On a similar topic, a reminder that James Blunt (yes, that one) and General Sir Mike Jackson (using creative politics and a bottle of whisky) completely fouled up direct orders to be stupid in Kosovo. It can be done!

Here is to rest and re-creation in one of the best places on earth after a reality-breaking year after hurricane Helene. I am thankful for the amazing recovery work that has been done throughout our region, and grateful to call this place home.

Think this is absolutely true - so much is written about boys and Andrew Tate - Tate is more popular with grown men than boys!

I've long had an interest in asylum and immigration issues, on which I'm sadly no longer reporting. I also like riding my bike. So, next Saturday, I'm undertaking the #BoxHill100 in aid of the emergency appeal by Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/box-hill-1...

The “Sunak for PM 2022, Sunak back to India 2025” thing is bleak but also, bleakly funny because so many of the people on it haven’t noticed what a big, mad journey they have gone on.

The number of times someone will say to me “what happened to you? Your takes used to be good” and then their feed features them retweeting an account that thinks I shouldn’t have been born, and it’s like, I don’t know why you think I would join you on this journey!

Celebrating 200 years of the railways.

It's all happening for us train enthusiasts (or is it just me?) as today marks 200 years since the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in 1825 - the birth of the modern railway. So here are some of the many railway linocuts I have done over the years - too many, I hear you say? Surely not… 😂

this has been a thing among the more stupid members of the British New Right - the idea that the Fabians are secret totalitarian Marxists

Got tricked into thinking I was attending a meeting of secret totalitarian marxists but they just kept talking about investing in skills in a changing economy from a centre left perspective.

idle thought: i wonder if the rush of ads for AI that promises to write student essays (euch) is at least partly the result of exam culture? if you make the target "get an A" instead of "discover interesting ideas" then you can't entirely blame people for wanting to take the easy route

A lot of free speech absolutist are being awfully quiet about this sort of thing.

My money’s on the lettuce (With thanks to @enniusredloeb.bsky.social for the inspiration).

This is the laziest bullshit imaginable. It is quite simply less accurate about the UK than any other European or Anglosphere western democracy. A cursory look at education, income and national identity data makes this simplistic nonsense untenable

Had to see Liz Truss

I wonder if this guy is related to "Boris Johnson" who introduced "voter id" as Prime Minister in 2023 ... off the back of some crazy US conspiracy theories ... and in the process, made digital ID pretty much inevitable.

This only happens to you once

I wrote about one of the most terrifying days of my life. www.pbump.net/o/taking-tyl...

We’ve only crossed the “billion” threshold 1X before, in Oct. 23'. Last night, we rejoined the Billion Bird Night Club in spectacular fashion. Migration soared past 1.2 billion, marking the largest single night of bird migration ever recorded by BirdCast. Learn more: birdcast.info/news/a-new-r...

Wait, isn't the 'break up the MMR into multiple more expensive shots' the exact thing that quack-fraud Andrew Wakefield was trying to do before he was brutally murdered in a back alley by @hbomberguy.bsky.social ? I mean, the other stuff is insane, too, just...man, playing the hits.

I’m really enjoying Felicity Cloake’s book about US food, but distressed to hear she didn’t enjoy her encounter with proper hash browns - given she describes them as “starchy, greasy, half-raw,” they definitely weren’t good examples…

Really sorry to hear of the death of Ming Campbell, a genuinely likeable man with the kind of mad CV - Olympic athlete to party leader - you don't see these days, plus a devoted husband to a quietly formidable wife www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

What next, confirmation that bears defecate in the woods?

Ever since I learned about this study enrolling I have been eagerly awaiting the results. Researchers in Uganda took a centuries-old cultural practice mothers carrying babies on their backs in cloth wraps and turned it into a public health tool. You got to love it! www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

It speaks volumes about how unmoored Labour has become from the people who actually voted for it in 2024 (i.e. people in work) that the line on digital ID cards is just an obvious lie to anyone who has changed jobs in the past decade!

Incidentally, there’s a pretty good rundown of the most likely reason Christmas is when it is here (prefaced with extensive de-bunking of various popular beliefs about pagan antecedent feasts here). historyforatheists.com/2024/12/paga...

I'm impressed by the gov.uk petition server's resilience, frankly. It's racked up over 760,000 signatures on the "no to a digital ID card" petition in little over an hour, and each of those requires an email confirmation. That mail server's throughput is *scary*! (20M emails/day.)

The answer to “Why is Christmas December 25th?“ is “because the Annunciation is March 25th”*, but it’s amazing how many regular churchgoers haven’t worked out the connection. * yes, almost certainly that way round.

RIP Ming. (Weirdly he remains the only MP I have ever cast a vote for, despite having voted in every General Election since I was old enough to vote).

Right now we have the absurdity of compulsory ID for voting without a hassle free ID system. Madness and unfair to those least likely to have passports/driving licences etc- again, poorer people, younger people etc.

Starmer shouldn’t go to a key climate summit in case he offends a party of racists and chancers largely funded by fossil fuel interests? That’s the advice? Seriously? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

1. What makes you think immigration isn't tightly controlled? It has been since at least 1905

I realise the audience for this would just be "me, and also maybe other foreigners" but I would love to read something on why Brits, who are happy to live in a country where their every movement outside is filmed by CCTV, hate the idea of having ID cards, something plenty of countries happily have

75% of care workers *today* were born in the UK, is such a fun stat imho

Also economically. The argument is explicitly 'New Labour's economic approach was wrong'. Okay, Keir...what is yours? Do you have one?!

ID cards do *fuck all* about the "shadow economy" You would work though? An immigration system that isn't punitive.

Oh Bluesky….

With the government moving to introduce mandatory digital ID, I will repeat myself: digital ID is the worst of both worlds, as it keeps the dimension of government control while leaving people without a physical document to autonomously prove their rights www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

“I’m trying to find a monastery where all the monks are over six foot five” “That’s a tall order”

Great article by @deenamousa.com on why AI hasn't replaced radiologists. If anything, demand for them has actually risen. www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-ai-isn...

The people they are talking about deporting include, to pluck one example from the air, my 59-year-old sister who has lived here since the age of six and is on a low income due to being a nursery school teacher. These plans are utterly scandalous and anyone who supports them is a disgrace.

From the Prayer Book Society of Canada: "Today in the BCP calendar, we commemorate the life and witness of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop and Scholar (1555-1626). We especially remember in prayer those ministries that bear his name". “Portrait of Lancelot Andrewes,” Joseph Buckshorn ⚓

The first College Mass of term!

Congratulations to the Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine for meeting Europe's decarbonization goals several decades early

I have heard of defensive cycling but there’s only so much it can achieve when drivers are careless and the roads are badly designed for vulnerable users. “Defensive walking” is not and shouldn’t be a thing.

I practice as much “defensive walking” as I can but until we get rid of all these stroads that I have to cross, there’s only so much I can do.

I've long supported some kind of ID card, and the initial Labour Together proposal was IMO a v good way of doing the 'how do you do this in a way that avoids it becoming a Home Office thing', but wow the government is not managing the politics of it well.

Some people here love to dismiss ‘sportsball’ but S. African teams being banned from international competition was an important factor in ending Apartheid because it made their crimes real for non-political folk.

I’m quite disturbed by Word on Fire. Quite apart from anything else, bearing false witness is a sin.