How long are you here for Jonn?

Relatedly I think my daughter must have met about 15% of the dogs in Amsterdam last week

The Renters’ Rights Act will come into force in 10 days.

Learn about your new rights, and how to use them, by signing up to a FREE Renters’ Rights Awareness Week webinar!

Sign up here:

www.generationrent.org/renters-righ...

🚨 🚨 MISINFORMATION ALERT: Shocking email from a letting agent about the Renters' Rights Act.

From 1st May:

➡️ ALL TENANCIES WILL BECOME ROLLING, regardless of fixed-terms tenants have previously signed.

➡️ Tenants will be able to leave the home with 2 MONTHS NOTICE AT ANY POINT.

Really sad news - I never met Giles but he was incredibly patient with the occasional stupid question I asked him and @generationrent.bsky.social's campaigning would be not be so well-informed without his skill at communicating housing law

This job changed my life - and it can change millions more.

Generation Rent is looking for its next Chief Executive. If you care about housing justice and want to make a real impact, take a look quickly, as applications close at midnight! 👇

Upgrade your downtime with Guardian Puzzles Give your in-between moments a new lease of life with Guardian puzzles. Available to play in the Guardian app.

🎬 Film reveal - 18/04/2026

Score: 159
Top 7% of players today

Pretty sure that's a PB - a whopping 58 points on Matt Damon...

guardian.go.link/1oRLv

Peter Vaughan

16th Century Dutch painting of an old lady

Spotted Peter Vaughan in the Rijksmuseum
#CharacterActorsOfTheDutchGoldenAge

More good news for renters from Rightmove data, ie new tenancy rents, indicating no shortage of listings on the eve of the Renters Rights Act changes. Don't know how long these conditions will last but right now wages are rising faster than rents

An idiotic idea imported from the US. Search for 'TurboTax problems'. No doubt some complete tech bro bastard had the ear of government on this.

I'm rewatching it at the moment and totally agree but I feel like the "dip in and out" quality makes it better for repeats on normal TV, like Frasier. Netflix needs a "surprise me" random episode feature for when you want to watch a show again but can't be bothered to start from the beginning

Today the two-child limit is gone. Parents have told us what this will mean for their kids:

- A first-ever birthday party for a 10-year-old
- Better quality food
- Clothes that aren't completely worn out
- Going on the school trip without getting into debt
- A new mattress
- Swimming lessons

Not much new in here, except for an excellent campaign by @stellacreasy.bsky.social going after dodgy financial advice being peddled by Tiktok landlords

Passed Alan Johnson in Streatham Sainsbury's, who was playfully chasing a small child who I presume was his own.

A few years/pay rises later, I saw Danny Alexander struggling with the self checkouts in Balham Sainsbury's

So good it got @melissac601.bsky.social (albeit at the weekend not this morning)

Niles: It wasn‘t really your finest hour, was it?

Fraiser: I thought it was a novel idea for treatment. How was I meant to recognise the great clown Pagliacci without makeup?

Bob Mortimer Would I Lie To You meme with text: I once started a war having forgotten the country I was attacking had the ability to shut off one fifth of the world's oil supply

Four weeks in and I'm kinda surprised I've not seen one of these yet

What level do you think inflation could reach this time? I can see how this is a magnitude of difference worse than the energy crisis prompted by Putin's invasion - are you saying that the spike in rates then was the wrong call, or was it different last time because we were emerging from covid?

Do Starmer, Macron, Merz, Carney et al need to jump on several planes to DC and stage an intervention at this point?

Personal news 🧵 I am stepping down from my role as Chief Executive at Generation Rent UK in July.

Leading the organisation over the last three years has been unbelievably rewarding, and I’m immensely proud of the change that we’ve achieved together. [1/6]

For me I'm slightly concerned how blase I'm being about it - I had a really strong psychological reaction to the pandemic, Ukraine and Gaza, but with this, for all the sheer insanity of what Trump has done, it's like my body is telling me "a) we've been here before and b) TACO"

Insane behaviour from the government

Plans to make rented homes cheaper to heat were announced by the government back in January. We've published a new report on what needs to happen to make this a reality and make sure renters benefit in full.
🔥🏘️💷
Here's a thread with the basics 🧵

Every autumn I see trees in back gardens around here heaving with apples and resolve to organise something like this... next year. I fear being reminded of it now means I now have to do it.

The Impact of the Second‑Home Surcharge: Ten Years On A decade on from the second‑home stamp duty surcharge: 2.2 million rental homes missing, higher rents and less competition for first‑time buyers

1.4m more owner-occupiers thanks to this extra tax on landlords, say Hamptons - though analysis is a bit whiffy. Several factors affect rents and housebuilding, but they appear to pin all variation on this one tax change... www.hamptons.co.uk/articles/the...

It is the anniversary of the My Lai massacre today. I'd say that even more than most years, it's important to remember what happened.

And the role Hugh Thompson, an active serviceman, played in both stopping and publicising it. Despite enormous military, political and public pressure to stay quiet.

Good read on competition policy - mentions some tension between the "antitrust" movement and the abundance agenda.

Of course, housebuilding in this country is incredibly concentrated, with large developers drip-feeding supply to maintain prices. Promoting competition should help deliver more homes

I feel like now would be a good time to slap some retaliatory tariffs on the USA as punishment for this fiasco

Narratively having Ever Given getting stuck in 2021 to set up Hormuz in 2026 is great foreshadowing. You want your audience to understand the basics of international shipping in a lower stakes context so you drop the real plot without a lot of saggy exposition about the minutiae of cargo logistics.

Do you use a long ‘a’ or short ‘a’? Britain’s “trap-bath split” mapped Mapping the results across Britain shows that the trap-bath split is much more common in the South of England than it is in the rest of the country.

Turns out YouGov did this last year yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Tom Adams has clearly not tried the blackberries that grow in my garden