If you live in Bristol, love horror and want to support local businesses, please consider doing some of your Christmas shopping at The Haunted Bookshop in Stokes Crofts. You may have seen Monika at some of our events and her shop is a wonderful sanctuary for those looking to find their people.

Roger Clarke and I are writing a book about ghosts. We need a publisher. @tomsbrown.bsky.social and I are writing a graphic novel about boy mire maids and need a publisher. If you are interested, DM me.

This thread is wild. Harry Cole is editor-at-large at The Sun. He is platforming extremism here, and leaving outright racism almost entirely unchallenged. Cole remains a member of parliament's Press Gallery (despite now being based in the US)

Harry Cole of Sun interviews Connor Tomlinson - who advocates banning ethnic minority MPs from parliament Tomlinson regrets sacrificing Suella Braverman but feels sure (on no evidence) she would sacrifice herself to remove the risk of Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel & Shabana Mahmood!

It turns out you can’t run the Labour Party to the benefit-slashing, tax-hacking, race-hating right of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. This appears to be an astonishing, staggering and possibly disgusting revelation to Britain’s very smartest, best-paid politics understanders.

Long shot, but does anyone in Switzerland have an emergency Theremin to loan tomorrow night ( Friday 12 December )? #ViaMardot is playing a show in St Gallen, and the airline lost her equipment!!! We can help pay for a courier if needed, please share to get this message out!! #theremin #switzerland

A new law has just passed that (and I know it's hard to believe) dictates that you have to share the post i've attached. Now look. I was as surprised as you are that they chose this one, but what can I do? I've reposted it myself, just to be on the safe side.

Yeah. That’ll do it. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

That time in 2014 when the BBC daytime soap 'Doctors' adapted M.R. James's short story 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jQO...

1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Oops. www.thenational.scot/news/2567668...

@zackpolanski.bsky.social absolutely sensational on Question Time. Actually made it feel like I'd gained something from watching it for once (although admittedly that may be because I put it on 2x speed whenever Zia Yusuf started talking).

When a child’s body is found, DCI Kenny Murrain uncovers buried secrets and a killer ready to strike again. A tense crime thriller where the past won’t stay buried. Out today! www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Corners...

This is a really good point. Forget today's view of this. Farage was making these comments only 30 years after the holocaust. Well within living memory. No one, no one at all, was doing "gas the jews" jokes on TV.

I don’t think that’s the problem. www.thenational.scot/news/2566874...

It's true! Here's Burgess doing 'The Burial of the Dead'. He had an extraordinary memory for poetry. We also have a tape of him reciting all of GM Hopkins's The Wreck of the Deutschland. Someone who was there when it was recorded says he reeled it off from memory. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRfg...

Excellent thread.

This is sad news, he played on so many of my favourite records RIP

So it turns out the content-stealing Politics UK Twitter account is actually 50% owned by a former Tory MP turned lobbyist and charged thousands of pounds for posting pro-China posts on its own feed democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-o...

Out tomorrow. Pre-order now for a mere £1.99 so it can magically pop on to your Kindle on the stroke of midnight.

We kept the receipts. These comments, taken together, paint a picture of the man he is today.

This is a borderline psychotic thing to put in a newspaper.

Farage usually denies he is considering this. Why would he say this now? Is it to change the subject (from allegations and testimonies of his bullying and racism at school)? He must expect/want it to be revealed that he said it

Ordered a new washing machine from a company who claimed I could track the delivery time on the day. Woke to message saying delivery from 7-9am. It’s now past 11 and the tracking app has been updating every 5 mins since 7.30 promising me delivery in the next hour. It’ll be right eventually, I hope.

I wish more people were aware of this. Considering the scale of the threat, the media's near-silence is both remarkable and culpable. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I assume they’re working on the wheel. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Indeed. This is not the BBC's job and to make it worse, in the same piece, Chris Mason again lurches into opinion and gives government carte blanche when he absolutely should not have!

If you would like to know the actual problems with the budget I set it all out in detail here. As Stephen says the problem is the headroom isn't really there. Not that Reeves had loads of spare cash... samf.substack.com/p/survival-f...

It was the most botched budget briefing since Truss… but this is increasingly wild. It is not an unsubstantiated “claim” that the OBR priced the productivity downgrade at £16bn in foregone revenue!

Dog bites man. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A validation of this marvellous piece from @igmansfield.bsky.social about what Reeves should have done:

Wrote this pre-Budget but seems even more relevant now. The obsession with OBR/forecasts (and even more so the current absurd media firestorm)is a pointless distraction from the UK's real economic and fiscal problems. www.ft.com/content/a06d...

I’ve no time for Rachel Reeves but when did we decide that the UK economy is in fine shape actually (or was until we removed the two child benefit limit)?

Took me a few moments.

Sad news. www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...

I’ve fallen in love with this. Quite extraordinary. youtu.be/Nbm-pNGPuo8

Whatever else this government do (and there's plenty of issues with this budget) ministers will always be able to point to this as an incredible important contribution to the country's future. Almost half a million kids taken out of poverty.

This DCI notices things others don’t—instincts that have helped him solve even the most baffling cases. But they also come at a cost. Come and meet the distinctive DCI Kenny Murrain - currently just 99p on Kindle. amzn.eu/d/e2eG6mX

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

When a child’s body is found, DCI Kenny Murrain uncovers buried secrets and a killer ready to strike again. A tense crime thriller where the past won’t stay buried. Available now for pre-order. www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Corners...

When a child’s body is found, DCI Kenny Murrain uncovers buried secrets and a killer ready to strike again. A tense crime thriller where the past won’t stay buried. Available now for pre-order. www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Corners...

The basic problem with the temporary refugee status policy - especially one lasting up to 20 years - is it leads to very few removals (based on Denmark's experience) but does significantly worsen integration.

Funny you should mention the Danish approach to immigration… www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Yesterday, we put out a report on the most important issues to voters. We know that immigration now tops the traditional most important issues question (see below from @yougov.co.uk). But that doesn't tell the full story. Here is a rundown of the experiments we did to test this out (A THREAD):

Well, yes. I’d have hoped the Labour Parrty wasn’t one of them. But there, it seems, we go. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Always a great read. @temporalboundary.bsky.social

This weekend has been an interesting approach to winning over the Parliamentary Labour Party for a leader on the verge of being dumped.

Very sad, if not entirely surprising, news. A fine songwriter. apple.news/AXvHMeWHySyG...

Tonight’s gloaming.

I can imagine a number of alternative uses for this image