Thanks, that’s the conclusion I was beginning to come to too.

I can still remember my grandparents’ numbers from the 60s enunciated in their posh telephone voices. I can remember land line numbers but I still haven’t learned any mobile numbers including mine. Then there was the student 2p in the payphone and then parents ringing you back.

A Venn diagram approach? There as an overlap of folly but outer and differing circles of folly and evil too.

But you can replace the buildings with parking lots.

How can you make a student happy? Drop them at university – and make a lightning-quick exit | Zoe Williams The impulse is to hang around meeting their friends, and their friends’ parents, and checking out their room. Maybe you’ll all go to a restaurant in the evening ... But be aware: no teenager or twenty...

Don’t write an article about them either!

Disoriented and disorientating!

You’re right. Downsizing at 60 meant a massive cull. I’d never disposed of any before!

Her office said the Office for Students (OfS), which regulates universities, had received reports of speakers and lecturers being harassed and blocked for holding gender-critical or religious views, of foreign interference suppressing academic freedoms, and of ideological belief requirements featuring in job advertisements.

The OfS will be able to use the new complaints scheme from September. From April, it will be able to fine universities the greater of £500,000 or 2 per cent of their income, which would amount to millions of pounds for large institutions, for breaches under the Freedom of Speech Act. Ultimately, universities could be deregistered for egregious cases.

Bridget Phillipson will introduce new laws to make it possible for Universities to be fined millions of pounds if they don't silence students who protest bigots invited onto their campuses. It's like the Tories never left office.

Waterstones in Guildford has a new vinyl LP section. The bad news is that the prices have gone up somewhat. £35 - £40! No longer can you buy an LP for 12/6 in Woolworths.

That’s what I suspected. By way of illustration I remember popping into Tesco in Dublin and waving my phone at the scanner to pay using Monzo. The only noticeable difference was the price seeming suddenly cheaper due to the instant conversion to Stirling.

I often wonder about people wanting to keep the £. Is the motivation economic or based on an emotional attachment to their currency? If the latter, given that we are increasingly cashless we will barely notice what sign goes before the figures in our transactions.

Rejoin is coming Customs union is a distraction. Only full membership offers a compelling vision of Britain's future.

Rejoin is coming: Talk of the customs union and single market is a distraction. Only full membership offers a compelling vision of Britain's future

iandunt.substack.com/p/rejoin-is-...

75 - I still think of it as a relatively recent modern design!

Trump broke the Commandents, so Vance had to commit the Deadly Sins. Trump compared himself to Jesus, so Vance had to claim that he was better at theology than the pope. This is one sad weird heretical Oedipal thing.

BREAKING: The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine just issued a formal statement defending Pope Leo XIV's teaching authority on just war doctrine — less than twelve hours after JD Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd the pope should “be careful” talking theology.

This is a serious escalation.

I went through Dover as a foot passenger two weeks ago.

Hugely inconvenient and elaborate process. And there were about 30 of us.

It's going to be utter carnage come the summer.

My theory on Starbucks: it caters primarily for that not insignificant sector of the market that likes the idea of coffee, but doesn’t actually like coffee.

“I exist in all languages: my language is Greek, my language is Syrian, my language is Hebrew. My language is that of all peoples for I exist in the unity of peoples”

Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 147.19

(Met Museum)

For the second day, the BBC are running a story that presents itself as providing evidence of endemic abuse of the asylum system based on seemingly a single encounter with someone who is neither a lawyer nor a registered immigration adviser. Words fail. This is reprehensibly irresponsible.

I’m forever being attacked by gorse. The perils of heathland conservation.

Reminded of the Glasscock at my sons’ school. Felt very sorry for him.

The eyewatering hypocrisy writes itself.

Today's BritPol exam question.

"After its supposed failure to see what was coming in the Brexit referendum, and with Reform leading in the polls, the BBC occasionally comes over as so desperate to avoid accusations of liberal bias that it risks overshooting in the other direction." Discuss.

True. What about deep-fried Mars bars though?

The poor struggle to buy fruit and vegetables. No mention of these.

And then they risk passing the cut off age for free NHS treatment too.

Why Americans Need to Get Much Angrier About Donald Trump Hope is not a strategy and my fellow Americans need to wake up to the far greater damage to the US this President could still cause, argues Alexandra Hall Hall

Why Americans Need to Get Much Angrier About Donald Trump

Hope is not a strategy and my fellow Americans need to wake up to the far greater damage to the US this President could still cause, argues Alexandra Hall Hall

Does Trump think he is Henry VIII?

‘One simple gesture says it all’: the world in black and white – in pictures From sunbathers holding hands to rain-soaked metro stations, Marina Sersale’s magical monochrome images take us across Italy, Japan and beyond

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Up to 71% now!