Tim Stanley "doesn't much enjoy talking at all" he says on #r4today thought for the day. Well, have I got a win-win-win suggestion for BBC bookers!

Jesus effing christ!!!!

Silent blank-paper protest in Oxford today. Plenty of police, including cameras.

The Kindertransport is *precisely* an example of a narrow safe and legal route when the need was much greater and the border generally closed. #r4today

This a pie chart:

The centre-left and centre-right keep falling for this: the far right only needs to increase the salience of an issue for half a dozen news cycles, and then the centre jumps on it and amplifies it. Partly because they're terrified of their imagined lumpen proletariat who swarm outside the M25 #bbcpm

How far will Labour go? I can't see why they'd stop until the prodigal return to the party of Lee Anderson - that's the "voter" they clearly have in mind, after all. Short of that, where will they have got?

Since when has Netflix been changing the language of text in realia to match the user's locale language? Maybe it's not a problem if you're watching with dubbing, but it's really jarring in VO.

Just think that this person was fleetingly our prime minister, and not so long ago. Amazing. How utterly reckless and ideologically bankrupt the party was that foisted her on us.

40% of America's young women would rather live somewhere else, compared to 19% of young men. Stark.

If it's on the news and chart topping, I'm going to be less shy about sharing my own AI-sung country. youtu.be/gn5ayxiSVaw?... #bbcpm

Ed's "inoculation"... In this case I find myself a vaccine sceptic #r4today

"Three inches that changed the world..." #r4today

America: names of bits of cars/automobiles are from after our Englishes diverged yet before modern comms meant they started to reconverge. Perfect field of battle to work out who does English best. "car" v "automobile": clear 🇺🇸 win.

How is Keir Starmer going to recover from coming off the worse in a leadership battle against himself? Incompetence in this case not a better answer than malice.

Minimal business name changes in my town: Liaison the Chinese–English cuisine » Liaison the Chinese–Chinese cuisine (new menu) Penultimate Picture Palace » Ultimate Picture Palace (new management) Mediterranean Fish Bar » Atlantic Fish Bar (2016... new mood? 😢)

A big part of the problem is that you Evan (the press) and you Amber (the politicians) acceot this premise that "many listeners" are turning to their tiny violin. Just because voters express frustration with politicians, it doesn't mean we're constantly baying for blood. #bbcpm

Whether or not the BBC is embarrassed by its editorial decision,it must not settle with a foreign head of state who launches an extortion suit: its responsibility to us would then become impossible. #r4today

Sackcloth and ashes continue to prevent #bbcpm from saying the obvious: the Panorama editing boiled down Trump's speech into what he was impeached and indicted for. The resulting fancy-free agonising this week is much more misinformative than the original editorial shortcut.

So has the BBC decided that its penance for editing a two-hour speech down to a representative 10 seconds is to platform voices from the US right, unchallenged? #wato

The BBC should not be "negotiating" with Trump, who was impeached and indicted for leading an insurrection. They took a dubious editorial shortcut to illustrate a truth.

Anybody listening to the BBC over the last few days might be expected to think that Trump hadn't been impeached and indicted for his role in organising an insurection on Jan 6th 2020. And yet he was. #bbcpm

Eh?

Baffled by the rash of news stories from residents and councils up and down the land who want to change the name of their "Prince Andrew Road". Why *now*, at the very moment the name has lost its association with failed international business strumpet and paedo-adjacent teddy worrier Andrew M-W?

It's so striking when something is in your domain how negative the framing of every story has become. There will be a debate around the curriculum review and the government's response; but what we get today in the headline is briefly factual; then 80% is about negative reaction. #wato

Please please stop reporting full moons as news. #r4today

Pretty far through the "first they came for..." poem by now.

"let's not make unrealistic demands", but on the other hand olease can we implement a technofascist surveillance state? #r4today

How far in advance of their train's departure time does Chris Philp advise young black men should arrive at the station? #r4today

Just remembering there was a time when we were supposed to think we had to pay attention to what Carrie Johnson thought about things.

It is SO LOW for the Tories to exploit a tragedy for political capital like this. So unspeakably, shamefully low, and new. #wato

It's quite something the extent to which the US seems now to turn to UK media for reliable news (the BBC, the FT, The Guardian, here the Independent)

Why's "Discover" full of exhibitionists again, Bluesky?

If cemeteries create a community of both the living and the dead, what happens when the living get displaced? Case in point: German cemeteries in the PL "Recovered Lands." All Saints' Day is a good day to reflect on what happens to memory in the absence of those who remember. 🧵(not an easy read)

Prince Andrew has been told to move house. We're being told to pretend he isn't as much a Prince as the rest of them.

For about 15 years, the web showed us so many wild animals doing things nobody really believed they were capable of before. Sure, there are cavils about framing and false narratives, but overall it was putting paid to the old "dumb beast" presumption. Cute AI clips are going to swamp that.

While it's true that Finnish and Hungarian are related languages, in fact there are Magyar differences.

*Is* Emmental festive, though?

But is Inverness currently without an earl?! #bbcpm

Nobody who hadn't already heard it, given a generous 17 seconds to get up to speed with the Chancellor's "scandal", would find that she'd done anything much wrong. But instead of those 17 seconds we get hours of useless political "analysis". Stop!

Topical cartoon for the Mountbatten-Windsors from this day 79 years ago

‘Just when you thought the water you wanted to go back in might be safe’

*anyway*, should we do one of those No Kings marches lads?

What *personal* cost is there to the king in changing his brother's *public* title? What rubbish. (Public titles which derive *only* from their shared parentage) #r4today

If the word "Prince" meant anything, Andrew would no longer be eighth in line to the throne – in fact, there'd be 10,000 labs and golden retrievers ahead of him. But the blood in his veins is the same blood that put his mother and brother on the throne; so there he, and they, remain. #r4today

Srzly #r4today we doing this?

Imagine being prepared to say Farage is a facist, but not being prepared to go further in justifying it than "he's not prepared to support minority rights", like Zarah Sultana on #r4today

In a thousand years, someone will find bluesky, and what remains of these Ozymandias poems: then move on.

Come on, Steve! This sentence should clearly be: "She had a hunch, and a Plantagenetically test it." www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

nb the "Halloween Season" begins this year, as it does in fact every year, when the end of day bell rings in primary schools on the 31st, and finishes that same day, quarter of an hour after the kids are in bed. Thank you for your attention to this matter!