Maybe I'm completely wrong but I do think Jonathan Powell's refusal to become the new chief of staff, and apparent decision to stand down this year, should be seen in the context of him turning 70 in August.

My assumption is Brown *was* a member of CND as it was kind of compulsory for people standing as a Labour candidate at the '83 election. But it still leaves the, slightly mind-blowing, fact that Tony Blair was the last person elected to be PM who was a member.

Something notable in the contrast between all the G&D candidates trying to display their local credentials but at the same time the issues I've heard them campaigning on are all national ones

Thanks Bing!

It's like one of those pictures of a past their prime US star, who's currently doing panto in the UK, taken with a fan when they head to the Wetherspoons round the corner from the theatre

Gifted The New Penguin Book of Love Poetry for Valentine's and notice that the two Larkin poems in there both mention the wind. More evidence he was secretly a nature poet? Goes without saying that Talking in Bed is a complete banger.

In trying to weigh up the cons vs the pros of the internet I've got ruining children's mental health, undermining democracy, and flooding society with divisive hatred on one side of the ledger but on the other I have helping me get back into solving cryptic crosswords. So, swings and roundabouts...

Britain is not as left-wing as you think I might think

When I agreed, under prompting, for my Alexa to give me a notification at 7pm if it was going to rain the next day, I didn't fully anticipate the undertaking I was consenting too

I don't know why I did this.

I told you that he'd hate knocking on doors.

Am I right in thinking no Labour leader has been removed as either PM or party leader before?

Finally watched the first episode of Small Prophets and now wondering if the no laugh track sitcom has simply eaten a big chunk of the space that used to be filled by one off TV dramas. If Mike Leigh was making TV today would he be pitching Nuts in May as a sitcom?

Seeing Rubio at Munich makes me realise the Trump administration is full of men who dye their hair while acting like there's something deeply suspect about men who dye their hair.

My assumption is that no one is going to be prompting for Restore Britain unless someone has paid FON to survey that way. So yet again we have the release of an attention grabbing poll by FON without the contextual details needed to fully understand it. Poor.

If Ian Hislop wasn't the editor of Private Eye he'd be viciously crucifying the people even halfway responsible for this

I think we should shame parents who allow this to happen. It should be a social norm that if you haven't vaccinated your kids then you're a terrible dad/mum. On a par with drinkdriving with them sat in the back seat.

Imagine, during an incredibly violent year in The Troubles, proposing replacing the army with an armed population trained in guerrilla warfare. Insane.

The Texas / 2nd Amendment flag is a particularly unhinged touch seeing as the protest was in Poole

As it happens, ex Co-op bank chairman, ex Methodist minister and ex Labour councillor Paul Flowers is currently serving time for something completely unrelated to this headline.

Not sure who's worse to share a pub with: football fans who are more emotionally involved in the game and volatile or rugby fans who are twice the size and take up more space and more likely to order Guinness and so clog up the bar for 15 minutes at a time.

This aligns with my belief that the Swiss watch industry's response to the quartz crisis is a model we'll see redeployed by those threatened by the rise of AI

I wonder what name they'll choose as the two extant ones appear to be pointing in different directions

someone currently working out how much an anti-capitalist punk vibe is worth as goodwill.

Two bands who, some might be surprised to hear, I've seen live. Indeed I'm fairly sure I was in the small crowd at the Melvins' first ever UK gig though the internet, prone to hallucinations and false memories clearly, doesn't want to confirm that: www.youtube.com/watch?v=keJ3...

Something I find interesting about current times is that people who are willing to say clearly racist things in public will still reject the label of racist, try to avoid it being placed on them and think people calling them racist are trying to aggressively shut them down.

YouTube and Google preventing adblockers from working and flooding YT with ads has surely changed the nature of clickbait. A thumbnail for a 3 minute cat video becomes less enticing when you know it comes with at least a 2 times 6 second advert time penalty.

Just been charged £2.80 for a pint of Wainwright Gold bitter on a Friday afternoon.

oh

Does mean the Met police have to now re-pick up all those elderly protestors and drag them back to where they originally found them?

Having our early Valentines lunch today. So we're walking 6 miles through muddy countryside in the rain to end up at an old coaching inn where prisoners used to have their last meal before being taken to be hanged at the nearby gallows.

I don't think Gorton and Denton is "set to determine Starmer's fate" as I've saw a piece headlined earlier. I think most people on here, discussing UK politics, know that his fate is already largely determined and has been for some time.

To show how nuts this is, Ju Ae is believed to have been born in 2013. The same year as my 12 year old daughter who is currently in the first year of secondary school.

It's like my partner talking about whatever Real Housewives season she's currently watching

guy in charge of US health policy is apparently unaware of the existence of cisterns.

People telling me how big a part affiliated members will play in the next Labour leadership contest at the same time Sharon Graham is talking about disaffiliating Unite. *confused shrug emoji*

There is no escape

I am at the Levenshulme hustings for #GortonAndDenton I'll try to post about proceedings, but I am rubbish at this kind of thing! I'll hashtag it as #GDLevHustings if I remember.

I have a friend who used to be a comic on a cruise ship and so has been *everywhere* and he asked my then 7 year old daughter if she could go anywhere in the world where would she choose? And she said Llandudno because that was the only holiday we'd taken her on she could remember :-(

You'd have thought, if they'd learnt anything from the past few weeks, that an expedited appointments process for high profile jobs was something they steered clear of.

Somehow I've buggered up my knee and it's the worst kind of injury in that it limits my movement, wakes me up in the middle of the night with pain and makes me worry it's some sort of herald of an imminent future where bits of me stop working on a weekly basis.

"It's Crocodile Dundee meets The Thick of It" me pitching my Bear Grylls as US ambassador comedy drama to Netflix. Commissioning editor: What about the whole baptising Russell Brand stuff? Me *under my breath* fuck...why do I keep listening to McSweeney

Starmer should go harder on Ratcliffe not only because in the populist times we live in everyone likes to see a rich guy get (verbally) beaten up but also because if you're a grown up public figure used to speaking to the media and say stupid and offensive things there should be a price to pay.

so they decided against calling it Your Party then?

Something raised in that Mark Urban piece (LRT) that I think about a lot is when did the news magazines last lead on a cultural story? If I were in charge of a current affairs publication I'd be interpreting my brief very broadly rn if only because of the sense that everyone feels so exhausted.

Thoughtful and, I think, largely correct.

Jim Ratcliffe's comments make me nostalgic for the 1970s when rich people would simply confine themselves to funding UFO research, studies into after-death communication or private armies to overthrow the Wilson government.

Ran out to the supermarket for some mid-week wine and when I got back the cats were waiting for me

Jim Ratcliffe looks like the bent detective in a Lynda la Plante TV adaptation who's secretly tipping off the killer because they're both into the same weird pornography.

Me reading your tweets