Paul

A story in the parts

A story in three parts

SHOCK POLL: NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW IN an amazing poll conducted by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like. However, 99 percent of journalists agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

You know that thing about a frog being slowly boiled and not realising it?

Can we change 'boiled' to 'radicalised'?

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Yes, yes I know I keep banging on about my fucking book! However, if you want one repost this and I’ll do a random winner pick thing by the end of the week because I’m great like that. ♥️📚
#amindofmyown

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

Javier Milei had to beg a bail-out and already needs another. Argentina's economy is in a tailspin. Gov't bonds and peso in freefall. People starving, throwing rocks at him.

Farage last year: "He's amazing. It's Thatcherism on steroids. Cutting and slashing expenditure. That's leadership."

SHARE!

Another gargoyle reading in the wild.

BBC Today is reporting that “at least 94” data centres will be built in the next 5 years in the U.K.
How can we possibly justify doing that when we can’t get a full electric car charging network built, & the power infrastructure is insufficient to connect new wind farms, never mind water shortages

Thinking about buying an Amazon van so I can park anywhere.

Superman is the story of an immigrant who grew up in Kansas, landed a low-paying job as a reporter in Metropolis, and still had time for a hobby because urban housing was affordable.

Where Labour has gone wrong and what to do about it. They can learn from Zohran Mamdani and...Robert Jenrick

I’ve written a lot about Labour strategy this year. With the first anniversary here, seemed a good time to pull it all together. Seven reasons Labour are in a hole, and six things Starmer could do about it. It starts with him and his dislike of ideology in politics. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

Trying to get a tan in the hot weather.

My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com

Let the non-doms leave Britain is better off without the do-nothing rich.

Showrooms for ugly, dangerous cars will fall quiet; galleries for gaudy, laughable art will have to reconsider their value propositions.

But the rest of us might benefit, thanks to the property market.

HOW COME mouldy bread is bad for you but blue cheese, which is riddled with the stuff, is okay? It seems to me like it's one rule for Rhizopus stolonifer and another for Penicillium roqueforti. Eldon Furse, email

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz346bs

How am I meant to sleep with memes like this popping up on my feed??

When you can’t even run a party that’s small enough to fit into a hatchback you sure as shit can’t run a country

Revealed: heat pump myths and benefits you need to know Heat pumps promise lower bills and greener homes, but here's how misinformation and challenges are slowing their rollout

A key planning restriction that heat pumps need to be one metre from a neighbour's property has been lifted.

Part of government Warm Homes Plan to decrease bills & accelerate the take up of the low-carbon technology.

So here is what you need to know about heat pumps...

If Dracula ever challenges you to play a single game to save your neck from his bloodlust, just say noughts and crosses. He's absolutely bollocksed then

A long walking stick. On the top is a skull with emerald green eyes and a wicked grin.

This walking stick with skull pommel and emerald eyes once belonged to Charles Darwin. Yep, you read that right! I bet you didn't know Darwin was such a badass. It's now on display at the Wellcome Collection in London, and I think you'll agree it's pretty amazing. #MementoMoriMonday

Lost in Triangulation Quiet Riot · Episode

🚨NEW SHOW

@marshadecordova.bsky.social joins us for:

🇬🇧🇪🇺 the importance of the summit now delivering tangible change

✂️ why the Welfare cuts need a rethink

💛💚 why Labour is losing more voters to left wing parties than right

open.spotify.com/episode/4j9J...

🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/q...

A quick run-down of what's been announced today

Almost all of it still to happen

PDF with clicky links: bit.ly/UshGraphic140
@ukandeu.bsky.social @anandmenon.bsky.social @cleodavies.bsky.social @davidheniguk.bsky.social @nvondarza.bsky.social

Magnum Cart.

The singular of Magna Carta.

I made a Downfall video

Slightly amended so I can fit this here: I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame! I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one. I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong. Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues. I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean? Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.

This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way. You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly. The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. Tanja Bueltmann

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

Cartoon ginger cat with big beseeching eyes.

In the days of lovely Twitter I often put out a call for help with research in writing my books. So here goes, Bluskiers.

I'm looking for a social worker (adoption/fostering preferably) and a probation officer who worked between 2008 and 2012, the more senior the better.

Please share :)

Similarly, it’s easy for Cooper to suggest care homes should be better employers – better pay, more hours, etc.

Why can’t they do that? Partly private equity, sure. But mostly because councils don’t pay enough for care, and can’t afford to pay more. And government isn’t fixing that, either.

Young priest!
there's no need to feel down
there's a
Country!
That's inside of a town
you can
Go there!
Now ol Frank's underground
and you
choose
a
new
guy
(bom bom bom bom bom)
It's fun to vote for a
P O P E

Pangolins: "the warrior caste of the Clangers"