Stuart Hayward

That also highlights the limits of the "shoulda done it in autumn 2024, now it's too late" critique.
We're still pretty early in this Parliament.

You know the story of Thomas Midgley? After inventing leaded petrol and CFC refrigeration, he was killed by a getting-out-of-bed machine he invented.

Much the same seems to be happening to Musk.

See also techbroes and Toklein, or whoever thought a Great Gatsby party was a swell idea for the White House.

All it takes is someone convincingly better to emerge.

So not yet.

Coming to Friday night TV in the new year.

Given that the sweetie jar contains an IOU, doing stuff that might help by 2028 is the only plan available.
I often say to new A Level students "you will hate the step up for a while and my main job is to keep you amused while you mature."
Starmer is bad at amusing, but the strategy is similar.

To put the size of London into even more perspective:

If all the cats in London moved to the countryside and founded a city...

...it would INSTANTLY be the second or third largest in the UK.

(Allowing for general fuzziness on "metropolitan areas")

It's always someone else's fault.

That's part of the appeal.

It's not a poll of support- it's how people think the government currently spends money.
It's utterly bonkers, but tracks newspaper hype pretty well.

Remember this poll from last year? Look at number four and weep for the state of the national conversation.

That'll be decades on a soapbox.

See also: John Major.

(Less snobby career, much more background in practical politics, but sneered at by the born-to-rule crew.)

She's Taken One For The Team, and not disgraced herself

(As has Powell- we're not talking Corbyn-Watson degrees of enmity.)

If they're that rich, $130 million is cheaper than paying taxes.

The argument for SKS4PM remains what it always was- the alternatives would be worse.

(Much the same was true for Sunak, and it's probably true for Badenoch as LotO.)

The leaky political career pipeline of the Johnson/Corbyn years is going to be a problem for a while yet.

Very possible. When he became Labour leader in 2020, the job looked more John the Baptist than Jesus. And a reaction to Johnson (who really really wanted to be PM) was pretty attractive.

Besides, wanting to be PM and capability to be PM are often in inverse proportion- especially now.

Some fresh goodness on display in Spain.

Echoes of the way some people say that they would love to have lived in mediaeval times.

The assumption is that they would have been on top.

Geological maps are ace. We should all spend more time contemplating geological maps.

TBH the only genuine hot-take I have on timezones is that One of my favourite timezone facts is that Franco switched to Berlin Time in 1940 to mollify Hitler and they really should switch it back.

In summer, somewhere like A Coruña is about two and half hours ahead of "normal" solar time.

How much of that is behind-the-scenes issues, though?

I'm fairly sure that the research teams (who ought to be feeding the big names the details) are spread more thinly than they used to be.

And politicians act as if they're doing the shows a favour by appearing. Since 2019, perhaps?

And that is why cats are justified in considering themselves more intelligent than humans.

Human nature wants to say "it's not my fault." That's why "it's not your fault" is so potent.

We've seen how this plays out in the USA; how many cross-with-Biden/Harris types have acknowledged that they messed up?

"Acceptable, under the circumstances" isn't a great message, but it's true.

Even with the names... Shrugs.

Highlights one of the really unusual things about Celeb Traitors... Actual celebrities!

Which, given the state of English football in the 1980s, is utterly insane.

You have got EXACTLY ONE JOB
#celebritytraitors #uselessbloodyloonies

Well, almost anything.

Showing actual interest in another human being as a human being? Naaaah

And that is why councils shouldn't allow Working From Home.

But it's still not their fault.

One of the bitterest lessons of adult life is there is often practically nothing you can do about someone or a company breaking the law without the resources to pay someone to enforce it for you.