Mrs Cosmopilite

The side of an inflatable ball pit. It has a sizeable puncture, into which has been inserted a green balloon - which has then been inflated. The resulting internal pressure plugs the hole

Fixing the puncture in the inflatable ball-pit, in the below manner, is (and I suspect will remain) the most MacGyver-ass shit I’ve ever done.

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

Perfect sibling roast.

Pocketed for future use

Hoping she's got her own health, police etc services. The UK has strong views on immigrants having recourse to public funds

What a complex problem …

✂️

The royals possibly using taxpayer's money propping up a wrong-un and also profiting from their monopoly during a C-o-L crisis

Imagine reinvesting wind farm rental income to improve the grid and benefit all

Not a sovereign wealth fund. The Sovereign's wealth fund.

Soz. My FT uni sub can't share

Great chart here from @resfoundation.bsky.social on housing costs by square metre by age. Britain's problems with Nimbyism and the planning system in a nutshell.

In the FT recently. Greenpeace want to sue Crown Estates over excessive lease charges for windfarm developments on UK seabed, which CE monopolises.

The last round was worth £879mn. Not much in economic terms but the start of a sovereign wealth fund? Not just the Sovereign's wealth fund.

We don't see any reason why landlords and lawyers shouldn't pay the same tax rate as their tenants and clients.

Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley. Perfection.

There's a great story to tell.
Working people pay the same but your landlord, retired parents etc pay more.
Not sure about the maths but might that also allow No 11 to raise the tax threshold too?

Almost all the conversation is about taxing income.
There's only a tiny conversation about how we treat income vs wealth.
I'm not an economist but I see so much merit in scrapping employee NI and upping income tax and...

But we won't

My husband works in renewables and is tying himself in knots over funding.

Current govt policy is too vague with key pts being published late 26. Too late for funding 4 yr projects cos 'when' Farage gets in he'll scrap net zero

Nutty binary thinking, but that seems to be where we are

This was so brilliant.

It's coincided, for me, with an undergrad module on alt econ theories.

Made me chuckle:

..and this time, the workers will rise up and overthrow the capitalists

No?

Well then, THIS TIME

No?

Well then....

Poor chap

Shame.

From a transparency/accountability pov, it would be a great metric for interested constituents

I wonder what MPs would think

Am I right in thinking there's no way to centralise data because of the self-employed nature of MP-ing?
I see value in mandating collection of this sort of data. I would love to know how my MP 'scores' in the work he does for constituents

Also. Sweaty.

Pityme

Today is World Mental Health Day. It’s a day that should be every day of the year. You are worthwhile, and you deserve to be here.

#WorldMentalHealthDay #WMHD25 #MentalHealth

A man in a suit stands at a microphone which has been mounted on the roof of a van. There are loudspeakers at his feet, and a building behind him. He has an arm raised, and is flinching as projectiles are hurled at him, because he's a fucking Nazi

Ah, happy 88th anniversary of the day Oswald Mosley tried to sell fascism to Liverpudlians – and someone concussed him with a brick

LAs have to acknowledge the scale of homelessness in their areas.
Dorset says they have 18 homeless people 🤔
Sofa surfers aren't included, and there's no acknowledgement that some ppl don't come forward because, e.g. they don't want to be sent out of their local area

Love that. Tempted to get a flagpole
Not sure how it would go down in my little corner.
In 2020 when our street had the mandated VE day t-party, I made bunting with flags of all nations involved in D-day and the battle of Britain.
The pursed lips almost imploded under the weight of their indignation

I started as an adult. Pratchett's books are historical, sociological political observations of the human condition.
He pillories power, skewers self-agrandisation and stands up for the little man, or goblin, or troll.
It's fantasy, but it's not childish.
And he's a polymath with wicked comic timing

I was a bit worried about my boys listening to this.
They were probably 11 and 13 the first time they heard it.
Generated some very thoughtful conversation which has morphed with repeated listening as they get older.
It's been good

If you're in the UK, find out if they qualify for pension credit
If either of them is unfirm, then Attendance Allowance is your friend

I still regularly refer to this New Scientist exchange from 1997

And this Despite some volunteer groups being targeted for helping the wrong people.

Thinking RNLI but some welfare services now advise workers not to wear lanyards outside after a Citizens advice office in Sunderland was targeted in last summers riots

Totally agree