If you're a councillor getting death threats of any kind, best option from experience is 101 online form submission to police. It gives you time to order your words and make them factual, and you get a more considered response. Bottom line is that yoy shouldn't just let it go as 'part of the job'.

I see there's a lot of 'cope' going on from people who generally accuse people of 'cope' but can't bring themselves to confront the idea that theoretical tactical voting like this assumes parties will not over-egg their chances, unless there is an actual alliance-forming mechanism against that.

My soundings are that what I set out here might actuallu understate the meltdown for Labour in these areas, and that in some areas there might be pretty well nobody to put their name to a Labour candidacy.

I rather like the Namibia national anthem. Got a Karl Jenkins feel to it.

Blackpool have won a game of footbal.

Maybe indicative that this article about choosing to endanger the lives of her children and those of many others is in the lifestyle section of the website, according to the URL www.independent.co.uk/life-style/h...

One of the great thrills of my mother's later life, which was one dominated by grief, was when I took her to see Jesse Jackson at Edge Hill University in 2013, just a few months before she died. She really wasn't well enough to go, but she was determined to witness greatness.

There won't of course be much sympathy for all the Labour cllrs in the 30 areas who've been told to plan for one more year of it all and now been told to plan for not one more year of it all, but I suspect lots of them will just not bother to be candidates in May, with vacancies v hard to fill. 1/2

Two points of hope this week: a) the Women's Institute grassroots rebellion against trans exclusion; b) the Bangladesh general election.

Just by way of useful like hack, it is possible to get a 9 pack of toilet roll into a small ruck (day pack) style if you squeeze it up against the widest part and arrange the potatoes around it, and actually it's quite comfy. Sorry I didn't get a pic, but pretty bloody pleased with myself, tbh.

Ramadan Mubarak to all who observe. And for those who don't, some, erm, beginner tips from Gulf News here, which include the valuable advice against inviting someone observing if they "want to grab a coffee". gulfnews.com/lifestyle/ra...

These 'results', paid for by Rupert Lowe to promote Rupert Lowe by promoting the name Rupert Lowe, are so clearly misleading that I wonder if other pollsters might contact their trade body, the British Polling Council, about their trade being brought into disrepute. findoutnow.co.uk/blog/polling...

It's hard to be anything but horrified at this kind of language about trans people, and the prospect of that language being made policy. That is why govt needs to reinforce protections, not strip them.

It looks like they could.

Small thing, but using the word "message" instead of "plan", or "proposals" or "manifesto" is a bit daft. His message needs to better than just "message".

Blimey www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke... They couldn't, could they?

Surprised by scale of win for the BNP in Bangladesh, but feels from afar like a big for for secularism. Maybe also a bit to do with a reconsideration of the legacy of the recently departed Khaleda Zia as leader of the 'less bad' dynasty. Well also, the NCP getting it so wrong.

I'd put this MP/cllr briefing/call to action on hold pending the GLC v EHRC judgment (due tomorrow) to make it time relevant, but actually I think I'm now going to have to incorporate a section on the DfE statutory guidance to schools so probably just as well I held back medium.com/@bickerrecor...

The Nepal vs Italy scorecard is making for very interesting reading www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke... Nepal took England to the last ball, and Italy got stuffed by Scotland.

So GM Police have provided guidance on how to do legally valid imprints on election material to the Electoral Commission, whose job includes providing guidance on how to do legally valid imprints on election material? I think GM Police may not understand this area of law.

Interesting convo with Benjamin here about tips on teaching adults who've missed out as kids how to ride a bike. Tips welcome. We're all going to have to do a bit more of this

Bloody Hell! The cricket www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke... Did you see it @duncanweldon.bsky.social?

Good to see this on the local Facebook group. Youngish adults in deprived areas who've never learned to ride is quite a thing, but this lad gets what he's missed. I've arranged to meet and get him through basics/give him a bike. I've taught plenty of kids but tips on teaching adults welcome

You know that bit in 100 Years of Solitude when it just starts pissing down and doesn't stop for four years, and everybody in Macondo goes even madder than before? Yeah, it's like that here.

It's bizarre that there's simply no media coverage of either the successful onshore wind/solar auction of the Local Power Plan, both announced today. This is real progress towards Net Zero, but the media seems to give Zero Shit.

You may have noticed that I've not commented much on the last couple of seismic upheaval days in domestic politics. You may also have not.

I'm intrigued, as a very lay observer, as to why the EHRC vs GLP judgment on lawfulness of the anti-trans Interim Guidance hasn't been delivered yet. It's been quite a while now.

I'm kind of guessing this is false information on Facebook, and that the Green candidate doesn't live in that house. However, AFAICS the poster is real, does do podcasts & Tiktok with Farage, Zia etc, and has a large following who believe her. So maybe Reform should be asked if they disavow this.

Hard to be sure nowadays but this looks AFAICS to be a genuine complaint post to a Reform F'book group to effect that this bloke's mother didn't actually "sign off" that now infamous unimprinted letter to Gorton & Denton residents, and that Reform have "left my mum to the dogs".

Léon Blum is a lot more instructive than previous UK PMs in these fascist circumstances.

I can confirm that Aldi's 'specialty' 1897 lager in blue cans is not distinguishable in taste from Kronebourg 1663 lager in blue cans, but that it is about two thirds the price. No need to thank me. It's what I do. Hic.

Some muppet here trying to claim the Muppets are puppets. I mean, we'd have spotted it by now if they were.

Great work by @manchestermill.bsky.social As election at a dozen elections & hundreds of candidates, I would just note that is about the biggest no-no there could possibly be for an agent and for the party. The imprint is the first and last thing you check before allowing a leaflet to go out.

Tomorrow is the 92nd anniversary of February 6th, which is France's own January 6th, when fascist groups converged on Place de La Concorde with a view to storming parliament. What antifascists did next is actually a lot more instructive for us now than what they did (or didn't) do in the USA.

I'll just note that there seems very little cut-through on the Mandelson stuff amongst people in my neck of the wood who do not really follow news. It's not in the same league as, say, the 2009 expenses scandal, which I suspect was just more relatable to real lives. Of course this may change.

Just re-read 100 Years of Solitude to get a feel for what living through the end times is like. A lot of ants.

It's a bit of a side issue for now but one thing the Greens are going to have to contend with is that they can't so easily paint themselves specifically as a post-sleaze alternative to Labour, given their leader's previous choice of career. They will have to replace Labour despite that, via policy.

4 February 1925 | A French Jewish woman, Ginette Kolinka (née Cherkasky), was born in Paris. She was deported to #Auschwitz from Drancy in April 1944. She was transferred to Bergen-Belsen and then to #Theresienstadt. She survived. Today she turns 101.

Peter Kilfoyle's "I can only speculate" phrasing as to why John Smith would have nothing to do with Peter Mandelson in 1992 is interesting in retrospect (Left Behind, 2000, p.290).

That should of course be "by 1992". I was abroad for that decade so those dates don't come naturally.

Went for a blood test at my GP practice, to see if I'm still alive. The practice nurse, who may be almost as old as me, called me "sweetie pie". I love the NHS.

What's the most explicitly upper middle class album in history? I'm here to nominate Al Stewart's heroic 1972 effort 'Orange'. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JEi...

On this day 38 years ago, before I became a centrist dad, I was a top strike leader, on the telly and everything. The power stance didn't exist back then. Or haircuts. #nursesstrike1988

My own view is that the men's world cup should now be relocated from USA to the capital of Burkina Faso, where the mothers of wives & girlfriends of the England team should go to a branch of the chain restaurant selling Japaneish food and adopt the practices of a Haitian -African diasporic religion.

An early chapter of my new book on associational democracy's challenge to the new fascism, in which I trace the line from the assault on the welfare state by managerial privatization through to the end of all social norms other than a hysteric death drive. will be called From Atos to Thanatos.

Well that's nice. Thanks Sadiq, even though I don't live in your city.

Dry January is done, but Wetherspoons doesn't open at 8am on Sundays. How unlucky is that.

V useful short primer on what the Supreme Court judgment on FWS v Scottish Ministers actually does to the law from an unexpected source celord.com/2026/01/31/t... Those involved heavily will know all this already, but worth forwarding to others (I have done and had positive replies).

What a bizarre question to headline. Zack Polanski's party is polling in the mid-teens at least. Was there the same question about Farage when his lot were polling in the mid-teens? (Clue: no) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Matt Goodwin burnishing his working class credentials via his steel factory grandparent and great grandparent war service does kind of amuse me, the son of a steelworker and WWII veteran who would have quietly despised Matt Goodwin in the same way he quietly despised the National Front in 1976.