A minor life goal is to sit on the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, which approves changes in country names. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Not sure which I find more objectionable - Kuenssberg’s over-burdened paragraphs of attempted chumminess that amount to little, or Mason’s breathless every-sentence-it’s-own-para which feels like trying to introduce the emotional punch of a report from Srebrenica into a piece about PLP management.

Lib Dem Tim Farron MP tells party conference Reform UK "spent a lot of their time [at conference] giving a platform to people who think that the Covid vaccines gave the royal family cancer, to self confessed convicted racists, and worst of all, Lembit Opik"

I was sniffy about Swedish Railways basically shrugging shoulders re alternative transport when the northern mainline washed away last week, but to their credit they’ve refunded my nice hotel in Umeå, dinner from a Luleå supermarket and some on-train coffees within 24hrs of my putting the claim in.

I'm telling my kids this was the Orange Order

Here's your treat for the feast of San Gennaro. In the Italian dub of Airplane! the Jive talkers speak Neapolitan.

I see your profile picture of your appearance on Newsnight and raise you mine appearing on nothing less than Televisión Canaria (with guest appearances from Mrs Turtle and a walrus). fb.watch/CdgW9qJThr/

Modest proposal for a much shortened replacement for the Life in the UK citizenship test: Drink an M&S alcohol-free mojito during working hours and report honestly whether this makes you feel a bit naughty or not.

I would say that the chips are down for Mr Hepburn, but that would just encourage more seagulls.

I was not ready to be hit with this triple whammy of "that's still a thing?"

Swiss Federal Railways getting ambitious with their new routes!

I disagree with Zarah Sultana on many things but I do kinda feel sorry for her wandering into battle with a bunch of people who've been doing Bennite factionalism for the last 50 years.

The first line on the official page of the Direct Debit Guarantee: 'Every organisation using Direct Debit is inspected and vetted by the banks before they’re allowed to collect your money.' Guys, I think you need to add 'Does this political party actually exist?' to that careful vetting.

Are you even a party until you have a version of CLPD? (To be fair, much of the membership of this faction may well in fact be CLPD.)

To be honest, if I lived in Grays, probably the most depressing place I've ever visited in Britain, I'd probably be up for spying for whichever foreign power was in the bidding. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Don’t think I’ve ever been on a short-haul, low-cost airline flight that has boarded over an hour before departure time before. I guess everyone wants to get home early if there are no stragglers.

Tenerife South Airport is an extraordinarily difficult place to spend any money after 10pm, which is not a phrase I really associate with airports. Even the cow was being pulled in for the night, bell tolling.

I’m assuming the ‘(T)’ is for ‘Tenerife’, in the manner of ‘Rainham (Kent)’, to prevent any very understandable confusion.

At least I get to use my favorite Santa Cruz bus station again. Lovely discovery: in Canarian Spanish, buses are called ‘guagua’, basically pronounced ‘wha-wha’. In Chilean and Peruvian Spanish, the same word means - for obvious onomatopoeic reasons - a baby. Enjoying the serendipity.

I am full of admiration for the driver of the number 20 bus from Tenerife North. He is at once going out of his way to be helpful and polite to a multinational crowd struggling with the 27 million ways to pay, while also making it clear he hoped to use his turnaround time to read his novel.

When I booked my dirt cheap flight home with self-transfer between Tenerife North and South airports, I didn’t fully appreciate the distance in question. Ah well, we’ve survived the bit into Basicallt-So-Foggy-That-It-Caused-The-Worst-Ever-Air-Accident-So-We-Largely-Replaced-It International.

It amuses me that Binter basically admit ‘Our tiny planes get so warm that we’re going to hand you out branded cardboard fans before take-off’. I was hoping the safety demonstration was going to include that dramatic thing Spaniards do with their wrists (and a fan, you filthy hounds).

When it comes to music, the barman at El Hierro airport knows what he likes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the theme song to Ghost Busters on constant repeat.

Seems very silly to be losing 500m of altitude on the bus from Valverde to the airport. I’m only going to have to gain it all again.

I feel the municipal librarian of Valverde leans towards the more traditional school.

Best of neighbours, Valverde.

Took the bus to the mirador, innit. (This is the location where Google Maps sometimes suggests a public transport route from the port to La Restinga where you take a bus that terminates at the hotel at the bottom, then ‘transfer on foot’ up this 1000m cliff, to catch the bus I’ve just got off.

Generally interesting vibes to this bus stop.

Two council maintenance workers are having their mid-morning break at the table next to me (they do a great job - La Restinga is pristine). One of them is using the moment to have a long phone call in perfect US Business School English about the off-plan apartments he is flogging. #SideHustle

“I’m not tired, I’m not tired!” he continues to insist as they show him the evidence of the WhatsApp message with a picture ‘of all the cute stray kitties that hang out by the hotel’ that he just sent to an airline rather than his wife.

Well no one else on the terrace seems to think this is at all weird. Some sort of underwater fishing? The wind means the angler fish are getting a really good rate on electricity and are leaving all the lights on?

Well I’d better do my duty and start exploring El Hierro’s cheese and volcanic wine, I guess. (And pimentos de pardon, which I aren’t hugely local but I need no encouragement to eat enough to sink a matador of.)

Under pumice and over-deliver.

there are some nice panels in the station itself. Before climbing to Foix, you passed the former site of the Camp du Vernet. First, a French internment camp for undesirable foreigners, then relieved as-is by the Nazis. The flower of pan-European antifascism passed there, including Koestler

I believe the paths the moose take are quite predictable in general. We have a word called «elgtråkk» (literally «moose step (as in the verb not the noun)») which is the general path that moose usually take. So I think that’s why they know where there is heightened risk of moose

In Danish “the bog-woman is brewing”

Hei hei from the Hvalross in Vardø, a fish port on a butterfly-shaped island in the Barents Sea, starting point for the #Schengen200 adventure. Schengen is 40 in 2025 and we’re attempting the longest point-to-point journey within it, by public transport, in about 200 hours. bsky.app/profile/poli...

Fleeing the country. On our way to start the next, most ambitious (and probably last for a good while) Travelling Turtle adventure. Even with help from this weird aerial form of transport, it’s going to take a long time to get to the starting point, so join me on Sunday afternoon for #Schengen200

My respect for Badenoch would have gone up quite a bit if her response to Dorries defecting had been ‘And I was just about to recognise her many years of service to party and country by making her a Tory life peer in the forthcoming honours list.’

A woman’s place is in the Home Office.

Truly nothing says ‘I love the city I run’ like ‘But on the other hand, Riyadh is lovely at this time of year.’

I will judge for myself the gentleness of your reminder, thank you very much.

Hope someone’s done the due diligence over whether rod licenses for the lake at Chevening are transferable.

Concerned that the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has not been able to get through to me on the electric telephone this afternoon as I’ve been trying to work out if the call from a Spanish ferry company was a scam or not. (I think, on balance, not.)

It’s like that scene with the wall in In The Loop, but with the knob on the US side turned up to 100.

Galaxy Brain: Taking her out of the incredibly unpopular cabinet for 18 months or so, leaving behind a decent legacy of leftist policies enacted actually enhances her chances

At least 20 seconds were spent writing the lyrics.

Be fascinated to know what Farage thinks of the original Nadine Dorries version of the Online Safety Bill. ‘Cos if you think what actually passed into law is an assault on free speech, well… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Everything else aside, it really out to be seen as weirder that the Shadow Justice Minister keeps making weighty interventions on a policy matter not in his portfolio. It’d be widely seen as bizarre if, for example, Heidi Alexander kept giving interviews about NHS policy. But a shrug for Jenrick?