Catching up on the news that the Premier League and Football League could end the 3pm blackout, as reported in the Guardian yesterday. Absolutely staggering, the latest in a series of moves to clobber non-league sides and the wider football ecosystem. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

John Robertson was a ‘scruffy, unfit’ genius who did not get the kudos he deserved | Ewan Murray

Also if you missed this on organ tuning books as local environmental records it’s a nice pairing www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Sad news about John Robertson. The reverence with which his teammates from that Forest side spoke of him in I Believe In Miracles was huge. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

A brief break in the clouds over Stansted Airport in Essex teased yesterday’s winter solstice sunrise

The UK has been exporting loads of its old Intercity 125s with flimsy fibreglass cabs to Cancun. Unfortunately it seems Mexico has slightly different attitude to the question “is it acceptable to have a car on a level crossing as a train approaches”, creating quite a stream of content.

both-sidesing poverty is obviously ridiculous & points to a wider malaise of chasing balance when there are times none is appropriate, but, please, to anyone complaining about the BBC this isn’t the BBC

🎄And as an Xmas special: What is voting intention by school nativity role we played? Labour’s best result is with those who played Wise Men, Tory’s Joseph, Greens narrators & maybe mirroring their rise from underdogs to today Reform’s best score is among those who played sheep/donkeys

There's only problem. This has just gone out to news outlets from the police. Journalists make mistakes (I do!), a big lie is harder to spot... but it's hard to conclude British journalism aggregation isn't rotten to the core. I think what's really bleak is that *someone else* did die in the canal.

When I interviewed Spinal Tap and Marty DiBergi this summer, none of them broke character, for the whole hour. Except Rob Reiner, once, losing it when Michael McKean's David St Hubbins talked about minimalism. I didn't use this in the feature and hadn't published any audio, but this is joyful.

How is untreated sewage from this upmarket Crouch End street polluting a Tottenham park -- and threading its way via the Walthamstow Wetlands & Hackney Marshes to the Thames? In today's London Centric, my deep dive into a small cog in one of the capital’s worst sewage scandals: misconnections.

MAGAZINER: How many veterans have you deported? NOEM: We haven't deported veterans MAGAZINER: We are now joined on Zoom by a combat veteran you deported to Korea

Great to take part in the annual Christmas quiz at the Sheephaven Bay last night to raise money for the CNJ's hamper fund, an ever-important cause.

Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

Majestic snooker from Mark Selby in this UK Championship final. Dug deep to win a great final frame too. One of the game's greats.

Jonathan Pearce's commentary on the World Cup draw is dripping with wit. Would give Graham Norton a run for his money in Eurovision.

Watching Question Time on immigration from Dover this evening has been fascinating. The audience have been very lukewarm on Zia Yusuf and Reform generally, to say the least.

The single-parent penalty: why do they get such a poor deal on family tickets?

The article explicitly notes WI had had a trans-inclusive policy *since the 1970s*!

‘Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia’

The singing is really not helping my mood as I try to write about this, if anyone wants an indication of how not in the Christmas spirit I am at this stage.

Listening to a choir outside Parliament singing 'Let It Go' while reading Richard Hughes' resignation letter from the OBR is incredibly surreal.

Zipcar is shutting down its UK operations, basically the only car club that worked in London. Massive kick to anyone who tries to live in capital without owning a car. Having been a customer for 17 years and used Zipvans to move house repeatedly, this is.... very bad! (Zipcar is owned by Avis)

This story is starting to make me feel I’m going slightly mad - maybe RR overdid the gloom, but the tax rises are paying for a) the welfare U-turns b) the £10bn-plus increase in headroom c) scrapping the two child limit d) bits of other spending eg higher local gov costs 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's part of the electionification of everything, which is why we as a country are failing to have a proper conversation about our actual problems. It's bad for the left *and* the right.

It will be interesting to see how much of the Badenoch response to Reeves' budget will land. The Benefits Street line felt the punchiest, but captures the 'Taxes v Welfare' argument that is being made.

Devolution Bill passes the Commons, with Perran Moon abstaining rather than voting against.

Juries are not perfect. Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials. But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having. They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.

Interesting to see the mention of David Lock KC in Health and Social Care questions in the Commons, and that he's advising the NHS on cutting clinical negligence legal costs. Some will remember Lock as Wyre Forest's only Labour MP, when the A&E at Kidderminster hospital was shut.

Labour MP Perran Moon claims devolution bill is ‘blatant discrimination’ against Cornwall and mayoralty with English county would be "unholy alliance" www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Lord Rothermere’s Telegraph takeover strengthens UK media’s rightwing tilt

This, from the Guardian, is Ryanair at its very worst. It's not good enough for them to insist that they're a low-cost airline and everyone knows the rules, in circumstances like this... I wonder if legislation is needed?

I sometimes feel like I am going mad. Owning a £1.5m home is not normal in London or the South East of England.

Beth Mead: ‘If we don’t adapt to climate change, football becomes a privilege, not a right‘

Government threatened with legal action by SAS association over Troubles reforms www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

I asked this question because I think whether the government acts to mitigate this possibility is key to whether it can pass this policy

Iconic Camden LGBT+ pub The Black Cap gets its name back - reopening Spring 2026

🤯🤯 The definitive Your Party weekend read from @siennarodgers.bsky.social www.politicshome.com/news/article...

From a day following the Assisted Dying Bill it's clear it will bust the four days allocated in the Lords. Peers were meant to get through ten groups of amendments in five hours. Only two have been discussed. As one said, it's "like trying to pour a quart into a pint pot".

18.3c the confirmed max at Heathrow that’s warmest it has ever been this late in year (1948-2025).

MP calls for companies to pay tax for AI bots used to replace workers www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Quick scan of the curriculum review. This is interesting. My school offered French & German. My kids have only ever done Spanish.

left-winger wins: BUT WILL HE DELIVER right-winger wins: WHY ARE THE LEFT SO OUT OF TOUCH

I wish those weather people on the radio would announce the currently unusual warm weather in a slightly less enthusiastic way. 18 degrees in November is not normal.

Met the former editor of the York Evening Press last night, who said in the mid-90s he had 85 people working directly for him, including nine staff photographers. All that to serve a city and surrounding area of about 200k people. Local news was wilddddd.

This New Yorker documentary about the 1988 UK government ban on broadcasting the voices of Sinn Féin and I.R.A. leaders is pretty good but they show *that clip from The Day Today with no explanation and no indicator that it is satire. www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...

The afterword of Le Carre’s The Russia House has an excellent anecdote about his visit to Russia

Another brilliant story from London Centric. Sadly not surprised to see the Met's disengaged approach on this - despite the BBC special on the topic recently.

Grandchildren want pardon for last woman executed in UK - www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/gran...