From Penzance to Thurso (and Marazion to Hoy)… it’s finished. After 25 years, I’m delighted to report that the New Adlestrop Railway Atlas now covers the whole of England, Scotland and Wales in one big PDF. Every* passenger line and station. Download it here: www.systemed.net/atlas/

Wow.

What gets me is that these people clearly got all their ideas about Sparta from watching 300, but don't seem to have noticed that the Spartans actually lost that one.

"It is one thing to take a beloved, multilayered book and make a movie that sets it in a new direction. It is quite another to make an adaptation that seems determined to reverse the meaning of the entire story." (This is also my take, btw, on the film version of Stuart Little.)

From today's @washingtonpost.com front page: "Abruptly terminated": harsh, contentious, negative "Sunset": natural, pleasant, the circle of life h/t @alecmac.bsky.social

Really, Radio 4, when Jim Ratcliffe uses offensive, historically uninformed language and gets his figures so grotesquely wrong, why do we have to go to such lengths to acknowledge his "broader point"?

There used to be a pub in St Albans with a box of secondhand paperbacks and a sign that read BUY A BOOK FOR A BLIND DOG, so this doesn’t bother me.

How many nannies does he have?

Macaulay Culkin now rewatching his Blu-ray of Kes to prepare for the film version.

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Sitting here in the UK listening to Radio 3 and eating a bacon sandwich and shaking my head sadly as Megyn Kelly tells the unpalatable truth that Europe has lost its culture to radical Muslims.

Lovely review, but when did British people start saying 'Rube Goldberg' instead of 'Heath Robinson'? This makes me sad.

If Starmer understands that McSweeney was giving him bad advice all round – that the Mandelson appointment was not just a fluke – then this "reset" might be meaningful and good. If he still believes that McSweeney was the business and regrets losing him, what's the difference?

I met a very nice young woman who had come all the way from the US to study at Bangor.

Good to see this sort of pragmatism, going for easily achievable goals.

Gordon Brown by James Macintyre review – a very different kind of politician

I think this is an important point about Starmer: the reason he's been so terrible isn't that he has no principles; it's that he's allowed himself to be persuaded that it's good politics to abandon his principles, and that's left him floundering, sounding directionless and insincere.

But I bet he said it with a faintly sarcastic intonation that made it sound as though he was implying something much cleverer.

I am very intelligent.

Bezos burning the Washington post to the ground is as firm a reason for the continued bbc licence as ever there was. Eventually everything that can be owned by a billionaire will be owned by a billionaire and at that point its future will be determined by the whims of a man making 166k per minute.

Headline on the World at One is that more people in the UK die of cancer than in Poland. But is that self-evidently bad? What do we think they should be dying of instead?

I guess crooks need to be good judges of character.

Feel this meme is allowing me to construct Maslow's Hierarchy of Nerds.

Yes, honesty is definitely Farage's distinguishing characteristic 🙄

The article talks of a security dog being supplied to an unnamed former prime minister. In would live to know which one. Truss?

“Jaywalking is permitted in London. In 1966, the police tried to crack down on it, but gave up after three months.” People walk and cycle on roads by right, people drive under licence. Jaywalking is not a thing in English law and Waymo must not change that. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Yeah, but now the press will have to pay for their tickets. Ker-ching!

61 last birthday, not sure how much longer I can keep it up

Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word. IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it. Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

The limits to Trump's power in America and the world open.substack.com/pub/programm...

I really don't think Sting's 2006 album of Dowland songs is much good. Follow me for the hottest cultural takes.

One if the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard.

Depressed to find that Radio 3 thinks Dukas wrote a piece called The Sorceror's Apprentice.

Instant nightmare sci-fi story about people celebrating surviving a nuclear blast only to find themselves toppling down a cliff and trapped door down in rising seawater. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I think we have to accept that "gets people to hallucinate" is a euphemism for "reveals"

Cos there’s no guarantee he won’t still invade them?

Maurice Glasman now on Radio 4 explaining that Trump is just thinking bigger than the Eurosimps, who fail to understand his genius. fml

Watching the BBC News channel and amazed to see that there are still Trump supporters trying to pretend, after today's rambling, confused display, that he's playing 11-dimensional chess.

please refer to your Davos phrasebook www.ft.com/content/ab4f...

"Seventy springs he read, and wrote, and read."

"Meanwhile, Princess Anne went for a ride in Kirkbride, Queen Camilla went shopping in Wapping, Prince Edward dropped a clanger in Bangor, and the young ladies of Buckingham asked Prince Andrew if he'd mind staying at home. Now it's goodnight from me ... ... and it's goodnight from him."

@mariafarrell.bsky.social This you?

Amazing scenes.

He goes on to describe one of his officers being stopped when she was off-duty solely because she's non-white, harassed by ICE goons who slapped her phone out of her hand as she tried to record, only to be let go when she finally revealed she was a cop.

Wild ride

Who wants to be under an umbrella when the person holding it keeps pissing on your head?

This seems to overlook the obvious fact that Badenoch is herself one of the nutters.

This is presumably happening in Florida in the UK, the police state we hear so much about.

Another day, another set of pundits and superannuated politicians on Radio 4 pretending that Trump is something more than a narcissistic clown. "Crazy like a fox" is the latest one – "Often two steps ahead of anyone else on the chessboard."

WELL IT’S NOT LIKE HE’S MAKING IT EASY