Could we stop with the “violence in Britain / on British streets” comments about Belfast? “The UK” is right there if “Ireland” doesn’t suit your purposes”

This thread has turned into some great fun

For a long time I used to go to bed early (Scott Moncrieff) Time was, when I always went to bed early (James Grieve) Time and again, I have gone to bed early (Richard Howard) Early to bed and stack up the zeds, that was my motto (Me)

« Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure » For a long time, I went to bed early (DeepL) For a long time, I went to bed early (Reverso) For a long time, I went to bed early (Collins) For a long time, I went to bed early (Google Translate) For a long time, I went to bed early (Microsoft Bing)

Matthew’s final World Cup 2026 predictions It’s going to be the most gruelling, unforgiving World Cup ever. The length, the heat, the travel, potentially some bad pitches, and chaos for fans. It will be attritional and ruthless and A-list teams who aren’t On It will go out early.

Three out of 15 Guardian football writers predicting Portugal make it to the World Cup final. I wonder how many of them watched Ireland beating them 2–0 in November.

Big week for Elon Musk, instigating a racist anti-immigrant pogrom on Tuesday, set to become a trillionaire with the backing of all the biggest banks on Friday.

Keir Starmer's spokesman tells me there has been "no change" to the Government's policy on using X, despite Elon Musk helping to incite the hateful scenes we saw in Belfast last night. Also no new plans to take action against X for its role in the violence

Northern Ireland seems, ironically, to be uniquely incapable of confronting 21st century nationalist violence. The“uneasy peace” has been maintained by tolerating the most intolerant elements of society. The PSNI have a “deescalation at any cost” MO. And the political leadership is compromised.

Whoa. Overnight, this ICE flight landed in Tel Aviv. Previous ICE flights to Israel, on small jets, held Palestinians, who remained shackled when transferred to Israeli authorities. They were driven to the West Bank and dumped on the side of the road. This would be the first large jet removal.

"Mins of a meeting of the BBCs Editorial Guidelines & Standards Committee in Mar seen by Byline Times show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter “story selection” & “other types of output such as drama” in order to win the trust of Reform voters"

Elon Musk is still going and I don’t know what to say. Unhinged racism and unmoored violent fantasies. I would say his site should be blocked, but thanks to Starlink he’s beyond reach (which is point of Starlink). Also note that the original post was 12 hours before he found it and replied.

BBC describing riots promoted by Elon Musk on X as "Protests sparked by a stabbing"

It would be too simplistic and not necessarily the way the world works to say that violent energies in Ulster have been bubbling away looking for an outlet ever since 1998, and are now finally finding a permissible target outside the bargains struck back then, but that’s certainly how it looks

Whether it's Donald Trump running a $3 billion crypto scam or Barack Obama asking for Dijon mustard on a hot dog, both presidents tested the limits of Washington norms.

here is the original push notification the BBC really needs to get a grip on these and exercise much more editorial oversight as @batariangal.eurosky.social keeps pointing out

Remembered Marian Finucane in 2014 saying Russia had a legitimate territorial claim over the Donbas

The 2030 World Cup has given me a hard target for getting my driver’s licence. Because I really, really want to drive a campervan around Spain going to loads of World Cup matches.

Excuse me

Just read an interview with an RTE presenter in the Irish Times. Asked to describe themselves in three words, they pick "easy-going" and "garden."

“Agriculture was a mistake” is probably a silly take but I find it even more ridiculous that people get so cross about it

Something I think about a lot is how every language has a set of possible puns, plays on words, rhymes, and similar-sounding words, most of which are the result of pure chance. From an anglophone Christian poet’s point of view it’s a terrific bit of luck that sun/son are homophones. But

Agnostic about the question

Cristiano Ronaldo World Cup Hot Takerediction Incoming He could stink out the place and cost his team but also be in the running for the golden boot by racking up goals against DR Congo and Uzbekistan

"every Parliamentary Question submitted in my name is reviewed, approved and submitted by me" he submitted 2,122 just in May how much of his working week is he claiming to spend on reviewing, approving and submitting PQs?

When are the World Cup wall charts coming in the newspapers? Or have I already missed them?

reading about the May government for a thing and mad, mad, mad that a Conservative Prime Minister said this nine years ago, I hate how much we've lost since then! I hate it so much! www.theguardian.com/society/2017...

More I think about this the odder it gets, bcos you cd say “he’s the man you want the ball to happen to land at the feet of, unmarked, in space, with goal at his mercy” about any old retired striker. It’s possible that Alan Shearer of today would finish a good chance more often than Marc Guehi would

Listening to various pre-World Cup football podcasts and losing so much respect for professional football journalists who still think Ronaldo is a goal threat. In his last 10 Euros and WC matches he has scored one penalty and no open-play goals. Never scored in the knockouts across 5 WCs.

Anyone got recommendations for classic musicals suitable for kids? We’ve done Singin in the Rain and Mary Poppins. Want to show them The Sound of Music but it’s really long so hard to find a time when it suits. Any wholesome and preferably not too relentlessly gender stereotypey tips appreciated!

Elizabeth I's Irish primer digitised – well, photographed www.isos.dias.ie/MARSH/Irish_...

God bless Ireland’s finest living literary critic, Edna Longley, for saying what she thinks in spite of her undoubted personal acquaintance with the people behind the making of a book drb.ie/article/when...

The current prices for solar make eg rooftop solar in the uk appear beneficial but eventually we will have enough solar that the price will be 0 in all the hours you get solar power so you won’t actually get repaid.

Since utility solar has much lower all in cost eventually the price of electricity at the good times for solar will be too low to actually pay for replacement. It’s why eg in Australia it doesn’t now make sense to put solar on houses, they already have enough utility solar to depress prices.

Obsessively tinkering with this. So many juicy fixtures. If you presume every group is won by the favourite, 2nd favourite comes 2nd etc, you get Argentina v Uruguay and Netherlands v Morocco in the 2nd round. Big names will be crashing out all over the place! www.theguardian.com/football/ng-...

I love both Maron and Stone and this makes me love them even more. A pair of legends doing legendary behaviour together. variety.com/2026/film/ne...

WIDOW’S BAY on Apple TV: strong recommend.

“In this game pretend I’m a baker but you don’t know my secret. My secret is that I have powers. But you don’t know that. OK?”

HR people of whatever gender are often nice people who got into it because of their empathy and people skills, but ultimately when you are being made redundant or subject to disciplinary action, it’s your union rep going to battle against the HR functionary who is a proxy for the company itself

This is the big thing Labour needs to understand. By moving rightwards themselves on immigration they're just pushing the right further to the extremes because this is their main issue and they can never say "yeah labour's sorted it"

I specifically requested no more metaphors

Supervillains

After consulting with my attorney I’ve been advised that what I actually want to say about this would be ill-advised so I’ll just say that he couldn’t possibly be clearer about which side of D-Day he’s identifying with

Brilliant piece by Ken Early in the paper today about the shit show this World Cup promises to be. Half empty stadiums. Pitches in poor condition. Weather chaos. Each half will be interrupted by an ad break. And teams that lose two matches will make it to the second round.

According to my climate change theory of everything we should actually expect lots of other, more localised instances of world governments just blundering headlong into ever-intensifying crises as ways of distracting from the overarching one. Alcoholic-type behaviour

“A junior cycle pupil in Co Galway got quite the surprise this week when a poem written by his mother, and inspired by him, came up in the English paper during this year's State exams.” 🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪

Impossible to imagine a photo like this of two male boxers

Last night Republicans were supported by Ilhan Omar, when trying to shoot down the Ukraine Bill. They failed in the House, but let it sink in: Mike Johnson, 193 Republicans and Ilhan Omar in the same corner and united on a foreign policy issue.