flyingrodent

Looks like there’s a bright future in it

The editorial team know about the shitehousing and do not like it; the politics desk know all about the shitehousing and they think it’s great. Never the twain shall meet.

Do you notice consistent themes developing here.

Okay, so this now looks a lot like the Slippin’ Jimmy thing from Better Call Saul: walk into the bar then do a flying header into the fire extinguisher, and phone your lawyer. Again, it’s a nexus of: well-connected wingnut cranks, the Times newspaper and billionaire legal funding.

These appear to be the only levers that actually do anything

Absolutely (hissing with fury, finger jabbing your chest) Fuck. You. Prick. And, I hope I can count on your vote in May!

I would’ve thought the choice would be easier here: if your success is largely reliant upon your ability to unify the left/lib bloc behind your project, then is it a good idea to be led by people who openly and ferally hate liberals and the left? I would say: No.

Opinion The Guardian view on Keir Starmer's control freakery: beating Reform requires risking power Editorial The prime minister says defeating Reform UK is Labour's overriding task. Yet by blocking Andy Burnham, he chose self-preservation over the coalition politics needed to win Mon 26 Jan 2026 19.02 GMT

Joe Biden repeatedly said that Donald Trump was an existential threat. Yet the former US president clung on to his party's nomination when he ought to have allowed a better candidate to take on Mr Trump. What happened next is history. There is an uncomfortable parallel in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer insists that defeating Reform UK is the overriding priority. He warns of the "fight of our lives" against a party offering "racist" policies. But when faced with a choice between maximising Labour's chances of beating a far-right insurgent and protecting his own position, he - like Mr Biden - chose the latter.

Guardian is comparing Sir Keir to Joe Biden, and not in a good way.

Twice

I used to joke that Cummings et al were running a book on who could make Robert read out the dumbest shit possible on air, and it turns out that wasn’t a million miles away from what was actually happening.

Can we all do the Slippin’ Jimmy routine, or do we think it’s strictly limited to the children of newspaper columnists, who can rely on being backed up by funds from squillionaire crackpots.

I imagine this will only get more baffling, confusing and extraordinary as the day progresses and more anonymous quotes stack up

This is not the first time Thea has been kicked out of a pub for holding gender critical views. On the day of my graduation, Thea, myself, family and friends were kicked out of a pub in Leeds for the very same reason. Again, with the help of @SexMattersOrg we sent a letter before claim and received an apology and £1.6k in compensation.

Uh huh

🤷🏼‍♂️

Of course

Also see parallels with Scotland and sectarianism, since we had years of terrified screaming here about The Tyranny Of The Offended. It’s decades of reactionary horseshit and screaming, all bleeding together into one great snotty, mewling, toothsome slime-beast, like the final creature in The Thing.

Hillwalking for example, or watercolour painting.

I note that “enshrined legal protections for wingnuts and cranks to behave as badly as they want, without negative consequences” is pretty compelling evidence that Britain has been deeply and maliciously Trumpified for quite some time.

Laura Cumming @LauraCu... • 27/10/2025 X This is my beloved daughter Thea Sewell and I COULD NOT BE MORE PROUD! @Docstockk @suladoyle @soniasodha @HadleyFreeman Society for Women • Mon 27 October 2025 2 Nick Wallis 1 comment "We're now at a point where I no longer can see inaction as just inaction. I now see a lot of it as just cowardice, and I'm not interested in it anymore." - Maeve Halligan, CUSW President and Co-Founder.

Laura Cumming @LauraCummingArt @ObserverUK art critic. Thunderclap - out July 5; On Chapel Sands, Sunday Times bestseller; The Vanishing Man @ChattoBooks @simonschuster Rep: @pew_literary

I think I’ve solved the mystery of why some people who get booted out of boozers are a national emergency, and others are not at all

I’d say it has developed eccentricities, for reasons that were not entirely noble

I refused to serve people back in the day for causes as varied as “being very loud and drunk while people were eating lunch”, “football strip” and “tiny swastika tattoo on face” but the key determinant of whether it’s a problem seems to be whether your mum is mates with a Times journo.

I also again note the imbecile irony that so many of these Gender Terror newspaper scandals are about crackpots and wackos trying to use their legal and media clout to force themselves into spaces where they aren’t welcome, and aren’t wanted.

Earlier this month, I walked into my local pub- a place where I have always been warmly received -only to be told, (immediately on entry) that | was no longer welcome because of my views on trans issues. You can read more about it in The Times below. My thanks to @SexMattersOrg for their support and advice. Cambridge student: I was barred from pub over my views on gender

Again: the job of most the British press is to recruit useful wingnut cranks and use them to promote the crackpot causes both the papers and the cranks hold dear.

I think everyone understand the shit is about to hit the fan in a big way

And this, writing in Tribune, is Andrea Egan, the new general secretary of one of Labour's most important trade union backers, Unison, on how Starmer and the NEC committee rejected Burnham: "I know that I speak for many of my colleagues across the trade union movement, and in chorus with a significant number of Labour MPs, when I say that we cannot allow those currently in charge of the party to take us down with them. A radical change in direction — in party culture, in policy for the country, in how we deal with the far-right threat — could not be more urgently needed. I am confident that a broad, pluralist coalition across our movement will now come together to ensure we see that change."

The only question that matters now, I think: are you going to sit quietly in your seats while the exact same people smash the bus into oncoming traffic twice within a decade? The cost last time was Boris Johnson and diamond-hard Brexit. It’ll be much worse, this time.

This is not exactly unusual behaviour, in British regulatory bodies.

“As clear as it’s possible to be” feels damning in itself

What’s happened here is that the previous head of the organisation was such an exceptional crackpot that their report on acceptable toilet use was unworkable insanity. So the government has said: we’d love to implement this wacky shit and get them sweet Sun and Mail headlines, but this is *insane*.

Positive news here. Cautiously optimistic that we might see a marginally less abusive approach from the EHRC. EHRC's guidance on single-sex spaces being adapted under 'constructive' new chair Exclusive: Mary-Ann Stephenson said to have more pragmatic approach in trying to limit im... ®www.theguardian.com

Sure, but when we’re grateful for minor acts of relative moderation from the national equality body - a boobyhatch of bigoted wackos tasked with adjudicating in favour of wingnuts and right wing cranks - then we already live in the Fallout universe, pre-war.