Lot of people in the Lib Dems get frustrated at lack of media presence, and feel that Ed Davey in particular should do a lot more to grab the news agenda, but recent events have me beginning to wonder whether he is in fact pursuing a masterly policy of Shutting The Fuck Up.

So, after Kemi Badenoch embarrassing herself on national radio this morning…. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Ex neo-Nazi activist withdraws as Tory election candidate

Kemi Badenoch says Joshua Bonehill-Paine will now advise the Conservatives on tackling extremism.

bbc.co.uk

Kemi Badenoch seems to have fallen into the Tim Farron trap, namely: Struggling to get a hearing on broadcast media, when you get on you spend the entire interview defending something that makes you look terrible. Zero control of messaging or saliency, entirely self-inflicted.

🧵 Nicest thing you're likely to read today.

John Bull@garius.bsky.social · 20h ago

small, single corridor shopping centre in Stevenage Old Town. Called the 'Magnet centre' after the family that owned the land. odd nik-nak and dress shops... ...and in the mid-90s briefly, hidden at the back, the town's first comic shop. we discovered it as teens. it was like finding heaven /1

Other government compensation schemes get uprated for inflation. But infected blood victims' payments don't - and the government's explanation doesn't stand up to scrutiny: lordseyeview.substack.com/p/the-infect...

The infected blood scandal highlights the siloed nature of Whitehall

Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords, this time taking a look at the siloed approach in Whitehall on how to handle compensation payments.

lordseyeview.substack.com

The correct answer is the Manx Islands. Just look at a map, everyone, you know it makes sense.

sarah jeong@sarahjeong.bsky.social · yesterday

around brexit, when americans were struggling with the difference between britain / uk / british isles, someone on twitter suggested to me (somewhat tongue in cheek) that "the british isles" is unacceptable and that the politically correct term is "these isles"; or "those isles" if you're american

Lovely, lovely rain. I've missed you so much, don't ever go away again. (Do not remind me of this post in February.)

When people deliberately use their craft to stoke and fuel division, hate, attract criticism, and do so in full knowledge they're making the world a worse place, it's astonishing that people think we shouldn't consider, or indeed speak, ill of those individuals when they're no longer around.

If only there were some major literary character whose tenuous connection to reality took the form of antipathy towards windmills.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Any country with windmills is a loser"

Former Royal Navy Officer Brands Reform's Small Boats Plan 'A Crock Of Shit' www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/a-croc...

'A Crock Of Sh*t': Former Royal Navy Officer Slams Reform's Small Boats Plan

The French government has also rejected the policy.

huffingtonpost.co.uk

Dear BlueSky Brits Count Binface is not going to win the Clacton by-election. He's not even going to get close. A good Binface performance will be saving his deposit and keeping Farage to somewhere between 60% and 80%. Preferably on an embarrassingly low turnout.

One of the things I have learned about Americans via Blue Sky is that they seem to call Baloo from The Jungle Book “Baloo Bear” which I find weird because 1. What the fuck else do you think he is? 2. In the books (and Disney film IIRC) he’s just “Baloo" 3. Baloo means “bear” in Hindi

I'm not in Ukraine and not in a position to judge, but my gut feeling is that this is a very plausible analysis of what's happening in the Ukrainian street protests.

Shaun Pinner@shaunpinner.bsky.social · 5d ago

Here is my article explaining some of the roots of the demonstrations in Kyiv. Much of the discussion has focused on personalities, but the protests run deeper. They reflect concerns over military reform, transparency, decision-making, and Ukraine’s direction as the war continues. 🇺🇦

So I did the Merriam-Webster thing and the one that shone out for me was Baby Boomer, because I was born in the last couple of years of the accepted definition (so much so that core-years baby boomers always got right on my tits when I was a teen).

Fantastic thread here (which does not definitively rule out the possibility that Wikipedia is secretly controlled by people from Hove.)

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 7d ago

here's a very random question: why is it that Google Maps hides Brighton? attached are several screengrabs that show it displaying much smaller places but not Brighton, you have to zoom in soooo much to get it to appear, it's so weird?

This is part of several structural weaknesses in the Nigel For No 10 project. 1. There's a lower ceiling on any political movement that goes to the extremes. A far right party needs to persuade the centre right voter that the threat from the left is so bad as to justify an extreme response.

Tom Roberts@tpgroberts.bsky.social · 7d ago

I think basically between elections it does become easy to forget quite how many of Farage's parties do fall apart, arguably Reform is his third, and a large part of that is that he just does not have the temperament to lead anything more than a protest.

I do like the way Khan leans into this stuff. Maybe at some point Farage and the Tories will wake up to the fact that there are millions of voters living in London, and millions more commuting in every day, and calling the place a slum when people can see it isn't is not a bright idea.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan@london.gov.uk · last wk.

London’s haters can’t stand our success. The picture they paint of a lawless dystopia is a gross distortion of reality. And now, neighbourhood crimes are down significantly too, with 35,000 fewer offences on our streets.

My mother had Alzheimer's, and it lasted a decade. That wilderness she descended into was made far worse by a state that essentially said "good luck" and "goodbye" having to navigate care and selling her house and worrying that we'd run out of money to finance it all. If anyone can fix it, good.

I’ve known this was coming and so has everyone else. It doesn’t exist, keep burning, it doesn’t exist, keep burning, oh, it *does* exist but it’s too late to do anything, so keep burning. The sheer cynicism should carry a jail sentence.

Roland Smith@rolandmcs.bsky.social · last wk.

Nighty night.

We need fair votes before the next election In 2024, Labour won 411 seats with 34%. As the landscape continues to change, next results could be even more disproportionate. Democracy must reflect our views - not distort our votes. Tell us what you think: digitallibdems.typeform.com/fix-politics

The real quiz - Column As Infantino's Trump-Fest Sponsored by Pepsi disappears into the rear-view mirror, regular columnist Dorse wonders whether QPR have it within them this season to restore faith in our once beautiful game. #qpr

The real quiz - Column - Queens Park Rangers News

As Infantino's Trump-Fest Sponsored by Pepsi disappears into the rear-view mirror, regular columnist Dorse wonders whether QPR have it within them this season to restore faith in our once beautiful ga...

fansnetwork.co.uk

"HOLLOW MEN" Starring Jason Statham. You want to know how the world ends? This is how. Coming this fall.

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last wk.

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

Confession time: apart from a bowdlerise kids' version, I've never read The Odyssey. A few years ago, inspired by reading an interview about the making of The Return plus listening to Liz Fraser singing Song To A Siren, I thought I ought to. But then I thought I ought to read The Iliad first.

So, there’s a lot of this sort of stuff on my feed today, to the extent that I think everyone needs to keep a bit of perspective, but... …whatever the respective merits of Labour, the Green Party and the Lib Dems, the last of those three has been very steady in the polls for two years now...

Excellent piece by @tomforth.co.uk (who, I think, should be here more often) as an adjunct to the article I quoted earlier that got loads of people shouting at me because they didn’t read the whole thing. tomforth.co.uk/recoveringfr...

When the story of why humanity didn't stop climate change is written, it will feature front pages like this. Even as the skies blacken with climate change-induced wildfires, right wing media continue their relentless crusade against measures to tackle it.

This is terrifying. Huge wildfires devastating parts of France and Spain, and still much of the UK press and political establishment is arguing that we need to ditch Net Zero. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

France evacuates Cap Ferret peninsula as Spain battles to prevent wildfires merging near Madrid – Europe live

Evacuees have been told to leave using hundreds of mobilised boats or the only road linking the area with the mainland

theguardian.com

I mean, of course he fucking isn’t, but leaving that aside, who really thinks the public wants a General Election? I don’t mean “does the public want rid of the government or think it’s shit?" I mean: do people want four weeks of election campaign filling the news?

John Rentoul@rentouljohn.bsky.social · 2w ago

Is Andy Burnham gearing up for a snap general election? www.independent.co.uk/voices/andy-...

You would never get the "£50 doesn't even buy a meal quote if the topic was the benefit system, then you would have a guy going "sack of potatoes and a carrot, and you can feed a child for a month at just 3.2 pence per meal"

Sky News@news.sky.com · 2w ago

'£50 doesn't even buy a meal': What people think of Burnham's electricity VAT cut