"There are no padel courts anywhere in Bath because the council has refused to grant planning permission for any - even when it is the council itself proposing the plans." Perfection. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Was going to go in and do my normal job today. But the ancestral voices started up, and so instead I found myself running a fancy goods stall on Oldham market.

OMD's "Tesla Girls" being played on the in-store radio station at the Co-Op. You always get more interesting stuff in the evening. By 10 or so they're playing deep album cuts and their own studio sessions.

Shots fired.

On broken prisons, a besieged BBC and the problem of collective politics in a climate of mistrust www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

File @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social's contribution to WATO under "truth bullets".

I don't believe someone told him to leave the transfer zone. I think it's much more likely that he was severely America-brained and couldn't believe that it was unnecessary to re-check bags while making an international-to-international transfer.

Tory culture spox demanding the BBC "grovel" to Trump is baffling. Who is this supposed to chime with? Just a bizarre line that no one who doesn't use X would ever think.

Like Hollyoaks, but with Trots.

Here we go

Don’t think I saw a single post from Trump himself about the BBC over the whole week btw, let alone an actual comment. It was all from the White House press team, in response to queries from UK media. Not sure the President even knows what Panorama *is*.

This might be the first spy who appears to be literally wearing one of those 'spy disguises' you could pick up in a joke shop in Newquay in 1993.

Mak u fink.

Alongside the British war dead, especially my own family members, this Remembrance Sunday I shall remember all American liberators but especially these African-American liberators.

At the end of September, Leeds prison had room for 641 men but was being forced to hold 1,092. Chronic overcrowding has tragic consequences: https://howardleague.org/news/leeds-prison-report-reveals-the-tragic-consequences-of-chronic-overcrowding/

The polling was clear as daylight on this. The public may have a very shaky grasp of fiscal details. But they are not mugs. They instinctively understood that, eg, furlough would have to be paid for.

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

Okey-doke. Sounds like the obits will be rollicking.

On the one hand, daftness. On the other, another poll which underlines how Reform voters are outliers - and current Tory VIs are at least as close and sometimes closer to LD/Lab/Green VIs

BBC really burying the lede there

Fools and their money are not always soon parted. But it does happen eventually.

On behalf of all football fans everywhere in the world, I would like to apologise for Gianni Infantino. Sorry.

I was just not prepared for Normie MTG.

I've attended Shabbat dinners where the blessing has been recited by ordained Christian ministers.

Reminds me a bit of this:

I hereby nominate Kevin Muscat.

Hold on, I thought Mamdani's secret sauce was freeing politics from the dead hand of focus groups and message testing? Turns that *good* research actually matters.

Funny old world. "The party has already lost big chunks of its right flank to Reform UK. That means the core who remain loyal to the Conservative Party are, proportionally speaking, more inclined towards what some might describe as the liberal side of the Conservative broad church."

Updated edition incoming.

A superb piece. www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-we-c...

Watching Semenyo and Scott turning out for Bournemouth and actually feeling quite bitter that, along with Lloyd Kelly, we're in a position where #BristolCity have served as a farm team for what should be a lesser club.

"Take up the Orange Man's burden..."

Bracing thread.

Last thing I need right now is a resilient ManU tbh.

Well that's our goal difference advantage nuked. #BristolCity.

A confused piece imho. The monarchy (or, the sovereign) and "the royals" are different things.

About as close as you can get to using one particular word without using that one very particular word.

Not a Tesla in sight.

This story - and the report itself - is magnificent, ocean-going claptrap.

The next screen grab on this thread is perfect.

Call me a Doubting Thomas, but...

Cairo one of my favourite cities in the world and this looks like a great reason to revisit.

Defenestrating a prince makes even more confident we're reliving the 17th century.

This is how the Plantagenets would have briefed. Vicious. '“These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” the palace said.'

Everything The Far Left Touches Dies.

An iron-held conviction of mine over many, many decades - being a big fan of Tolkien is always a sign of being a wrong 'un.

Totally. And likewise for Brits talking about class in America. Ask yourselves "But is this actually about race?"

"Nathaniel Redmond, director of the Yale school of public health, said on Tuesday that the “horror, scale and velocity of killing” in El Fasher had left pools of blood visible from satellites" Pity the West simply does not have any tools to pressure UAE, which is the RSF's main funder and supplier