David S. #MDANT

I have only recently discovered this chap @lawrenceodonnell.msnbc.com, but his daily skewerings of Trumplethinskin give me succour. The combination of outrage, satire and surgical analysis are nail on the head. He and simonmarksfsn.bsky.social are bastions of proper journalism.

Minority representation on TV causes outrage There has been widespread support for prominent Reform MP Sarah Pochin after she complained about the over-representation of minorities on television. Said one angry viewer, "She's right. Every time you turn on the telly there's another Reform MP being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg." She added, "I respect their way of life and their strange customs, but Reform MPs comprise only 0.7 percent of the House of Commons. Yet Nigel Farage is on Question Time more than Fiona Bruce." "I'm not prejudiced. Some of my best friends are swivel-eyed loons, but enough is enough. There are too many people with angry red faces on television.”

Gotta love Private Eye.
Always cuts through the crap.

The Kraftwerk of their day...

I'm jealous :). I love Badalona...such a quirky, charming town, far removed from the excesses of BCN, and much more interesting as a result.

Badalona?

I remember leading an IBDP ToK teacher-training workshop at a prestigious private school in Kent. The music PRACTICE rooms each had a Steinway. Lord knows what they had in the main rehearsal rooms...

I've lived & worked in many countries over the years (Finland, 6; Lebanon, 6; India 5; Spain 5, and a number of others for 2/3 years), and making a linguistic tit of myself is the only way you can learn how a language really works & how it expresses the cultures of the place where it's spoken.

John Searle obituary American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do

Bugger. John Searle is dead. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

YouTube video by citizen2 The Fall - Smile and 2X4 (The Tube 1983)

Peak 2-drummers The Fall.
Sublime.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE-6...

Barry Bannan has heard it @memorialdevice.bsky.social

Reminds me a little of Gursky. Noice.

Closes today

Hahahahaha...my schaudenfreude this morning is cranked up to the max.

2-tier justice innit: "throw paint at a plane and you get proscribed and any 80 year olds defending you get arrested. If you incite people to burn down hotels, and they try, you get an interview in the Telegraph, positive coverage on the BBC," and the Gbeebies lot wet themselves.

I suspect most of the commentariat on this issue aren't teachers. My international school in India banned them 2 years ago, and it appears to have had zero detrimental effect on the kids at all. There's no valid way to measure if it has or not, and they seem just nicer to be around. I'll take that.

Fair enough...but I wonder whose side the proto-fascist Meloni will be on.

For my money, this is the second greatest cover version ever, after The Stranglers' 'Walk on By.' (It is also my take-off track of choice, since I'm a nervous flyer...)

YouTube video by Novara Media The Ancient Indian History Our Schools Don't Teach | Ash Sarkar Meets William Dalrymple

“Black pepper, which (Pliny the Elder) considers a kind of ‘woke spice’” 🤣🤣 www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI8K...

Which gormless cretins thought that this gormless cretin was worthy of being elected...or is the answer contained in the question? www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyVF...

I make no apology for leballing him a xenophobe, because he's a xenophobe. He's also a racist.

In what sense of the noun 'salad' is that a salad?

Vindication. I just KNEW it was you ordering the carpet-bombing of Dresden in WW2!

A man in a suit looks at the camera

“Poverty, great wealth and democracy are ultimately incompatible elements in any society…either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property or property…will destroy democracy”
Nye Bevan, 1952

My crush ever since the days of 'The Beiderbecke Trilogy' and 'A Very Peculiar Practice' ❤️

Barbara Flynn...still to this day my crush, ever since I saw her in this and The Beiderbecke Trilogy ❤️

Forest Green tickets on prescription to improve patients’ mental health Dale Vince’s team are giving away seats at their games to a local doctor to be prescribed as an alternative to antidepressants

More of this.

www.theguardian.com/football/202...

"LIke," and I wish for your opinion on The Fall, please.

I guess I'm lucky in that I teach 16-18 year olds in an international school in India, so I suspect they put it down to my being British (or "a Britisher" as I am wont to be referred to...). I sometimes precede the 'mate' with their given name if I have to be 'sensitive' but otherwise...

I call all of my students "mate." It confuses the hell out of almost all of them.