Alistair King
@alistairking
If you’d be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal.
I'm meeting a friend for lunch in Brockley and am working at the Wetherspoons beforehand. It's £1.89 for a refillable coffee here compared to £1.49 in much-more-salubrious Muswell Hill. Cheap to those who can afford it; still cheap but slightly more expensive to those who also can but slightly less.
It’s weird how that reminds me of both Kenneth Williams and of Willo the Wisp, his narration for which was probably my first exposure to him. It makes me wonder whether the cartoonist created the image with Williams in mind.
Good interview with whip-losing peer, Gavin Barwell, on #r4today, whose crime was to criticise Kemi Badenoch’s deranged purge of net-zero-supporting candidates, although why he wanted to be in her gang in the first place is a mystery beyond his line that he’s a Conservative.
Alarming post in a local Facebook group. Does this parent not know how old his or her son is?
England was the biggest part of the UK when the latter did some pretty awful things two or three generations ago before voluntarily dismantling its empire. This twit lives in a country whose head of government mooted the unprovoked invasion and takeover of a Nato ally earlier *this year*.
Rather than write a long thread here, I've written to my MP, who I know from experience will read it and probably reply. This is a really difficult issue, hence the length of my email, but I *think* I'm suggesting something sensible. If you agree, feel free to copy and paste elements of my alt-text.
You have to hand it to Spanish speakers. It’s taken me four words just to translate the first word in this sentence. Such an efficient language. And yet they still cram in two or three times as many words per minute when speaking as we do. Why IS that?
Wait, ‘belle-mère’ means ‘stepmother’ as well as ‘mother-in-law’? Yeah, I know context can usually help you out, but we’re talking about the French here.
1/2 This is on Erling Haaland’s Wikipedia page. On one hand, it makes sense: in Scandinavian languages (I know a tiny bit more than the average non-Scandinavian as my wife’s Swedish), the letter ‘å’ is interchangeable with ‘aa’, much like the German ‘ß’ and ‘ö’ are sometimes written ‘ss’ and ‘oe’.
What’s worse than having ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ after the numbers on a 24-hour clock? Yes, that’s right. having ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ after the numbers on a 24-hour clock when the numbers aren’t even right for the 24-hour clock time.
Megalol (I didn't really doubt that he had a wife but I *was* curious about her background, given his poisonous words.)
The journey from left to right here represents the most concentrated spell of panic to relief I've felt for weeks.
Today’s Blackberry Providence is a homeowner who put this high chair (left) out just as I’d passed some really high blackberries (right). I’d had dozens and dozens that were reachable but because these would only have been in the grasp of a freak, they were both ripe AND massive. Delicious. Had c30.
None of the serious commentators I follow think it’ll happen (and my hunch agrees) but the current betting markets put it at 11/2, which is an implied probability of 15%, so not absurdly low.
If Ed Davey gets what he wants - all other candidates boycotting Farage’s stupid by-election, an idea with some merit - this could be Essex’s answer to the 1973 Northern Ireland border poll, which nationalists sat out. He’d still be an MP but his authority and legitimacy would be shot.
I’m rewatching the match with my son (don’t worry, he’s not skiving; he’s on his long post-GCSEs school holidays), and I’m questioning how many players in the Mexico team watched this episode of The Simpsons and took inspiration from it. It’s certainly the majority.
Of course, between 1013 and 1042, England was in a personal union with Norway and Denmark, known as the North Sea or Anglo-Scandinavian Empire. How would FIFA react to our rekindling that arrangement before Saturday so that we skip the game and the Empire goes straight through to the semis?
This is a zoomed-in-as-much-as-possible view towards Canary Wharf from Muswell Hill. What’s the aircraft, if that’s what it is, in the middle of the screen? Anyone nearer by able to identify it?
Shopping done, massive rucksack unpacked, time to put it away… oh. As two asides: 1) Why do I see so few others with rucksacks doing their Big Shop? Do they ALL only do lots of little shops or rely on their cars for such short journeys? 2) As I was trudging back, I could REALLY feel the weight…
Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just rearranging the Sunday Times in my local Tesco Express so the Farage-cosying-up-to-criminals-and-taking-their-money story is easier for everyone to see.
Now deleted post saved for posterity here where it's less likely to be found... Embarrassing.
England, Scotland and Wales are all ancient compared to the US but how old is the sovereign state we actually now live in? There’s an argument it’s younger and dates back only to 1801, when the United Kingdom was formed. This is if we assume the Irish Free State was a new breakaway nation, rather…
2/4 Then also take their relative populations into account. Treat them like gravitational objects that factor in mass and distance. Then, for any area in question, you look to see which of those three objects would draw them in. This is why Norwich, for example, feels more southern than midlands.
Good news. Let's hope others in government follow. Shame about her reasons, though. She's opened herself up to responses like those in the second screenshot. I'd have been bolder. It's not just abuse and misinformation. It's disinformation and the promotion of far-right politics by powerful users.
Always love it when you have a cat who’s happy enough but showing early signs of unfocused irritation with a bit of casual tail-wagging, so you slip their tail under their haunches so it can’t wag and they forget they were starting to get annoyed.