This poem is dedicated to anyone heading back into work and having to endure dull conversation about what they got up to during the Christmas holidays.

Another chilly night ahead. Pyjamas applied ready for snuggling down 💤💤🐾🐾

Smug zone here. Back to gym today with new exercise programme underway. Highlight was actually getting car parked in the last space. #littlewins

Happy New Year and happy 5th birthday to our Gemma. This time last year she was out racing having never had a break since being a pup. Now living her best life. 🐾🐾❤️#greyhounds

Happy New Year!! 🍾🍾🥰 Delighted to announce by unanimous vote we have agreed 2026 is the year we rewatch The Wire in its entirety! Beside myself with joy

2025 Awards: Racist of the year: Farage Incompetents of the year: Reform run councils Traitor: Nathan Gill, Reform Grifter: Farage Most ruinous policy of the year: Brexit (9th year running) New Year’s resolution for 2026: Not having these howling failure monkeys leading in the polls.

#Jaws Perhaps not the most festive of movies, but a masterpiece nonetheless🦈

If looks could kill!! Gem not entirely impressed with her new pyjamas. She’ll come round, I’m sure! Merry Christmas 🎄🤶🐾🐾❤️

I’m not sure it’s possible to have watched #ET too many times. It’s perfect. Laughter, tears, iconic moments. love it. 🥰

Such sad news about Chris Rea. What a voice he had. May he #RIP

Something magical about getting up early, going pre-Xmas shopping in the dark mornings. In the deli buying essential chutneys, nuts, previously unheard of cheeses etc. maybe this year they’ll get eaten 🤞🏼🎄🎄

Erasmus mattered because it gave working class kids opportunities money usually buys. The Daily Mail’s owners and the wealthy can send their children anywhere regardless. Erasmus wasn’t for them, it was for students who’d never otherwise get that chance. That’s social mobility, not elitism.

It’s exactly this kind of dismal, prejudiced bollox from the Daily Mail that’s got us into the ruinous Brexit mess we’re in. What a moronic response to us rejoining Erasmus and all the benefits that brings. If they’re really worried about cost, they should push to cancel Brexit altogether.

Great to have such an enthusiastic support for rejoining Erasmus from the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University on #t4today No stupid questions about whether this was anti-Brexit. Just unequivocal celebration of the chance to broaden our horizons again. A step on the road back to sanity.

Some more assessment of this from over on LinkedIn

I am in tears The Employment Rights Bill has passed the Lords and goes for Royal Assent this week Sick pay for everyone No more zero hours contracts No more trade union act 2016 years So much more Doing what you sent a Labour government here to do

Word of the day, should you be feeling a little huffish, is ‘apanthropy’ (18th century): a love of solitude and the desire to be away from other people.

If handing someone their arse, was a video clip

Good luck to all the children taking part in their school’s nativity play this week. You’re all stars, no matter what your role.

Snooker final. Gripping stuff. 8-9 and still impossible to call #UKChampionship

A word to the wise re snooker commentary: Less is more. Truly. Shut it with your ‘best ever shot/player/cue’ nonsense.

To all cafes, pubs, restaurants that claim to be dog friendly, those that offer a water bowl and a few treats with maybe a fuss and cuddle for your dog-you are getting it right. We feel welcome and valued. Thank you 🙏🏼🙏🏽🙏🐾🐾

Barry Bloomin' Hawkins! You don't see snooker like this every day.

Stephen Hendry is world class in the grumpy, but brutally honest commentary stakes. We are all for it here! #UKChampionshipsnooker C’mon Higgins

Impossible to exaggerate what a brilliant writer Henry is. Pisses me right off tbh.

Enjoying being totally immersed in the #UKChampionshipsnooker

One of my abiding impressions of Brexit is the way it slammed doors of opportunity in the faces of young people several rungs below Boris Johnson’s countless children on the ladders of privilege & advantage.

This story is starting to make me feel I’m going slightly mad - maybe RR overdid the gloom, but the tax rises are paying for a) the welfare U-turns b) the £10bn-plus increase in headroom c) scrapping the two child limit d) bits of other spending eg higher local gov costs 🤷🏻‍♀️

This poem is dedicated to anyone making a start on their advent calendar today.

As the news continues to squeeze the last drops of tedium from the budget, tune it out. The #snooker is on and offers calming balm to soothe us all on a Sunday.

Glorious, cathartic, taking no shit at all, Stewart Lee. Brexit: “like someone stepping round a massive pile of dogshit on the living room carpet. Every day. For nine years.” If only all our media could be as ruthlessly challenging as this. www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...

It's the satirists I feel sorriest for.

Sunlit Uplands latest... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Saw #Nuremberg in a cinema with 5 others. It’s not Wicked 2, of course but anyway Russell Crowe is terrifying and terrific at the same time. Leo Woodall is mesmerising and so moving. Powerful film.

The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.

Net migration fell sharply agaim to 204,000 in the year to June 2025, having been 344k in 2024 and 848k in 2023. But falling immigration has been the biggest secret - and it is time for the media and political debate to catch up with this change www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn...

the price of populism

Quite proud of this. It’s definitely pie weather so this creation is steak, Guiness and pickled walnuts. Yep, as delicious as it looks! Dog is v excited and will be disappointed! #domesticgoddess

The worst possible Government at the worst possible time. All those lives lost, all those lives changed forever. Boris Johnson was not fit to be PM and the Conservatives should never be let anywhere near Government ever again.

The “toxic and chaotic culture” inside Boris Johnson’s Downing St was behind the UK’s “too little, too late” response to Covid-19, with Johnson singled out for particular blame. Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said poor decisions by him, his ministers and officials cost tens of thousands of lives.

Dinner in the village pub with Gemma. Loved seeing her do the rounds with all the old chaps. Special bond between older Yorkshire men and greyhounds. Like being in a Norman Cornish painting. 🐾🐾

Alf Dubs is a 92 year old man who spent his life fighting for refugees, and in particular for refugee children. He fought the Tories tooth and nail during their last three terms, only to see Labour adopt far-right policies on immigration. “But to use children as a weapon ... I’m lost for words.”

Scotland!!! What a game and what a result!! So proud 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Governments really should remember that asylum seekers are humans like the rest of us, who have often been through very traumatic events.

Confiscating jewellery from survivors of a war zone makes you look like a fucking Nazi. And the obscene thing is, that is the intention. It's there to look appropriately harsh. Indecent. Filthy. A moral stain. And no-one of good character would have ever proposed such a thing in the first place.

The only Legitimate Concerns about asylum seekers are concerns for their well being and safety. For a rich country like ours to incessantly whine about these people as if we are their victims is perhaps the single most pathetic spectacle in British politics over the past quarter century.

Read 'em and weep. (www.nber.org/system/files...)