Last updated Sunday 11th January 2026 14:02 GMT
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Yorkshire Evening Post (or "Eenie Po!" as the newspaper sellers used to shout in York) wins our Headline of the Day Award. One of the crustier judges was heard to remark: "You mark my words, Colonel, this is a very slippery slope. Allow the children to wear coats in winter, and before you know it you're abolishing the school leopard."
The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay. Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result ...
Back in 2008 when I first joined, Twitter was a lifeline for me. I had Glandular Fever which knocked me out for months and it was incredibly isolating. But here was a community of people I could communicate with in real time, many of whom became friends in real life. There was the Formula 1 crowd. My life was made when then Brawn driver Rubens Barrichello replied to me. Of course there were the growing community of Lib Dems – and Jo Swinson was quickly recognised for her authentic use of the platform not just as a broadcast mechanism, but ...
The Independent reports that rebel Kingston upon Hull MP, Karl Turner, is absolutely confident that the plan to scrap jury trials will be defeated. Turner told the paper that MPs would be "going stark raving mad" if the Tories had proposed the much-criticised plans and called for a meeting with the prime minister: "We are absolutely seething with the government, with the prime minister and with David Lammy and I've said to the prime minister I want to see him face to face on this single issue and I expect him to instruct Lammy to stop and think again," told ...
USA – Minneapolis The shooting of young mother Renee Good this week in Minneapolis has further exposed the divisions in a fractured American society and President Trump's determination to exacerbate rather than heal them. Anyone who watches one of the many videos—or reads the eyewitness accounts—can only conclude that Ms Good was murdered by an ICE agent. She was clearly driving away from a confrontation with the agents who were in Minneapolis as part of a politically motivated round-up of ethnic Somalis. As she was turning away from the armed agents, one of them fired through the car window and ...
I was interested to read in Peter Lidsky's book of the known behaviour of parasites in extending the life (if not the quality of life) of their hosts from time to time and I thought I would read up on this. I do recommend buying Peter's Book Aging: Why Does Evolution Kill. I have given the link to Amazon. I have, therefore, asked three LLMs to produce a summary of this behaviour and I copy
"For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don't think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth - and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists ... many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments." To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the TheoBros, says Kiera Butler. Martin Barrow finds that Labour's reforms of the care system are an admission ...
Donald Trump has gone too far. Keir Starmer needs to find a spine to oppose him in the piracy which he launched in Venezuela. Starmer will not find that spine, so it is left to liberal parties and individuals to take action. One of the most egregious examples of brown nosing that I have seen for years is the presentation of a first Peace Prize to Donald Trump. Stoking the ego of a bully might be a way to quick gratification for the person doing it but in the long run appeasing a bully encourages even more bullying behaviour. After ...
Let me cast your mind back to 1974: Paul McCartney's Wings is blasting out of AM radios, children play in the street, Terylene clothing is common and it's socially acceptable to smoke on petrol station forecourts. This is before my living memory and I don't think I'd have enjoyed playing British Bulldog, however I bring you back to this year as modern Liberalism has accidentally been rewound back to this post-War zenith. Politics text books talk of this era where Liberals stood up for the 'little guy', at the time this was someone not part of the business-owning class, but ...
Source: Horn of Africa Simple Map Part 1 was published yesterday. DJIBOUTI This small but strategic former French colony sits at the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, overlooking the narrow Straights of Mandeb. It is famously home to a port serving Ethiopia and hosting the huge multi-agency Camp Lemonnier base for the US and in part the UK, with 4000 staff. However over the last 15 years Chinese companies have dominated and they also have a large Red Sea military base there, a short drive from Lemonnier, allegedly staffing up to 10,000 personnel. Proposals for a bridge between ...
With the end of another, rather interesting, quarter, another update to PollBase, my database of British voting intention opinion polls since the 1930s is now up. It includes the first PM approval ratings from 1938 and first national voting intention scores from 1939. Download the new version here. As well as another three months of data, changes this time include: Additional information about MRP polls for the 2015, 2017 and 2019 Parliaments. (As I note, one fieldwork date in Wikipedia is definitely wrong as it would mean an MRP was conducted three days after Tim Shipman had tweeted about its ...
The rules-based world order has been the cornerstone of international diplomacy since the end of World War Two. It is surviving by the friction of inertia alone, and many argue that we have already slipped into the abyss of the unknown. The ancien régime depended heavily on American support and direction. Donald Trump has indicated that providing that support is no longer in America's interests. According to Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House and a Key Trump adviser, what counts now is not law, but raw power. As he told CNN: "We live in a world... ...
Swansea's Dylan Thomas Centre started life in 1829 as the town's new guildhall. It was built to replace the previous building that was situated next to Swansea Castle and which dated back to the late 16th century. As the centre's website relates, the Old Guildhall (as it was known) looked quite different to today: Built by Thomas Bowen, between 1825-1829, from designs by architect John Collingwood, the building originally had sweeping grand staircases either side of the main entrance and the building housed court rooms and smaller offices. Beautiful as the structure was, the doubling in size of the borough ...
