This, in @londoncentric.media, is a perfect example of a trend that's been ongoing since around the pandemic. *So many* organisations, both government and private, not answering press numbers, not bothering to reply to questions -- just not really caring about transparency or accountability.

Anyone else just abjectly failing to focus on anything today?

Looking for someone who is house hunting to chat to the team at Money Box. Maybe you have a mortgage in principle or you’re upsizing and need a new mortgage. We want to ask how you’re finding it - and if the current uncertainty is putting you off. Email me please - [email protected]

This piece opens on the trade show carpet industrial complex, but somehow weaves in Kant, the Victorian anthropologist James George Frazer and the decline in demand for the rainbow lanyard. Gorgeous.

My favourite publication to write for, @thepersistent.bsky.social, has been nominated for a Webby! We'd love your vote in the People's Choice category. It's frustrating and fiddly because you have to sign up - but it'll be worth it to see the joy on our little faces if we win. Vote below.

Excited to be firmly in "is this a cold or hayfever?" season.

Is there a difference between 'normalising' and 'reporting on something that's happening'? Surely the only way to organise against eg. a horrifically misogynistic (a-)political movement is to spread the word that it exists.

One of the most interesting parts of this very interesting piece are the North Korean idioms it gives us: “One can survive only while husbands serve socialism and wives serve capitalism” and also the fact that "husbands are often mocked as ‘light bulbs in the daytime (a thing of no use).’"

Who could have seen this coming?

While I'm on my IVF high horse, that BBC story about the North Cyprus clinic giving not one single F that they'd been using random donor sperm is a direct result of the UK's terrible NHS IVF provision. If we offered better IVF, people wouldn't be driven to barely-regulated clinics abroad.

Honestly thought it was an early April Fool's but it turns out it's not a joke that NICE has updated its guidance to local authorities to say that not only should they offer three full rounds of IVF to anyone who wants it, but also if they're over 40 then they should get another three.

Making a cross-stitch of this and framing it @sianysianysiany.bsky.social

The thing that makes me feel most nostalgic is when someone answers a press phone number that they've put on their website.

This is why millennials do big purchases on their laptops FYI

Sometimes the world can feel quite bleak and then you read something like this.

Shooketh.

What I really enjoy is sending out a journo request asking for a certain opinion/perspective, and then being overwhelmed by replies which are the direct opposite of what I've asked for.

"A new study out of Cornell Universit found workers most excited and impressed by corporate speak may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions, and it can leave companies with dysfunctional leaders."

Trump’s foreign policy is stop hitting yourself idiocy. Like @audacityofdespair.bsky.social said, “Thank you for paying attention to this moron”.

First Dawson, now this. Millennial women are not ok.

Can confirm Canterbury is a dead zone at the moment. Very few people about; those who are around are wearing masks. Very reminiscent of Covid.

It’s me!

What in the name of Ballerina Farm is happening to Mothers At Home Matter? It used to be an organisation which gave a voice to a hugely under-represented group of people - now it's pushing this bizarre tradwife agenda.

Now a case of measles has been announced at my daughter's school. Bacterial meningitis nearby, measles at the school - presumably cholera at the local water source next.

Just manifest it.

A friend tried to get her kid antibiotics because one of his close friends, who he saw at the weekend, is in a coma. She was told he can’t have them until he has symptoms, which is not what’s being said on Today.

Well I didn't have terrifying meningitis outbreak in the local area planned for this week.

My stupid cat has died and I’m absolutely raging that I’m so upset because if the tables were turned, she would not have been anywhere near this inconsolable.

By Nick Newman.

Time to dust off maybe one of the best pieces of business writing of all time, by @tracyalloway.bsky.social: That Time I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘If my child showed a sign of developmental delay, I’d be thinking gosh, I should have done genetic testing’ Emma Haslett investigates the genetic testing startups luring parents to US https://bit.ly/3OUORms

Freelance journalism is wild. Monday: crying at my bank account Sunday: splash in a Sunday paper (still crying at my bank account)

It’s ok not to use misogynistic epithets about Kristi Noem, even if you really hate her.

The responses to this are all reasons they should absolutely be bullying us.

Cannot describe the joy I get from replying to press releases from the agency which now represents the chain of fertility clinics whose marketing manager once withdrew an interview once she discovered it would be behind a paywall because ‘we don’t talk to media behind paywalls’.

Five years since Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped, then murdered. She was wearing an anorak, and walking along a well-lit route: the things we're meant to do to stay safe. But her parents couldn't see her face to say goodbye, because her killer had set fire to her body. How much has changed?

So Iran are about to develop nuclear capability after it was 'totally obliterated' last summer? We should be capturing these lads and putting them to work on HS2.

🚨BREAKING🚨 Robert Jenrick has defected from Reform to the Greens.

There's a clip of Lowe praising stay-at-home mums which is being shared furiously on Instagram by people who are otherwise quite nice and non-racist. Started pointing it out to people but it got so prolific I gave up.

HOW can it only be 11am when I am this hungry

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

I just challenged a man listening to his phone loudly on the train, who have I become.

Booked a restaurant table for the wrong date. Felt massively embarrassed and sorry for the no-show but it's impossible to get hold of them by phone to actually apologise/get a new booking, so I'm now left feeling less apologetic and more massively annoyed.

Presented without comment (from Popbitch).

After 20-odd years of hiding my deep hatred of Cathy and her stupid boyfriend, writing this felt good.

Know this feeling, amirite ladies

Every now and then I get an analyst note about an air conditioning company called Munters, and my inner early noughties schoolgirl snorts.

One in six couples experience infertility (that's couples, so not counting the single people who struggle). So that's at least one in six votes he's automatically losing. Or maybe there will be a special 'it's not my fault' discount on the barren tax?

A man who likes a navy puffa. Listing here: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

After a short hiatus we are back at 'serious conversations about putting down the cat' stage. Am painfully aware that if the situation were reversed, she would not blub like this over me.