Piers Beckley

A social media post by user "mamaoffthegrid" expresses the view that Starbucks baristas should earn enough to cover living expenses with their paycheck.

there is a tabletop rpg I really enjoy called bluebeards bride and the setup is quite easy, all you will need is some six sided dice, a copy of the book, a free evening, and 5 men you want to irrevocably traumatize

Twenty years since I had to sit and listen to David Miliband pretending that postponing council tax revaluation was a brave political decision, rather than a cowardly mistake.

I know we all sort of know this but it's extraordinary to see it laid out like this. (I say, waiting for someone to say £90bn isn't that much really.) We so clearly need a completely different kind of politics to navigate the next decade - conscious renewal rather than managed decline.

What it looks like in the transcript versus what I actually said.

Ghost of Yotei

Two months after firing over Charlie Kirk comments, Ghost of Yotei dev blames harassment campaign, not 'bad joke'
aftermath.site/sucker-punch-c...

Brilliant thecritic.co.uk/auntie-in-th...

Looking at polling averages, Reform has dipped a little recently but it's largely because of Labour 24 voters who had been saying "don't know" now saying Green.

As DKs they were excluded but as Greens they are not, so Reform drop even though they have the same number of people supporting them.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

two men standing next to each other with the words if you were waiting for the opportune moment that was it Alt: two men standing next to each other with the words if you were waiting for the opportune moment that was it

You…

We are sorry to announce that Milkshake Labour Government…

No need for sorrow here.

This week I am writing about obeying illegal military orders.

Happy to hear any informed views and of any interesting/useful information, on or off record.

DMs open.

This has made me want to watch The Five Doctors again.

It’s not one of the great stories, but I know I’m going to get a huge nostalgia hit from it.

Would love to know if any fans who came later to the series enjoy it, or if it’s only a That’s Nice Grandma.

just because the internet has gone a dozen different kinds of crazy since the 2000s doesn't mean ceiling cat isn't still watching you masturbate

Reform’s ‘Trumpian’ legal threats hint at more aggressive approach to media Ultimatums sent to publications appear to intensify as Nigel Farage’s party rises in polls

If you receive legal threats from Nigel Farage for your reporting of Reform, please get in touch.

We have employed a defamation lawyer specifically for this purpose and would love to help (and we do so on non-commercial terms). www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

All the supposedly progressive people saying 'Nigel Farage's racism doesn't matter. His fans love it'.

It matters whether the leader of the party leading all the opinion polls is an outright racist. It matters if he called black people 'wogs' and said 'gas them' to Jews. Not everything is a game

Nothing to read into Illya's arm across the back of Napoleon's chair or his hand going to his broken arm as he urged him to be careful.

Fifteen Years

i’m not crying you’re crying

xkcd: Fifteen Years

Why are you asking me questions about my t-shirt?

Why Edge Of Darkness makes so much sense in 2025 | The Quietus Judge Rogers speaks to several key members of the team who made the ecologically-minded thriller for the BBC

And another! Stories and interviews with the team behind one of the BBC's greatest ever TV dramas – "a revenge thriller, a mystical nuclear-and-environmental-apocalypse fable, a clear-eyed political document of the mid-1980s, a ghost story" – by me for @thequietus.com thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

If you want to feel old, we are now further from the formation of the Kenorland Supercontinent than the formation of the Kenorland Supercontinent is from the formation of the Solar System.

This is your regular reminder that being a weekly columnist for 10 years + is deeply self-radicalising. No one has that many ideas or opinions and the two inevitable outcomes appear to be either inane predictability or performing acrobatics to justify hate-stoking controversy.

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

This is… not good.

OMG. The Guardian have confused Kenneth Clark, presenter of the 1969 series 'Civilisation' with Tory ex-MP & former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in their review of the new BBC series 'Civilisations:Rise & Fall'

"Second, we need to enforce the policy with a vigour that has reduced flows at America’s southern borders by 90 per cent, and in Denmark by 95 per cent. Crucial to the Trump programme is an aggressive policy of removals, including snatching suspected illegals off the street. One friend tells me Latino parents are now so afraid to be seen out and about that the other parents have a rota to walk the Latino children to and from school. It is hard to imagine that taking place in Britain."

Just a jaw-dropping paragraph in Trevor Phillips's column for The Times.

This is a policy that, by his own account, has left parents of a particular race too frightened to walk their children to school.

And that's the example he chooses of the "vigour" we "need".
www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Incidentally, theft like this is why there won’t be a second Steelflower trilogy, why the Bannon & Clare series was canceled by the publisher, and why I will never do another collected SquirrelTerror book.

Did the math. If I were paid for each download on that piracy website, I'd have at least 500+ USD more than I do now. I gave up counting after 100 tbh.

What's 500 USD to me? Business insurance, or therapy for my kid, or a gig I didn't have to take so I could write the books y'all steal

Here's the Health Secretary Wes Streeting explaining that a clinical trial of a safe drug used in the UK and across the world for decades is necessary in order that it can be banned.
He wants to be PM.