Chris Brooke
@chrisbrooke
"an already elusive subject is considered here from a variety of oblique angles"
We are still in a state of catlessness, but we saw Ptolemy just over a week ago in Oxford, where he was looking very well.
They sound like excellent cats. There is a new black-and-white cat who incessantly patrols the courtyard of our block of flats right now. So I am confident there will be no rodent infestation any time soon.
(Also, with reference to this bit, I think the one time he *was* stopped by the police was when he was driving at night,very carefully, in order to avoid going over the 30mph speed limit, such that the police thought that he must be drunk.)
Actually disappointed that I haven’t seen anyone say that *this* is the Russian agent who reads their posts.
All eyes on Labour junior ministers tonight, and whether they will begin to move. Here's a handy list:
W. S. Gilbert understood the connection between holding multiple offices simultaneously and corruption. From The Mikado:
Maybe. On the other hand, the photo shows what my helmet did to the windscreen on impact with the bus, and I'm quite glad that was my helmet hitting the windscreen, and not my unprotected head.
I don’t know how to tell the duck that comes to swim in the pond outside my flat that quacking loudly in the morning won’t actually turn the fountain on any earlier than it was going to come on anyway.
Josephine and I were married in San Francisco twenty-five years ago today. 10/10. Would recommend.
A question and an answer on @josephinequinn.bsky.social’s bookshelves.
The Times on Saturday 31st July 1976, printed that year's Oxford Modern History class list on p. 14. Is it the man himself or someone else w. the same surname? Well, the other details--initials, school, college, & degree subject--match up with what's reported on his Wiki page, so I think it's him.
Here's Mandelson calling Epstein "young & vibrant" and "a friend of mine" in email to Jonathan Powell (then Tony Blair's chief of staff) in 2002.
This is how Mandelson's relationship with Epstein was described in the "due diligence checklist" that was part of the PM's advice ahead of deciding that there was nobody more suitable to be our man in Washington DC.
The first document in the Mandelson files is civil servants explaining to the PM that he can have an "official" or a "political" appointee as Ambassador, but that with the latter "if anything goes wrong, you could be more exposed as the individual is more connected to you personally". #gaiety