Excl with @pickardje.bsky.social @iankmsmith.ft.com and Sam Fleming - Burnham looks to flex borrowing rules to borrow for a huge council housebuilding programme as.ft.com/r/4018fe59-a...

Did someone say beveragino?

I do urge you to watch Girlbands Forever www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis... #TOTP

That's fine but England have responded with Harry Kane as the Venerable Bede

If he's standing in a by-election then I think he's doing rather more than considering a return to Westminster. Does the Express employ any journalists these days?

Since Kemi Badenoch has reignited the issue of a modern UK civil war, I should share the definitive scholarly work on what this would actually look like, as authored by @tom-phillips.com for BuzzFeed, eleven years ago. (Aka when buzzfeed was A Thing) www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/...

That Oxford education really shone through

While Hilton was mocked in Britain for his offbeat ideas — he was parodied in the BBC show The Thick of It as the gobbledegook-spouting “knowledge is porridge” Stewart Pearson — on the west coast he appears to be among friends. as.ft.com/r/ea2ca332-b...

When people ask the very sensible question wtf do people drink freeze dried coffee the answer is because Anthony Head made a lot of people very very horny

I love that James Marsters says that the reason his British accent was so good as Spike was that Head would insist on teaching him the proper pronunciation of every word he had to say

This is really in my "no one deserves to get scammed, but..." lane, because if you think "Yes, I want to know more about Nigel Farage pulling a gun on the QT set, while being gently caressed by a US cop" I'm not sure you should be trusted with much more than safety scissors.

The things you learn when you don't have pockets

Did someone say beveragino?

Unashamedly delighted with how Harry Kane as the Venerable Bede (left) turned out. Right up there with Ed Miliband as Neil Kinnock (right) even if I do say so myself.

How America emerges as a military power from this Iran war markurban.substack.com/p/the-giant-...

Don't think he's the marrying kind

The mechanics of TV booking means that the most keen, the always available, the pushy, the ambitious etc get on air the most. I don't know how we fix that.

Trump refuses to comply with discovery requirements for his suit against the BBC. This usually leads to dismissal of the complaint, which his lawyers fully understand. www.ft.com/content/d2a0...

I'd like to say I've been a a productive researcher this week. Instead I've created MandelsonMail.com 👀 View 1,500+ pages of the Peter Mandelson files as his email box and WhatsApp chats. Today's @politico.eu London Playbook described it as "a lot of fun, so it should probably be avoided".

They're calling her the CBS Igor Tudor

Why is Vote Andy sponsored by the Barclays Premier League?

tl:dw it adds wah-wah effects to the Speaker www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eooj...

This is great. "If you can’t be bothered to write it, why should anyone be bothered to read it?" is spot on.

Which allows me to share the greatest piece of football-related culture ever made. DOMUM REDIT:

Probably thought in Latin though…

Pontipines and Wottingers surely.

We do all know, don't we, that the IRGC has a big calendar of 2026 on the wall next to one of 1979, and each morning they tick off another day on the countdown to the big red circle in the first week of November and cackle to themselves?

I went viral in India once with a mildly silly tweet about George Freeman MP. Halcyon days.

I miss my Twitter content being shared on Facebook by the “archbishop of banterbury” and all my non-twitter pals messaging me in excitement 😂

That's fine but England have responded with Harry Kane as the Venerable Bede

You could write a decent movie based on the tale of the idiot Viking princeling and his resentful veteran adviser.

They're lucky none of the games are at Stamford Bridge

Gearing up for the second anniversary tomorrow.

Very much hope Kemi's civil war prediction doesn't come to pass as from what I understand, elementary photoshop skills are not going to be of much use in such a conflict.

I have questions.

Every time I'm minded of the Bird and Fortune sketch about the South Sea Bubble. -Was there not a scandal attending investment in tulips in The Netherlands but ninety years ago? -There was but this is not the same case at all. There, you had actual tulips! Here, there is nothing but the shares.

War Movie Theatre's not PG anymore kids

Right Wing Political Parties be like:

Unusual breed spotted at the Royal Cornwall Show

"A 99 with two Flakes please, boss!"

Somehow this keeps getting funnier

Do you like my Mr Blobby Has An Autopsy birthday cake from 1993?

My in-depth research has led me to understand Alanis Morissette and Michael Bublé are performing at Canada's WC opening ceremony. I will take back every derogatory thing I've ever said about FIFA if they're duetting.

EXCLUSIVE Andy Burnham interview in this week's New Statesman On the fight against Reform, what he would do differently to Keir Starmer, and how he wonders whether Brexit would have turned out differently if he had been elected Labour leader in 2015. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

this is cool www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

HULK GOOD EMPLOYEE SERVING PUBLIC NOW, WORK FOR SOUTHEASTERN

Sad to see my alma mater fall victim to the DEI fad www.ft.com/content/66b0...