I don't praise people for the bare minimum. Like what, I am gonna praise people who can walk and chew gum?

I am so sorry you have to put up with ghouls like this. You deserve better.

This is a wild thing to say to someone who is actively facing persecution by this government NOW. Fix your heart.

This isn't 4D chess, these people are venal and think you are stupid. To be honest, if you cannot see that this was an obvious quid pro quo situation wherein Mandy was given a plum job for services rendered, you are, in fact, a bit of a rube.

You have to ignore so much for this to be true.

The whole 'Starmer only appointed Mandelson because he knew he was dodgy and Trump would like him' line only works if you ignore:
a) the fact that Trump almost vetoed the appointment himself.
b) Labour Together.
It's unserious as a claim.

The Trump Trade Deal is not why Starmer was working with Mandelson's project Labour Together. Come on man, linear time exists.

So now we've established that Mandelson is a corrupting force that sullies everything and everyone in his sphere of influence, what are we going to do about the fact he hand-picked the entirety of Labour's 2024 intake of new MPs?

it should be lost on nobody that - but for the US not giving a damn about burning the British ambassador - Peter would still be glad-handing senators, Morgan would still be shouting at underlings and everyone would still be pretending nothing is fucked, and the plane hasn’t crashed into the mountain

If I were a Machiavellian strategy genius, I would simply avoid a position where *everything written about me ever* supports the “demanding bribes for factional allies” rumour

Red Ed Redemption

A vote for Labour is a vote for Reform!!!

Senior London Labour figures charged after criminal investigation into alleged vote rigging Exclusive: Four people charged after criminal investigation into irregularities surrounding Labour candidate selection process for Croydon East

And I mean, this is before we get to the part where the party-within-a-party appears to have illegally stitched up at least one internal election. That’s a new one that I haven’t previously touched on. Do we think this was the only piece of comical criminality involved?

In 2009, Sweden Replaced Textbooks with Screens: 15 Years Later, It’s Spending $120M to Bring Them Back Sweden embraced screens in classrooms and pushed books aside. Years later, the country is making a costly reversal that says everything about what went wrong.

Sweden, too.

15 years after Sweden began replacing textbooks with computers, they allocated over €100M to bring printed books back into schools for core subjects.

Teachers, parents, and education officials cited concerns about reading comprehension, reduced attention span, weaker writing ability.

We’re currently recruiting for a Project Cataloguer on a 1 year fixed-term contract to catalogue parts of our archives relating to our transfer from Hamburg to London in 1933.
35 hours per week
£30,842 per annum
Apply by 12 May 2026
Apply now ➡️ warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
#jobopportunity #UoL

TIL: There's a whole network of databases named after the 12thC abbess and intellectual, Heloise! The network is devoted to gathering historical data on Europe's universities. If that isn't a legacy, I don't know what is! heloise.hypotheses.org

#MedievalSky

The headline "Senior Labour figures tell Keir Starmer to stop making mistakes" with the sub header that's not super important, but a picture of Starmer looking like he's just done a little poo in his pants while a tiny union jack is in front of him on a desk.

Anyway I think to summarise today, we only need one image.

Trump ally says Peter Mandelson’s US ambassador job will not be blocked Newspapers had reported that new president might veto UK pick, as ministers brace for a turbulent four years

This doesn't really work though, given that Trump almost vetoed the appointment in January 2025, which was a whole news story that everyone is just pretending not to remember now.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

A visible change when he sticks his hand on his chin. Truly remarkable

Damn it really is.

a cat with big eyes and a wrinkly face with the words "it is gumbus"

open for a surprise

You can tell it was Peter Mandelson’s project because it isn’t a political operation that dabbles in bungs and influence peddling. It’s a bungs and influence peddling operation that dabbles in politics.

The *entire Starmer project* needs to be understood as one big Jobs For The Boys operation. That’s why McSweeney - Labour’s squillionaire bungs officer - spent 2017-19 running around telling dejected MPs to hold tight, because he was going to hook them back up with their clout, status and freebies.

WELL DONE!

We are trying to keep up!

The Avignon Papacy is not the Western Schism, my good friends!

Challenging the Pope: The Avignon Papacy

So today on Gone Medieval I have that rare thing - a medievalist emergency - wherein I had to explain the Avignon Papacy because a lot of people know the phrase *cough* the Trump administration *cough* but they don't actually know what it means. Don't let it be you.
open.spotify.com/episode/7bsa...

Getting a lot of questions about my decision to hire a guy called Roderick The Evil Killer Clown for the role of Ambassador to Circuses

Fascists and Nazis hate history, and historians; but understand the power of history. Thats why, across the world, they work so hard to control HOW we tell stories about the past, to drive out diverse critical voices and perspectives, to ensure a narrative that makes them look good.

To me, he will always be the guy who argued with me for days saying everything (everything) in ancient Rome was made of stone. Incredible stuff.