This does seem the type of policy where you have to take the public with you and that doesn't seem to be happening: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Curious as to why this Economist headline implies that Graham no longer represents the arc of the Republican party now he's dead?

Top tip: if you're frightened about being bugged don't tell the world where you hold your meetings

When I was a kid the jokey thing everyone knew about Manchester was that it never stopped raining. Now every year it has wildfires.

That a Labour govt didn't move to publicly prioritise explaining and preventing this type of stuff is another missed opportunity that can hopefully be redressed soon.

Warren Buffett's observation that only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked but it's a heatwave that reveals who really understands what's acceptable menswear.

I've never seen these before

New Thomas Pynchon character name just dropped

The ways things are going I'm surprised, though thankful, we don't have more Orange marches in England.

Thinking about the phrase "science advances one funeral at a time" but about US politics (that isn't advancing)

Who knows how dodgy the stuff in Montenegro is. But one thing is clear: anyone serious about becoming PM wouldn't be near any of this stuff because of how it looks. Farage is near it because at the end of the day he'd rather have money than political power: www.opendemocracy.net/inside-refor...

Trying and failing to imagine Milei and Starmer making small talk at the semi finals

Was it pretty? No. Was it convincing? No. Do we have a chance of beating Argentina? No. However

I mean well done England but does feel like I could have spent my evening indulging in a more enjoyable activity. Like sleeping.

TOP TIP: If you're too tired but still want to follow the game, wrap your left ear in tin foil and put your phone with the ITVX app playing the match next to your bed and you should dream all of the remaining coverage

Hearing cheers in my neighbourhood 20 seconds before I saw a goal and 20 seconds after is why we have the politics we do. In this essay I will demonstrate....

Surprised the England fans haven't taken up chants along the lines of "That bloke was right, you don't know how to row", "sailing isn't rowing!"

As someone who hates sport and knows nothing about it I've never had this ambition before but now I genuinely think I could be an ITV football commentator

Angrily throwing my Knut Hamsun novels in the bin (does this help?)

Makes sense to play walking football for 90 minutes and make no attempts on the goal to conserve your energy for the post-match interview

Surely a price cap on croissants is actually a cap on the price of butter and therefore a war on famers?

One of the most curious things of post GE24 politics is the amount of political parties whose strategy appears to be to appeal to a hardcore base and to tell everyone else to piss off despite that adding up to being nowhere near an election winning number

“Binface’s candidacy does not need to threaten Farage electorally to be damaging. His campaign could prove the perfect counterpoint to the Reform leader’s martyr complex.” www.politics.co.uk/news-feature...

It's hard not to see the Iran war as an exercise in both self induced humiliation and publicly demonstrating the limits of American power. The US' Ukraine?

One of my indoor only cats discovering exactly what's going on in the outside world

The man who was arrested for placing the replica mosque on top of the bonfire has 123 previous convictions and only got out of prison on Wednesday. He's saying he was forced to do it and has nothing against Muslims or Islam.

The crossover between this stuff and the type of New Age woo that these people would condemn a priori as demonic is quite remarkable.

Hello! Outside of my work at @thinklabour.bsky.social, I’ve been squirrelling away at a polling aggregator. This is www.pollingpolis.co.uk! It has all the usual stuff but, crucially, also has a wee view for Age, Gender and Past Vote, plus much more for customising and sifting through. Have fun!

No shit

thinking about who gets to call others "elite" and wondering if it's to do with the direction of travel you think the country is going. And no one thinks it's heading in their prefered direction so the power must lie with someone else.

Imagine there'll be a significant % of people who decide to go out this afternoon to "warm up for the World Cup", badly miscalculate, and be slumped out cold on a sofa come 10pm.

A machine to turn teen's mental health into profit (as long as the parents don't sue)

As I said earlier he's made his own personal security part of his re-election pitch so of course he's going to use Widdecombe's death as a campaign tool despite the sheer crassness and lack of supporting evidence to do so. Truly awful man. Predict the worst and Farage will gladly meet you there.

There's some very good ideas in this list but everyone sticking an amendment on a bill seems like a really terrible way to decide on the rules around how we fund our politics

"A hundred flowers to bloom in every postcode and Mao Zedong thought in every heart"

Sitting in the garden and hearing neighbours noisily put their unwilling kids to bed at the same time the magpies begin their pre-sundown squawking. Get the complaints of unfairness out of your systems now sentient beings, before the darkness and silence of night.

It's an often repeated truism that there's no such thing as a stupid question but I think YouGov have just disproved that

This is a fairly sub-par piece but reading it did inspire the thought that perhaps Farage's problem now is that for a long time *he was* the comedy candidate. But now outflanked on the right by Restore and outflanked on the none of the above, cheeky chappy, puncturing smug politics by old binhead?

Louise Haigh currently flying to the US to drug Harry Kane's hydration break Ribena and Wagon Wheel to prevent this delay

Huge. I think Reform's direction of travel is now clear. It's people like Danny Kruger I'd feel sorry for if they weren't such terrible people.

I was halfway through explaining this theory to my partner who interrupted me to say "oh my god do you think he did it?" And just to clarify: no I do not think Nigel Farage is responsible for committing murder.

With security being a big part of the justification of Farage's actions I fear that today's events are about to be politicised into something big whatever the facts of the matter turn out to be.

One day I'm going to go up to one of these young lads and ask them what perfume they're wearing that I smell absolutely everywhere in town. But first I have to master the facial expressions that don't give away that the reason I'm asking is because it smells so awful.

It would be ironic if Farage suffered the same fate as his hero Thatcher: winning a vote but not by a big enough margin to show you're the unstoppable force you used to be.

I live about 12 miles as the crow flies from Manchester Piccadilly and yet people are walking down the high street dressed as if they were out for the day in Marbella which I suppose makes sense as it's actually hotter here than there today

Some politicians have forgotten there's a huge difference between social media, talking to people just like you about how everyone else is a laughable idiot, and electoral politics, convincing voters who usually go for other parties to vote for you instead: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Do wonder if time is against the Farage project as if he doesn't make PM in a 2029 election, the election after that, assuming a full term, will see him out door knocking at the age of 70.

His argument that councils are somehow trapping drivers into committing offences would be more convincing if his account of how it happened didn't say that he new he was in a 20mph zone but accelerated above that speed regardless

I'd be interested in what the general public think Net Zero means? I imagine most think of it in very general terms of decarbonising energy and almost none think of it in terms of dates of 2035 or 2050. So criticism of speed or detail may be taken by voters as just criticism of green energy entirely

I could understand the Tory party positioning itself as agnostic about Net Zero or wanting to adopt a different timeline to achieve it but being actively against surely limits the appeal of a centre right party?