greatest book ever written

The alarming longterm trend is that any book that gets big will gradually have its proper audiobook replaced, or never made, in favour of a really shit radio play.

This is nuts. Do read while eating. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

"Just cut spending" is the mirror image of "just tax the rich": a) it's not that simple b) inevitably you end up doing spending more / collecting less c) people insist on seeing failure of successive govts to do it as "didn't want it hard enough" not "more complex than that" d) and persist saying it

Removing benefits from those with indefinite leave to remain will leave 100,000s of families facing destitution. And if you think that mass impaired child development, a mental and physical health crisis is in the national interest, I'm afraid you simply aren't thinking things through.

Bravo.

“So I leant over, tapped her on the cleavage with a pastry fork, I said my mother gave birth to twins in an unheated wash house and then got straight back up and finished the mangling, so think on.” RIP, Patricia Routledge.

The Mail says that they can run a false front-page headline by the smallprint attributing the false claim to Mr Farage

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

I do not understand what Labour think the immigration system is for. I accept there are many possible answers here but what is their ideology that drives this?

For many years there was a legend that a horse and cart fell down inside a concrete pier during construction of Glenfinnan viaduct. It was only until 2001 that modern scanning technology proved that the accident had in fact occurred here at the nearby Loch nan Uamh Viaduct. #industrialarchaeology

Locomotion No.1 has arrived in #Darlington. What a fantastic event for #Railway200.

You know how like all men think they could play for England or whatever? I secretly believe that with just a little training I could be an assassin and nothing about my recent progress thru Heathrow belies that. Thank you for your attention to this matter

I felt bereft in 2016. This, with a party saying they are going to kick out people with *indefinite* leave to remain, makes me feel bereft again. This is not the Britain I thought I lived in in early-2016, and it just seems to get worse 😭. I didn’t vote Labour just for the economics!

Sam Altman’s description of ChatGPT Pulse is practically a sales pitch for an ad network. You tell ChatGPT your favorite vacation destinations and later on it gives you “updates” about these destinations? 🤔 Sounds like ads.

A crazy situation www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

For all those claiming that Britain is going to pot, wife and I traveled on the London tube twice today. Both times someone gave up seat for wife; second time someone gave up seat for me as well. In addition, the people giving up their seat were of three different ethnicities. Well done London!

I don’t know about you, but I’m still sort of processing that the US president stood up in the UN and declared that London is about to be under Sharia law, and the response has been “actually, that won’t happen” rather than “Jesus, that is insane.”

"To prove fiction, indeed, there is need of fiction; but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth." Jeremy Bentham, 1776.

It is a truth too often unacknowledged, that a populist in possession of the public's rage must be in perpetual want of an enemy.

Yes, you can and should argue that Reform’s new policy would lead to an economic crash that could resemble a full-on depression, not just recession. But you should also be able to straightforwardly say it’s *wrong*. Not that it should matter but: It’s not even bad politics to say that!

“15m downloads a month and more than half their audience is under 35.” Good read on the success of The Rest Is History pod. Strikes me that mainstream broadcasters dumbing down history to “OMG #iconic” spoon-fed shite left a huge gap that they’re filling www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Hang on, I thought the exodus of non-doms had turned the City of London into a wasteland.... www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

This is absolutely not what Christ wants. (I would also like to think that the Great British public will look at them and go “yuck, weirdos”, but I do not like this totally illegitimate attempt to claim the Cross for hatred against immigrants).

There’s a real generational divide between Labour MPs leaking to the Guardian and Labour MPs leaking to the Huffington Post

So am I. My conclusion is that most columnists are just making it up for the clicks and, thus, their salary. (#notallcolumnists)

Last week for @ftweekend.com and @financialtimes.com I took you on a tour of three classic bars. This week: three classic restaurants, namely Rules, Quo Vadis and Bentleys. You want edgy? You’ve come to the wrong place. And to access my FT reviews head to the LinkTree in bio.

Bottom trawling is incredibly and depressingly destructive, and the new footage in the Ocean documentary makes that very clear. It’s not only unnecessary, but counter-productive. And yet the UK government has just decided against a blanket ban. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Interesting.

Apple says iPhone users snapped 500,000,000,000 selfies last year. With roughly 1.56 billion active iPhones in use, that works out to more than 320 selfies per user annually. 🤳

"Online privacy is fucked so we don't see why we should be bound by any rules to preserve our users' online privacy wait what who fucked online privacy in the first place, nothing to do with us, guv."

Slightly diminish a book: Murder on the Gatwick Express

No idea what’s going on, but isn’t the Mall in London amazing as a pedestrian street? A place for people, not metal boxes. More of this!

Honey, weve all been there.

"Morgan this wasn't on the grid" "well it is now"

This is the Platonic Ideal of a Bluesky thread

London's mudlarks at war: feuds, fights and slurs on the shoreline. It's a Bank Holiday so for one day only, I'm making this brilliant piece by @susborne.bsky.social free to read. There's also an experimental one day flash sale for the first 25 people! www.londoncentric.media/p/london-mud...

Here's an envelope I illustrated, which will be auctioned with other designs by celebs to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society. I'll post details of how you can bid in due course. Reposts appreciated. #caricature #art

wow, all it took was one week of restricted access to porn.

We chose marginally lower fuel costs/income over maintaining decent road infrastructure for a decade and a half. Remind the next person who complains about potholes of this. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🎶 Straight from the Lab to the Mic: when a Pasteur scientist turns her thesis into a rap 🎶 #FeteDeLaMusique

Finally, I can post this video I've been hanging on to since somebody sent it to me.

HIGHLY SPECIFIC REQUEST! I am looking for a school librarian who would be prepared to read a book proposal & give (brief) feedback. If you know anyone who might be able to help, please shout!

But they are all patriots and love their mums. Tinder box Britain latest. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Our first funeral using the amazing Loop living coffin. It was not made, rather it has been grown, in just eight days, by injection mycelium spores into a frame filled with recycled hemp fibre. The mushroom eats the hemp fibre, and upon burial, helps the body breakdown much quicker. Genius.

Road deaths are a policy choice.

Sometimes the historical dictionary offers solace through the existence of an obsolete word that is sorely needed now. One of them is ‘respair’, recorded just once, in the 15th century. It means fresh hope, and a recovery from despair.