The Travelling Whaleburys?

The UK’s radical ‘Preston model’ faces an uncertain future with local elections looming | Andy Beckett A Lancashire council has pushed on with plans to keep wealth and power in the area, despite such ideas being out of fashion in Westminster. But Reform could unravel it all, says Guardian columnist Andy Beckett

The UK’s radical ‘Preston model’ faces an uncertain future with local elections looming | Andy Beckett

I love that sometimes you chance across something here and then it leads you to spending your evening listening to Dunedin Sound music from The Clean and The Bats.

Been working all day with periodic cricket score checks. It’s so infuriating that @trentbridge.co.uk don’t do Free After Tea as I’d go as a detour on my way back home from the office. It’s the policy at Derby, Leicester, Surrey, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire…

BuT i KeEp ReAdInG tHeY aRe BoTh ThE sAmE 🤪

Allowing flights from UK bases by American planes is complicity. We should be revoking flight permissions ahead of Trump’s deadline tonight.

feel like as millennials we kept being told that sure, the economy was bad but at least we'd never had to spend any time in a world where it felt like major, global, maybe even nuclear conflict could erupt at any moment and well well well: who's laughing now

It seems like Zack Polanski was being modest here:

Greens are actually first.

Anyhow, anyone here like music? Seriously, check it out if you haven't already. It's pretty great.

School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - Index on Censorship A school librarian faced a disciplinary hearing and scores of books were removed from her school library after she stocked Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women

This is utterly jaw-dropping.

A school that bans Atwood, Zadie Smith, Terry effing Pratchett and *literal George Orwell* is actively harming its pupils.

www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

Keir Starmer has dragged the UK into this war against our will.

UK bases face further attacks - putting military personnel and civilians in the potential line of fire.

This is a Prime Minister who promised a vote before any military action - that must now happen on Monday.

You could say that Rock n Roll was born 111 years ago today in Arkansas, but probably not where you'd think. Before there was a Chuck Berry or Little Richard, there was those who wanted to be like her.

Rosetta Nubin better known as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of Rock was born on this day

Nottingham Forest overspent by £34.5M & received a 4pt deduction. Similar story with Everton.

Chelsea concealed illegal payments of over £47M, though didn't breach PSR, but no points deduction. Waiting for Man City's gentle slap on the wrist & the Premier League get more petrodollars in fine money

Jim Cramer suggests on CNBC that Trump could “bomb Tehran into the Stone Age” until Iran reopens the strait, citing U.S. bombings of North Vietnam in the 1970s. Carl Quintanilla points out to him that Hanoi won that war.

I would 100% read The Speechwriters by Dorian and @iandunt.bsky.social though

Theatre review: The Marriage of Figaro at Theatre Royal Scheming Spaniards, slapstick, mistaken identity and cross dressing make for an entertaining update to the Mozart classic in Opera North's new staging of The Marriage of Figaro at Theatre Royal...

Latest edition of Gareth reviews opera for @leftlion.bsky.social leftlion.co.uk/features/202...

Yet again, Trump’s international military adventures are the biggest advert for domestic renewable energy supply and independence

Was able to really efficiently rebook an upcoming NHS appointment over email today. Genuinely why are we still doing letters and phone calls for those who would actively opt in for a cheaper centralised email-based system and save that phone/letters/staffing for those who need it?

This is a wild prediction based on just one poll but even with Reform on top, Jenrick still loses Newark. Every theoretical cloud...

Krump 👊 @OXY TikTok video by Vik White

Autocorrect also tried to change that to crumping and I’m now trying to imagine which Labour politicians are least likely to be krumping (most of whom are councillors) www.tiktok.com/@itzslavik/v...

This pod (not in the clip but in the episode) is one of the first times I’ve heard, on a national podcast, that the Labour Party is reliant on its councillors as its paid campaign vanguard, and even that is crumbling

'Charlotte embodies the new Conservative Party.'

She won 1.9% of the vote.

Good article from @joelocker96.bsky.social on alternative heat sources and district heating schemes in Nottingham: www.nottinghampost.com/news/notting... Something that needs following with Nottingham's CN28 ambitions and it was campaigned on internally by the council leader when becoming leader.

Nice to see the late Dave Bishop pop up here. A shame that he didn’t come out above David Icke on this though.

Genuinely, I imagine many in Labour were more pleased in the downfall of Corbyn than winning in 2024 as the party is more internal struggle than anything else.

The sooner we get a more proportional system and the Labour Party properly splits, the better.

The archives of compromising material, screenshots, recordings of speeches made clandestinely and even once having someone take pictures of a candidate outside their house to prove they lived not where they claimed are just some of the examples from just one city - and this is happening everywhere.

Having been very involved in Labour politics for a while, this is what the entire party is like.

If you get in in then your social circle becomes your side of an internal divide and you are in constant WhatsApp chats which is all just “how do we bring down so-and-so” by any means.

Labour lost three council seats last night. 1 each to the Greens, Lib dems and Plaid. Reform were 2nd or 3rd in each.
The Greens also won and beat Reform in another local election.
So when they say vote Labour to stop Reform, they couldn't be more wrong. Vote almost anyone but Labour to beat Reform.

More reckless destruction of urban habitat and wildlife by the supposedly eco-conscious council, who continue to spray our streets with poisonous glyphosate and have cancelled food waste recycling too.

openletter.earth/ecological-d...