Cardiff Uni wants to scrap the 2nd floor of the Arts and Social Studies Library. We're talking 7km of books and vital study space gone to make way for classrooms. Please help us save this crucial campus resource before it's ripped out in June! Add your name here: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

You're all wrong. The best Bronte novel to read is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Right Ho Jeeves is a perfect work of art: exemplary in plotting, comic tone (Bertie’s voice) and witty exploitation of the English language. If you don’t laugh til you cry at this miracle, you are not worthy to compile lists.

Honestly, almost no books without humour are good. Lit fic = when Po met Faced.

Having seen all 100, it's as I feared. My list would include Right Ho, Jeeves, At Swim-Two-Birds, Scoop and Tom Jones. More serious omissions include The Old Wives'Tale, The Way We Live Now, Esther Waters, Rabbit at Rest, Therese Raquin, The Radetsky March ... #booksky

NUJ responds to Farage doxxing a photo journalist who was doing their job. www.nuj.org.uk/resource/nuj...

Having scrolled through the bottom 60 of the Grauniad's best 100 novels, feeling disappointed at how few could be described as comic novels (OK, Vanity Fair and Catch-22, but what else?). If Wodehouse and Flann O'Brien aren't in the top 40, well ... www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Don't know how the Wayback Machine works, but it's important that it continues

Blog alert: my obsession with an old poem about Essex has resulted in this oldgeezerrereadingblog.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/r...

The Robson Rotation! Don't tell me you never learn anything new from Blusky (as a #sortition enthusiast, I really should have known already)

Stop reporting it as if it's a new series of The Traitors, for God's sake. So tired of this really important stuff being treated as some kind of panto put on for the enjoyment of the political hacks/bloggers/podcasters.

Thank god there's no actual news in the world or policy issues, so political journalists can concentrate on breathlessly reporting WhatsApp messages, what that person thinks of that other person, and generally pretend there's an election every week.

At first it was false balance, the BBC Politics department bending backwards to accommodate Brexit. But now its daily partisanship towards populism, its complete lack of commitment to democracy and transparency, make BBC Politics more a public disservice than a public service

In a rational world the government would be asking people to respond to the current fossil fuel crisis by car sharing, turning lights off, and generally saving fuel and energy. And yet Ministers can’t even propose better efficiency standards for tumble dryers without the right wing press going mad.

We must stand in solidarity with Jews being attacked by antisemitic criminals and terrorists: no ifs or buts. We must stand in solidarity with Palestinians being murdered by the Israeli government: no ifs or buts. These are not contradictory positions. They are consistent ones. 🧵1/5

Just as Indians are fond of quoting that thing about cricket being 'an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English', will Wu and Zhao fans start claiming that snooker is a Chinese game accidentally discovered ... (etc etc)? #snooker

Two points from the last six games - surely Wellens must go. But no idea who should succeed him #lofc

Chelsea and Man City in the FA Cup final. No other English clubs have systematically ignored, bent or broken the rules like both have done. In terms of trophies won, no other English clubs have been as successful over the past decade and a half either. The moral of the story - is that there is none.

A proper game of football, this one, berween a team that should have wrapped up the title already and another which should have been demoted to League One a long time ago.

The three stages of life: 1. Too young 2. Too busy 3. Too old

Yes, very much this

A city isn't a proper city unless multiple languages are spoken there (a thought that first came to me in, of all places, Belfast)

I know it was my duty as a Bluesky user to watch SNLUK, but the McCartney doc on BBC2 + clips dictated otherwise. No contest

Still the best thing is to shift away from cars of any kind. Walking, cycling, public transport.

Long but very good blog on Hamnet the movie - especially sound on the historical guesswork re Shakespeare's career. A pity PE hasn't read the MO'F book, which imho is far superior to the film (see my not-so-long blog on the subject)

Aren't bluebells great?

I’m sure many have drawn attention to the advice given by the Oracle of Delphi to King Croesus of Lydia, that if he should send an army against the Persians, he would destroy a mighty empire. Just not in the way he hoped

Have just finished @elidavies.bsky.social brilliant new book on cooking for one. Part memoir, part recipe collection, part manifesto this is a much-needed and refreshingly relatable peek into the single person’s kitchen. Absolutely loved it. Coming soon from Indigo Press

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal. Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big. And here we are.

I remember how the press reacted when Johnson refused to lock down or really do anything before the second wave, just before the vaccine arrived: Half of them roaring him on to crush the scum, the other half muttering darkly about how there would be Hell to pay, for Boris’s non-specific crimes.

NB this thread

Why when something good is invented is it applied to the wrong thing. Buy some tat on eBay get minute by minute delivery updates - waiting for an appt from hospital, wait for the second class post.

I meant to write a blog about Hamnet back in January. Two months later, I've finally written it: oldgeezerrereadingblog.wordpress.com/2026/03/24/r...

Any update on this? Have the 'Royal Mail bosses' actually appeared before MPs?

I'm probably shouting into the void here, but what can I do to get Royal Mail to actually deliver some post to us here in our London suburb? A whole week has gone by, and not only regular magazines but also expected birthday cards have still not arrived #RoyalMailfail

Finally got round to watching Jay Kelly. Flawed maybe, but didn't deserve that awful one-star review from P Bradshaw in the Grauniad #JayKelly

It really gets my goat when people tell me I may not like AI but it’s here to stay & there’s nothing we can do about it. Yes there is! We don’t have to bow down to every corporate demand! We can fight, regulate, use the law. We can & must ensure this tech benefits humanity & doesn’t dismantle it.

Yup.

Pact - RS Thomas Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus...

#HappySaintDavidsDay #DyddGŵylDewiHapus

#primroses #earlyspring

If you read only one article today, don't click on another thing about Trump, or Mandelson, or royal wrong'uns, read this.

Yep. The niche-ification of news has been a disastrous thing. I don't just want to read about the things I'm already interested in – I'll find them out anyway from multiple sources – but about the subjects I'm not, but might find interesting or important anyway. And it's even worse at local level

This excellent article covers everything I hate about genAI too, and, of course, it begins with Douglas Adams.

V perceptive review of wonderful film seen last night on iplayer. For two hours luxuriate in beautifully shot French provincial cooking, forget the starving peasants #thetasteofthings

If children were more politically active they would be quite pissed to be told that their screen time is “the most urgent public health issue” while the largest measles outbreak since the vaccine sweeps their schools because of conspiracies that the adults in their life believed from social media.

This is part of a bigger story that hasn't had much coverage about the FCDO being cut to ribbons. Development funding has been slashed but foreign office staff are also being reduced by 20-30%.

A fascinating politician. Does not do the job, visibly and audibly not interested in the brief…bizarrely aggro about people pointing it out.

A lot of people really don’t realize that there is a vast amount of information out there that is not online and plausibly never will be, or can’t be.

The thread on one page: skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...