Oh my god, the canal water has just disappeared into the earth below www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🐙 Caribbean Reef Octopus 🎨 Sculpted from poly clay ✨ #ArtYear #Art #Octo #Octopus #ArtGallery #MarineLife #Invertebrates #InverteFest #Cephalopods #ArtAdventCalendar 🦑🐡

Half Ma’am Half Brisket

Gotta say, I’m the kind of squishy lib who would probably be in favour of banning boxing – paying people to beat the shit out of each other for our entertainment feels barbaric. But, after last night, I’m willing to concede there should maybe be exceptions…

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

The most brutal Dutch insult I’ve come across (taught to me recently on here) is toen je jouw wijsvinger had gebroken kon je zeker weken niet meer lezen. It means “if you broke your index finger you wouldn’t be able to read for weeks.”

Just spent 5 minutes on a financial services website editing two sentences to get it through message input sanitisation (no quotes, apostrophes or brackets allowed)! Presumably to avoid the "Bobby Tables" problem: www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.p...

BBC whitewashing Trump's various deranged remarks again (this time the plaques under the former presidential portraits in the Whitehouse).

The Norwich Cathedral Cat, on the pulpit, drinking from the glass of water left for the Reverend. “He lives here” we were told, as if the church had had no say in the matter and his presence pre-dated the building. “He’s named Budge because he doesn’t budge. He thinks the water is left for him”

I just donated to the Python software foundation. Python has been *the* single most important programming language in my life, personally and professionally, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my Bigbot gave to me... Eight Maidbots Milking... #12BotsofChristmasRemastered

A modern hero:

Connecting the bits of the North NOT on the East Coast rail mainline via an HS2 heading to L'pool, M'cr & preferably on up to Glasgow *should* be a major national priority. But history of post-60s UK shows politicians & voters in the SE of England don't give a f*ck about anything north of Watford.

“People have every right to own property, but we must balance that with the demands of burglars to steal that property and sell it.” Fuck off. And tell your loser tech mates to fuck off while you’re at it. Cheers. Ta. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The full Mossbourne Report is here. It turns out that the SLT were quite fond of shouting at teachers too. Loss of pupils between Year 7 and Year 11 is 22%, national average is 7% chscp.org.uk/wp-content/u...

I think this is bad, and probably another low point for some very basic notions of human decency in the United States.

Squirrels remind me of my dad who died around this time in 2020. He used to hate them using the bird feeder, and would rush out to scare them off when he saw them. I value the memory but I don't think it's how he'd like to be remembered!

🧐 tacc.org.uk/2025/12/12/t...

Sssh, don't tell the other MPs. Ed Davey wins the Christmas card stakes this year.

#RomanBritain In the #Roman period #Chester was known as Castra Deva (prounced Dewa), meaning "the military camp on the River Dee" Chester began life as a fort occupied by the 20th Legion (Valeria Victrix). #RomanSiteSaturday #History #Archaeology

The fact is no presenter has ever had to leave the BBC for expressing conservative views, or even explicitly endorsing a right-wing party. Was never a problem for Jeremy Clarkson. Was never a problem for Andrew Neil. Was never a problem for Alan Sugar

Justin Webb, in a far more consequential position as presenter of a flagship news programme, has repeatedly violated impartiality rules. If he had a similar warning, it clearly had no effect and he’s been allowed to continue.

The BBC is purging its workers (contractors in this case) of opinions. I wonder which right winger will be first to be sacked because they have too open an opinion in public. Its always the 'lefties and centrists' who seem to suffer at mo. bsky.app/profile/prou...

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

"If the safeguarding principles of professional curiosity and challenge are lost to the white noise of such a zealot-like approach, we have truly lost our way." Hackney safeguarding chair Jim Gamble lambasts DfE's school behaviour ambassador Tom Bennett. chscp.org.uk/wp-content/u...

You honestly don't have to show me what Twitter's saying. That's why I'm here and not there.

Is the government boosting the flu crisis to put pressure on the doctors in their dispute? In the past I would have said of a Labour government "Don't be ridiculous", now I'm not sure.

It’s rare these days to see someone in a privileged position take such a principled stand Robin’s kindness, empathy, thoughtfulness, and respect for others are the antithesis of what celebrity culture has become Thank you, Robin, for putting people first

Oh @robinince.bsky.social is the best of us and it’s criminal that he has to resign from presenting on the BBC while Justin Webb and Sharron Davies and all the poisonous people continue without the “difficult” conversations

All kicking off in the school discipline world, Tom Bennett (government behaviour czar) published a late night rant on the Mossbourne report. Jim Gamble, the Hackney Safeguarding chair, is writing to the Minister asking if Bennett's views are those of the DfE. www.tes.com/magazine/new...

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Every Far Side cartoon is amazing, but having a science background, this is my personal favourite The cow slapping the man and his glasses coming off sends me every time

We now learn that Fifa had a very specific "ask" in exchange for its "Peace Award" to Trump, with loads of gold trinkets, and that was dismissal of a criminal corruption case against senior Fifa officials. And Trump granted it. Another corrupt bargain, barely noticed (and ignored by US media).

"He was reputed to be the first person in the country to receive a football banning order when they were introduced, and spent several spells in prison in his younger days for football-related violence."

Back in 2012 I wrote about revisions to GDP figures, the ONS were quite pleased that revisions were only 0.4% ianhopkinson.org.uk/2012/04/revi...

This month's Visual Code update is all about wedging more AI into it, something I very definitely do not want nor do I want AI in Excel, Word, Powerpoint or any other of Microsofts offerings.

The line that this was driven by "campaigners determined to attack any school that doesn’t agree with their view of how schools should be run" also v revealing. "Campaigners" often parents, concerned about impact of policies on children's wellbeing.Most/all accept need for rules.

It is extraordinary that the response of the public face of school behaviour policy in England is to lash out at critics, rather than to acknowledge that there may be problems, at least for some children, and seek to get to the bottom of them.