Matt

The "one fan" being quoted incorrectly saying that there are two fewer episodes rather than three is the cherry on top

Comedy spin-off in which the Doctor retires and acts as an occasional consultant to the big alien fighting organisation

Just so everyone is aware, the answer is definitely NOT 'All Along the Watchtower'

very good and healthy democracy

Good to see On Beauty correctly ranked here

As many have said, it makes you wonder what FM25 looked like at the point they finally decided to can it...

I respect the ambition to move to a more dynamic UI but yeah, this ain't it

My favourite example of this is on the role selection screen, where on console you can separately select the role toggle and the corresponding description (why?). Pressing A on the description does nothing, so you inevitably press it several times before realising you didn't have the toggle selected

I played a bit on the Steam Deck and it is also terrible to use on a console. It highlights your current selection in purple but it moves around incredibly unpredictably so it always takes multiple tries to get where you want, sliders are awful, and obv core issue about busy info environment remains

Yes, we need to have a moral panic about everyone on phones

Great newsletter Stephen, but I thought you'd had your South Coast Derby blindness addressed yesterday

we recently got a new front door and we got this crazy thing installed. It's a little hole in the door that lets you see outside without actually opening it

And now we come to the root of it. It's Birmingham City's fault.

Their fondness for the phrase "priced to sell" says a lot I always think. How else should it be priced?

Fair, the level of requisite self-awareness is proportionate to the level of dopiness I suppose

I have to agree, the sequence at end with the revenant Lockjaw, for example, is surely self-aware

In this sense Boris Johnson was terrible for Starmer as it seems like Johnson's premiership (and Starmer's personal dislike of him) really did convince him that if he just came in and rolled his sleeves up and "stopped the chaos" that everything would be great.

Pubs to stay open until early hours in push for UK growth Exclusive: Plans for England and Wales would help the ailing hospitality sector but have attracted criticism from health experts

Lots of coverage today on these new government proposals to reform the alcohol licensing system.

I can see an inherent popular appeal to allowing pubs to stay open later, but I have a lot of thoughts about why these plans are an extremely bad idea..

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

If this is the case, then I doubt it would be marginal in public health terms either (i.e. it will probably be harmful)

Hard to believe that "I'm not racist, I just don't like primitive alien cultures" has become an acceptable position for some on the right

I can't get over "(a year hence maybe?)"

It's great that two of the biggest challenges facing the Government (NHS and shit country syndrome) are made much worse by social care pressures, and not only did Labour barely have a policy on it coming into the election, they immediately bottled trying to come up with one

This, but also there is just too much political reporting in general. There is so much other news happening and yet we just get wall to wall politics.

Yeah for sure. I'd love to see their streaming numbers before and after Gracie Abrams and Olivia Rodrigo covered Just Like Heaven at the same Glastonbury...

Actually I note that this album was number 1 in the UK and dozens of other countries and number 4 in the US billboard... which goes to show something which we already knew about the cultural relevance of charts

Forget the back catalogue, they had a great album out last year! Not really sure why they didn't have a Pulp moment last summer. Although speculation rife that another Glasto headline slot could be on the cards in 2027 (now that Robert Smith has been ingratiated with the young people)

The split in the crowd at Glasto when she brought out Robert Smith was really something. Millennial/xer dads delighted (myself included) hardcore fans completely nonplussed. She smashed it tho

Time to dust off those FBPE fantasy cabinets. Stephen Fry, Clare Balding, Brian Cox, your country needs you!

This does come across in his first interview back with us as well to be fair - it's quite obvious how ambitious he still is and how he wants to be competing at the top of the division and beyond. I guess we'll just have to hope there still aren't the minutes for him at Ipswich come January

There's no might about it - the decline did plateau in the years before the smoking ban

For sure. I love In Our Time for both sleeping and waking hours, to be clear