Her policy is genius... if you're a Tory. Scrap compound interest, but keep graduates paying off the triple fees and maintenance loans the Tories also imposed. Poorer graduates keep paying for 30 years, rich ones pay off debts, get richer, and pay in less. A de facto tax cut for rich people.

the worker / the work

in Glasgow, going for that tired live-out-of-bag look again 🥲

Damn right tbh. We paid the same as anyone else ever did just to sit at home, struggling to pay heightened bills that we got no help with whilst work was also unavailable, to study with reduced resources, and for what? To sit on Zoom with a bunch of unresponsive strangers. bbc.com/news/article...

yob / boy ✌️

So the UK has wasted £110m on a trade border scheme, and now spends £5bn a year sustaining all post-Brexit border controls, all because 4% more voters backed a thing a decade ago and this was broadly interpreted to mean the UK can't use the existing systems. 🤡 www.theguardian.com/business/202...

I can see my house from here

Not a bad view to start the day with 🇫🇷

I don't like kids. But I was on a flight last night that was delayed by 3 hours, we had to switch planes and traipse in the cold and wet prior takeoff, there was no food on board, and the turbulence was bad. Not one of the many kids on board complained about any of it, unlike some of the adults.

Manchester - London - Paris On cameras for a MIKA mini-tour

And Instagram has a bug again, rendering it completely unusable... must be Thursday 😑 The American social media monopoly is bad as it is, but that bubble needs to burst above all else because it's totally mediocre.

Lost access to my primary email address last September. On Bluesky you can't change your primary email address *or* your password without accessing the old primary email. This is a staggering security oversight, and I think the thing above all else that's going to make me ditch here before long.

All I can think is how Robin Williams was so hesitant to voice Aladdin's Genie because he saw it being a step towards stunt-casting known actors rather than hiring more exciting but lesser known voice actors. Chris Pratt as Mario is that prediction realised to its fullest.

Nearly 59% of my £89,000 pre-interest (£106k post, and rising) debt stems from maintenance, which used to be a grant. There is no discussion about making students or graduates better off (which is needed to make them fiscally active) without a drastic reassessment of how maintenance is provisioned.

'If young people bothered to vote' is just such a pathetic and lazy excuse from anyone who uses it. Doesn't matter how big or small that voting demographic is, you should base your response and your policies solely on those who did vote, rather than empowering those who didn't bother.

I try to avoid wishing death on anyone, but you know it's a real rough week when there's a tidal wave of public figures attached to awful news, and you think it's an injustice that Catherine O'Hara is the one that passed away rather than a single one of any of the others.

"Never let the bastards get you down" 💜

There's only a relatively small number of public figures for whom I genuinely feel saddened at their passing, and Catherine O'Hara is one of them. What an unexpected and premature loss.

🖤⚡🤍

Working in this gig economy and in an industry that basically hibernates for winter, when winter is also when the heating is needed, the tax bill arrives, the accountant needs paying, the rent goes up, and you've just got through Christmas... is collectively not it.

It's staggering how an article about the Millennial inheritance of wealth being the greatest in history, doesn't once mention that the transfer will be to the smallest proportion of people in history too, and that we're about to see insane rich/poor divides. www.independent.co.uk/us/money/gen...

Trump just posted this. Coup the twat already.

🇺🇸 "You will meet our demands and give us Greenland, or we will impose taxes on American citizens for things that they buy" 🤪 www.ft.com/content/6055...

There's a lot of hype around this, some of it I get and some of it I just don't. It's got none of the emotional depth or complexity of the one before it, and is shot and directed in a far more conventional way. It's not bad, it just follows something far better. boxd.it/cEX055

I'd heard that quite like the second game, the second season of The Last of Us had divided people a lot more. Much like the second game, I loved the second season tbh. A brilliant (but not perfect) adaptation of (half) a game that I can't imagine was at all easy to work with.

The funny (not) bit is how the government has gotten both of these things wrong in the absolute worst way. The OSA was an ill-conceived Boris Johnson project that risks more harm than safety to kids. Starmer's complacency now harms kids too. Get tech-illiterate boomers out of government.

Top-end Hollywood really is just stuck in a regurgitative cycle, where its rich executives pray and hope that we settle on watching things that exist to remind us of existing things we already enjoy, rather than investing in anything new for us to enjoy. boxd.it/cyga3j

2016 vs 2026

There's a lot of people calling for the government to go about prosecuting anyone who went about generating illicit images on X. If only that same government hadn't ignored smart people when it went for a crazy censorship overreach on all legitimate adult content, leading to *everyone* using VPNs

Starmer's government went and delivered a bunch of ridiculous online censorship that made zero sense in 2025, forgive me if I fail to think he'll do the right thing and actually ban Musk's child porn and misogyny machine, even with the freak now monetising it. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Films I watched for the first time in 2025;

Shows I watched in 2025 Pluribus - 10/10 Adolescence - 9/10 Black Mirror: Series 7 - 8/10 Those About to Die - 6/10 The War Between the Land and the Sea - 6/10 Doctor Who: Series 15 - 5/10 Stranger Things 5 - 2/10 Feels like a correlation between quality and originality, idk

The showrunners: “the middle parts can be bad as long as you stick the ending” ... and then never did a show fail so hard at sticking the ending. A trash final episode in a trashier final season. One of the all-time biggest drop-offs in quality I think I've ever watched.

With only one episode left, it's fair to say Stranger Things 5 is sludge. Dull, overdone, over-expositioned, overpopulated sentimental guff. I really liked Season 4. The chasm in writing quality as they rush for an ending despite having episodes as long as these, is astonishing.

Why does advent calendar chocolate always hit different?

A solid first two episodes gave way to two mediocre episodes after. 3 and 4 pull the story in utterly different and twisty directions, but at the complete expense of pace, focus, characterisation, themes, and coherence. Like a jumble of many good ingredients but no refinement at all. A shame.

It's done it. This is my favourite show of the year, and could yet be more than that. Rhea Seehorn and Vince Gilligan deserve all the recognition and awards.

🎸 on cameras for amy macdonald in glasgow this week 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This is a lot of words just to say they're really going to take rule-breaking and politicising the contest seriously - next time. Get in the bin. 70th anniversary of a peace-promoting contest looking the other way as one of its entrants warmongers.

I know this is such a boring, cynical, almost obvious thing to say, but it really doesn't feel at all Christmassy this year - like, more than even the usual unChristmassy vibes. Literally everyone seems to just be ignoring it, or waiting to get it over with.

Not surprising when Samsung chuck in a stylus but remove the bulk of its functionality, when they downgrade 10x telephoto lenses to just 5x, design their camera around AI software rather than good hardware (Apple are also guilty), and ditch the curved screen. www.phonearena.com/news/s25-ult...

Really enjoyed the first two episodes of The War Between the Land and the Sea. Not perfect, but really well made, you can see where the Disney money went at last, and the writing is mostly solid as well - honestly, where the hell has this Russell T Davies been (Pete McTighe is always good)?

Reform in a nutshell. £49,000 on a bunch of flags, and another £16,000 just to put them up. Local services will keep eroding, but hey, we've got some flags on poles. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The slow burn tale of another unhinged billionaire who loves risking huge sums of money, because he doesn't see what that does to his employees in the real world, or the dangers it creates around unregulated tech. Meta is a slop company that needs to burn faster. edition.cnn.com/2025/12/04/b...

Not quite the message you'd want for your 70th anniversary, but fuck Eurovision. Fully behind the countries that have done the right thing here... as usual, far too much to expect the UK to be even in the right ball park as good principles. www.bbc.com/news/live/ce...

Just checked out Pluribus and it's the best new show I've started in some time. Hints of X Files and Black Mirror about it, with the trademark Vince Gilligan style. Rhea Seehorn is superb. Well worth checking out.

'Your Party' trying to do what the Green Party is doing, but in the most backwards way imaginable

Let's start an over 30 selfie thread 33

Up to date with Stranger Things 5, got to say it's the weakest season by far so far. One solid episode versus three that dragged. There's a few great bits in there, but for every great bit and decent character moment are three others slowing and dulling the whole thing down.

An apologist could barely describe the budget as modest. Most see it for what it is - a pretty ineffectual one to get a nod of appeasement from middle class centrists who don't know a thing about the state of the UK beyond their mortgage or small business. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...