SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten. "I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA

Pagans in paperback early next year! With RED SPREDGES!

This is unbelievable. Just a complete lack of belief in objectivity. And the BBC fucking caved to it

Can anyone recommend any academic essays (that are publicly available online or that you could send me) exploring the parallels between Loki and Ulysses expanding on Snorri's slightly throwaway lines on the topic. Or failing that, general explorations of Troy-as-Asgard? #MedievalSky #ClassicsSky

Rage against group think, writes Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times, by reading out a paragraph of what *I* think at the beginning of every BBC editorial meeting.

boosting this again because honestly I am proud of this near future and very political sf story, the illustration by Juan Bernabeu is exceptional, and big shout out to the editor Oliver Dougherty for having such a keen eye.

'“Critics say” is the tell, and does it ever go on telling.'

Ooh, I wrote the script for this (based off Tom Fleetcher's excellent story concept), so that's nice, innit? www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

I KNEW I'd write 'Tom Felton' instead of 'Tom Fletcher' (mainly because I just read an interview where he says people always call him the former) and then I went and did it anyway. Will repost when the burning guilt has passed.

Help to get a nationally-important monograph printed. A pledge of £34 will get you a print copy of the Rhynie book + UK shipping if the full £10k is raised. A bargain price for what will be a very detailed account of this major Pictish site and its environs. (The ebook will be free.)

Book update. I used to use a UK printer called Inky Fingers to print my books & they were always really good. When looking at making my latest book, I went back to them to find they were bought out by a larger print company. OK, I thought they seem to run things similar & still affordable But...

X is designed to radicalise people. The algorithm promotes Elon Musk's agenda to promote racists and people who want violence bought - specifically - to the streets of Britain. Members of Parliament, major institutions and the media should not be there. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Mamdani is the most Leslie Knope-assed American politician in a decade.

Honestly TELL THE STORY. Won’t someone just tell the fucking story of how Brexit created this economic hardship, how a Muslim immigrant just saved the lives of those commuters on that train, won’t someone in politics or even media just connect the fucking dots and TELL THE STORY. IT’S RIGHT THERE

A great day for the golden rule of political analysis: when the right wins it is a resounding ideological victory that humiliates the left and when the left wins it is a precarious fluke that will surely end up humiliating the left. Conservatives are power’s landlords and the left merely tenants

Lovely page from a kids' book from 1952 (title unknown, I'm afraid). 'How to sleep though the Winter (Hibernate)'. Double points for the most annoyed/delighted lynx ever.

I need specificity on the lineage thing though, like is 20% Jutish okay?

The flip side of this is the male author who was asked about his writing routine, and who talked about how much he loved the feeling that he could close his door and then “the day is completely yours” to focus on writing. He had, at the time, two young children… and, of course, a wife

I’d say this was like John Terry taking off his suit and putting on a full kit to accept a winner’s medal, but John Terry didn’t spend his entire career putting in scything tackles on his own goalkeeper and blasting the ball over and over into his own team’s net.

Sobering news for a lot of top Democrats, tonight, as they realize people would prefer they actually fucking do something.

Death in the Spires ebook is on cheap at Amazon UK in November! Get your Edwardian academia murder mystery with extra pining right here! (I do not control sales for this book, I don't know if it will price drop anywhere else, sorry.) www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Spires...

over the weekend I painted two layers on all the gold suns & signed & numbered & packed them up & if you want a cheeky crow thief I'd recommend you get a move on 👀 shop.frankduffy.co.uk/product/crow... #art #crow

"Taxation of jealousy..." @politicsjoe.bsky.social's Laura Beveridge turns up with facts, including by HMRC, on taxing wealth. Tory MP turns up with a load of bad faith: first pretending it's about council tax (it's not), then that the rich will leave (they won't), then he shifts to companies. 😠~AA

Trying to write as my stupid cat rubs her chin on the corner of my laptop screen, purring and slowly pushing it closed.

The screeching handbrake turn from Everyone Left Of Norman Tebbit Is A Fragile Snowflake to Don’t Go Outside, It’s Full Of Blacks And Crime has to be seen to be fully believed

Time to watch some proper grownup telly you losers

This is it. We know exactly how to fix the climate crisis. We have all the technology and we know what actions we need to take. What people are hoping for is a technology that will fix everything without us having to change anything at all, and that's a fantasy. We have to do the work.

My book THE LOST RAINFORESTS OF BRITAIN was published 3 years ago. Since then, it's sold nearly 100,000 copies. More importantly, it's been so wonderful to see the momentum behind the movement to restore Britain's temperate rainforests gather pace - with many more victories yet to come, I hope.

Now playing 👇 Bloody majestic.

Saw the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein, full review to follow:

I'd venture politely to suggest that if the EHRC had done its job and written a code that was about the law rather the pursuit of an anti-trans ideological agenda duty bearers would be better able to do what she urges upon them.

At the V&A going ooh at carved things

Feel free to discuss me it with meeeeee

Hey what if we didn't have any royals at all, we could give that another try, just a thought

Watched that Springsteen movie, which really made me want to record an acoustic album in the early Eighties in New Jersey, so job done.

Here is a good thing writer types could donate to if they felt like it: Write Here, Right Now www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/writeherer...

Me and daughter about to head into the West End and NERD IT UP GOOD (Forbidden Planet, Foyles, Orcs Nest, Gosh Comics, National Portrait Gallery).

I mean, the whole thread, but this is the gist.

Counterpoint: at this stage they're probably stuffed regardless, the moral imperative is to stop thinking about 2029 and just bloody well govern

Stumbled across 'The People Matter' from @warringtonruncorn.com's 'Public Works and Utilities' album and it has somewhat blown my socks off, listened five times in a row and it somehow still gets bigger and more menacing every time I listen to it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJlR...

Only been in this train for three minutes and the woman in the next seat just said into her phone 'Like Eric Morcombe said, I've only got one arm full!' I have pulled the emergency cord.

When your Chotiner interview is going great

Okay so the current economic plan for the United states seems to be fire everyone, cut off people's access to food, sink an entire gdp of funding into the "fire everyone" technology that literally can not work as the creators intended, and to do all of this right before the holidays huh. Alright.

hello! I have a big profile of James Orr out now in the New World! it includes: a theory as to why he's been written about so incessantly over the past few months www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

FYI for Google Drive users.

Sorcery in Caerphilly: @johnsweeneyroar.bsky.social visits the Welsh valleys on the trail of a Russian spy, his wife, a Reform politician taking bribes, party leader Nigel Farage and a vanishing by-election candidate. Here's a sneak peak of John’s film - coming tomorrow only in the Nerve

“Again and again we were told the only way to beat the Republican Party was to become the Republican Party […] and the choice that we made was to stop listening to those experts and to start listening to you” Mamdani is so good at this

Sad that I missed @jonnelledge.bsky.social's event at the Falmouth Book Festival, but I bought a signed copy of A History of the World in 47 Borders and it's the most readable non-fiction thing I've read in years, big recommend.

Pull up a chair, please. I think it's time to have a talk about book jackets. Particularly modern book jackets. Especially in the UK, and particularly in the crime genre. My sense is that publishers haven't known how to jacket crime novels since the 20th century. I have evidence.

To move from the heated dryer discourse, daughter asked if after the current D&D campaign I'm doing for her and friends, did I fancy doing a Marvel Multiverse RPG one and I said YES I DID. Immediate pitch: a universe where the main threat is occult/vampire stuff, which has gone down very well.