It's like two student debaters play-acting a PMQs session, with extras roped in from the pub to pretend to be MPs

“The $65 billion should be placed in an unmarked federal appropriations bill—if it isn’t, that will be the end of your precious Minnesota,” read the note, a handmade letter assembled from magazine clippings and sent with what ICE claimed was the severed finger of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Liz Truss waiting patiently by her phone for Reform to ring, not realising it's actually a penguin biscuit

And planned to invade the Canary Islands if Germany assisted Spain in invading Gibraltar during WWII. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati...

Standing on the correct part of a Tube platform for the smoking carriages.

The detention of Noriega in 1969 is clearly the closest precedent for the Maduro operation. But events in Caracas remind me of a now-forgotten episode in which the US invaded a Commonwealth Caribbean state, giving the UK Gov’t a few hours’ notice and ignoring their objections 1/9

Joey interacting with Wild London.

I have not so fond memories of St Sepulchre, Holborn Viaduct, when I first sang there in the 90s - the gas fired hot air heating had to be turned off at least 20 minutes before a rehearsal or service to allow the organ to settle into tune, and even with the heating on it was a very cold building.

Since everything is awful and it’s nearly Christmas, who’d like some pictures of ship’s cats? Don’t worry dog lovers, a canine thread’s coming soon! Let’s start with Tiddles, sitting in his favourite spot on the carrier HMS Victorious in 1943 (he liked playing with the bell rope) 📷 IWM A 10646 🧵1/17

The complete Bayeux Tapestry has finally been released and proves that Bishop Odo had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal Norman invasion of England.

The latest Brexit & Brexitism blog post. I'm only a couple of paras in and there's already a winner: 'As for Frost, he shows the self-awareness of a toilet seat. One might as well expect Liz Truss to refrain from pontificating about “sensible economic policy”'.

I could’ve sworn the Telegraph led accusations of the BBC skewing its news output but that can’t be right

I believe anyone could have done better than Johnson. Here's a quiz I made to prove it.

Let’s have a look at a crazy Twitter to newspaper pipeline story and debunk as we go! 🔎👍🏼 16th Nov the “Britain is Broken” account shared the following post claiming “Tesco are no longer celebrating Christmas” With a picture of their “Evergreen” Trees 2.2Million views to date🙄 🧵1/26

This cartoon gets more and more relevant with every passing day

Look, for fuck’s sake, humans have been migrating continuously for our entire existence. Every single human in the world is the product of migration. It’s what humans do. There is nothing *more* human. That’s never going to change. Just grow up, get the fuck over it and plan accordingly.

Really looking forward to hearing @seasideferry.bsky.social talking at the Folkestone Book Festival on Wednesday. A seaside town steeped in history, always keen to hear new interpretations. www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/the...

Ah the 1970s. Stagflation, three day weeks, collapsing infrastructure. Civil War in Northern Ireland. In yer face racism and bigotry everywhere. Bin strikes. Strikes in general. Blackouts. Industrial decline. Wage inequality. Dog crap everywhere. And households spent 25% of their income on food.

"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate" was mostly unspecified magic fairy pixie bullshit then, and it's not going to get any more realistic in the hands of a bunch of Reform clowns who don't know how anything works, don't care to learn and disdain anyone that might.

There has been much speculation about the Grade II-listed building's future Read more here: www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/n...

A week on from the end of BST and the cats are still WHY IS BREAKFAST AN HOUR LATE?

A bison calf only a couple of days old at Blean Woods, part of the Wildwood experimental introduction of a herd of bison to a large area of woodland to see how they increase biodiversity and all that woke stuff.

On #BBCQT - Fiona Bruce said that the audience and public didn't want to press Reform UK on their dodgy links to Russia. I disagree. RT if you agree it's in the public interest for Reform to explain about their links to Russian money and bribery!

Next time Farage or one of his mates is on Question Time getting applause for stopping/reversing immigration, may I suggest the following riposte: 'Everyone who just applauded needs to think hard what they were applauding. Without significant immigration, this country will become a catastrophe.' /1

Decades of personalist rule turned Argentina into a global economic laughingstock, Scott Lincicome argues. Donald Trump seems to have misunderstood the lesson.

The old garden swing on a tree IT gag about what the customer wanted, what the analyst designed, what the engineer implemented etc etc has been around for over half a century. The principle still applies in these wondrous days of AI...

Oh the humanity!

A fantastic day at Ashford Maintenance Depot to celebrate 200 years of railways. #Railway200 @serailway.bsky.social‬

Very interesting statistics. As you can see, the number of visitors affected by 90/180 is literally miniscule. The number of people who want to spend 91 rather than 89 days is tiny, and the extra spend - the benefit to Spain - is microscopic. 1 H/t @quieroserabuela.bsky.social

People can feel sympathy for Lucy Connolly over the scale of sentence she got after pleading guilty. But the appeal found her evidence demonstrably not credible on what she knew/did not know about the sentence before her guilty plea. Her media interviews repeat those false claims

Last night fighting an ex Liz Truss minister (for goodness sake) on Newsnight about what to do about asylum accommodation. Pitch forks are dictating UK asylum policy now. 🤦‍♀️ My thanks as always to the brilliant @implausibleblog.bsky.social for the clip ❤️🙏 www.youtube.com/watch?v=8auh...

MP3, the file extension that revolutionised the music industry, is 30! The audio codec that led to the rise of the iPod & Napster was created by a team at @fraunhofer.bsky.social IIS and named mp3 in July 1995 after an internal email poll. The first song saved to mp3: Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner.

One of those headlines that could only have appeared in the Onion a few years ago, now is apparently a genuine quote. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Following Braverman’s lead, I am going to rewrite my mortgage contract with my bank, stripping out my obligation to pay interest or repay the loan, and replacing them with obligations on the the bank to pay for repairs on my home.

1970s employment rate: 72% Today’s employment rate: 75%

Brexit:

One other 7/7 thread today. Because I think how the bus network got running again is a real testament to some serious heroes that day: The bus drivers and staff who got that network running again and got London home that night. And TfL/the Mayor disobeyed the Security Services to make it happen /1

This post seems to have upset Douglas Carswell, which is a terrible shame.

Is this the kernel of the problem? Is it the unwillingness to acknowledge that Europe is a legitimate world actor. At this point, it's a hang-up And is that reflex rejection what is actually stopping the UK moving towards Europe? The history is interesting. A 🧵

Went to Wimbledon for the first time. The tennis was fun and the strawberries not as expensive as I’d imagined but MY GOD, that place makes Lord’s look like The Wheeltappers and Shunters. It was like somebody’d emptied out Hampshire. Like an explosion in a Ralph Lauren factory.

It's here! It's finally here! It's Daniel Hannan Day! The future he promised everyone a mere 2 days before the Brexit referendum is so exciting, I think my heart may burst with joy when I step outside and experience it for myself. (Read it. You deserve a laugh.) www.reaction.life/p/britain-lo...

The irony of having this in a piece of research about laziness inducing cognitive assistance

Trump's idea of negotiation has always been to use his advantage to bully others into what he wants. When he doesn't have any leverage he is utterly hopeless, because he haw no empathy and is incapable of understanding the motivation of others.

had someone come in to a museum today and ask chatGPT how much it cost to enter and chatGPT gave an imaginary number and the person asked "are you sure it isn't free" and chatGPT went "I am sorry. Yes, entry to this museum is free" and then the person showed me that and demanded free entry

And I stupidly thought the big camera and the microphone was enough

Newly elected REFUK leader of Kent County Council on BBC local news: flying Ukrainian flag from council buildings would be a 'distraction'. Which given UK Govt and popular support for Ukraine actually sounds worse than coming clean and saying 'we don't want woke LGBTQI+ flags on our buildings'.

Labour’s tone and diplomacy may be welcome after years of Tory stupidity and childish belligerence. But on the substance, the differences between the parties are much smaller. Both have told us we can have stuff we can’t because both fundamentally expect the EU to square our circle for us. It won’t.

I find it so sad that this is the only deal Little England will accept. Imagine if Spain said British pensioners can only buy the same number of holiday homes that Spanish OAPs buy in the UK.

Trump Team (2022-24): Peace in Ukraine is so easy, we’ll accomplish it in a day. Trump Team (2025): Hey you, Ukraine, give Putin what he wants. Ukraine: No. Trump Team: Hey you, Europe. Cut off Ukraine so they get scared and surrender. Europe: No, shan’t. Trump Team: Well, we’re out of ideas.