I am by no means a bomb disposal expert but I would probably get a longer stick.
I mostly write code. Occasional photographer. GitHub: https://github.com/garethpotter/
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I am by no means a bomb disposal expert but I would probably get a longer stick.
Guy trying to shut the barn door after the horse escaped but can’t because he’s standing blocking the doorway.
US President back-pedalling furiously after his administration treated some innocent hard-working Koreans like they were innocent hard-working Latinos.
I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday. As leaders, we must stand together and make clear Musk will face serious consequences for these actions.
korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in
Important piece by John Simpson in @theobserveruk.bsky.social, on the American money funding Yaxley-Lennon and the far-right in Britain. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
Kash Patel’s FBI puts two pounds of methamphetamine in the incinerator at an animal shelter, sending 14 people to the hospital, and exposing some 75 cats and dogs to the narcotic. www.bbc.com/news/article...
No wonder Musk is impressed, the London march stretched all the way to the Arc de Triomphe
For there to be no comment from the government on Musk's call for violence, let alone action against X, is unconscionable. An utter dereliction of its responsibility for national security and an affront to every member of an ethnic minority, who is being put at risk by this rhetoric.
Given the context and the crowd, despite Musk’s weasel words, this was a call for violence against the British state, from a foreign national who controls a major propaganda engine, and has engineered it to monetise hate
Appalled by the violent scenes of police being attacked at the Tommy Robinson rally today. Those responsible should face the full force of the law. These far right thugs do not speak for Britain.
I did not imagine a year ago that minority Brits might well have felt safer under the Johnson & Sunak governments (and even Truss, for all of the 5 mins she was in office) than this one, but Starmer is managing it!
Not going to pretend today wasn't depressing but the far right has been stronger in the UK before. Mosley packed out Earls Court and was backed by several large newspapers. Enoch Powell had the support of 74% of the population. Musk has a net popularity rating of -52%
Government and the main opposition can and should convene civic society! All that is being asked is that the government show as much leadership and integrity as the world’s best Arsenal blog.
If I were the UK Government I would simply not route all my communications through the platform whose owner just called for regime change in Britain and said "fight back or die"
No 10 might be insisting that the PM still has full confidence in his chief of staff Morgan Mcsweeny, but Labour MPs certainly don't - below is a picture being shared among the PLP
Elon, born in South Africa and now a US citizen, speaking at Tommy Robinson’s rally, without a sense of irony, calls on “the people of Britain [to] take charge and actually ensure there’s a government that represents their interests and not a government that represents foreign interests”
It's absolutely craven that we allow foreign fascist agitators into this country in the first place. Obv we have our home-grown ranks that are bad enough but allowing Bannon, Mannarino etc to pollute this country with their psychopathic bullshit is a joke. Get them out and keep them out.
The ideal car doesn't exis—
There’s a real generational divide between Labour MPs leaking to the Guardian and Labour MPs leaking to the Huffington Post
People say the BBC lack flexibility in the modern digital era, but the launch and roll out of their 24 hour Charlie Kirk News channel in a matter of hours was pretty impressive.
Right. And of course this just feeds into the sense of despair people feel about a place they (want to) have pride in: why *can’t* we do anything about this? Why is this the best we can do?
If he'd been radicalized by a leftist professor the bullet engravings would have been an unreadable 90,000 word rebuttal to another leftist academic over a purely semantic disagreement they've been arguing back and forth since the 70's and he'd have shot Reviewer 2.
It’s also an illustration of this point made by @lewisgoodall.com The BBC used to be led by the tabloids, now it’s increasingly led by social media. The same is now true about ITV and, especially, Sky News.
Given the amount of taxpayer money the firm is now receiving, nationalisation almost feels like the next logical step - suitable recompense for the money spent and an opportunity to start revitalising these properties.
“Having an Ed Davey interview just after a Madonna song and before Teenage Dirtbag is so much better than leaning into Wato" An insightful @sophiealichurch.bsky.social piece on the Lib Dem ‘jam & Jerusalem' comms stategy — inc the voter they're now going after www.politicshome.com/news/article...
Oop.
Is it not now known as an Amazon Fulfilment Centre?
I’m sure there’ll be corrections in equally prominent positions in each of these papers, yeah?
KIM KITSURAGI - "What is it, detective? Can you make it out?" BULLET - "if you read this you are gay lmao" 1. "It, um, doesn't say anything." 2. "Transgender ideology. My old foe." 3. [Espirit de Corps - Medium 10] "I think you should read it for yourself, Kim."
Google AI overviews nearly sent me driving to the wrong airport terminal (and nearly caused me to pay twice for parking). Honestly fuck everything about this.
Kirk was local news. He wasn't a govt official, held no office. Just an internet guy. Tragic. But just local news. It shouldn't have dominated coverage amongst European orgs. Until there were broader political/econ/security consequences that impacted us, then it should have been kept in perspective.
From the outside, this is also why we need to put some distance between us and the USA. And why some perspective is needed from Euro (and other) news orgs when discussing US events, rather than being carried away with the breathless drama and blindly following the US toxic infotainment industry.
Now that Kirk's killer seems to be caught, maybe the news could spare a moment's attention for the right wing, from the commentariat up to the GOP and president, whose immediate reaction was not mourning, but to seize the opportunity to try to incite violence against groups they hate
I mean, one certainly has to guard against technofear and as an inveterate (45 year) gamer, I should feel targeted here, but they *are* never Really Into Crochet or Enjoying Building Model Railways, are they?
This is an interesting claim given almost all polling on issues suggests otherwise!
> be me, 17 year old meme lord > see neighbor 69 years old (nice) > tilting hard, carrying heavy bags > not on my watch! > BEAST MODE ACTIVATED > tip fedora > "I'll courier quest those, m'lady" > swole arms lift bags like I'm carrying noobs in wood tier LoL > thanks anon! ur poggers > am poggers
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
We have essentially broken any social contract between the electorate and the local services they pay for. So I won’t be massively surprised if a bunch of people come in and say “let’s do this totally unworkable thing” and local electors go sure ok, the current situation isn’t working, whatever
oh well, onward and upward
![REPORTER: Mr. President, my condolences to you, Sir. My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. [unintelligible] How are you holding up over the last day and a half, Sir? TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's gonna be a beauty. Absolutely magnificent construction. We just started, so it'll get done very nicely. And it will be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cfy5rgqvohpdqxgu2geb5u2b/bafkreig42mujsiyxozvq3kiayszu47dbk6zds3icm5bwu34twt3d7vbo2q@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Kashyap Pramod Patel, who speaks Gujarati and says he was raised strictly as a Hindu, appears to have converted to the Old Norse faith.
I was pretty baffled by the Diana death response. This is just barking
"Asking us to build factories and invest then arresting and detaining. Is this what an ally does?" -- Protest sign at airport where South Korean workers, including engineers with work visas, were returned www.wsj.com/world/asia/c...
We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it.
It is insane for this to be the only evidence you cite in your editorial about political violence. The far right has been responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States for years. Republican leaders routinely celebrate extrajudicial killings and refuse to regulate guns.
![In May 2019 and for the first time in its history, the FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories as a potential source of domestic terrorism, it specifically cited QAnon.[37] A June 2020 study of domestic terrorist incidents by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that during the previous 25 years, the majority of attacks and plots were perpetrated and hatched by far-right attackers. This trend has accelerated in recent years, with this sector being responsible for about 66% of all of the attacks and plots which were perpetrated in 2019, and it was also responsible for 90% of all of those attacks which were perpetrated in 2020. The next most potentially dangerous group has been](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:j76trmiofvaxxpvx2vnb2vwf/bafkreic2lqskmjkxl2u7wmfsvqxyxjwcfznx4njsr7sbrma44nlvr5mjcm@jpeg "Click to view full size")
It's worth asking why every elite institution is issuing statements like this rather than pointing out the obvious fact that the institutional right commits and glorifies violence far more than the left. Is there a reason you feel you can't say that out loud? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/o...
The US has repeatedly threatened to take land from Denmark so this seems like the only realistic choice for Copenhagen
The insanity of the current media environment in an article. It's criticising BlueSky for having "dozens" of accounts that said stupid, horrible things about Charlie Kirk. While quoting Elon Musk. Whose site allows users to monetise uncut footage of it. www.thetimes.com/uk/media/art...
Brazil: Democracy is good and coups are against the law! USA: First of all, how dare you
5 parties on more than 12%, winner gains seat with under 30%. Results like this used to be rare, freak outliers. Now they are routine (there was a second just like this yesterday). Electoral chaos.
These two paragraphs, these two statements one after the other is quite something.
Is this not just talking around the trans issue, where Streeting is in line with the public but out of step with the membership? (which, obviously, is a massive hurdle to, you know, getting elected to the leadership)
If you’re a true sicko, check out the related article “How Bloomberg News Vetted the Epstein Emails” with all the sicko details: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
'In a quirk that has not been fully explained, Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister between 2010 and 2015, was given the right to claim PDCA funds from the scheme even though he never held the top job. He received a total of £445,000 over four years'. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Do love how Broon’s “government…of all the talents” lives on. His most enduring legacy?
British_political_decision_making_V3(FINAL)_USETHISONE.png
Might offer to read it as a Thought For The Day. thecritic.co.uk/oh-m...
You’re just not allowed to do journalism if it displeases MAGA
These same American clowns want to lecture Europe on ‘free speech’
It's over 24 years since Peter Mandelson was last sacked/resigned from government. Has anyone had a longer gap between ignominious departures?
TBF, we only don't eat swans because the King is the only one allowed to do so, people moving to the UK legitimately don't know this law. It's an extremely weird law if you give it even 5 seconds thought.
To lose one job in a scandal might be regarded as a misfortune. To lose three, however…
Charlie Kirk was killed for saying things "that used to be simple common sense," says Boris Johnson. Here's a few of those things
“you can’t do anything to a listed building, ever!” okay, counterpoint, you can hoist a 700 year old church tower up 16metres in the air to build a new subterranean basement for an office block
You join us live from Danny Dyer’s birthday drinks.
If this is accurate, the foreign funding rules have been broken and the Electoral Commission should force the Conservatives to pay back the £2.6 million. The only thing that will teach these people if hitting them in the pocket The rest is all window dressing www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
British politicians and journos writing heartfelt tributes to Charlie Kirk is at least as weird as when they were writing heartfelt tributes to George Floyd. What happened to This Is Not America.
Justin Webb just referred on Today to "platforms like Bluesky, where you can see the celebration of the killing" of Charlie Kirk. What I'm seeing on here is overwhelming condemnation; despair at the violence of US politics; alarm at where this might go; & calls for equal horror at other shootings.
This is interesting because it says something about the UK right. Johnson is an opportuinst who proved adept at judging what was best for him politically, until the inevitable crash because of who he is. This is where he is judging it is best to pitch himself. A concern, given who Kirk was.
A private citizen trying to say on the right side of the money train is unseemly, but the sitting Prime Minister offering condolences about someone who the median constituent has never heard of, in a different country, is a level of brainworms I find pretty uncomfortable
EPC ratings are being used for access to grants, to ban landlords for letting low-rated properties, and for access to green finance. But yet another study has found they bear no relation to energy used. share.google/oqiQWuAtGTJ4...
Blimey
We don’t yet know who killed Kirk or why. Not that you’d know it from the endless numbers of accounts on X with huge follower numbers, including British politicians, making as yet unknowable claims about the motivations behind the murder. Exhibit A. Extraordinary stuff.
Wow, that was quick. He’s not even cold.
Absolutely fantastic photo I saw on Reddit earlier. I do love how despite all efforts, we still have some enjoyable quirks as a country. Love an umbrella, we do.
I guess this has probably already gone viral somewhere but I am simply dying at this picture of a bear that looks like it hired a photographer to do a glamour shoot
"me to the New York Times"
Are they the ones that go “plop”?
My Dan Brown novel is coming from a giant onlne distribution company called Amazon. It was named after the Amazon rainforest which is the world's largest tropical rainforest, located in South America and renowned for its immense biodiversity. Langdon chuckled at the irony.
This has surprised me as much as hearing tonight that Tennessee Williams only died in 1983, meaning he was alive at the same time as Serena and Venus, the other tennisy Williams
It's funny how when Twitter was wildly left-of-centre, everyone except maybe Owen Jones *knew* it wasn't reflective of the real world. But now it is X and wildly right-wing, that instinctive knowledge has just dropped away
Was going to say exactly that.
Is the alternative they're proposing here that someone faked Donald Trump's signature on a birthday poem 22 years ago? Or that Democrat deep-staters edited it in but for some reason didn't edit Clinton out?
It is with heavy heart (and, unfortunately, deep affection) that I must reshare a snippet from the 1980s masterpiece “Yes, Prime Minister”, in relation to Russia’s drone attack on a NATO ally.
His gavel, eh? Which gavel would that be then, given that British judges don’t use gavels? Or are you all so America-brained that this doesn’t matter?
It's always worth asking, "would you want this to stay up if you didn't agree with the message?" If an artist had painted Lucy Connolly on the side of the court, holding a sign saying "Two-Tier Keir", would the GLP also want it to stay up?
"We need a tweet that is somehow even more trite and misleading than the original Banksy spray-painting. We've workshopped it for a couple and hours and I think this hits the mark."
This
Mine is that Judi Dench is older than three of the Mount Rushmore sculptures
Once again, the BBC enables the now-ridiculous 'newspaper industry' to inject a damaging virus into the national conversation. ITV (GMB) is far worse. All 'newspaper reviews' on mainstream TV & Radio should be stopped immediately. If you want to know what the papers say, go and look it up FFS.
Worth keeping in mind that if Russia continues to escalate against Poland, Sweden and Lithuania these EU states have the capacity to severely constrain Russian land and sea access to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave
Boycott’s going well, then. www.thebookseller.com/bestsellers/...
Marvel is leaving Atlanta and heading to the UK, citing rising costs. Labor costs are less expensive in the U.K., and universal health care means studios wouldn’t have to subsidize workers’ medical expenses. This move alone could cost Atlanta up to 20,000 jobs. san.com/cc/hollywood...
Is Anyone Following The Leader? My SKETCH of Kemi Badenoch trying to seize the microphone.
Sentiment analysis on four decades worth of FT newspaper articles. 🥳 Rreally cool stuff from @joelsuss.ft.com. on.ft.com/4n2TVBq
Fully accept Tube strikes are hell etc but the upside of having to walk from Downing Street to the Elizabeth Line at Bond St tonight was giving directions to a lost American tourist wildly excited at being able to take a shortcut through Green Park. ‘YOUR PARKS ARE OPEN AFTER DARK? tHIS IS AMAZING!’
1997 - Noni Madueke is the first player with all five vowels of the English language in his name to score for England since Paul Gascoigne against Moldova in September 1997. Scrabble.
