Simon Wolstencroft is the guest on the latest, bumper Fall content episode of the Oh! Brother podcast. Si and Steve recall the ups and downs of the group in 1994, before being joined in the second half by Craig Scanlon for a Fall Q&A. A top show. Recorded live at the Prestwich Arts Festival.

Are you a restaurateur or hotelier looking for a bit of cheap kit? The entire contents of the Birch Selsdon Hotel, Croydon is being sold off. And there's some nice stuff currently going for buttons. www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auctio...

I want to get the EU and/or the Spanish regulator to intervene to force Vueling to provide the compensation form they're statutorily required to provide. Any ideas?

And here's Brittin telling journalists to use AI or "risk missing out". The BBC board has made a terrible error. Like the UK press, it's trapped in a 90s bubble where Google's a whizzy start-up & tech will save us...the most dangerous myth of our time 7/

NEW: Will Google's AI hype man kill the BBC? I've written about Matt Brittin because the coverage of his time at Google is shockingly naive. The BBC's next DG is a corporate yes man at a rapacious AI monopoly that preys on journalism in order to destroy it. 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/matt-britt...

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"locking educators into a compulsory regime of technologized education is precisely what profiteers and opportunists are attempting to do." RESIST! And thank you, @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social

I have been studying the far right for decades but have never come across the insanity of these Christian nationalists In the U.S. 🤯

"Palantir, the US AI surveillance and security firm with hundreds of millions of pounds in UK government contracts, poses 'a national security threat to the UK', according to two anonymous high-level sources working with the Ministry of Defence."

👇👇👇👇

"Something ineffable happens when you write down a thought: You think something you did not know you could or would think and it leads you to another though. The process of writing itself leads to previously unthought thoughts [and] crystallizes half-formulated or unformulated thoughts" - Lynn Hunt

“AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.” Chilling but brilliant article, @doctorow.pluralistic.net doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

Good recommendation. Also lays out Dubai’s recruitment strategy, offering producers, studios etc alongside low/no tax to influencers with a track record

This also applies to any kind of embodied “process knowledge” which by definition AI doesn’t have, since it lacks a body @doctorow.pluralistic.net pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/p...

Just finished the @stephenhanley6.bsky.social audiobook, The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall, read by Stewart Lee. Brilliantly written (and narrated). It has been essential listening in my studio. A must for Fall fans.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about in just implicitly trusting AI and acting like it doesn't hallucinate. If you had to hire an electrician in the first place, what makes you think you're qualified to judge Claude's output to determine if the electrician is wrong?

Another completely predictable thing has just happened.

friends! I have a question, for secret reasons: if I were looking for a venue in zone 1/central zone 2 London, ideally a pub, with a room that could hold, say, between 80 and 100 people, probably sitting, and had maybe some form of stage, where might I start my search? thanking you kindly!

I want to be an artist, but I don't want to learn how. I want to be a filmmaker, but I don't want to learn how. I want to be a musician, but I don't want to learn how. I want to be a writer, but I don't want to learn how. AI, for those who can't, don't, and won't.

Take a bow, @privateeyenews.bsky.social.

Must be so sad to be Ukrainian and witness the USA burn through more missile interceptors in the first five days of the illegal war it started against Iran than it contributed to Ukraine's defence in the past 4 years.

I prefer my Krusti Gnome well fired. 😁

Language can matter. In this short look at the #Budapest_Memorandum how differences in word choice among the English, Russian and Ukrainian titles can change the impact and focus of the document. www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-la...

In the House of Lords today, a government minister refused to rule this out. To be clear, this would amount to legalising theft. It would fly in the face of public opinion on what is fair, and would mean a surrender of British creatives' work by this Labour government. 3/4

Amen

🚨🚨 I hope this finally put an end to the incredibly non-sensical and factually distorted narrative of "Russia is winning the war". On the contrary, it is losing and will lose faster if #west and the traitorous #trump regime gives military and financial backing. /1

Labour have decided to set fire to their few remaining votes. If Reform allow universities to stay open, PhDs will be written about the gross incompetence of Starmer and his inner circle.

The Guardian has identified the Columbia student abducted by DHS as Ellie Aghayeva. She posted the IG story below: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Thursday's MIRROR: Don't let hate win #TomorrowsPapersToday

🇬🇧🇪🇺 Britain and the EU must go “even further” than the Brexit reset to build closer relations, the president of the European Parliament has said. 👏 Roberta Metsola called for British “common sense” as she urged deeper economic, energy and defence ties. Couldn't have put it better ourselves!

There’s a lot of things that need to be said today. But there’s one main one: Thank you Ukraine. We see you. We know what you’ve done for us. We know what we owe you. We know you will win and take your place as a central defender of the free world.

Because of course BVI is involved in some way. The unwillingness of Whitehall and Westminster to get a grip on Caribbean tax havens under UK oversight is one of the great systemic scandals of British politics

This is stenography, not news reporting. The BBC ought to provide some context, such as putting the scale of the changes which Reform claim are possible into context. This omits the major policy of revoking ILR and deporting legal migrants at unprecedented scale. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Heads up! Heads up! Take a look at our first announcements for The Fall: Futures & Pasts Weekend. Celebrating 50yrs of The Fall 5-7 June, Band on the Wall, Manchester. You coming? All Info and Tix: linktr.ee/fallfuturepast

We all have our own forms of blizzard preparation

We must stop pretending that Brexit was just a domestic choice. It was a successful Russian hybrid operation designed to shatter Western cooperation. This betrayal has left both the UK and the EU more vulnerable to aggression. Those who still defend it are idiots or traitors

It’s on Google, even though it is making search worse. It’s on WhatsApp, even though I absolutely do not want “homework help” or “relationship advice” from my messaging app. In the year of our lord 2026, it is everywhere. And it *doesn’t work*.

If foreign influence touched the most consequential democratic decision in modern British history, then the public is entitled to know the full truth. Not fragments and assurances. The full truth.

“We live in an age of impunity. The arrest of the former Prince Andrew was a good day for justice.” Anand Giridharadas why the arrest of Andrew should be applauded, but why the public should not yet be fully satisfied. Andrew has since been released without charge.

This is something I had wanted to write for ages, but 10 years on from the Brexit vote made the most sense. What would Britain still inside the EU look like? Incredibly powerful, is the answer. www.thenewworld.co.uk/luke-mcgee-t...

He's explicitly and repeatedly ruled out the return of FoM. Doing that removed any chance whatsoever of Labour getting my vote.

This is almost certainly going to get lost amid everything else happening at the moment. But it’s a big story.

This is excellent from @iandunt.bsky.social on the government's proposals on settlement: unsupported by evidence, counterproductive on integration, cohesion and economic growth. As Ian says not too late for government to think again. iandunt.substack.com/p/can-we-ext...

The AI "caricature" trend has been very distressing to genuine caricaturists like my husband @tealcartoons.bsky.social. We've been discussing how to reconnect with people & remind them what human-made art looks like. He just started a YT channel. Please subscribe, share & delight in real caricature!

Yet another sad reminder that there is a two-tiered justice system in America: One for the rich. Another for everyone else. If elites can be held accountable in other parts of the world, why can't they be held accountable in America?

BREAKING: A memorial for Kristi Noem’s dog has been erected in Chicago

Welcome to Reform’s front bench Yusuf, Hampton School, £29,916 per year Jenrick, Wolverhampton Grammar, £17,835 per year Farage, Dulwich College, £30,618 per year Tice, Uppingham School, £58,176 per year Braverman, Heathfield School, defunct private school The authentic voice of the working class

The argument that you have to get into (civil) dialogue with the far right is factually and morally wrong. Most are bad-faith actors. And even those that are not are rarely actually “confronted” with their “controversial” ideas and assumptions — which you can read in their publications anyway.

Still looking for a good book (article, even!) on Red Vienna ... Historians, help, please?