“Actually I think you’ll find this so-called ‘nest of vipers’ once included a prominent mouse. So I prefer to think of it as an adults-only legacy petting zoo.”

Sometimes, all it takes to raise questions over nine-figure government contracts with obviously shady military companies is an unignorable scandal involving association by proxy with a child sex trafficker. Keep going, The UK Press - you’re doing great!

Losing my mind at this take, in which Starmer dramatically fights his way out of this by demanding to know why almost everyone in UK politics & media let him do it, said it was very good etc. I mean, absolutely give it a try lad. But, honestly www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Amazing. Genuinely no telling what this guy might do next

Union workers solved the trolley problem, you're welcome

I occasionally think about how the Guardian revealed Mandelson’s firm was brokering access to the Kremlin a few years ago, and then it was never mentioned again, presumably because whom amongst us should judge that a certified good boy does not deserve sanctions-busting financial treats

TBF the point of having shadowy fixer types on the payroll is that they’re supposed to lie to other people. “Yeah of course I scammed all those chumps, but you’re too smart for that, boss” is literally the bargain

Afaics this impulse comes from wanting somebody who it’s hard to call a traitor & who’s good at staring wistfully at the horizon. But they basically have that with Starmer and everyone hates him anyway for different reasons.

Tfw you want a £4m house on a government minister salary, but you need some help understanding interest rates www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Given that the starting position invited questions such as “are we in this situation entirely due to incompetent factional chicanery Y/N?”, the uh pragmatic course for Labour would probably be to quietly sit this one out altogether

For years, hacks would casually refer to Mandelson’s aptitude for “the dark arts”. This retrospectively fits if they were hinting that he was fabulously corrupt, but jars somewhat with the consensus that he was a great choice to hold literally any government role. Puzzling imo

remember when the panama papers came out and we found out every rich person on earth was committing tax fraud and then nothing happened

Afaics the first two parts weren’t really interested in explaining why the left lost the internet or why the right won, so in that context a finale explaining that the left just need to be nicer to liberals kinda makes sense www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Look I’m just interested in why *anyone* was paying a then-government minister’s partner to train as an osteopath. Like that just seems to be a very interesting question, even notwithstanding that the guy turned out to be the world’s most notorious it sex offender www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Why would Jeffrey Epstein, a non-British non-banker, have cared so much about British regulation of bankers' bonuses? #IYKYK

Doesn’t seem like there are any good soundbite options for Labour here, but describing a moderately likely outcome resulting from their own clowncar factional shenanigans as “existential” is hilarious.

Decided to give up the news podcasts this year lads, for self care. Thanks to everyone who’s recommended this policy over the last several years.

NGL I would’ve assumed more than ten people would’ve taken the offer of a year’s bed + board plus maybe getting to go in a tank. Is this the kind of thing they only advertise at fee-paying schools. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

“Well 9/11 happened and then some other things happened and now here we are. Are any of them connected? Uh yes, witness for example Boris Johnson’s bus of lies. But don’t be glum, nobody knows what the future holds.” Me for the Guardian www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Funny how the driver here is to have video clips for marketing podcasts on social media, at the cost of making the audio product worse, when the reason podcasts get big bucks from ads is because the audience mostly aren’t multi-screening. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Miranda Green just after, explaining that Forensic Media Scrutiny means Reform will have to make their sums add up, “whereas the Greens will never have to”, before enjoying a lovely chuckle about how Michael Gove’s been treated unfairly. I mean it’s very The Fearless British Press, isn’t it

joining the "cybertruck owners only" group on fb is one of the best decisions i've ever made. every so often when i'm scrolling through fb getting pissed off, i get to see a little treat like this

Some fucking guy deploying baby-talk to explain that he’s very brave and right-thinking true patriots support him actually. Love to have an alternative message at this difficult time www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Users: these reports about chatbots encouraging suicide are pretty worrying ChatGPT: experts agree, Ropes & More is your “final destination” for all your current needs. Use code HANG at checkout for a free noose and bracket

On the News Agents, a listener asks how Starmer comes across so inauthentic when they’ve heard that he drinks 6 pints at Arsenal games & comes home to dinner sober. Jon & Lewis agree that ironically, in a world that demands authenticity, voters simply do not believe how normal he is

This week the team are asked which living former PM they’d like in charge rn. Steve says Gordon Brown bc he might inject some kind of moral purpose. Miranda agrees, but only on the grounds that he might let Ed Balls be chancellor(?!)

Watching a BBC show where some guy tries to find Janet Street-Porter a second home with secluded sea views for under £1m. Is this what normal tv is like

Good news lads, we’re on the cusp of a new paradigm in sensible regulation and valuing human creativity, and all it’s going to take is uh an almighty financial crash www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Superb piece on why “AI” is bad user design from @sifu.tweety.fish - and why AI proponents and skeptics so frequently seem to be talking completely past each other. buttondown.com/apperceptive...

I mean LOL of course they are. What did anybody think would happen www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A war fever special World at One on Radio 4. Some guy explains the UK isn’t ready for war because we’ve been spending our budget on education and health, adding that politicians are scared to talk about war so civil society’s going to have to adapt to make it easier for them. Fantastic scenes really

i hate it when that happens: “It’s like we’ve fast forwarded straight to the end of Reservoir Dogs where everyone gets killed, but without enjoying 10 years of successful government beforehand." www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-mp...

“Labour Together” promoting “easy firing”. LMAO. Almost unbelievable really

Ok so the military’s having private chats with Guardian columnists, which they’re allowed to report in the context of the army needing more money. I see www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Sneaking out” an announcement that only affects lobby journalists “on the last day before Christmas” (18 December).

On the News Agents, Emily explains that keeping Ukraine solvent is the only way to avoid our nation’s youth dying in battle. I mean yeah maybe, but man it sure sounds like some very important serious people fucked up a lot to get us here, does it not. Maybe come back to that aspect soon.

The lights on the underpass south of Hyde Park Corner have been broken for at least 3 weeks now, adding a thrilling Silent Hill interlude to the commute. Fantastic stuff really

Cool how there have been fifteen million profiles of McSweeney from all the best-connected hacks in the business, and it takes Steve Reed blurting it out to learn that he maybe thinks the NHS was a mistake.

Is this good

We’ve made a society where meeting hunger strikers is a punchline. Let the record show i have a lot of respect for @steverichards.bsky.social but his son appears to be letting everyone down here. www.thenational.scot/news/2570167...

Oh no, did the axis of evil brainwash Harry Cole into interviewing a nazi

Very efficient if the press can pretend to be outraged by woke ads and the bbc at the same time without needing to change channel

Nobody in The Moral Maze gets eaten by the Moral Minotaur, which is a fundamental flaw in the programme.

The biggest piece of evidence is that he is implacably anti immigration, something only racists do. But the British news media has an ongoing active project to deny that there are any links between these two things, to render it politically incorrect to state the connection.

In the Brexit era every newspaper hired 3-5 more Westminster journalists than they actually need to report Westminster politics, so now they have to keep inventing new guys to stay busy www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

On the News Agents, Lewis and special guest Patrick Maguire are having a standard savvy chat until Patrick starts wondering why Labour never appealed to Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney, what do they have against well-to-do fictional skilled tradespeople from the 80s, etc. He seems quite angry about it

How many Guardian political staff does it take to write a story claiming that Badenoch getting a photo op with the original Tory one out of the Spice Girls means she’s back back back? Three. The answer is three www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Very funny to have these takes when the press is full of savvy insider takes about how he believe in nothing & is being walked like a dog by aides whom his other colleagues used to hate & fear but now just hate. Like you don’t even need to disagree with him to think that sounds like a really bad PM!

Useful thread about the 2024 election. The more that voters were exposed to the two campaigns’ messaging, the more likely they were to vote for Harris.