#Kuennsberg: 3 minutes in, four mentions of Reform 'policies' already. The BBC is editorially unbalanced.

Oh, what a waste. Crackpot bill incoming... BBC News - Sir Desmond Swayne tops private members bill ballot www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It's nagged at me for years. Who does #arthistorian #AndrewGrahamDixon remind me of every time I see him? It's the late actor #DavidBattley. Battley right, Graham-Dixon left, or maybe the other way round. Battley made his name in comedy, so I've always assumed AGD's programmes are comedic, frankly.

So incredibly sad: three daughters, young women lost in a single moment. My heart goes out to the family. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Whole morning with JMWT today, my birthday. Pure joy!

Win = run amok. Lose = run amok. Our problem in Britain is thuggery, isn't it? BBC News - Riot police deal with 'serious disorder' as Celtic fans celebrate Premiership title win www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What I've never understood about Brexity folk is how they can bleat on about 'the flaaag', how great we are etc. and then say we were the cowering victims of naughty foreigners in the EU. Make up your tiny minds: are we mighty or cringing?

At #SomersetHouse where flag-bedecked folk who are short of gorm left the Yaxley-Lennon 'march' and are dumfounded to find peaceful people ignoring them.

The ridiculous fashion of the moment is contrarianism - if you say the sky is blue, a bunch of 'ordinary voters' vox popped by the BBC will swear blind it isn't. #Burnham isn't home and dry. BBC News - What does Makerfield make of by-election and can Burnham win? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'We have a simple choice: do we want to spend this parliament fighting the Tories or fighting among ourselves? You don’t offer an olive branch whilst holding a baseball bat.' #WesStreeting, 2017. Strange how people change.

'I am by instinct a team player – I’m not a maverick. So, when there is a team and there is a kind of collective position, I’ll play, I’ll do it. I always did it as a minister, always will now.' - @andyburnham.bsky.social in 2011. Funny how people change.

First, the topics covered by UK legislation to be announced in the #KingsSpeech; then, the topics of concern to UK voters according to recent @ipsosintheuk.bsky.social polling. The level of disconnect is extraordinary.

He doesn't get it! Extraordinary! I can hear it now: 'We'll address voters' concerns about force deployment in the Balkans, naval building will be augmented by 24.6%, and subsection 47(b) of the TCA will be renegotiated to reduce phytosanitary dissonances...' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Prediction on #localelections in England: @labouruk.bsky.social will lose a lot of seats and still not understand why, @reformuk.bsky.social will pick up many but not enough to hold more than a couple of extra councils. #Conservatives will lose out, and some of their councils will move to NOC.

And now #Reform are resorting to blackmail. Weird party. Weird times.

First #Trump wanted the Strait opened, then to close it, then demanded it was open again, then said the US would guide ships through it, but now says that the US won't. Even the most clueless #MAGA people must be seasick with the gyrations necessary to believe this idiot knows what he's doing.

Do yourself a favour before you vote. Just search, say, the BBC website for stories about #Reform. Read the reports. They're truly hopeless: inept, divided, racist, misogynistic, clueless. It's your council tax money, do you really want this barrel of hopeless ineptitude in charge of it?

Dear BBC, One simple question. When does the snooker end? Is it going to be on forever from now on?

The waters in the #StraitsOfHormuz - why can't he just...part them?

Cancel the King's state visit, now. BBC News - No 10 says Falklands sovereignty rests with UK after report of US 'review' - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Dear #America, it is #StGeorgesDay and #ShakespearesBirthday, so - with your current travails under the Orange Blot - I give you lines from Macbeth spoken by Malcolm: 'I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.'

#Iran is playing #Trump like a fiddle. He'll now drop blockading and revert to 'keep it open'. The man's neither stable nor a genius. (But he is 'very' - annoying, that is). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

During periods of so-called 'mania' #GeorgeIII was often frantic, used lots of words to say very little, imagined himself to be the King of Prussia or talking with angels. His personal hygiene was poor and he made unwanted advances to women. Remind you of anyone, #America?

#Starmer's government really wants to alienate everyone doesn't it? #ShabanaMahmood says she's like to 'taser and deport' political opponents. In the current frenetic political atmosphere in the west, this can't stand. It's an *appalling* thing to say. www.thenational.scot/news/2603938...

The Hindujas, Deripaska, Geoffrey Robinson, Epstein, the Millenium Dome fiasco. Sleaze, vanity, deflecting blame. Westminster people, some advice. Never. Touch. #Mandelson. Again. [Image: UKinUSA from Washington, D.C., USA, CC-BY]

With #OllyRobbins testimony surely public trust in #Starmer has now gone?

And now Mr #Starmer has decided his popularity isn't low enough - he's pressing forward with proposals to ban phones in schools to alienate young people. Short of shooting David Attenborough I can't see much more he can do to hit rock bottom polling in May. It's a government with a death wish.

I wished the government well when elected but, gosh, do they try your patience! How can you personally as #KeirStarmer in your role as PM suggest #Mandelson (!!) for Ambassador KNOWING he'll be vetted and then NOT ASK ABOUT THE RESULT OF THE S***ING VETTING?!? It. Makes. No. Sense!

'The decision [by the FCDO] was that I wasn't to know and nobody else was to know' say Keir #Starmer. In what world does *any* of this make sense? Why would civil servants decide NOT to tell the PM about failed vetting unless the PM was being protected from knowing but approving of Mandelson?

I don't know what to make of Mr #Starmer. It's almost as if every week he looks at polling data and says 'How can I make @labouruk.bsky.social 's poll ratings *worse* today? There's a total lack of even the vaguest political nous. That or he's listening to the world's worst political advisers.

The BBC is showing old #AntiquesRoadshow episodes from 25 years ago. Old AR: 'Look at the sweep of the cabriole legs on this 1780 mahogany neoclassical Secretaire.' New AR: 'So you were actually at this Swelled Puffins gig all the way back in 1988 and Zigg signed it?' Dumbed down. Totally.

I give you the *hopeless* #RAC. My wife - lone female, car failing to start, stuck in a remote location, called RAC for assistance at 1030 this morning. ETA for the superdeluxe service from this bunch of charlatans? 1130 this evening. 'Complete peace of mind' is their registered mark. Idiots!

Can we all - among the public and in 'political circles' - agree that Mr #Mandelson should never, ever again be anywhere near places of power and influence? Never, and no 'fourth chance'.

Staggering, given the #Mandelson past, you didn't check!!

'And she'll never spend her salary in the shops, or pay someone to fix the plumbing, so that the rest of the economy vanishes, the Tech Bros end up with all the cash and the underclass embraces 90% of the population. Good times, eh?'

An advert promoting an AI company at Bristol Airport has been pulled after backlash. The advert showed a female AI worker who will 'never ask for a raise'.

When I saw this first I thought maybe his next move to deflect from #Epstein was to come out as gay.

Para 216 of volume 2 has a stinging reproach for the killers' parents. Sir Adrian blames them for 'a total avoidance of responsibility...[so that] they bear a very considerable degree of responsibility for the appalling events of 29 July 2024.' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Amazed at US #media: you give the most inveterate liar a break every time. #Trump says something, you find evidence it is untrue, then he denies saying it, you report that, then watch him move onto another lie. For goodness sake, do your job. Show lies where they are!

In the #Pentagon, #Hegseth describes the surviving war aim...

Hey #MAGA, how's that swamp draining going? www.citizensforethics.org/reports-inve....

So #Hegseth's #Pentagon drunk with power has now threatened the Scouts and the #Pope. Who next? Flower arrangers? Hikers? The under fives? What an insane #America now stalks the world like a playground bully.

Thinking of voting #ReformUK? Here are just a few recent BBC stories about them - not opinions but reports of their own behavior. They're evidently grifting, incompetent, bigoted, loudmouths you'd want nowhere near your council services - and your council tax money.

Can we all just remember, as this weird man-baby threatens NATO again, that his tantrum over #Iran had no basis in law, there was no evidence of an attack upon a NATO member, and that it was conducted as negotiations were in train? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#Lecce - so unwelcoming the churches have bouncers kitted out like riot police.

Top: me, gin and tonic in hand in #Lecce, #Puglia. Bottom: Thomas Jones (1742-1803) in #Naples. I suspect Thomas was G&T-less.

An awful decision. The King's Captain-General of the Royal Marines which served in Afghanistan alongside US troops. 60 were killed, 78 seriously injured. Something that Trump denies ever happened. That excrescence you call a President, #America, brings you deep shame. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Recalling all of those Sunday morning 'Letter from America' episodes (before my hearing made it difficult to hear that affable voice) it was a delight to get closer to #AlistairCooke through this. You should too. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Would it not just be cheaper, more productive and economically advantageous to #UAE, #Oman and the #US to create a 'Panama Canal of the Gulf', cut out #Iran from control of shipping and reduce the threat of other piracy? Happy to be told I'm talking nonsense and it's impossible.