Turns out this truly is the perfect start to the day. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Worth 5 minutes of anyone's time to read about Ronnie. Consider having a tissue handy in case something should happen to get in your eye 🥹

How delicately a Romanesque angel uses the lightest touch of a finger to wake one of the magi, snuggled with the other 2 under their embroidered circular blanket at St Lazare, Autun, c1130 (& how beautifully the textures of pillow & blanket are represented). Season's greetings to you all!

Turns out this truly is the perfect start to the day. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

The Embassy staff of Germany, France and the United Kingdom sing Schedryk in the Kyiv underground. Wonderful!

This is going to end with Ed Davey on the run from a CIA hit squad

FFS

No notes.

Thanks to @timbale.bsky.social for his positive and very clear review of our edited book on the history of the centre-right in Northwest Europe. Available on Early View in @politicalquarterly.bsky.social for those who have access. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If betting shops are the ‘heart of the community’, it sounds like letting people gamble alone at home on their phones is encouraging loneliness and should be banned then.

Wish there were still TV programmmes interviewing French critical theorists

"Are there no workhouses?" - new from me on benefit culture, this Christmas.

God jul to everyone celebrating today! (except the Phd schwindler who sent me an AI smelling outline at 3 am on a topic I don’t work on). youtu.be/ZTgM9uK4LT4?...

Final paragraph here is brutally astute.

Harsh but fair. (Source: www.ft.com/content/11a8...)

And they say satire's dead. 😂 "Far from the outdated stereotypes, today’s bookmakers are lively community hubs. During the festive season especially, betting shops take on a special atmosphere filled with excitement, companionship and familiar routine that many people look forward to each year."

Must be a total pain in the proverbial to be sanctioned. On the other hand, being labelled a mastermind must be rather gratifying.

This again. flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/t...

How would you motivate people to study foreign languages? This German caller has the ultimate, definitive answer. [I love this so much 💙]

As ever, it's the squeaky (tractor) wheel that gets the oil.

Immigration salience has less to do with aggregate Immigration numbers than - visibility of boats & asylum > visas - general vibes about integration - elite cues from media & political discourse in shaping public perceptions This is more true when immigration is falling then when it is rising

But it was Trump's plan! Who could possibly have foreseen this happening?

But it was Trump's plan! Who could possibly have foreseen this happening?

From Snape, Suffolk with the solstice sun beaming down on the Alde river... I wish you, my valued followers, peace, joy and love this festive season.

First they came for the birds; then they came for the planes. 😂

Re-upping or anyone wanting to settle (or have) a ding-dong argument over the festive season. 1/2

The bit that gets missed in the scandal around Farage's schooldays is that his school made him a prefect - despite warnings from staff about his conduct. It's a recurring theme for Trump, Johnson, Farage & co. We can't be surprised at the way they behave, when their behavior is constantly rewarded.

Saw it yesterday at the cinema. Five Stars. Cracking tale. Great acting. And morally really interesting.

📢 TODAY @brightblueuk.bsky.social publishes a major new report on reducing victims and abuses of modern slavery in the UK asylum system, proposing 8 new policies. 📘 Read it here: brightblue.org.uk/wp-content/u... 🗞️ Read about it in The Guardian: theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

NEW: Organ tuners have been leaving temperature and humidity records in little-known books for decades. 🎹 They reveal how temperatures inside churches have changed over time due to climate change and increased heating. A new scoop for The Reengineer! www.thereengineer.pro/p/church-org...

Only £15.52 and delivery by Christmas Eve apparently. Get it before the Tories ditch Kemi and render the front cover (but not the basic thesis, that they've become an ersatz populist radical right party and much good it's done them) outdated! www.amazon.co.uk/Conservative...

He's making a list, He's nailing it high, Indulgences, No longer apply, Martin Luther's coming to town

Meanwhile in Australia: Call that a pothole?

Agree with all of this, other than "the right will go 'pro-natalist" - I think what will happen is that much of the right will shift from 'blaming our ills on immigration' to 'blaming our ills on ethnic diversity', which is already happening to an extent.

If he can't get off on a "personal use" excuse then I don't know what Europe's coming to.

The UK will celebrate net emigration and depopulation come 2027. And by 2028 it will start to realise, with an ageing society and low growth, what a really silly thing it has done. The right will go "pro-natalist", the centre-left will be completely stuck.

For anyone who's ever attended the @apsa.bsky.social annual meeting and stayed in one of their recommended hotels (Source: www.economist.com/business/202...)

"When they came to be questioned, the only officers available were from the child protection squad – and the irony of child protection officers questioning Led By Donkeys over the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein because all the regular police were busy protecting Donald Trump … well, it was striking."

Loved this.

We're pick of the year!

Pitch perfect, sadly.

The upshot is that as soon as the next election, there is a good chance Britain’s population could actually be *shrinking*. More on what that means for politics and the economy in today’s @thetimes.com column www.thetimes.com/article/e242...

Not a great analogy in that FT headline, really: if you steady a sinking ship, there’s a good chance it will sink faster.

Two Jews meet at Ben Gurion Airport. One is arriving with his family to live, the other is leaving. Both cite security concerns. I've written for @theobserveruk.bsky.social about Bondi — and whether there is anywhere Jewish people can feel safe.

For anyone who's ever attended the @apsa.bsky.social annual meeting and stayed in one of their recommended hotels (Source: www.economist.com/business/202...)

If Batman was a Santa, would he wear his hat like this, or like this

The grown-ups are back in charge 😂 "Tory officials say Badenoch’s more focused messaging has been helped by a reshuffle in the team around her, including appointing Harry Newman — who advised Boris Johnson when he was PM — as her chief of staff."

🇪🇺🇩🇪 Published Today in @bjpols.bsky.social 🇮🇹🇫🇷 How a voting advice application affected voting behavior in three large-scale field experiments: shorturl.at/2ekBj TLDR of our study (with @simonhix.bsky.social & @rlachat.bsky.social) below 👇 1/14

Fair IMHO.

With all the moral force your victory on a 7% turnout gives you.