Wishing everyone a vaguely sane New Year.

Yes, but it’s fine because his failures weren’t woke.

Well, I was a police detective in wartime Kent. Now I’m an academic, though I’ve been too busy returning to my working-class roots to pay any attention to what I teach.

Companion video. youtu.be/BQVLon0owJY?...

I like that every iteration of the Tory party since I’ve been aware has had its own version of Sir John Hayes, a point of surety in an uncertain world

I like the fact that he’s the centre of attention – the one everybody else clusters around.

It crops up every Xmas and I always post it, because I love it. Ian Curtis at his office Xmas party.

I love my two blackout drunk Minnesota sons

A mad detail tucked away in this story: provision to rename the opera theatre the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House is already tucked into a Congressional spending bill.

"As Mr Chamberlain flies back from Czechoslovakia, we ask which is the bigger threat to Britain – Jew-Bolshevists or Herr Hitler?"

this field biologist does a great job highlighting the insidiousness of AI editing these one-click AI edit buttons are incredibly appealing to many photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, and are framed as innocuous this is worth sharing and educating people about

This story from yesterday didn't perhaps get the attention it should have. It's utterly shocking. It follows dogged reporting by the Observer (in its pre-sale era), which was repeatedly rejected by the academy federation concerned. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

Terry Eagleton on Stoppard’s insider-outsider status. I’m a bit shocked that nobody picked up “Thomas Sheridan”: he must mean Richard.

And Farage’s defenders will dismiss that as an injustice that was the result of woke.

I could do at least a couple of plausible versions of this list that would make most people say "Hang on, they're all English!"

A friend with a new baby asked guests to mask in order to hold her baby. A relative refused to mask & broke down in tears about her "restrictions" As a reminder, babies <6 months have the 2nd highest hospitalization rate from Covid after adults 75+ & are too young to be vaxxed

Good to see the love for Wallace here.

@tommckinney.bsky.social ‘Dance in the Sunlight’ was certainly recorded before 2014 – I grew up with a vinyl recording my parents had, along with Hamilton Harry’s John Field Suite and bits of Butterworth.

A reminder of how the BBC covered Boris Johnson's long record of lying, as being a "complicated relationship with the truth". www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-poli...

What on earth makes Chris Mason think it's his job to "call it"? (I'm reminded of Robert Peston's BBC editorial piece, three days before the 2015 election, which concluded that Ed Miliband hadn't apologized sufficiently for Labour's handling of the economy. Impartial, schmimpartial.)

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

But this time the Labour government seems to be in agreement with its opponents.

This is the most alarming story I’ve read today. Giving up the fight before it’s started

Just started watching Priscilla. Quite taken aback by the way it opens with an almost subliminal musical cue from the New World Symphony (cut short by the Ramones). Feel someone should have warned me.

I discussed Tom Stoppard’s TV play ‘Professional Foul’ in this column for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social ‬⁩ (no paywall) www.thenewworld.co.uk/everyday-phi...

One of my very favourite Stoppards. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5MY...

Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88

Several people in the replies incredulous about that price in 1970; but certainly paying four figures for a house was not uncommon then, and North Kensington is at least partly a euphemism for some pretty shitty neighbourhoods. I don't think it's impossible.

if you include pensions

I don't see how the BBC can ignore the response to the Budget on Budget Day by the leader of a political party riding high in the polls. Perhaps they've moved on from the racism story, but one news alert that they were bound to put out isn't the thing that proves it.

To be fair to the BBC, World at One on Radio 4 went big on the racism yesterday; the budget is clearly today's big story. (In any case, one news alert is not evidence that the BBC is treating this as a big story. There are things it's worth bashing the BBC for: hard to see that this is one of them.)

A great loss. Worth looking out for Bill Brand, the 1976 ITV series written by Trevor Griffiths, where he starred as a Labour MP; and he write the terrific play In Lambeth, in which Thomas Paine ends up in William Blake’s garden. youtu.be/t2mCXOdO2AI?...

@mjrobbins.com Possibly you feel you've done enough on Cambridge, but I'd love to hear an episode on guided busways – beloved by local government in Cambridge but, afaik, nowhere else. My suspicion is that if we want really reliable public transport, we need light rail + congestion charging.

People are sneering, but I don't much like cars and my mother died of motor neurone disease, so…

The details of Ryanair's shittiness are astonishing.

Make sure Ryanair get more than £100 worth of bad publicity over this. www.theguardian.com/money/2025/n...

big bugs bunny getting elmer fudd to marry him vibes in the white house currently i see

There’s also evidence of him having been a strong advocate of human rights, a talented administrator and on the left(ish) of the Labour Party. Is it possible he was replaced by a clone?

I'm fucking cryinj

Can I just urge people disillusioned with Labour: don’t just decide not to vote Labour. If you have a Labour MP, it takes two minutes to find their email address and write to them, telling them they’ve lost your vote and explaining why.

Network DVD's liquidated stock has finally surfaced here, giving you a chance to buy one of the greatest sitcoms of all time before all the copies are gone: futurenetwork.wales/product/nigh...

Mahmoud says that small boats are tearing the country apart. So she’s decided to stop this conflict by coming down decisively on the opposite side to most Labour voters.

Christ, who thought it would be a good idea to ask John Humphrys’ ideas about anything?

SATAN: So what makes you want to work here? Isn’t it a bit of a sideways move for you? ME: Well, sideways and down, haha SATAN: Haha ME: But I’ve been working in the sector for a while, and I feel this is where the action is SATAN: Your most recent role was… ME: Cinema website designer SATAN: Sweet

It's another one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I value my heritage; you trade on past glories; he hears ancestral voices prophesying war.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p... This is a pretty good overview of the fuck-ups in the Labour Party and the BBC.

Trump Still Polling Well With Working-Class American Pedophiles https://theonion.com/trump-still-polling-well-with-working-class-american-pedophiles/

The Today Programme? *The Today Programme* is woke? Justin Webb and Mick Robinson are men of the left?!

Deeply unimpressed by Arthur Laffer on Radio 4 – just trotting out the same old defence of low taxes and "trickle down".