When local authorities massage the entitlement of aggressive drivers instead of protecting vulnerable road users (VRUs), they are accepting their average road death & injury toll as normal. Also they risk some unbalanced driver, attitude to VRUs unchallenged, snapping like Paul Doyle in Liverpool.

Am I the only person distracted by the blanked out Elizabeth Tower clock, every time the BBCTV News does a parliamentary piece? I suppose someone complained because they relied on it to be on time. Can't they animate it instead? I stare at it, thinking this, instead of listening to the presenter.

How is GBN allowed to get away with this, when one of the first statements the academics make is that Somali communities in the UK are commited to FGM being eradicated. www.bristol.ac.uk/policybristo...

Part of Chepstow Castle.

I made a gluten-free, vegan, rich fruit and nut cake for Christmas, tray-bake style. Big mistake. It allowed me to take a test slice without spoiling the shape. Only half the cake now remains. I'm going to have to make another. Now I know why celebration cakes tend to be round.

Keir Starmer needs to stand up for the BBC against Trump's outrageous $5bn lawsuit and protect licence fee payers from being hit in the pocket. Trump wants to interfere in our democracy and undermine our national broadcaster. We cannot let him.

Surely another candidate for the George Cross, sadly posthumously, alongside Ahmed al Ahmed. Both these men risked their lives, one losing his, trying to stop the Bondi attack and succeeding in causing delays that will have reduced the death toll.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is addressing the Dutch parliament, Powerfully, in English.

@bbcnewsnight.bsky.social is wasting valuable news time debating potential replacements for Keir Starmer (after priming West Streeting on the subject as a bridge). I will be interested in this when Starmer is on rubber legs, not before. They could have discussed something important with the time!

When daughter Rachel made a wedding breakfast speech for her younger sister.

I just heard on BBC News @bbcnews-uk-rss.bsky.social that ⅓ of us still buy physical calendars (Germany buys most, then UK, then France). I'm one of them, and chose this #RNLI one for 2026: #Lifeboats #art #artist

This is cruel, and just one cruelty amongst many. I would be only distantly concerned, but the US is still shifting the Overton window fascist-wise and dragging sycophant nations with them, including ours.

Around 1:30 today in Wiltshire. The sun is so low! Jubilee Lake, Royal Wootton Bassett.

Muppets Christmas Carol is the best Christmas movie bc it includes a song with the lyrics, "your future is a horror story written by your crimes" & nothing says Christmas cheer more than that. Also Michael Caine deserved all the awards for that performance. Perfection. No notes.

Hoe did this not cross my news feed, first time around?

Why Trump will fail on the economy

Putin bragged to foreign journalists that his forces had taken the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk. President Zelenskyy showed up instead and showed the world that Russia wasn't even there.

There have been no small boat channel crossings for a month. Granted, the weather has been awful, but I didn't hear opposition politicians blaming the calm channel weather for increased numbers over summer 2025, yet happy to take credit for low 2024 figures during one of the worst summers for years.

Too windy for Pen-y-Fan even without a stiff back, thanks to Storm Bram, but still plenty of more sheltered walks.

YHA Brecon Beacons. As a member, I got my midweek dorm bed for under £17. I could have had a private 2-berth room for under £30. And you can see the hills when the trees are bare.

My story "Vanya and the Dog Witch" is now free-to-read at www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/vany.... Please check it out! I am highly biased, but I think it's pretty good. (Note: please support BCS by pledging to their Patreon or buying e-books. I want them healthy to buy more stories!)

PLUS news from the Rotten Boroughs of Bristol, Dover, Lambeth, Derbyshire, and Doncaster in the new Eye. AS WELL AS a Reform round-up. 🧵4/4

Another plug for my sister's newly published children's storybook, a gentle tale of a young Canada goose who was afraid to fly and so was abandoned on Gleneagles Golf Course, never mentiined by name, but with features recognisable in the illustrations. A gentle story www.amazon.co.uk/Gossamer-Goo...

The visa requirements for the USA. It's only missing handing over your firstborn child.

I used to work for an American company and there was always the possibility of moving out there. You honestly couldn't pay me enough to even try to visit there now

I just watched a BBC Breakfast piece on Jackanory. I remember I watched it every day. It only occurs to me now, in my 70th year, how I managed that, being clearly an ADHD personality with 4 siblings. It was Mother! She made sure we were all in front of the TV at the right moment, just before teatime

Someone has been busy with the windows at #YHA Brecon Beacons and I thought it deserved a wider audience:

My sister has written and illustrated a children's book set on Gleneagles Golf Course about a gosling who was afraid to fly and so missed the migration. It's a cosy read for 8+ year olds and easily understood if read to 4+ year olds.

There is one overriding political problem, from which all others follow. Until it is addressed, every policy advanced by governments is window dressing. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

I Suspect there is no shortage of American craft cheeses for those who can find the suppliers. The fact that most supermarkets ignore it doesn't mean it's not there. Same with bread thst doesn't taste like cake. If the US can do good wines, they can do the cheese that accompanies it.

News media being largely consumed online is a rubbish reason for refusing to reinstate the Leveson Inquiry phase 2. The dirt the diggers desire may be being smeared onto screens rather than sold on streets, but what they unearth is still lucrative, still personal & still destroying innocent lives.

Malfoy waves letters from Crabbe and Goyle to prove he was not a bully at Hogwarts. The two sidekicks agree with him that it was just harmless 'banter' and never malicious. Also it was ages ago!

I’m loving Doctor Who spinoff The War Between The Land and The Sea. I think they could have made a lot more of the “Here, have your sh!t back!” scene. We’ve dumped some pretty terrible stuff out there. Also, I expected to see at least _some_ fishing nets!

Dunk’s sentence is vindictive. There is often a particular vehemence when things inconvenience motorists. Today, a peaceful protester got 26 months. A man who destroy the lives of 3 people with online libellous incitement received a suspended sentence as he’s ‘no danger’. @zackpolanski.bsky.social

Swindonians are wondering where the prosperity is, in the light of this data. This prosperity isn't for them, though. They are PRODUCING more wealth per person than similar towns and cities; they aren't receiving it themselves. It's shareholders and CEOs who are laughing all the way to the bank.

Although Brexit was and still is an economic and social tragedy, the fact that it happened is proof that every member state that remains in the EU does so through choice. The USA's current regime is mistaken when stating that the EU undermines national sovreignty. Could California cede from the USA?

The calls from America this weekend to "abolish the EU" are for one simple reason: the EU is the only thing that can keep European nation-states from becoming Russian or American vassals.

It is indeed!

Carbuncle on the arse of humanity Joey Barton has received a suspended sentence for his sustained online abuse of Jeremy Vine and female football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko. His apparent motive was to drive engagement to his podcast. There must be a few other toxic influencers mildly panicked.

Of course the town was crowded; it was Christmas! (credit: Dave Allen, comedian)

How stupid does a person have to be, to believe that a foreign Oligarch is giving Farage £9million just because they're bezzies? Answers on a postcard please to N. Farage MP Constituency office, Clacton-on-Sea.

Poll: Was FIFA openly mocking Donald Trump in front of the entire planet? Yes or No

Has Laura Kuenssberg #BBCLauraK got a new set dresser who is into brand awareness (or maybe tagging)? I noticed last week that LK now fills what was a blank QE Tower clock, on the background graphics, and now see another LK logo on the BBC building, in addition to the main banner LK, centre set.

Putin has definitely seen the Epstein files.

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

Authors, I am judging you by the typo count in your published works. Half a dozen typos that don't obscure meaning over the whole volume is the limit. Any more, or any that obstruct flow and meaning, should have been proofread out. Also...

Why am I not surprised? @europeanmovement.co.uk @politico.eu @ec.europa.eu dorseteye.com/exposed-how-...

How does global warming cause colder winter storms? whowhatwhy.org/2019/11/23/t...

Worst World Cup draw ever. Best bit so far was the kids explaining to Rio Ferdinand how the draw works. Two pigging hours!

Farage defends himself. Watch. Was the BBC as bad as Farage's bullying of Peter Ettedgui who had German Jewish grandparents? "it was almost like a kind of gut reflex when he saw me ... He regularly would come up to me and say 'Hitler was right' and he'd also come up to me, and he'd go, 'gas them',"