Tim Burrows

Ok but this is totally something Charlotte Church would do

Hi Dave! Great to hear, thanks for reading it but especially for underlining - good work!

Matt Goodwin is so unserious. A country with a healthy popular intellectual discourse would have buried him not long after he 'ate' that book. But he just grifts along

I just…don’t understand any of it. And it mostly elicits feelings of deep sadness and a sense of huge missed opportunity. The better choices were right there and they had *plenty* of people pointing at them.

Honestly, the potential case for getting rid of Starmer before was the lack of any political project and absence of charisma. But now No.10 is creating a moral imperative for the PLP to act as well.

Portishead’s Geoff Barrow: ‘I can’t think of any worse music to make love to than ours’ As he moves into film production with the thriller Game, the musician – also known for Beak> – answers your questions on Myspace rappers, sex playlists and whether Portishead will ever make new music

[ Source: www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n... ]

A screengrab of text in which Geoff Barrow from Portishead answers a question: Barrow answers: Did you ever imagine that your sonic experiments on Dummy would become the backdrop to so many romantic entanglements – and how do you feel about being the unsung hero of the 90s sex playlist? asks VerulamiumParkRanger I’ve heard that people were going out, doing ecstasy, coming back, smoking spliffs and putting Dummy on. If you just listened to the music, you’d think: “That’s really chilled, man.” However, the worst thing that anyone can say about my music is that it’s chilled! That makes me throw up. They’re only listening to Beth [Gibbons]’s voice, not what she’s saying, which makes a huge difference. I’ve had people actually say “My daughter over there was made to your music”, and I’m like, “fuck off”. I can’t think of anything worse to make love to.

Knighthood for Geoff Barrow

Any journalists interesting in covering/following can DM here or contact me at pdkmitchell at gmail dot com. The most recent BBC and ITV coverage is here (CW: violence, femicide, suicide):

www.bbc.com/news/article...

www.itv.com/news/tyne-te...

I'm in Nairobi this week for the opening of the inquest into my sister Kate's death here, almost four years ago, which is still very much unsolved. The case has been beset by obstructions and evasions; it's taken us a long time to get this far and there may be more to come.

"The problem isn’t that we have a deliberately biased BBC, it’s that we have a BBC that has been consciously reduced in its scope and bullied into dumbing down and retreating." @stephenkb.bsky.social's newsletter today

For as many years as anyone been counting two or more inmates been mistakenly released from British prisons most weeks. Record does not make it acceptable. System needs to be fixed. It does leave me asking why BBC now gripped by end-of-civilisation hysteria heard on Radio 4 Today programme.

New Labour leader's first day in office next summer after spending all of May and June channeling Zohran Mamdani:

Faschismus

When has such a baldly factual statement felt so thrilling?

So much of Labour’s comms is just weird and confusing at this point. Surely it’s really, really easy to decide to offer congratulations/support to a wildly popular left-wing candidate who has just pulled off a historic electoral victory

Notable in today's YouGov that the centre/left bloc - Lab/Green/LD/SNP are on 54%. With Reform/Tories on 43%. That's the biggest differential in a long time.

I think useful to track blocs given instability between parties at the moment.

Coming Soon: Tom Skinner says "a-BOSH" to Nigel

Thanks @luketurner.bsky.social - and yes, I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about this around the rise of Farage and Towie from 2012 on, looking at the history behind the political stereotype. I thought after the book came out its relevance had passed, but it turns out Faragism relies on it

He may have privately liked the music, but bet he wasn't into goth fashion. The fact he chose Northern soul legend Dobie Gray and Lightning Seeds/Baddiel/Skinner on Desert Island Discs makes me think his trajectory was mod revival>angular post-punk>Britpop. (Bet he loved Pulp's His n Hers aesthetic)

Please! I feel like his opinion is more valuable than, say, Nick Robinson's at this point.

We need a long read on the post-punk archeology of Starmerism, how its detachment lay not in any deep lying discomfort with a role he felt he was born to have, but just his love of groups like Josef K

My latest working theory about the fact Starmer *simply can never look directly at the camera* is it is a hangover from his much-reported obsessive infatuation with 1980s post-punk bands such as Orange Juice

It is way past time for the UK government & the BBC to get off X & for Musk to be treated as a threat to national security.

The world's richest man is using his site to promote civil war, ethnic violence & the overthrow of an elected government.

You won't win him over with another conference on AI

‘It’s scary how many St George’s flags there were’: Blood Orange on coming home to Essex and mourning his mother After grief brought Dev Hynes home, he reconsidered the county that shaped him. The result is a masterful new album – made with a little help from Lorde and Zadie Smith

“Physically, you’re bigger: your shape has changed. But the space is the same. The memories are the same.” I Interviewed Dev Hynes about moving back to Ilford when his mum got sick & how it inspired the incredible album Essex Honey www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

‘It’s scary how many St George’s flags there were’: Blood Orange on coming home to Essex and mourning his mother After grief brought Dev Hynes home, he reconsidered the county that shaped him. The result is a masterful new album – made with a little help from Lorde and Zadie Smith

“Physically, you’re bigger: your shape has changed. But the space is the same. The memories are the same.” I Interviewed Dev Hynes about moving back to Ilford when his mum got sick & how it inspired the incredible album Essex Honey www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

‘The normalisation effect’

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas - study
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

How has the government got itself into the position of standing up for Israeli football hooligans, while criminalising peaceful supporters of Palestine Action?

The BBC are accidentally running the subtitles to Mrs Marple over the Mercury Prize, and it’s rather wonderful. A few of lines could plausibly have been written by Jarvis.

Our Terry Waite