You have a breathtakingly poor grasp of the concept of representative democracy, which is the system we have in the U.K.

That encapsulates the whole thing. That Starmer is a highly capable lawyer who doubtless fully understands this and its significance, yet refuses to address it, is infuriating.

Star Trek TNG's Deanna Troi sitting on Dr McCoy's shoulder, as if she were his conscience.

I can’t see DeForest for the Trois.

The Bosch car battery selector has a VR feature which allows you to see how lovely a nice new car battery would look when installed on your sideboard.

I’ve detested Microsoft software since 1979. I’m that old.

Justified

The only reason I’m sitting in Schiphol airport watching a little mouse with clogs on for the foreseeable while I wait for Lucy is Nigel sodding Farage.

To be fair, it’s Fox that’s doing the heavy lifting on this one.

The white one or the middle-eastern looking one?

The EU is a colossus. So why is it cowering before Trump like a mouse? | Alexander Hurst With its woeful trade deal, Europe prostrated itself before the president. We need a leader who will tell him where to shove it, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst

The EU is a colossus. So why is it cowering before Trump like a mouse? | Alexander Hurst

It’s bloody irritating, but unfortunately Yorkshire is pretty lovely.

And as a dual Irish/UK passport holder, would I count as a foreign national?

And Zaxary sort of works for anyone who has some nodding acquaintance with Greek, or maths, or the etymology of Xmas, or LaTeX.

I was looking for the movie Equus on Amazon prime. It’s not on there, but suggested “Champion the Wonder Horse” would be a suitable alternative. (On the upside, it does understand Latin).

It is magic. But pretty much all the stories where people are gifted magic end up with the magic performing in unexpectedly disastrous ways.

I wrote a paper years ago about the Roman law of slavery, and some American academic has just berated me for being insufficiently attuned to the moral issues.

Similarly, *explaining* vs. *excusing*

I have a personal theory that this is what happened to the BBC in the 90s and 2000s. It always had a reputation as a bastion of lefty-ness but was also very conscious of wanting to be neutral, so often gave disproportionate time to right wing commentators as ‘balance’. And then the right took over.

Exactly. That would be majoritarianism, not democracy.

The theme to the Godfather was prettt special at my last place of work

You know you’re ancient when your social feed starts sending you ads for incontinence pants. Come back Beyoncé’s arse, all is forgiven.

When Humphrys was hosting the Today show, Bragg was the perfect counterweight, and a blessed relief when In Our Time followed.

Where Humphrys somehow managed to be self-congratulatory about his own profound and deliberate ignorance of science, Bragg was the exact opposite.

I have also heard, directed at a small blonde child with a red face having a tantrum “Oliver, stop being so Trumpian”.

I’m in a beautiful park near the Barbican having a ver pleasant cup of coffee. It’s popular with parents who have young children. I have learned that for 50p you can get a “babycino” which is a tiny cappuccino with sugar sprinkles on top designed to wean kids onto the hard stuff.

Can we retire the -gate suffix? Watergate was a peccadillo compared to current events.

Hosted @nextcloud.bsky.social. Great product and getting better all the time.

Hmm. The only time I ever have problems with updates on my Mac is for Microsoft Office for Mac.

Nextcloud is great. And getting better all the time.

Slowly but steadily getting everything off my Google Drive and on a personal and a work NextCloud instance (managed hosting in Germany at Hetzner).

That is some huge effort (though rclone helped), but I'm trying to reduce my footprint on US services as much as I can.

Same, but Manchester Airport and Frank Bough.