It’s November and the narcissi are flowering. Is this good?

did a Halloween bit with @arabellamunro.bsky.social

Yes, because Badenoch’s was a criminal offence carrying a custodial sentence, whereas Reeves’ was not.

I’m really starting to suspect that most of the tech bros haven’t actually read Tolkien, as they certainly don’t understand it. The gentle hobbits save the “hard men” of Gondor, largely through compassion and selflessness. Not the other way around. The Christian parable is barely hidden!

This is the second time in about a month there’s been an alleged racially aggrevated rape in this area The fact this isn’t bigger news truly boggles my brain, what on earth is going on www.lbc.co.uk/article/woma...

Kemi Badenoch’s ability to plant political time bombs that blow up in the face of the party she leads is truly unparalleled. What’s particularly impressive here is she could have found this out herself before raising the profile of this issue at PMQs. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The evidence for this argument has grown and grown, and become increasingly convincing. The policy remains difficult, unavoidably. But the rhetoric is clearly wrong. Critically, the centre left must directly challenge the slow normalisation of far right ideas for both moral and tactical reasons.

A little bit of navel-gazing on the last twelve months of trying to run a start-up local news organisation with no investment or plan, entirely funded by readers. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-new...

If you'd like to watch "American Week", not just listen to it...you can find this week's visualised version here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb6H...

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

Surely it’s a good thing that a government is passing laws to protect the majority of people rather than doing whatever is in the interest of its most wealthy and influential donors?

Good that the Guardian is calling Kirk “far right” and showings its readers his views - not “common sense”, not “conservative”, but far right conspiracy. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

When someone is shot and killed on stage at a political event, I don’t think there is any problem calling it a political killing, even before a suspect is caught. What *is* premature is assuming the killer had a particular ideology or motivation. Obviously this hasn’t stopped many people.

Insane hagiography of Charlie Kirk on US networks. Offensive not only to anyone in touch with objective fact, but even to Kirk's memory. If he was proudly one thing, he was a controversialist, an agitator, a fanatic. He would surely loathe this conversion to middle-of-the-road vanilla diet froyo.

Giles Coren on why he didn't go to Sunday's antisemitism march www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Really interesting that support for *all* left-of-centre parties dropped as salience of immigration rose after "island of strangers" speech - our exclusive:

Nigel Farage is claiming to Congress that the UK gov deliberately withheld details of the Southport attacker from the public. This is dangerous and it’s false. The attacker was under 18, and so a court had to give express permission to release his name in exceptional circumstances, which it did.

My gentle suggestion is that, if you have any evidence "the government" is actually instructing the Met police whom to arrest on a case-by-case basis, you really should be writing about that. And if you have no evidence, but *just think* that's what happens, you shouldn't be writing about anything.

That PX report on the Good Friday Agreement is breathtakingly disingenous. Just waves away all the immense political and practical problems with a bunch of semantic obfuscation.

Polling on Lucy Connolly tweet following her release finds that 35% think her sentence too harsh, but the majority of Brits: 52% say it was about right or too lenient. Most 2024 Reform voters say too harsh, Tory voters split harsh or lenient/about right. Most Labour/LD/Green the latter

Horrific story that shows the need for local journalists being able to check out tips and ask questions about stuff that might otherwise just have floated around local WhatsApp groups. www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/...

And will we get a Taylor Swift Wedding bank holiday?

Immigration has dropped dramatically in the last two years – small boat crossings are a small part of the overall picture, but have come to dominate the story (in part because the government has let it)

The real reason for the introduction of 4% service charges on pints bought at the bar in London pubs. www.londoncentric.media/p/why-london...

👇Column I’m really angry that @duncanrobinson.bsky.social wrote and not me is “UK needs to wake up to the fact it is now a hot country”. Part of that is we should actively be targeting having many more foreign tourists at British beaches.

Whispers: a lot of the UK’s problems would probably get a bit easier if we put up income tax.

This is a key table to understanding public opinion on migration. *When confronted with the real trade offs* people go for protecting the NHS and the economy over reducing migration. The problem as per the rest of the thread is many don't believe those trade offs exist.

‘The 22 inch colossus’

‘Tommy Robinson’ frequently rails against the policies of European leaders, which allow “foreign criminals” into their countries. Robinson, who has multiple criminal convictions for violent crimes and crimes of dishonesty, recently landed in Spain. www.thenewworld.co.uk/rats-in-a-sa...

UK’s rarest breeding birds raise chicks for first time in six years www.channel4.com/news/uks-rar...

In the 12 months since then, the number of “increasingly mainstream” abusive online comments against UK migrants has skyrocketed Read more: https://trib.al/ErrBvAX

We should have a larger convo about how companies like American Eagle use beautiful people to add glamor to unglamorous products. In 2023, a young Bangladeshi woman committed suicide at a factory that made American Eagle clothes bc of abuse. This is the cost of cheap, trendy clothes.

Yes. www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the...

unmpteenth AI-rendering of a baby shark boarding a plane emits final bit of carbon emission that plunges world into irreversible global catastrophe

Your regular reminder that over a lifetime, people born in 1956 will each receive on average £291,000 more from the welfare state than they paid in, compared to £132,000 for people born in 1996 (h/t Resolution Foundation) Just something to consider next time you hear “I’ve paid in all my life…”

A reminder that an annual salary on minimum wage is now £25,396.80

There’s a VERY good reason asylum seekers get circus tickets and Amazon parcels. But the Mail on Sunday was never going to tell you that. Here’s the crucial detail they left out: 🧵

My new Constitution Society report on compulsory voting has now been published. I argue that low turnout has left the UK with an unrepresentative electorate. This is creating warped incentives for politicians, and contributing to low growth, high inequality, and rising democratic discontent.

Britain is hot. Accept it. Buy the aircon. Build the hotels. Take August off. Plant some trees. Put up the awning. www.economist.com/britain/2025...

"Why don't we attract better quality people as MPs?" I ask, between speculating on whether the person on the verge of tears on national tv is getting sacked or not.

The problem for the government now is that it has to justify to its own MPs why it could u-turn for a household on £30,000 a year losing £200-£300, but not for a disabled person losing £10,000 a year, at once, because of the government’s choices.

This is the ninth Reform councillor - all elected last month - to either have resigned or been suspended.

For every 1°C rise in global temperature, the water vapour held in the atmosphere increases by 7 per cent. So a warmer world will face both droughts and floods, writes @timsmedley.bsky.social. www.prospectmagazine...

Brighter minds than mine suggest that abundance is responsible for no longer treating art with respect. I'd suggest the same is true of meat. This report shows much of our chicken - Britain's favourite - has an awful death. (Pic hidden as it's upsetting) www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Another good piece from @morganj0nes.bsky.social - on how Labour talks about the Greens. It is striking to me that voters we lose to the right are treated as people with serious concerns - about immigration, welfare, the economy - whereas voters we lose to the left - labourlist.org/2025/06/gree...

Morgan Jones (@morganj0nes.bsky.social): Social democracy is true

Should you fancy it, you can also now watch "American Week". Today's episode in glorious technicolour: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qDE...

One thing you learn doing book festivals around the country is there are very angry middle-class professionals everywhere...

Yes to Transfer: 82% of Jewish Israelis Back Expelling Gazans www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

🏛️🔥 6. Cassandra - Everything Must Be Said Again 🔥🏛️ NEW EPISODE: Cassandra. Unheeded wisdom or unnecessary pessimism? Woman vs Man? East vs West? Science vs Denial? Why we listen to some people. Why we don't listen to others. 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/0tCz... 🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...