Richard Milner

...but reinvigorated my interest in basement conversions

My take - a series of wrong turns/misfortunes since 1979:

- Election of Thatcher
- Death of John Smith
- Supporting the Iraq War
- GFC 2008
- Austerity
- 2015 election result
- Brexit
- Covid

Eight body blows in 46 years, some of them just bad luck, some self-inflicted.

I saw George Mitchell give a talk last night about the diplomatic effort to end the Troubles, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and he said something so sobering but obviously true: if social media had existed in the 90s the negotiators would never have been able to get an agreement.

YouTube video by Peacock Cheers | Every Time Norm Peterson Enters the Bar

A supercut of every time Norm entered Cheers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXED...

My grandmas were immigrants, my mum & sisters in law are immigrants; my sister & nephews are migrants. My kids study maths, Shakespeare, dance, act & score tries alongside the kids of immigrants. My dad’s life was saved by immigrants. Immigrants have made us richer, wiser, stronger

Win the fight

One of the strangest ironies of the last ten years has been watching Britain immersing itself as deeply as ever in memories of WW2 while proudly turning its back on the project that emerged from it.

Just been reminded of one of my favourite stories from the old days of television. Dag Hammarskjöld, UN secretary general, was due in for a Panorama. Before he arrived, they needed to line up the cameras, so floor manager Albert Stevenson, later a distinguished LE producer was asked to step in.

I lived there around the time it happened. There was a chunk taken out of the wall and someone had written "WHAM!" next to it. Made me laugh.

Went to the speech this morning. A few thoughts. TL;DR - I thought it was really good, but of course lots of tricky challenges to work through. 🧵

My hand holding a jar of Tesco Finest ‘Alphonso Mango & Apricot Chutney’. I didn’t subsequently buy the jar of chutney, I only took this photo of it for comedy purposes. I do this quite a lot in supermarkets and it annoys my partner.

Sounds like a couple who’ve written a letter to the Telegraph about how they can only go skiing once a year because school fees have gone up

Here is a visual reprersentation of how the parties divided votes.parliament.uk/votes/common...

At a US passport control:

Agent: why are you here?
Me: I’m a Professor, going to give a talk.
Agent: what area?
Me: political philosophy
Agent: my favourite subject.
Me: really?
Agent: no, I say that to all the Professors. Seems to make them happy.

To be fair she does look like a chicken.

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The truth about Trump’s tariffs - Tortoise They weren’t a disaster first time around, but they could be next time

Today's Daily Sensemaker from @tortoisemedia.bsky.social - The truth about Trump's tariffs www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/11/18/t...

A young(ish) Mrs. Thatcher holds up a jar whilst wearing a white lab coat

It’s 35 years since Margaret Thatcher resigned from being Prime Minister. He she is in her earlier days of being a good scientist, looking at some concentrated privatisation in a jar.

We’re lucky Orwell isn’t around to say “I told you so” endlessly. It would be intolerable.