Excellent thread.

Concerning.

Heaney

Why are the pubs I never go to closing? Why is that useful-looking shop I never buy anything from closed down?

From today’s Times. I’m of the view that going to the pub is good for you. A walk there and back, being sociable, maybe read a bit, nice cask ales to try. It really settles the mind.

i do not want to hear any more about the mayor of new york, i do not think there is any reason most of us should be hearing about the mayor of new york this much

This is really good.

Anyway, at least Shane Lynch was entertaining. Was he performing or buffering? Hard to tell. Whatever the case, it was something.

“This morning I discovered the newborn year on my doorstep, begging to be welcomed into the house. I hesitated a moment for fear of what might come in its wake. But it continued to plead until I picked it up, not out of pity, but because I had to.” (‘Autobiographies: A Year in Llŷn’)

The problem with the fat jabs is now all the celebrities you've known for years look like they are battling an aggressive wasting illness

I was saying tonight, to my uninterested other half, that these protests are ultimately about living standards. The same in China- the Tiananmen Square protests were not about democracy, they were about having an equivalent amount of pelf as the West. They got economic growth, the movement ended.

I’m reminded by this of Skint Video’s Bruce Springsteen take-off, ‘Radiation Baby’. ‘They say the night has a thousand eyes, and baby so do you’.

We’ve had this cartoon every damn year since Lemmy snuffed it. Hopefully I’ll get to see a positive version before I’m dust.

NewYear. Adapted from Drawing for a New Year's Card. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. c.1900.

The log burners are lit @oldeenglandpub.bsky.social - which is good, as it’s a nippy NYE.

By the kebab van on the edge of the business park the Deliveroo drivers are making a fire from fallen branches to keep warm. Welcome to the future, 2026 style

This is really good. Being stuck indoors on our own during lockdown made us all potty. Go out, go to the pub, invite your friends, make some new ones. Join a club. We’re social animals.

I ran into a Labour supporting friend of mine on the way to town yesterday. Bright guy, an osteopath. Said he’d gone over to the Green Party. Dense of Labour not to have had a plan after 14 years in opposition. Denser still to essentially tell their supporters that they don’t want them.

Thread on the drivers of long A&E wait times (not a lack of AI, not a surfeit of hiccups)

#4 is from veteran economics hack Dan Atkinson, L&U's inaugural writer back in 2015. "To lose one decade may be misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. Well, in three years’ time we will have completed our second lost decade since the 2008 crisis"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/08/16/a...

Tommy Davy, Gage Hulsey and me really innovating hot jazz 😂 Very serious stuff 🎻👍🏼😎💪🏼 #jazzsky #swingsky #djangosky

Love this from Greg Chappell Memo to Australia and England: honour the format that has elevated you www.espncricinfo.com/story/memo-t...

I’ve taken this piece out from the paywall for everyone to read. What happened this year could have been prevented, but the US made Putin’s terror campaign much easier. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

N E W ! I'm the Cher of the Bear Den. I'm a Cher bear ! zoubisoudotblog.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/g...

When I next see Gary Hoffman -chair of Northamptonshire and Monzo- (awarded CBE in the New Year honours) I’ll try to remember to ask him what he did in the culture wars.

I was in the pub with a friend, and Francis Bacon winked at him, ignoring me completely.

"Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti)". Tamara de Lempicka. 1929.

Whenever I’m cooking I like listening to music or “gentle” podcasts. The BBC’s Soul Music is one of them and they just celebrated 25 years. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/s...

🚨NEW CCP EPISODE🚨 Who are the top five Barbados cricketers of all time and in what order? @mashstpaddy.bsky.social constructed the definitive list. youtu.be/zol71NsLCI8?...

I just came across (while looking for something else entirely) a sentence by Eimar McBride that I wrote down ages ago, and which now seems… relevant: “While a picture may paint a thousand words, a thousand considered words are more powerful than a thousand misleading pictures.”

Writer,DJ and remixer Kris Needs recalls his neighbour Lemmy Kilmister, who left us ten years ago to the day.

Sir Titus Salt, mill-owner and philanthropist, died OTD in 1876. The model village of Saltaire was built between 1851 and 1871 to house his employees.

"‘I think I’ve just killed the Liberal Democrats,’ William Hague told his wife Ffion, after the Conservatives and Lib Dems reached their coalition agreement in June 2010." @lordbonkers.bsky.social on the fall and rise of the Lib Dems. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/29/1...

As today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, here's a thing I wrote about how Herod's massacre inspired Taika Waititi's and G.K. Chesterton's satires of Nazism. It's also about trying to navigate the troublesome fact that people's artistic and personal ethics can be complex and contradictory.

Forgive me for reposting this, but nothing that has happened since the GE has altered my view that we're not really serious about the fundamental change in approach needed to tackle regional inequalities. open.substack.com/pub/ukcivils...

🏏Hugely saddened to hear of the death of Hugh Morris, a key part of Glamorgan for many years as captain and CEO either side of his work with England. A genuinely nice man who achieved much within cricket as player and administrator, keeping Glamorgan afloat in tough times. RIP Hugh🙏🏽 #Cricket #Wales

We’re proud that our beautiful Royal Safety Curtain has been included in the Beyond the 100 online exhibition, created by Northampton Museums & Art Gallery. Find out more: https://royalandderngate.co.uk/news/royal-safety-curtain-included-in-beyond-the-100-online-exhibition/

✨🍺 My All Time Best Pubs 🍻 Seems quite appropriate for the season - updated and revised the pubs I've gravitated to on my travels over the last 20 years. Cheers! 👉 www.digest.andymarshall.co/andy-marshal...

Saturday night in town. Not usually this quiet. Guess everybody is with families. Or skint.

One hell of a win for Northampton Saints, a 41-21 win away at Bath - who are the reigning champions, and the bookies had them as 17 point favourites. 😇

Lovely stuff- “Except, now Duckett is out there playing meth-ball. Carse has gone out to bat in chaps. Brendon McCullum is lounging back so far in his chair, feet up, he’s in danger of disappearing into a ball of pure human insolence.”

Turns out he flew dozens of raids over Europe as a navigator during the war and crash landed multiple times. So many postwar comedy legends had similar stories of seeing death very close up. Eg, Denis Norden and Eric Sykes being present at the liberation of Belsen.

Oh, yes. This is a very good point

Seeing as today is Fanny Cradock day, here’s Benny Hill and the great Bob Todd taking them off. Bob Todd shouldn’t be forgotten. A hell of a life and much funnier than Benny Hill, I think. youtu.be/axYPrEraPYg?...

🚨NEW CCP EPISODE🚨 Who are the top five Jamaican cricketers of all time and in what order? @mashstpaddy.bsky.social constructed the definitive list. youtu.be/ioGIMBjyGvw?...

Alas! It is 31 years since the world was deprived of one of its more colourful culinary characters: Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey – better known as double bigamist, child abandoner, amphetamine user, dangerous driver, and celebrity cook Fanny Cradock

Prescient Ballard. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

These Test matches are like episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond. The narrative and the reason they all get angry is slightly different each time, but by the end we're back to where we started, and nobody has genuinely learnt any lessons. And Australians find it much funnier than the English.