James Chalmers

(In fairness, worth acknowledging that the blog has since got further into the detail, while trying very hard to be evenhanded.)

While it seems odd for a tribunal decision to be the subject of a BBC live blog, the result of that is something more nuanced than you get in the rush to publish a headline about a 300+ page judgment the instant it appears (although the engagement with the detail is still very thin).

Noticeable that most news outlets are reporting the Peggie/Fife tribunal decision as a victory for Peggie, while Sex Matters have put out a statement attacking the decision; the tenor of coverage might well change between today and tomorrow’s press.

Maybe this just says something about Falkner more generally, but while I can understand why people making apologies fall into the trap of offering a denial dressed up as one, it’s quite something to see someone offering advice doing the same thing.

Asked by Sky News about Farage’s comments, Falkner said she felt “quite confused and disturbed”. She said: “You have a situation where, when you read these allegations in terms of what is attributed to him, it looks utterly ghastly on paper. And then you try and contextualise it, and you think, this is perhaps 50 years ago – you know, young people say all sorts of things at school.” There was, however, she said, an element that she did not understand: “The one thing that sadly confuses me about him, and I hear his contextualisation of it all: why can’t he just offer an unreserved apology for any distress?

Sometimes I wonder why people are so bad at apologising but here’s Kishwer Falkner offering advice to Nigel Farage on apologising and it’s terrible advice: an “unreserved apology for any distress”. (It should be obvious that’s self-contradictory; using “any” is itself a reservation!)

Genuinely what are people like Ed West doing with their lives? Go to Wigmore Hall, go to the movies, go to Koko, go to the Vortex Jazz Club, go see an orchestra, go see the Last Dinner Party...it ought to cure you out of having this weird, unnatural reaction to your fellow citizens.

I am bad at recognising faces/remembering names, especially *quickly* and so never greet anyone I bump into by name. I’m fairly sure this has left many people I’ve met on the street convinced I have no idea who they are and was just bluffing through the conversation. But sometimes they’re right!

Thanks to confusion arising from having edited a new edition of an elderly textbook, Google Scholar records me as having started to accumulate citations before I was born, which is nice.

I can’t believe that the sentence “if you’re calling Rachel Reeves a ‘villain’ you are clearly not an objective commentator on the structure and organisation of British girls’ chess competitions in the 1990s” just went through my head.

So the women do have eight arms but they have to be called seven arm octopuses because of the men? Honestly you expect this in humans but you expect more of the cephalopod community.

If the Equality Act had never existed, and someone proposed to pass a law banning women’s organisations from choosing to welcome trans people, we’d think it was a pretty extreme proposal. I don’t think it’s less extreme because it’s come about as a result of a new interpretation of an old law.

With the government looking to scale back jury trials, newly-released YouGov data shows Britons who have served on juries are more likely (67%) than the wider public (54%) to say they would rather have a jury rather than a judge decide their own case

yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

“That [the title Reeves won] is not the British girls’ championship, it is clearly defined as the girl who does best in the British championship.” is… no, I’ve got nothing.

While it was technically true I did enjoy reading a profile of Charles Kennedy many years back which explained he was such a confident debater that he would frequently leave it to 15 minutes before competitions to pitch up, having no idea what the topic was or what side he would be arguing.

(Now wondering whether some parents put them up early because 'my kids get so excited about Christmas!' and others put them up late for exactly the same reason.)

That was common in my house when we were growing up although I think less a point of principle and more not getting round to it until the last minute. (Similarly we always bought a tree very late, including one that the shop was dragging out to throw away and paying £1 for it.)

It's absolutely wild that with dozens of easy-to-understand terrible choices and dubious claims in the budget, the great british press has decided to pick the one thing where it's not clear she did anything wrong and which is also completely incomprehensible to any normal human?

Booking our cinema for private commercial viewings Our cinema can be booked for private commercial viewings after 6.00pm from Monday to Friday.

Available for hire! www.bbfc.co.uk/fee-tariffs/...

The “in the cinema” bit is probably crucial - lots of these people would watch more films but in screening rooms or on screeners they’ve been sent to watch at home. (Plus GWR needs verification, so you’d likely have to do it as a charity challenge - the record holder was monitored by cinema staff.)

Obviously tricky if you have a job etc, but I discovered recently that “most films seen in the cinema in a year” is 777, which seems readily doable for anyone looking for some sort of post-retirement project.

In principle, though, you'll be allowed to be a member of any combination of the 12 and there will be a small group of people who understand *exactly* what your chosen combination means.

Congratulations!

I’m assuming it must have been in a *terrible* state for permission ever to have been granted for that. I see from one of the other comments someone is going to try and turn it back into a residential building so good luck to them I guess?

This makes it sound as if really a modern office block type structure inside an attractive shell (and perhaps not a complete shell). www.elginscotland.com/elgin/promin...

There’s a link on that page to a virtual tour which lets you see inside the building. Doesn’t look in bad shape from a superficial glance although I haven’t explored all the way through - it’s huge. Converting to a residential property seems unlikely though.

Better than that: it is one of only three Danish pianos in England, according to the article. (I don’t know whether this means the Danish piano making industry is remarkably niche, it refers to some particular style, or there are actually loads but they’re all in Wales for some reason.)

Huge respect to the papers for finding both an 88 year old worried about the tax bill on her 6 bedroom Kensington house and a 20 year old fretting about only being able to save £12k a year tax free.
Top work all around. These are not easy case studies to find.

I remember a discussion about this here further back: the consensus of those who knew seemed to be that the Bakerloo line could be particularly bad (old trains, no CCTV, perhaps some issue of overnight accessibility to carriages?), which may be where this is from (as a worst of the worst example).

If I upload a document to the university website it gets renamed with a random number rather than my very carefully chosen filename, which mildly annoys me but I now wonder whether it’s a design feature in the web publishing software we use to mitigate this kind of risk.