Mannequin 2: On The Move Carry On Columbus Blue Ice (Michael Caine and Sean Young, if you've forgotten) Critters 4

Imagining the big security conference at the Louvre and everyone agreeing to change the network password to "Louvre1"

this is a great example of the central problem that afflicts the British state, and critiques of it - we are great at diagnosis (the BBC's editorial processes and its responses to criticism are feeble!) but crap at imagining and delivering change that might improve things (1/)

Not sure who does the playlist for Co-op instore radio but they're an indie kid in their mid 40s because we've just had "Going for Gold" by Shed Seven immediately followed by "Girl From Mars" by Ash, I was half-expecting Mark and Lard to come on

Walking up the road past a big line of traffic, some idiot gets impatient and pulls out, driving up the road on the wrong side and trying to push in at the lights. Two unmarked police cars peel out of the queue, blue lights on, to give chase. Lovely stuff

Weekend at Bernini's, or something

Funny that in Back to the Future II, Biff Tannen, the antagonist and Trump proxy, has demolished Hill Valley's courthouse and erected a huge casino on the site, and that plot point always felt a bit heavy handed

personally I would get Mel and Sue to present Strictly. Or for a slightly different but no less late-90s vibe, Lee and Herring

to all the other different governance models - autocracy, democracy, kleptocracy etc - we must now add "caseyocracy", or "government directed entirely by Louise Casey"

Can't believe that Faisal Islam writes a long read for the BBC News website about price fluctuations of frozen concentrated orange juice and doesn't mention these guys

when you book a visit from a BT engineer, you still get a splash page reminding you about COVID precautions

My favourite thing about Murder She Wrote is how when there's a scene in a public/semi-public place (newspaper office, police station, hotel lobby) there are always way too many extras engaging in way too much background activity, it's v funny and once you notice it you can't unsee it

I only accept the Red Dwarf explanation as canon - that is, JFK was assassinated by himself

2007

"Mission accomplished", one might say

@katebevan.com I wasn't sure if you'd done this one yet

One thing that's interesting interacting with big banks is that they essentially replicate 100% of the logic and qualities of public sector bureaucracy (the need to taxonomise, sharply demarcated silos/domains of competence, complete inability to tailor, diffusion of moral agency, etc.) 1//n

OK so my younger son's primary has I think the highest rate of children with English as a second language in the borough (and one of the highest in the country). Biggest primary in the borough too (650 kids). There are quite a lot of kids who start reception with v little spoken English. (1/)

Policymaking - developing and agreeing policies, and then implementing them - is difficult, but plenty of people (increasingly) confuse it with "coming up with ideas for policies" which is, indeed, very easy. Same philosophy that says that announcing the thing is the same as doing the thing

Bit weird to think that the Conservative leader this time last year was Rishi Sunak

Quite right too, we don't want people with opinions cluttering the place up

Yakety Sax (not quite sure it's a "pop song")

amusing to think that in a possible alternate universe Paula Vennells has just been confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury

Anyway! Only four weeks until Wyclef Jean's back

I love it when a compressed thread presents itself in your feed in a way that makes you genuinely curious about the intermediate posts

"Storm Amy has been named" has the same sort of ominous portent as "Sapphire and Steel have been assigned"

do find it tiresome how success in political leadership is often taken to be one and the same as "can you competently deliver a speech" - arguably one of the easiest things to do as a senior person

I do note that all the people upset about immigration aren't bothered about restricting people having children - who won't be economically productive for at least 2 decades after their arrival and who are a significant drag on public finances and their parents' earning capacity

I think it was only his curation of that strange "Tomorrow's MPs" account on Twitter that made fully clear to me how deeply weird Michael Crick is

obviously the Blair photograph accentuates this, but impossible to overstate just how much "use a digital ID card to report potholes" has the ring of a 2006-era Labour policy, you can imagine it being fronted up by Hazel Blears or something

On an unrelated point, great to see a World Dryer Corp Model A in the wild, not many around these days

Has the rapture happened yet, I have an onsite meeting later and it would be a real pain if it happened while I'm on the DLR or something

real talk: if Zack Polanski wanted to cement the Greens as the new leading party of the left, he would make a total ban on normal golf a tentpole policy

Incredible scenes

It's fascinating how incorrect this is, and the disingenuity of the straw man embodied in "traditional political communications" (a set of descriptions which I don't think describe how any politician has communicated since possibly the 1950s)

pff, I remember making the argument to upgrade to *four*

trying to book a ferry to Ireland and noting with pleasure that the sailing times have shifted ever so slightly because of port maintenance work which means that none of the connecting rail services at Holyhead now match up, beautiful stuff

Bear with me, I anticipate your disagreement. There is a clear pattern to the advice given to those who want to press back against rising racism. What it boils down to is that if you point out that racism is often being dressed up as “legitimate concerns” you will alienate people. /1

All this stuff reminds me of the long-forgotten and deeply weird Comic Strip episode "Les Dogs", where at the beginning Britain's dictator (played by Peter Richardson) comes on TV to casually announce that he's banning cars

What if Morgan McSweeney is *literally* very very gingerly carrying a Ming vase around all the time, and these tactical errors are because he's really distracted trying to avoid dropping it?

in lighter news, some proper public service journalism here from Adrian Chiles. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Government's unwillingness to fund what would seem (on the face of it) to be a new burden for committee system authorities is, on the face of it, a bit of a surprise (1/) www.themj.co.uk/lack-governm...

All a bit "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!"

"reopen Wantage Road station* klaxon

You may have missed it (and I don't have a clip) but at the second reading of the Devo Bill Abtisam Mohamed MP (Sheffield Central) highlighted the inequity of Government's abolition of the cttee system... (1/2)

"Questions at council" is something which has come up a few times recently in bits of work we've done for councils in England. Some thoughts... (1/)

for me, the "COW" is the Computer Originated World, the rotating globe graphic used in the 1986-1991 BBC1 ident, but I suspect that I may be in the minority