Quite frankly anyone travelling to the US voluntarily gets no sympathy from me. They know what they are getting into. news.sky.com/story/englan...

It’s striking that none of these guys ever say the need to urgently rearm means we need to, say, sharply jack up taxes on the top 50% of earners. A thing that would surely work, and quite easily too. If it’s that important, then it’s surely a must.

4 year Long Covid anniversary. My life has never been the same since. No official treatments, no cures, and no public efforts to reduce Covid and its many serious harms. Governments and Public Health need to do so much more.

For the first time ever, heat pumps outsold gas boilers in Germany in 2025. 48% of all new heating systems installed last year were heat pumps. Gas fell to just 39%. A decade ago, heat pumps had a 7% market share. The transformation has been remarkable.

Massacre upon massacre in Beirut in the last hour. AUBMC announced a “code disaster.” Over 100 airstrikes in 10 minutes across the country. One hit right behind my house. Sirens ambulances & the smell of sulphur. The city is in total chaos the people in complete panic

It’s incredibly disturbing that the president would threaten death to an “entire civilization” and Congress would do nothing. I’ve involuntarily committed people for less direct threats… but the president gets to murder whoever he wants in the name of “liberation” I suppose…

An Easter message from the president which should really force the VP and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Holiday advice: It's pleasant to get a train to Europe. You just have to turn travelling into a core part of the holiday - lunch in Paris, dinner in Bordeaux, trip to Spain, week on beach etc. It's limiting, but very enjoyable & decent alternative to a flight you won't be able to afford by summer.

This kiwi car dealer only sells electric cars and all their inventory is gone. Never seen that before.

the Attlee government nationalised healthcare, the railways, the energy industry, telecoms, the steel industry, and the Bank of England, and established the welfare state, introduced free secondary education, and built a million homes

He's very good, and very well briefed.

On #LongCovidAwarenessDay — I think the most important thing to understand is that it’s still happening: “I got COVID for a 3rd time in 2025 (I'm vaxed, boosted & took paxlovid)... Boom #LongCovid. Can't climb due to PEM. I haven't climbed in almost a year.” “COVID… is still causing disability.“

This is no longer about saving the corner building. It's lost. All the SFRS can do is try to prevent what would be a catastrophic spread to Glasgow Central Station. 📷 Vyro Media

This is important. Reform keep taking positions that are only supported by the 25% of the electorate they already have and in doing so are negatively polarising everyone else against them.

We haven't heard from Savanta for a while, but they were commissioned by BBC to survey on issues ahead of the SP election. The published sample highlights the 2014 vote breakdown and shows the impact of removing 2014 weighting. Yes voters are up from 34% to 48%. Clearly some false recall here too!

Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad, Qom, Shiraz, Isfahan and that's me. But I like geography, remember stuff, and I don't claim to know about Iran.

As a professional military strategist, I just wanted to make sure everyone has a full understanding of the American strategy in Iran, thank you for your attention to this matter

a sombre morning for british columnists as they move their "The electorate has spoken, we must listen" articles to the recycling bin and upload their "the greens victory shows just how far the west has fallen" articles instead

Labour campaigners and leaders consistently underestimated the resilience and potential depth of support when it came to the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales. If they do so with the Greens in England as well then Labour will not survive as a serious force beyond 2030

If Labour campaigners and leadership keep belittling the Green Party as a movement and underestimating the skills of Green leaders then Labour is heading straight to electoral oblivion. Stop refighting past factional wars within your own party and start adapting to new realities.

Family voting? Is this where patriarchic muslims insist their household votes en bloc for the party led by a gay jew?

Given that we're told that Muslims as a bloc are communalist, anti-Semitic, misogynist homophobes, you might assume voting for a non-religious white woman, standing for a LGBT friendly party, led by a gay Jewish man, might lead you to stand down all those sectarianism headlines.

obviously today is a huge embarrassment for Matt Goodwin and for Reform, which is something that we absolutely ought to celebrate, but we must also remember it's a huge embarrassment for Morgan McSweeney and Maurice Glasman and all the Blue Labour weirdos, and that's important to celebrate too :)

Columbia student detained today is a day-in-the-life influencer with 100K followers. Her stories right now go from her studying for a Genetics exam in a nicely edited "ten hour study with me at Columbia" video, to a photo of her knees with the caption "dhs illegally arrested me please help"

February's Norstat poll had the smallest sample of 2014 No voters it has ever recorded. It dipped below 300 for the first time and is now lower than the number of new voters who didn't vote in 2014. Fair fucks to them for continuing their ludicrous reweighting to the 2014 result!

full FT story: Lord Peter Mandelson has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following claims he leaked confidential UK government memos to Jeffrey Epstein and received cash from the paedophile American financier www.ft.com/content/778e...

Team GB curler Bruce Mouat speaks about coming out and being an LGBTQ+ role model in British sport.

Olympic highlight in this house.

Huge breaking news. Anas Sarwar is going to call for Sir Keir Starmer to quit. Emergency press conference at 2.30pm. Follow @heraldscotland.bsky.social live blog here www.heraldscotland.com/news/2583840...

This Boston Review piece by @adambonica.bsky.social and @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social is obviously not going to be the last word in the "popularism" debate. But it's the last word for me, in the sense that anything I might want to say on it is said better here. www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

We are taking our research to Parliament! By bringing our nasal spray evidence directly to policymakers, research teams are accelerating talks about how simple, preventative measures can inform NHS winter preparedness, antimicrobial resistance and public health messaging. Well done to all 👏

Good to remove the tax exemption. Dual-cab pick-up trucks don't look much like the utility vehicles of yore. In fact, they look like four-door saloons on steroids, where someone has nicked the bootlid. Often ought for ego-boosting or to feel more manly. Accountants cosplaying as wild outdoorsmen.

This made me look up the origin of the word "second" for a unit of time. Which is an odd word given it means between first and third. Turns out "minute" was "prime minute" in Latin, the first ("prime") tiny, minute, division of an hour into 60, and second was the second division of an hour into 60.

Kind of extraordinary that the new Local Growth Fund is to be distributed by the Welsh Government in Wales, but directly by the UK Government in Scotland, and that the rationale for the difference seems to be no more than "we don't trust the Scottish Government".

The BBC is doing it again. On both the Radio 3 & Radio 6 news it reported Vance's story about that video of Renee Good's murder and denials of it, without telling us the facts. It should have the same approach to weather forecasting: "some say it'll rain, some say it won't. Who can tell, eh?"

Welcome to Minnesota, fuckers. Also this is super disturbing because the ICE agent's assault rifle appears to fire as he falls down. This was filmed by a friend near Chicago and Lake last night.

Ah here. The 10 o’clock news on BBV Radio 4 is leading with ‘JD Vance has described a woman shot dead by an ICE officer in Minnesota as a deranged leftist carrying out a terrorist attack’ This is not public service broadcasting

Yes, our partnership with the US *is* the most important relationship we have. Because we've allowed ourselves to become dependent on an unreliable and sometimes hostile foreign state. The answer to that isn't unyielding Atlanticism, it's working with our actual allies to unravel that dependence.

It's the hypocrisy that bugs me. By all means go with "might is right"; cynical realpolitik has its place. But don't then lecture us on law & morality. You can't ride two horses with one arse.

Never a more vindicated group in human history than those who have spent years saying Europe needs to move away from reliance on the US. Fantastic our closest ally is a fascist regime that has torn up international law, great stuff, thanks Atlanticists.

I mean look at these graphs - 82% of 2024 Green voters disapprove of Starmer, 64% of LDs and 53% of the Labour voters *who explicitly voted for him less than two years ago.* That is not normal. I suspect it may be unprecedented.

Y’all might not appreciate it, but it took him 87 moves and 14 hours to get here

our current system has a strong chance of putting a far-right government in complete power with about a quarter of the vote. electoral reform *must* be a Labour priority. FPTP is simply not set up to deal with a system with five competitive parties.

📊 Ref lead of 10pts Westminster voting intention REF: 28% (+1) LAB: 18% (-1) CON: 17% (-1) GRN: 17% (+2) LDEM: 14% (-) via @YouGov, 14 - 15 Dec Chgs. w/ 08 Dec britainelects.com

Seen a lot of comments about Reform voters not caring what Farage said at school, which is probably true. But you've also got to consider people who aren't going to vote Reform but you want to turnout or vote tactically against them.

I’m old enough to remember the Bosnian war, which was regarded as bringing irredeemable shame on all of Europe. This stuff is *massively* worse than that - far more cruel, calculated and deliberately intended as cull of the civilian populace - and it’s been done with our active aid and complicity.

Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands to boycott Eurovision 2026 as Israel cleared to compete

If Russia is banned for its war of aggression and atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, Israel should be banned for its genocide in Gaza. This should not be hard for anyone with a shred of moral/intellectual integrity. www.rte.ie/entertainmen...

Eurovision members have just voted against excluding Israel from the contest. Russia was excluded the moment they attacked Ukraine in 2022, but apparently genocide is fine if its Israel inflicting it on Palestine. Will the BBC tell us how they voted and will they now follow the Dutch & withdraw?