From reading some of these, I have a new one: a time-travelling Justin Trudeau is Fidel Castro's father.

Still have a feeling that Richey Edwards is alive and living happily somewhere (based entirely on Nicky Wire answering a question a bit weirdly while promoting This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours).

I get your points, but I think it still is the character of Sherlock Holmes, just one who works with the police more often. And definitely more Holmes than Moffat's "what if there was someone called Sherlock Holmes who had the superpower of Being Clever?"

The British media lined up in hot dog suits wondering just how anyone could have got the idea that this man who their sources tell them can barely tie his own shoelaces would make a good PM.

Just realised how uncomfortably close we are to President Vance meeting with PM Streeting.

Shocked, shocked that the "we just want a debate" gang is now declaring that all wrongthinkers should be excluded from society.

One of the reasons British HE has been slowly dismantled over the last decade or so is that far too many people in positions of power and influence are the tedious wankers who got their biggest thrills at 19 going to see "controversial" speakers at the Oxford Union.

I should be more surprised that Parkrun is stricter about insisting run directors have been DBS checked than the government is about making ambassadors pass vetting.

Ed Davey and the inexorable drift towards conservatism Despite unprecedented electoral success, the Liberal Democrats are drifting on the tides of political debate and utterly failing to shift its terms.

“if your sole concern is maxmimising parliamentary seats — as opposed to shifting the national debate in your favour (the strategy adopted by Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski) — then shifting to the right is simple electoral maths”

My latest piece on why the Lib Dems are ditching their principles.

this is it right here. AI violates Vonnegut's number 1 rule for writers: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." AI shifts the burden of effort from the writer onto the reader/audience and that is unacceptable

Problem is that economically right and socially left isn't a very large slice of the electorate, and the lesson of 2010-19 is that they'll usually put economic concerns over social ones.

Of course, this means I'll get some miffed Lib Dem in my replies going on about 72 MPs and huge numbers of councillors, but the problem is that the party has come to see winning seats as an end in itself, not something in service of any political vision.

I've had similar thoughts rattling around for a while but it's a sign of the general apathy the Lib Dems induce in me now that I've not felt that writing any of them down is a priority. Like James say, where they are now is a consequence of many decisions and not easily turned around.

I only care about Arsenal choking insofar as it means another year of City fans pretending that winning the league is some triumph of the Mancunian proletariat, not because they're an autocrat's plaything loaded with cheat codes.

Falcon, can you hear me, can you hear me, Falcon?

Someone else quoting this was a reminder that I - with a birthday midway between Geri and Idris Elba - have also passed the Meldrew Point.

Totally fine that large parts of the British government are jumping into bed with a company whose public statements are "we are, at a fundamental level, absolutely batshit crazy neofascists".

Every party has its arseholes, but the Greens do seem to have inherited the "how dare you criticise us, the most saintly people in the world" tendency from Corbynism on top of their existing smug wing.

Did the writer of LFO's odd stream of consciousness pop culture rap go on to write speeches for Trump? #TOTP

Their response to discovering there was actually a surplus in the budget would be to cut welfare spending to make sure it doesn't go away.

Ironically the BBC stumbled on a really important story: Desperate asylum seekers being forced to turn to fraudulent fee-charging “advisors” to navigate a system that is intentionally impossibly baroque and from which all sources of free advice have been removed.

But no: they chose Fake Gay Panic.

Obviously incorrect, it's JD Vance.

ChatGPT: you’re right you’re so much smarter than him. He’s so schlubby and you’re so suave. Columbo will never catch you.

You could repurpose Chappell Roan's "I'm your favourite artist's favourite artist" as "I'm your dad's favourite artist's favourite podcaster"

I left this question to the reader's thought two months ago, choosing rather that he should work it out for himself than have it sharply stated to him. But now, the ground being sufficiently broken (and the details into which the several questions, here opened, must lead us, being too complex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so that I must pursue them elsewhere), I desire, in closing the series of introductory papers, to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

"I desire, in closing the series of introductory papers, to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE."
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Unto_Th...

And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one; -- consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future -- innocent and exquisite; luxury for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruelest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly; face the light; and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread, and bequest of peace, shall be "Unto this last as unto thee"; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease -- not from trouble, but from troubling -- and the Weary are at rest.

"consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world"

"We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for them selves that they will be happy in it"

"in the inactive or ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay and the victories of treason work out also their own rugged system of subjection and success; and substitute, for the melodious inequalities of concurrent power, the iniquitous dominances and depressions of guilt and misfortune."

The most covetous of mankind would, with small exultation, I presume, accept riches of this kind on these terms. What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial or hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person). And this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price for an article of which the supply is limited. If the musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him; but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one who offers him most. And thus the power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see presently, even when most authoritative) depends first on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of the number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats at the concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becoming "rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour."

"What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends."

"The masters cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and frantically rush at every gap and breach in the walls of Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with impatient covetousness, every risk of ruin"