Starmer isn’t great at politics, but politics is difficult. Blair was good at politics, and we complained about that too - too superficial, too manipulative, making the wrong friends. What I want is someone who is good at advancing an agenda I approve of. There is currently little prospect of that.
You should check that none of the 601 bastards spoke from a sedentary position or were already standing before they spoke.
Try this one: m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dit3...
In Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece Arcadia, one of the characters leafs through the library of an English stately home and finds a letter to Thackeray among the pages of a book. I always wondered whether Myles’s Buchhandlung business had spent a weekend there…
It’s a pebble!
Really? Best author, but his worst book.
I saw Mark Watson’s show in the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. It was OK, 7/10 maybe. Better described as rambling rather than tightly constructed on digressions within digressions. But good that he’s an adherent!
To reduce T, round up all the mobile phones of the Adults and the Children and take them 20m from the house. The As and the Cs will soon follow.
Adults includes people aged over 60, and the subset of over-60s who are over 80. And it includes adults of all ages who aren’t the parents of the children.
Podcaster interviews a War Criminal.
The Arse of the Deal The new Private Eye is out now.
More Americans Buying Firearms To Defend Selves From Toddlers Who Found Their Guns
Flann O’Brien would have much to say about one-legged bicycles. How the phrase alluded the great wordsmith, we may never know. That he should have been beaten to it by the Bard of Burnage is surely literary criminality.
“What's happening in Edinburgh then? What's all that thick s***. People juggling f*****g bollocks and that? Swallowing swords... one-legged bicycles. What's all that s**t about?" Liam Gallagher (Oasis), Edinburgh, August 2025 One-legged bicycles - I think he’s been reading The Third Policeman.
Why Dubai is finished by Our London Correspondent Isabel Cheapshott From the new Private Eye, out now.
MP claims Surrey Care home is a “hot bed of terrorist activity” filled with Palestine Action supporters.
You could give The Third Policeman a try, if you don’t mind devoting the rest of your life to it. Flann O’Brien (1911-1966).
New Death With Indignity Law Lets Terminally Ill Be Crushed By Falling Vending Machines theonion.com/new-dea...
Kennedy Curse Sure Taking Its Sweet Time With RFK Jr.
“We’ll share out the booty after we’ve allocated a percentage to our CSR schemes” From the new Private Eye, out now
111 Years Ago Today: War Declared By All
Not wrong @ianmbrooks.bsky.social @katatrepsis.bsky.social
I can think of ways that Ben Stokes could have made himself more money than by devoting himself exclusively to test cricket for the last 4 years. His body would probably be in better shape as well. (Surely sportspeople are expected to talk bollocks?)
How do you ensure a nation fails to cope with drought? Privatise its water system. Almost everyone wants our water renationalised. Almost everyone, that is, except the government. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
So the BBC is losing viewers on their 7th birthday? And the BBC should close down Radio 1Xtra and the BBC Asian Network as poor value for money?
Where can I read the essay? (Congratulations, by the way. Is it (the essay) about a bicycle?)
Trump: the comprehensive Mexican food acronyms From the new Private Eye, out now.
In 2012, only 46% of British people over the age of 65 said they had even used a computer in the previous 3 months. Of those, only 18% had used a social networking site. By 2020, 67% of over 65s said they use the internet every day. This explains a lot I think
I’m no expert but I would’ve got a person to do it.
When escorting guests on a lap of the York walls I always call them “the Roman walls”.
"Investment" is one of those terms that disguises rather than reveals realities. The word now means two completely different things: 1. Using money to create productive and socially useful assets or services that did not previously exist. 2. Capturing and exploiting assets already in existence.
Oh dear. Will @kermodeandmayo.bsky.social @kermodemovie.bsky.social @simonmayo.bsky.social have to retract their review of the movie and their interview with Jason Isaacs (who did not underplay the meaningfulness of the story and the film)?
People who say "well the police are obliged to arrest criminals" need to explain why they can't arrest the person who bought shit on my credit card even when I gave them his address and a picture of his fucking house
Chancellor and defence not subject to parliamentary questions and scrutiny?
Salary = roughly 3 x median earnings?
“never inexorable nor inevitable” I was involved in wordsmithery at a time when it was neither popular nor profitable. @flannobriensoc.bsky.social
The article doesn’t quote him saying anything against shooting or saying anything in favour of restoring nature (trees, etc) to the land. Perhaps he is in favour of these things, but perhaps not. The Gamekeepers are powerful; their employers more so.
Hi @georgemonbiot.bsky.social It isn’t natural forests that are tinder-dry and burning in Scotland. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association, NatureScot and the Scottish Greens all fail to suggest closing the shooting estates and returning the land to forest. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Also, on BBC R4 Today they kept going on about “next year”, “next year’s Glastonbury”. There isn’t one next year - fallow year. It’s almost as though the people talking on Today about Glastonbury don’t know much about Glastonbury.
Bezos wedding guest takes us through her extravagant goodie bag from the wedding 💗
He leaves the policies on a few £bn to Reeves and Kendall. They are less warm.
Ukraine? Poll reform? Or a short DJ set to close the show?
It's hard to make this any more explicit... from a cynical political perspective anyone in government comms should be concerned about the incentive structures that most "local news" sites have, which are increasingly shaped by big tech aggregators that push clicky headlines onto phone screens.
What - is climate change STILL happening?
Today’s London Standard has a big report on how the capital “isn’t working”. It blames immigrants, especially Muslims, and the lack of “White British”. It asks “if there’s a minimum number of natives” at which London must give it up its status as the UK capital. www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/lond...
The ultimate saviours are the County Council?
Mike Lee Stresses He Would Have Posted Same Thing If Own Family Savagely Murdered
Eamon Morrissey certainly wasn’t afraid of biological open-ness. I remember him describing “the melting of the snot” as part of this act, which is astonishingly 31 years ago. @paulfagan.bsky.social @flannobriensoc.bsky.social
Ecologically illiterate, cruel and self-serving industry propaganda, channelled uncritically by the BBC. So much for informed reporting. So much for impartiality. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Marines Raise American Flag Outside Cell Phone Store After Defeating Skateboarding Teenagers theonion.com/marines...
Breaking news: it appears Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica are declining faster than predicted. Latest satellite data shows a massive 22% drop in penguin numbers over the last 15 years in key regions. This is more than double the rate of loss that experts had expected... 🧵 1/8
When did you ever hear the BBC stating that it must alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama”, to win the trust of Green voters, or of unrepresented people on the left? All the shifts are in just one direction. bylinetimes.com/2025/06/09/b...
Mark Avery was happy to live with driven grouse shooting when he was head of the the RSPB @rspb.bsky.social Then he left the RSPB and wrote a book about how driven grouse shooting should be banned. He was right the second time.
This is welcome and long overdue. MPs are now calling on the UK government to ban trawling and dredging in "Marine Protected Areas". It's outrageous that this wholescale destruction is permitted anywhere, let alone in these "reserves". It has to stop. committees.parliament.uk/publications...
What news editors and politicians think people want: "Just tell them they'll get a tram somewhere in their city if they're nice." What people really want: "SHOW ME THE FULL GPS ROUTE PLAN COMPLETE WITH LINKS TO THE WIKIPEDIA PAGES OF THE DISUSED RAILWAY LINES THAT COULD COME BACK INTO USE."
Lots of good ideas. But all of these reforms will create some losers. They will howl, and the media will amplify the howl. So nothing will change.
If they stopped using fancy funding structures to avoid tax then most of those rules wouldn’t be needed. Any non UK business can fund its UK subsid with 50% share capital and 50% loans and be reasonably certain that this won’t cause them any significant tax problems.
Even if you assume that Bozza is not exactly hogging the lion’s share of the household chores…
The man himself couldn’t have written it more creatively.
Ed Balls should know. He was advising Gordon Brown when he abolished his own 10p tax rate and had to U-turn several times in an expensive way of not satisfactorily limiting the damage. www.theguardian.com/politics/200...
Poetry Corner: So, farewell Then, Skype. From the latest Private Eye, out now.
As the UK and EU carve up fishing rights, I don't give a damn which party gets to trash our marine ecosystems by overexploiting fish populations, ripping up the seafloor and killing vast numbers of "non-target" animals. I just want this orgy of destruction to stop.
The taxpayer is getting its money’s worth out of the salaries of Lib Dem MPs. Two questions on the important solar dimming project that could ruin the summer.
Come on Tories! Are they Die Hards? Or Diehards? Must die harder.
Yes it is. Every conversation when meeting people in London starts with how everyone got to the meeting place. The explanations only make sense if everyone knows the tube map and can visualize your journey.
Life imitates Eye: Who will be the next Pope? L: BBC News R: Latest edition of Private Eye
They're 100% wrong. The fireprone landscape on Dartmoor is caused by centuries of grazing. Preventing fires means rewetting the land, and allowing/assisting the return of the temperate rainforest and carr, which should be widespread here and is v hard to burn. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Hi Dan - are figures available for the top 0.1%? Or for the top 0.01%? That graph doesn’t look the most convincing and I’ve heard other evidence elsewhere. Agreed that the effective rate is higher now. The people who genuinely paid much 83% tax must have been financially naive.
Here's Gary Stevenson calling for a return to the 1970s, when the top rate of tax was 98%. But did the rich ever pay it? We spoke to 1970s tax dodgers and ex-HMRC staff & and crunched the data. A 🧵, but here's a spoiler: the rich pay more tax *now*.
Even the cognoscenti are dupes. What will happen when (as inevitably it must) McNally’s absence is of a non-temporary nature? Who will be left to correct the record? Nobody. While Myles / Flann’s writings will survive forever, the image of their author will forever be that of a forgotten poet.
Anyone telling you there's anything normal about these locals is talking out their arse. Below, gains and losses as a proportion of total contests in every set of locals in the last 50 years - provisional numbers, based on 62% of seats declared.
Such a weird article. My outgoings also leave me with less than the minimum wage
Nobody else dares say it, but I think the Guardian has made up that Mr Bale is soon going to publish an interview with Lionel Messi.
I re-read The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien recently. Wondering if there might be more to it than I first thought.
This is thorium. There is no uranium.
This is thorium Dave, not uranium.
I suspect I'll make myself unpopular again, but I welcome this. Small modular reactors make decarbonising heavy industrial processes; hydrogen production; grid balancing and other tasks easier. We don't need to choose between SMRs and renewables. We can have both. futurism.com/china-thoriu...
Oh FGS. Anything that upsets corporate power and/or the far right is now deemed by the BBC to invoke "public controversy", and must therefore be nixed. The BBC has done more to censor public debate than any other organisation in the UK. And still it goes on.
Running in our middle class suburban area on a cool evening, the smell of burning wood is absolutely choking.
Dear Lord, the excuses, the denial and the exceptionalism in the comments here would register at the top end of the scale on any pollution monitor.
To all the people saying, "it's cheaper", no it isn't, unless you have your own supply. Which is one reason why wood burning is predominantly done by wealthy or middle class people, poisoning themselves and poisoning others. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I'm really sorry, but we just need to stop doing this. Your wood-burning hygge leads directly to people's deaths - other people's and perhaps your own. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Does she talk about the hostile environment? And making up stories about migrants avoiding deportation because of cats?
Not, I think you mean? This is not, rather than this is now?
It would be great to see the fossil fuels industry held to the same ethical standard.
“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.” ― Flann O'Brien (who died on this day 1966), The Third Policeman
Oh great - years and years more bleating to come from Monbiot. 😉
Jim! The vide-printer would say Hull City 0 Leeds United 7 (seven) You’ve reversed the protocol.
For weeks now they’ve had no beans. What is going on?
even BIG TESCO only had red kidney beans and cannellini beans! at least that's *one more type of bean* for my chilli but fucking come on. has anyone else noticed bean problems?
We’re not short of deer. If there was a 90% attrition rate, that would bring the British deer population down to about the right level. Then trees could grow and store carbon (without needing to be planted in plastic wrappers and fenced off). Doesn’t look like lynx will be allowed to do the job.
The Dartington Trust is making a massive, historic mistake here. Please sign the petition - www.change.org/p/stop-the-d... - to let it know what you think. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Er…1.5C is out of reach. It would be good to avoid 1.7 or 1.8 with concerted action, but the 1.5C ship has sailed. This makes it even more important to act, of course.
Did Myles know enough economics to count the change in his pocket?
Come off it.
So what was the tax scheme that bankrupted Frankie Dettori, and who is the unnamed adviser who sold it to him? And why should we feel (slightly) sorry for Dettori? Quick thread.
Flann O’Brien would like this news story today. Someone simultaneously held three full-time UK civil service jobs, all working from home. As a man who had multiple careers and three identities, Myles would have (hypocritically) written a very funny column about it! inews.co.uk/news/politic...
Anyway, if MailOnline are going to stick their story behind a paywall then I'm going to make mine available for free for 24 hours. So have a read, stick this in your WhatsApp group, and just help me spread the word about where to get the real thing. www.londoncentric.media/p/harry-pott...
