Simon Landau

You turned up your nose at chicken soup? Shocked, I am, shocked.

Yeah, but it does work as a pitch for a Doctor Who spinoff.

It says “with the Beatles”

Endlessly fascinating. Today her Conservatism is rooted in turning the clock back to right a wrong (*plan 2*) not the future. Conservatism is successful when it is perceived to fix the future.

The Major Questions Doctrine: An Inquiry Into Doctrinal Shifts and Supreme Court Power By Annemarie Colette Ardy

Instructive piece from 2024 that may explain some of the political shift in SCOTUS seen in the wildly different interpretations of the Justices (on every side!) in the Tariff case. https://llso.uchicago.edu/llso-review/ardy-major-questions-doctrine

Does SCOTUS 2026 now have Four Horsemen, Three Musketeers and two floaters looking nervously at the midterms?

Reminds me that it used to be a trope of British tv cop shows that a car would be stopped and the driver would say “must be shum mistek, ossifer”. No longer on tv but rampant on social media.

I love bin chat because it reminds me I have just received my Council Tax bill and do not have to pay an additional service charge.

YouTube video by The Hall of Advertising Fiat Strada - Handbuilt By Robots (1979, UK)

At times like these I am reminded that technology shifts are variable and inherently unpredictable (if not unforecastable). The 1979 Fiat Strada (unloved) increased Auto employment. Steel companies still had apprentices biking test pieces up the line in 1997.

The only way it could work as a *Reform* policy (bridging the different interest groups that form its current base) is by restricting the diagnoses to limited specific conditions. At which point their *coalition* falls apart

Would we know (and avoid) lampreys were it not for the history of Henry I ?

Wotif adults cannot focus ?

I fear I am stuck in that olden-time when opinion was mediated by a man in a suit from a family who made it the family business. *self promotion* mediated by different flavours of technology is the opinion du jour.

I can see some hope for young people in that competing ways to encourage brain development outside of digital devices might help. But the older people (like me) face no such positivity. The digital device appears to be the only one listening.

Isn’t this about inequity in public schools both in the disparity between single-sex schools and sports provision in mixed schools?

Now you can look forward to arthritis

Where foreign policy is a game of marbles (and my marble is the same size as yours and yours, oh who are you)

I just wonder how the interview went down “Do you fancy the Gunners for the title this year?”

First the claim she didn’t raise the Epstein links at PMQs because IDS did “and we are one big team” is risible. Second, her confidence is so high that she is on a visit to Surrey today not Gorton and Denton.

“The purpose of government is not to scare horses - discuss”. It’s not great, is it and a theme Stephen identified early on. I recognise my own formulation in July 2024 was not great either “get people to feel and see things are a bit better”.

For one glorious minute I had an ear-worm of “Day Trip to Bangor” as sung by the erstwhile MP. (It has lifted my spirits, Thankyou).

Isn’t it more that the system starts with rich person being introduced to supplicant and RP says “I can help you” introduce an employer, business or contact and it grows from there - it does not stop. It doesn’t start with applying for a job via the job centre,does it?

But how else do you build up support for your cause when you buy your sandwiches from M&S?

Suggest you read much of Stephen’s journalism since 2016, especially his analyses of Tories and Labour

Because Stephen is a very acute observer of the fractures in UK politics and the way leadership is in short supply.

It ain’t funny - it is another indication of the fracturing of politics - I am surprised you do not see that

His best friend is the overreach of his enemies.

I can remember my father queuing to get his copy of the Denning Report on Profumo convinced the contents would bring MacMillan down. Instead the jokes and illness did for the PM.

I have been looking at AI through the lens of my volunteering. I can see a future of advice triage through AI leading to a an advice/counselling session - UBI is a way of increasing that pool of potential volunteers.

It as if delivery is constantly stuck on a truck on the M25 updating the tracking system with pitiful slow moving diodes.