Given the shared history of coal mining, it would be top trolling to announce the Donny thing and then explain it as a twin-town thing.

No.

Not enough coverage of this.

Speaking as a Lib Dem, Milliband's response to the Gulf crisis puts to shame the calls from both my party and the Green Party to ponce about with fuel prices.

This is the first time I've found you on here since you left Twitter.

Absolutely wonderful to have found your account again, the world is a better place for me as a result.

Not a small point at all IMO.

Please tell me that you have an FDR out there.

Right.

Dig out the Concordes.

I wouldn’t know, but the depressing thing to me is that these Labour factional battles should then drive policy decisions.

Better not make it a Wednesday - that interferes with both weekends.

Yeah, I’d sort of bought into the claim that Mandelson was chosen as the shit who could deal with the shits (which I think a lousy plan, btw) but it’s been strongly borne in today that it was all about where he sat in Labour’s cliques.

Which is even worse.

You don’t want to have a go, by any chance?

The bar has been set very low by the last four incumbents (inclusive), and not very high by the two before that.

Just how delighted you must be to have the Home Secretary turn up in central London and tell liberals to fuck right off.

Here’s @samfr.bsky.social's predictions for London.

Imagine you are a Labour councillor in central London (Sam’s prediction for Camden, Islington and Haringey: Labour to lose control to all three, to Greens in Islington, east Haringey and south Camden, Lib Dems in W Haringey and N Camden.

Back to Andras’s point, as an American you might be surprised by just how shitty the UK is about citizenship.

Birthright citizenship hasn’t been a thing here for decades and the end of Empire involved a series of mass withdrawals of citizenship or 2nd class versions.

This is crap because although ministers are usually (but not always) elected MPs, ministers aren’t elected *as minsters*, they are appointed, which is precisely how they get to exercise prerogative.

The main limits are imposed by courts if e.g. the minister can be shown to have exceeded the limits of the Prerogative, or acted irrationally, or took a bribe or suchlike.

Ministers get very cross when this happens and often say the courts are interfering with “elected ministers"

The fudge is that King Charles doesn’t get to exercise Crown Prerogative, that’s left to ministers who get their jobs from the PM, who in turn needs the confidence of the House of Commons, who are elected obvs.

In practice the HoC exercises virtually zero control over Crown Prerogative.

Just as a clarification to Andras’s (valid) point about demonisation of immigrants in the UK (as so many other places) UK Cabinet members can sometimes have very wide powers when they exercise Crown Prerogative - i.e. stuff that never officially came under Parliamentary control.

Tolkein rewritten by Bill and Ted.

I’m sure Rob is correct, but an additional complication in council elections is that there are generally a surprisingly high number of independent councillors about who can make up some of the numbers in the gains by parties.

Well remembered, that had disappeared into my own memory hole until I started reading this thread.

Even Neighbour Totoro deals with the feelings of a pre-school child whose mother is in hospital for long-term medical treatment and Kiki’s Delivery Service has a girl on the verge of womanhood leaving home for the first time and simultaneous rejoicing in and struggling with her new world.

Has just occurred to me that if Angela Rayner becomes PM, Trump will absolutely hate it.

Vance will probably warn her not to talk about poverty.

I really think the license fee should have an opt-out for BBC News and Current Affairs. Because I would like all of my money to be spent on other things.

Yeah, someone on here told me exactly that at the time and I didn't believe her.

If I could remember who she was I'd apologise.

The state of so many British resorts is such that I genuinely thought that was a brilliant new coinage.

I shall use it anyway.

PS I bet countless dogs have won the Dickin medal and as a cat person I feel it is pretty on brand for cats to almost without exception go “Are you fucking kidding?” to the concept of risking their lives for the benefit of humans.

Two posts below this in my feed:

bsky.app/profile/ones...

To really appreciate the scale you need to see people surfing on it.

It would be tricky - as 2010-15 coalition showed, if your tactical voting coalition is built on Not-X, going into govt with X is going to be seen as betrayal.

SNP minority govt with LDs able to block moves to full independence looks a wiser course to me.