Ben Yates

Ben Yates

@benyates.bsky.social

Opsimath, betwixt fascinating rock and smart looking hard place. #OUFC

737 Followers 1,921 Following 430 Posts Joined Nov 2024
1 day ago
Cast iron giant octopus

Just moved in and found this behind the bath.

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6 days ago
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I've used this place to shout into the void a few times. In cricket you get to bat twice. Some life events you think only happen to other people, and when they happen to you, it is scary to say the least.

Yesterday I bought my new house. It's only a wee place, but it's mine.

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1 week ago

Starmer should have come back with “and as much as he’s trying, Trump is no Hitler”. Damp rag.

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1 week ago

This is what happens when you have a military lead by the kind of people who think wars are fought like Call of Duty games.

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1 week ago
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The @ipso.co.uk ruling of Telegraph’s preposterous “We earn £345k but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays”, reveals the article to have been a fabrication. There is no such family as Al, Alexandra, Ali, Harry and Barry Moy. Glad to have acted as lead complainant on this.

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1 week ago
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1 week ago

This is just to say

I am trapped
In Dubai
While my
Labradoodles
Are sick

Forgive me
My Mounjaro pen
Is in the ice box
So crisp
And so cold

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1 week ago

I absolutely adore this. It's stunning.

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1 week ago

If Reform had won, Labour's statement would be that this result is a stark reminder we need to listen and learn from voters who rightly feel betrayed by modern politics.

But the Greens won by a comfortable margin, so it's: these voters are stupid and also sinister and, ugh, Muslims

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2 weeks ago

Whatever Starmer may think of her party, this is massively insulting and patronising to Hannah Spencer, who seems to be a thoroughly decent and sincere person who is in politics for the right reason.

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2 weeks ago

Honestly, I've met pigeons who learned faster. The biggest majority in living memory, devoid of policy, and unable to grasp they're literally in the business of getting people to vote for them. There are 2 silos of voters now, and they will never cross.

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2 weeks ago
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Lmao

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2 weeks ago

So Labour not just learning absolutely nothing from this, but leaning further in. Kind regards, previously a member for years.

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2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
simpsons meme: I tell you what's not so funny,
 matt goodwin's at home
crying like a little girl
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2 weeks ago

Absolutely all of this. Let's hope they never learn.

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2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
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And Matt Goodwin who DID NOT win

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2 weeks ago
Allister heath headline generator: 
Allister Heath
The catastrophic reality of manchester losing another plumber is finally dawning on the British public
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2 weeks ago

"Friends" is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

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2 weeks ago

I need to shout into the void again.

I signed the contract on my new house this afternoon.

Months of every emotion. Such an anticlimax for something that is everything.

God this is hard.

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2 weeks ago

Excellent shout. But stop for lunch at the chippy 😊

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2 weeks ago

Trickle Down

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2 weeks ago
Black n white Godzilla blastin a vehicle

I said it's pronounced JODzilla

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2 weeks ago
GILES COREN
Loyalty isn't a crime, even for Andrew's daughters
Preserve the parent-child bond and allow
Beatrice and Eugenie to be loyal to their father if they want to be
Giles Coren
Monday February 23 2026, 5.02pm, The Times Outrage is the least interesting of all human responses, so I do my best never to express it. But it's hard.
There are paedophiles out there,
rapists, child killers, bent politicians, Send kids driven to suicide, shady monarchies answerable to no one, narcissistic lawyers forcing puberty blockers on pre-teens to advance their political ambitions... you could spend your entire life being outraged.
But I don't. Because it's boring. Which is why I find the Andrew "debate" so tedious. Because it's all so bloody basic. There is no nuance. One can only be outraged, and everyone is. New story please! In my ideological neck of the woods - educated, urban, centrist — there is the added tedium of "I told you so" republicanism, which is the second most boring belief a person can hold, after atheism. And nobody is ever one of those without the other: "Hark at me, I don't need gods or kings; I've got a Ukrainian flag and Jarvis Cocker."
But the thing about those people is that deep within their liberalism beats a totalitarian heart.
And that is what I see in the widespread calls for Beatrice and Eugenie not only to "make a public statement" but to "go to the police with what they know" Do British liberals really want to see children denouncing parents to the world? Do they want to see daughters snitching on fathers to the security services? Because the only people who have ever demanded that in the past were fascist dictators. If Beatrice and Eugenie have broken the law, fine, lock 'em up. But allow them to be loyal to their father if they want to be. Because the insistence that children betray parents was one of the very darkest obsessions of Nazi Germany, communist China and Stalin's Soviet Union.

You can guarantee these lads will be there swords drawn, ready to fight, whenever a wealthy and important person is arrested. Particularly but not only for sex crimes.

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2 weeks ago

I need to go back in time & persuade Pru Leith to just go to the pictures that night

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2 weeks ago
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Russia launched its full-scale invasion exactly four years ago.

If anyone had told us, during that first month, that this would be the situation four years later, we would have instantly called it a massive Ukrainian victory and a staggering Russian defeat

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2 weeks ago
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a year is a long time in politics

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2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
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"John Prescott would be loving this"

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