Maybe I'm being incredibly naive but I just find it hard to imagine anyone other than the most terminally angry will get riled up about something that is, after all, based on a public consultation! They asked people what they wanted on banknotes and most people said "cute animals please"!
One of the many, many things that's so bizarre about this whole argument is people like otters! They like British wildlife! That includes a lot of Tory voters! No-one is going to be angry about seeing an otter on a banknote!
Wait, they actually called it Gabbo?
"Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/p...
Logged into Facebook for the first time in a long time to check something someone had sent me and man that site has become essentially unusable huh.
Another example of why Trump is a different kind of autocrat to the ones FIFA are used to making deals with. He is perfectly happy to disrupt the World Cup, and that should make FIFA very nervous
bsky.app/profile/sydn...
There's a Big Horror Reveal early on in Requiem - not quite a jump scare but certainly a proper surprise jolt - that's so good I nearly laughed out loud.
Is this the same Andrew Neil who eviscerated Keir Starmer for not joining Trump's attack? It can't be, surely.
It makes sense if we're looking for a more like-for-like replacement for Ryan, but we'll miss him, been quietly one of our best players in this tournament.
Have to assume Ryan is injured if he's not featuring in this. Murray's inclusion over Edogbo suggests we're looking for more lineout cover off the bench than we are power.
Ryan has to be injured right?
Team largely as expected, although if you saw Darragh Murray coming you're a smarter man than me. Could this be Aki's last game for Ireland?
You saw it when Charlie Kirk died, and a number of leading conservative politicians and pundits leapt to memorialise him, and in so doing basically created an imaginary version of him. Boris Johnson's eulogy for example actively denied that Kirk held extreme views.
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Ultimately I think there's a real reluctance of many on the right/centre-right to confront the fact that a significant (and increasingly and worryingly influential) part of their movement sincerely hold extremely extreme, hateful and often violent beliefs.
Someone on here made the point recently that there's also been a weird watering down/laundering of some of these beliefs. On instagram people use "tradwife" to mean something like "housewife/stay-at-home mum".
But it's a term with far-right origins, and the way they use it is much more sinister.
I genuinely think that part of the problem is that these people are so extreme that many people think you're exaggerating if you straightforwardly say what they believe.
I also think frankly there's a lot of "I never thought leopards would eat MY face" going on.
It's been a similar story with the likes of Ben Shapiro, who seems to have all of a sudden realised that the far-right movement he's been promoting for much of the last decade may not in fact have the best interests of Jewish people at heart.
For a lot of people, being part of the New Right is all fun and games until all of a sudden it's you who finds yourself the subject of their attention.
One of the notable things about the interviewees in this is that they all say what drew them to the New Right was in part the sense of edgy transgression. And they've only slowly realised that the extreme things their fellow travellers were saying weren't just jokes/shock tactics. They meant them.
Yeah can't say TikTok is my thing personally but this just feels like real "old man yells at cloud" stuff from Lawes.
That'll be more the lingering remnants of amateurism though right? And it'll apply more broadly than England I'd have thought. Ireland's Leinster contingent in particular will have surely travelled through as priveleged and smooth a pipeline as their English counterparts.
All for more diversity in rugby! All for better pathways from people of all walks of life, not only because it's a moral good but also because a wider playing pool is ultimately better for the sport! I just think as a tactical analysis of England's current issues it's a very simplistic one!
Incredibly funny to look at the underperformance of this England team and say that the issue is (a) TikTok dances or (b) that the team is full of posh blokes, something that has been true of literally every previous England team (and the Ireland and Scotland teams that battered them a few weeks ago)
This is of course extremely weird from the Tories but all I can think about is this
Managing international freight logistics via the Argos counter
This sprang suddenly unbidden into my head, so here it is
Oh amazing! Will check it out
There was a great article I remember reading about Russian prison tattoos a while back! I wonder if it was linked to this book, will try and dig it out
I think what I really love about these things is how much it really tells you about individuals, particularly marginalised ones whose voices often get lost amidst the grand sweep of history. Arguably nothing more personal about someone after all than what they choose to get inked into their skin.
