Plesiosaurus and oblivious duck, Crystal Palace Park

I love Veolia's explanation that the banner had become a health and safety hazard. What on earth was it made of? But then again - why would Veolia have incinerated it if not on orders from the GLA? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Led By Donkeys wins compensation over seizure of Gaza protest banner

Waste firm Veolia pays £27k after ‘Yes It’s A Genocide’ banner taken by Greater London Authority was destroyed

theguardian.com

Give the man a chance. I loathe Mahmood & her policies but some of the comments below are absurd, talking about what a failure he is when he's been in office about three and a half minutes - some of you sound like self-parodies frankly. No offence

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last mo.

I strongly believe in giving the man a chance. But keeping Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary suggests the vicious attacks on immigrants and refugees, and self-defeating attempts to outrun the far right, are likely to continue. Which is pretty damn depressing. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Interesting thread. No one mentions England being psychologically incapable of winning a major tournament, despite having the highest-paid players from the world's most prestigious league. We simply don't feel we can win

Arthur Snell@snellarthur.bsky.social · last mo.

The weirdest thing is that everyone I know agrees about this. But most people I know (myself included) are hardly football experts. So why did the experts decide to do this?

Great! A new comedy on BBC Radio 4. Said nobody, ever

Gorilla Glue: "For the toughest jobs on Planet Earth". Has there ever been a better strapline?

How does "no replies" work? Why do some posts have them & why can only some people reply (do you have to prove you were at the Palladium in 79)? Why post something like this but not allow ordinary people (I wasn't there but I like London Calling, indeed think it's one of the great albums) to reply?

womensartbluesky.bsky.social@womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Photographer Pennie Smith, The Clash, September 1979, an image used for the 'London Calling' album cover art and voted best rock 'n' roll image #WomensArt

I love Scotland, have many strong connections there and one day would like to live there but by heavens their performance in the World Cup has been dismal. Last night was like the first reel of a bad Netflix comedy

oh for Janey Godley (if you know, you know)

Massimo (mirror)@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A dog wants to play with the small rodent, who is determined not to be distracted from its work. Original post

All these 10 year anniversary programmes for Brexit. It's like marking the day you stuck your todger in a blender. Now that was a bad idea, wasn't it? Any upsides? No. End of story

Timeline: what Farage has said about the £5m gift from a crypto-billionaire

Timeline: what Farage has said about the £5m gift from a crypto-billionaire

Whether the money was a reward for Brexit or for his security, media interest in it has intensifed as the Reform UK leader returns to the public eye

theguardian.com

I was just locking up last night, went round the corner and saw this. Gave me quite a turn. I didn't know my daughter's chap had left his golf bag...

Next from Heffer: "I'm not saying Hitler was right. He just went a bit far". Deceitful, falsely-argued, sloppy, race-baiting bilge. Avoid (but if you want to see the kind of stuff Speccy readers are lapping up, www.removepaywall.com will get you the text) spectator.com/article/its-...

It’s time to uncancel Enoch Powell

Despite a career of nearly half a century in public life, Enoch Powell is generally remembered for one utterance only

spectator.com

"Farage is... a moral stain upon this country’s reputation, the fag-brown teeth of a rotting corpse. But he is also, and this is underdiscussed, a hapless clown." Absolutely love that faux-academic "underdiscussed" iandunt.substack.com/p/triumph-in...

Triumph in Makerfield: Everything is about to change

Andy Burnham is now certain to be the next prime minister

iandunt.substack.com

Richard Tice on BBC Today arguing that Makerfield was a win for Reform because votes for Burnham = votes to get Starmer out, which will mean a GE and a Reform govt. It was basically highly sophisticated tactical voting. 3d chess for Reform voters

Is this a new thing? just had an email saying a party has been postponed because of the weather. I feel it's rather an un-British thing to do - aren't we just meant to jolly well get on with it?

Pub. Pretty empty. Three blokes behind the bar. One serving, the other two piddling about w glasses, admin ect. Family getting complicated meal and drinks. I'm ignored for 5 mins until I say to one of the blokes, can you serve me? Pulls pint, surly, unsmiling, as if I'm being totally unreasonable

What IS it about these strutting little bigots that is so chilling? Is it the stupid Nazi hair, the horrible pub-bore clothes? Or is it the puffed-up confidence, the flexing of muscles, the look that says they're on the winning side and this is just the beginning? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Code of conduct complaint for Reform UK council leader

The complaint comes after George Finch released a statement on the county's libraries on Monday.

bbc.co.uk

I'm reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It's discombobulating - turning from the brutal excesses of the SA (it was full of thugs, criminals, street brawlers) to the scenes in N Ireland fomented by Musk and Farage. Then to see how ICE is terrorising Americans... The parallels are terrifying

Grotesque the way Badenoch takes Reform rhetoric, dresses it up with some 6th-form argument to sound reasonable and measured, and peddles it out to her vanishing base of support. Shires Tories might buy it but it's thin, nasty gruel www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Badenoch to vow to scrap public sector equality duty in effort to fend off Reform

In speech on Tuesday, Tory leader will claim obligation to consider equality being used to advance ‘divisive agendas’

theguardian.com

Ho hum. Reporter makes a minor mistake and hands Reform a PR coup. A comment that should sink Farage as a politician and - as textbook incitement to racial hatred - put him in the dock, has now been turned in his favour www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

BBC's Matt Chorley apologises for misquoting Nigel Farage on Newsnight

Matt Chorley says he "misremembered" a quote by the Reform leader, which was "a mistake on my part".

bbc.co.uk

Robert Kenyon is as comical a candidate as Susan Hall was for London mayor in 2024. She was the one who had no idea what a Met policeman earned, and thought Hammersmith & Fulham were separate boroughs. Kenyon's on a different level of course, but equally entertaining in a ghastly kind of way

Heat (1995). I'd forgotten what a superb film it is. Sample line from the weary and permanently exasperated Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino): "Empathy was yesterday. Today you're wasting my motherf**king time"

And the problem of our post-war generation is that we dropped our guard to the point of complacency. Fascism seemed to have been so comprehensively destroyed it became a joke (remember Viv in the Young Ones?) I'm permanently in a state of mild shock at what's happening

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Yes. Fascism never completely disappears, and every generation needs to defeat it anew. When we drop our guard, it rises again.

For a Farage disciple the only way to respond to a call for "Pure, cold rage" is with violence, and it's clear he means violence toward the Sikh community (and by extension other Asians). Surely this is incitement to racial hatred, a criminal offence? Any lawyers here - Is there a case to answer?

Sky the colour of Peter Mandelson's underpants... drizzle... persistant chill... that's summer over then

Mandelson. Most striking is the sheer pettiness of the exchanges. The cheap sniping, the veiled threats, the fawning when he got the job ("Congratulations, Your Excellency"). Everyone seems terrified of him - of what he might do if thwarted. Unedifying stuff. Starmer comes out pretty well I'd say

At Whitechapel a bloke in a motorised wheelchair zipping along the platform, his daughter, chubby little girl of about 10, being pulled along on rollerblades