Connections Puzzle #835 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 My first ever perfect connections (although that green one WTF?

There should be a high bar for politicians attacking the media, but maybe Ed Davey has half a point here? For example, the first three paragraphs of this BBC story repeat Reform's £243bn figure without saying that the thinktank behind the estimate now disowns it. (This is mentioned in paragraph 35)

Labour cowardice on immigration is pathetic. Why are they too scared to say that immigrants are our friends, colleagues, neighbours and family, and it's great that they are here?

Reform are now coming after people with permanent residency. It'll be citizens next. No one is safe from authoritarian governments.

Labour must finally stand up firmly against a Reform policy. Call it out for the obscenity it is. Starmer has recently finally spoken out against populism and division. What could be more populist and divisive than this? Nor for heaven's sake, don't dodge it, or excuse it. Challenge it.

Fewer nazis and terfs here so mostly much calmer

All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.

Over the weekend, the world's richest man appeared on screens in central London to call for a race war and for the UK government to be overthrown. No arrests were made in connection with that communication.

Our members have had their say - and Pride in Labour is not endorsing any candidate for the Labour Party deputy leadership. It's obvious that the threshold to run in internal election is leaving members with poor choices to vote for.

Imagine what he'll do when he finds out that a senior politician stoked racism and struck fear into the heart of black and brown Britons by giving a speech about immigration where he said that Britain risked becoming "an island of strangers."

Just recently German schlager has had a very rare moment in the British spotlight via Scott Mills love of ‘drinking wine, feeling fine’

My hot take on iOS26 is that Liquid Glass is astonishingly ugly. It feels like a weird middle point between the flat design pioneered by Ives and Forstalls more skeuomorphic tendencies. Maybe I’ll adjust to it but it’s weird bubbly aesthetic just isn’t doing it for me at the moment.

I don’t normally skeet about stuff this dull but wow ios26 really is ugly as hell

Looks like the campaign to ban Musk from the UK is growing legs @theleaduk.bsky.social startafire.co/scramnews/ba...

Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey responds to Elon Musk.

reposting with alt text because this feels incredibly significant. the right-wing disinfo machine means a lot of the people grieving Charlie Kirk never heard any of the things he said that would have tarnished his brand as Guy Who Just Wants to Have Dialogue Across the Aisle

London is one of the best cities in the world and it's extremely obvious that one of the main reasons for that is immigration

Two-tier policing.

Three UK newspapers put this lie on their front pages after the NYT had already published that this wasn't true. Whatever happened to fact-checking?

did a little media criticism www.theverge.com/politics/777...

I’m sure there’ll be corrections in equally prominent positions in each of these papers, yeah?

I’ve now been watching the #totp repeats for long enough to recognise that b*witched’s violinist is the marvellous Bobby Valentino who also did the signature violin part of the Bluebells’ ‘Young at Heart’

Sadiq Khan calling out Zack's use of "social media" instead of calling out the genocide in Mayor's Question Time really is the perfect analogy for why Labour are quite so astoundingly unpopular.

Keeping Mandelson would mean Number 10 thinks not following a recommendation to take specialist tax advice is a resigning matter, but believing the world’s most notorious paedophile over his victims and lying about your post-conviction contact with him isn’t. That’s…not a sustainable position.

as a UK 14 year old who had just got into music big time: * Radio 1 (especially evening shows) * Record Mirror (which felt like the only UK music mag to take dance music and R&B seriously) * Q (absolutely not aimed at me but still helpful) * Richard’s Records, Parrot, & Woolworth’s in Canterbury

Hold up a picture of a private eye front cover: violent arrest, supported by Starmer. Encourage violence against trans people: peaceful arrest, condemned by Starmer as a waste of police time.

Jesus Christ.

This may also explain why I’m still depressed despite being on anti-depressants (On a non-flippant note: blister packs without days of the week on them should be illegal)

2025: the UK now has 1 (one) non-transphobic party leader

It is insane to me that the richest man in the world is using his global megaphone to call for millions of British people to be rounded up and deported (including my family) and somehow this isn’t even news.

is it only asylum seekers our Labour Prime Minister would object to living next to or would the sentiment apply to black and brown people in general? if merely the former, would he like to explain how he knows people he sees, say, in the street, actually are asylum seekers and not citizens?

Keir Starmer has appointed as his new Comms Director Tim Allan who was a board member of the hate group Sex Matters. It's no longer even pretending to adhere to its Manifesto promise to "remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance."

The Fellowship of the Ring

Why would you do this? The original is possibly the darkest comedy I’ve ever seen and all the better for it

Imaani on #totp98 tonight with Where are you?, the UK’s best Eurovision entry of the past 30 years. Also one of closest ever finals, with Dana International winning in the final few votes, and best of all The Netherlands’ Edsilia in fourth

What the Quakers are demonstrating is that including or excluding trans people remains a CHOICE, even after the UKSC judgment. Too many organisations (encouraged by the government and EHRC) want to treat their CHOICE to implement trans-exclusionary policies as “out of their hands”, like the weather

This 👇👇👇is so good. It’s hard do to it this well, but it’s not hard to give the same message.

No overlaps with my list, which is only songs I like, ranked by vibes and perceived popularity

According to various NYC celebs interviewed by the NYT these are this year’s songs of the summer. I feel like the Bluesky pop pollers could do better? @nonoxcol.bsky.social @tomewing.bsky.social (Actual songs of the summer contenders not just personal favourites)

So the only sensible thing to do is not to cede ground, not accept their framing, and hit them back full on. Saying, “well the public believes X (because of a decades-long misinformation campaign) so we must go along with it or stop opposing it”, is craven, weak and profoundly f***ing stupid.

The Times editorial line: "sieve" the entire population so we can put 100s of thousands of people into camps. "Removing a city’s worth of people would be an extended exercise. Identity cards would be a must if the population was to be sieved into legitimate and illegitimate camps" archive.ph/78dcP

Dying at the book he's reading

#ALL50RTS Day 50/50 KENDRICK LAMAR (& the uncredited DEYRA BARRERA) - WACCED OUT MURALS (2024)

I don’t want to be too shrill about this but I think the BBC, ITV and Sky have disgraced themselves in their coverage of the anti-refugee protests. A massive failure of judgement. But now we know the next time a progressive protest “isn’t news” that it’s nothing to do with numbers

Robot meets bollard. Nothing beats the #WorldBollardAssociation

The current Conservative Party appear to be trying to move further to the right than Reform

#ALL50RTS Day 49/50 SUFJAN STEVENS - CHICAGO (2005) I have two siblings and it's rare when all three of our tastes align at the same time. This was a rare occasion and it gives me very fond memories of many times together listening to this.

Lucy Connolly tried to claim in her appeal that she didn’t know what a guilty plea would mean. Her first lawyer brought *comprehensive* receipts demonstrating that wasn’t true. As Sunder says, she’s repeating claims a court very clearly found to be false.