Sally

Sneakily playing a note with an unexpected finger is – says 11yo pianist Boris – a "Fake Rabona pass". He's right! I must add this to the Blog I'll Never Write: a new version of Dozen A Day exercises, but they're all types of football manoeuvre. #PianoTeaching #TheBlogIWillNeverWrite

Does Fennel fade if you overcook it? I think I've just answered my question. My minestrone was beautiful about 20 mins ago (and I added fennel seed in the onions), but it's actually lost taste, rather than deepened it. #cooking

I agree. I've been upset about the things Labour hasn't done and should have. About the things it shouldn't have done, yet did. But I've been really dispirited by its inability to cut thru extraordinary media hostility with the good things it *has* done.

Yes, that's fair. The quality of her interviewing is beyond reproach.

I think so too. But they generally don't get serious guests anymore, it's just a chat show. I think they're probably badly resourced, too, compared to the 45-minute Newsnight of old.

Sadly, it does show how far Newsnight has fallen. I'm old enough to remember serious journalists supported by serious programme-makers sitting behind a desk being - serious.

Anyone need some calm relief? Switch off Matt Vicker's inane gibbering and appreciate a few minutes' silence. I thoroughly recommend it. #Newsnight

Calm this down, ffs. I've never heard so much high-octane gabbling - my blood pressure is through the roof. #Newsnight

Does he seriously think he's going to be living in luxury in zero gravity, taking whatever he takes and counting his money, while the earth burns?

Keir Starmer’s director of communications, Tim Allan, steps down Exclusive: Decision follows departure of chief of staff Morgan McSweeney over Peter Mandelson scandal

Well if Tim Allan was doing a good job, I'd hate to see what failure looked like. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Very grateful that you did - one of those ‘This is what I think but I hadn’t articulated it’ reads.

Great article - once I got past the word ‘removing’.

Even more tests for most tested children in the world Testing times ahead for four-year-olds as new starters face ‘harmful’ assessments within six weeks of starting school.

"ABRSM sounds like a disease," my nephew just said. He's right. The UK is manic about measurement. We test children more frequently, more intensively, harder, younger and for longer than *any other children in the world*. #PianoTeaching #MusicEd theconversation.com/even-more-te...

Russian spy spacecraft have intercepted Europe’s key satellites, officials believe Unencrypted European communications are being targeted by Moscow

Feel like Mandelson meant this alarming story wasn’t noticed enough this week
www.ft.com/content/cd08...

Trousers are brown
It's Gordon Brown
- Rory Bremner was brilliant.

I see your Sunday is as exciting as mine – if not more so.

'Delphi is watering down their hummus,' my sister just texted to me. We live it large.

Not enough is said about this. it's a form of assault and manipulation.

I want a Labour Leader who can beat Reform.
I don't think it's Keir Starmer.
I don't know if it's Andy Burnham.
I'd get behind whoever could do it.
The ONLY thing I'm sure about is: Andy Burnham needs to stfu.
#AndyBurnham

Irish Traitors is a revelation! Less glossy and lavish than UK Traitors but all the better for it: raw, edgy, uncomfortable, witty. One player quips, after using his fluency in Irish for a mission: 'Well that'll be a first: surviving *because* I speak Irish'. #IrishTraitors #TheTraitors

Okay, bye bye, little house on Rightmove.

That's the absolute nub of it.

I'm still in Labour, terribly uneasy (aren't we all). Of course we have to keep out Reform (or Tory-Reform), but I know too that if we get another weak centrist Govt kowtowing to the US (and to the media), we just defer the problems and they get worse.

Yes, yes (and another yes).

I'm not sure what I think of blocking Andy Burnham.
I am sure that he is not the Great White Hope of the left – he's just as jellyfishy as Starmer. He just has a nice face and voice. Is that enough to stave off a Reform govt? I dunno. I'm at the point of desperation now. #AndyBurnham

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible.

It leads on "sharply contested narratives"

It has a dramatic skew to the US government

It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

It's unbearable to have these lies pumped, unfiltered - like raw sewage - live into my home. This isn't journalism. #bbcnews

Wow: my sister’s garden just now (in Devon) #NorthernLights

Post-teaching exorcism.

Sounds like a straw man argument to me.