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Ottery St Mary #Devon afternoon.

457 British troops lost their lives in Afghanistan. Trump avoided military service 5 times. How dare he question their sacrifice. Farage and all the others still fawning over Trump should be ashamed.

My goodness the weather in Ottery is hideous today (and has been all week). As my normal outdoor activities have been curtailed, I've started #AdventOfCode 2020 in #Fortran 77 (mostly). 11 days completed. Will I get to the end before the weather perks up?! #RetroComputing github.com/psychotimmy/...

Britain is one of the best places in recorded history to be born, live, work and grow old. Lots of room for improvement obviously but combat the pessimism, it’s the forerunner of fascism.

As someone who grew up in America & is very fond of the American people, I never thought I would see the day when an American president would threaten the UK with tariffs for refusing to allow them to ‘buy’ the territory of another sovereign country and NATO member against its clearly expressed will

Starmer’s US policy lies in tatters. Trump is now punishing the UK and NATO allies just for doing the right thing. Time for the PM to stand firm against the bully in the White House, and work with European and Commonwealth allies to make him back down from this reckless plan.

Liberal England: Saying Reform UK are "just the same old Conservatives" may not be the smart line some think liberalengland.blogspot.com/2026/01/sayi...

“Britain has been in decline” says Robert Jenrick who served in the Conservative government for 12 years.

One more rat is leaving the sinking ship - the Conservatives are out of ideas and Reform only have bad ones.

It’s another Labour U-turn! My @libdems.org.uk colleagues and I have been calling for the Government to drop their unworkable and costly compulsory digital ID plans - delighted they have seen sense! www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

New from me: Ottery St. Mary mcl.timholyoake.uk/2026/01/13/t...

Well well well... That tells us everything we need to know about Reform, which is quickly becoming a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative ministers. If Mr Zahawi decides to stand for elected office here in Stratford-on-Avon, I can only say Bring it on! 💪🔶️

Usual Brexiter garbage on regulations - the UK didn't diverge much because it turned out there weren't obvious places in which to do so

Here's what a map of crime by population actually looks like. It doesn't fit the 'London is a hellhole' narrative.

New from me: Building a Pico RomWBW z80.timholyoake.uk/building-a-p...

1983 called. This keyboard is actually an entire computer etc. etc.

This keyboard is actually an entire computer. Just plug it into a monitor and you’re set.

New from me: Building a Pico RomWBW z80.timholyoake.uk/building-a-p...

Started blogging in ’95. Nearly all site’s my content from the past 30 years is still up. Sadly, the same can’t be said for most third-party content I linked to. Happily, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer solves much of this. wordpress.org/plugins/inte...

The UK government may still be on X because they're very stupid. There are around 19.5m families in the UK. Baroness Anderson claims here, on behalf of the government, that 10.8m = 55% of them "use X as their main news source". This is an obvious lie. hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2026-0... (1/3)

I keep trying to write something to wrap up this year. I went into 2025 with a lot of plans – I did a few goal-setting sessions and just kept writing the phrase ‘change your life’. Which, as was kindly pointed out by people wiser than me, was a ridiculous goal. emilyholyoake.com/2025/12/27/c...

#AdventOfCode reflections, mostly avoiding spoilers. neil-vass.com/advent-of-co...

Here's my account of solving this year's #AdventOfCode using #Fortran 77 (mostly). #RetroComputing ftw! z80.timholyoake.uk/advent-of-co...

Penultimate article in the #AdventOfCode assistants 🤖 . Write-up about days 9-11 where Kimi-K2 pulls a Dieselgate and all AIs happily try to re-invent the wheel! emma.has-a.blog/articles/adv... #python #AI

The Good Life - Silly But It's Fun (26th December 1977). "The ooh-ah bird is so called because it lays square eggs".

Season's Greetings to all. If you've nothing else to this Christmas Eve, here's my account of solving this year's #AdventOfCode using #Fortran 77 (mostly). z80.timholyoake.uk/advent-of-co...

Tories who say that allowing young people to access Erasmus+ to and from the UK is a betrayal of Brexit need to recognise that Brexit was a betrayal of the young by people by living in a past that never existed. #bbcpm

Great! Now do a Customs Union!

counterpoint: nothing you post on any social media platform will in any way combat the dangerousness of the right

Seaton - East Devon District Council Lib Dem gain from Conservative (now Independent) 🟡Lib Dem Steve Hunt 789 41.3% ➡️ Reform UK 565 29.6% 🔵 Con 400 20.9% 🔘 Ind 156 8.2% Congratulations to Steve and team - yet another win in Devon this December!

What a victory! Today MPs narrowly backed our bill to cut the Brexit red tape and end this economic nightmare. The PM must listen to Parliament and the public, drop his self-imposed red lines and go for growth with a new customs union.

Recreating the lost SDK for a 42-year-old operating system: VisiCorp Visi On | Discussion

Halfway through #AdventOfCode for 2025 and I'm still managing to write the solutions in #Fortran 77. Is there anyone else out there who has decided to use an equally arcane language? github.com/psychotimmy/...

Curiously the BBC subsequently removed the thumbs up/down feature from their live feed.

“Boss, people are still saying we at FIFA are corrupt after holding a World Cup in Qatar.” “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea that’ll get them giving us a thumbs up again”

The penny has dropped FINALLY

Starmer's defining trait is cowardice disguised as prudence.

"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out" z80.timholyoake.uk/the-nine-bil... #Fortran #SciFi #RetroComputing

Ottery St Mary morning #Devon

Limit jury trials. Limit rights to protest and jail people for just talking about protesting. Arrest peaceful protestors as "terrorists". ID Cards. Plaster the country in CCTV and add facial recognition. When I was growing up during the Cold War, those were the sort of things the bad guys did.

Brexit: the trillion pound ‘mistake’ The recent NBER report suggests the Treasury’s 2016 analysis – slammed by Brexiters as a ‘hoax’– actually understated the impact of Brexit By Anthony Robinson @anthonybylines.bsky.social

What’s the point of Keir Starmer employing an economics advisor if he ignores her on the biggest economic issue of the day?

Some six months ago, I was playing the lovely Sharp MZ-700 adventure game Ropoko and writing a walkthrough. I never managed to complete it, but I just now noticed that it's been released for Steam & Switch. So I figured my partial walkthrough would be useful to new players.

Feeling confident! #PicoMZ #Sharp #MZ700 #RetroComputing

A question of perspective. Applies to children, too.

The extraordinary Ernie Wise - born 100 years ago today - seen here celebrating on 1 January 1985 after just having made the first ever mobile phone call in the UK. 'Ring in the new year'. See what they did there?

This Government has chosen to reject the single biggest thing it could do to turbocharge economic growth and repair the £90 billion Brexit black hole. For millions of people struggling with higher bills this was a botched budget.

I wish I was surprised. Buried in this Budget is a plan to slash the Digital Services Tax, giving a multi-billion tax cut to US tech giants and the likes of Elon Musk. That's right, cutting taxes for the world's richest man while hiking them for millions of hard-working Brits.

Utter madness. The project maintainers must've been pulling their hair out. So-called AI has very real costs that go far beyond the planet burning datacentres needed to run them.