It was for me, and I’m not very charismatic
07.03.2026 21:42
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It was for me, and I’m not very charismatic
We knocked 10,000 doors in Southwark today. Something is fucking happening and it’s good
I predict a Green wave in the local elections. Anyone who thinks our byelection win was an outlier is mistaken | Zack Polanski
Can claude want to want to be something it is not? No? Ok.
The hit rate with Rest Is… titles that make sense is extraordinarily poor for a company with unlimited marketing budgets. History & Classified are fine. “The Rest is Money”? No it isn’t
Failed to invest in enough Penguin Classics and impractical bookcases to 10x the scale up, smh
Musk is really the only one where “this guy’s a psycho” has crossed over into “…therefore please don’t give him money”, and all it took was about 500 3am posts about overthrowing the uk government
TBH I think we do, but it usually seems to be a separate conversation from e.g. “the AI train’s a-coming and we all need to get on board”
Generally not ideal for the culture that the UK’s leading history podcast consists of a couple of Tory oafs, but they are at least historians. Also paying one of them for his views on Wuthering Heights is gratuitous, an error
The Book Club from Goalhanger podcasts, with Dominic Sandbrook
There’s some justified concern about where young people are getting their information from online, but then I see adults being encouraged to sign up for Dominic Sandbrook’s takes on literature
Screenshot from Omid Djalili on Twitter replying to Zack Polanski re the Israeli bombing of a school in Iran: Nothing is proved yet Zack. The fact that you are spreading misinformation is appalling for someone in your position. To date no one has been allowed to see any evidence of casualties or even the site itself. The regime says it's America or Israel. The Americans say they were nowhere near the area. Here's what Iranians inside Iran say: IRGC blew it up themselves to fill it up with dead bodies of children they've kept on ice hidden away in cold storage from the January slaughters to put on display in order to blame their aggressors. The fact that we have not seen the evidence yet is a red flag as we know the regime would have gleefully paraded those images on television and all over the internet. Most probably they were caught on film transferring the bodies hence why there is now a media black out on this story, as well as a full internet blackout. As Iranians we know how this regime operates. We're talking about new levels of evil. So any narrative like the one you are pushing Zack actually supports the regime in their "don't care how many die as long as we
Whew boy, “Iran planted the frozen bodies of dead children in the school and then blew it up themselves” is a fucking HELLL of a take
In the first 10 seconds of Mad Men some part of my lizard brain decided it was pretentious feelsmart junk for rubes, and to this day I have never watched it
one google data center in virginia
two million gallons of water per day
information only released under court order & risk of contempt
Honestly they might as well have called it statemaxxing for all that anybody seems to give a shit about presentation and follow-up questions.
Afaics Niall Ferguson has specifically coined “regime alteration” to describe when you don’t really care which faction’s in charge but you’ll keep killing leaders until you find one who’s fun to hang out with
I mean Love, Actually was only 10 years old at that point so maybe some feelings were still raw
And given the events of the following 6 years, the idea that a Labour leader’s 3-line whip was enough to force MPs to go against their deeply held principle is, well, it is what it is.
Tory guys: if only David Miliband had been around we’d have been spared the last 10 years of horror
Interviewers: 💯, no further questions
McKinsey consultant: gentlemen, “spreading democracy via unlimited amounts of high explosive bombs” was pretty insulting to everyone’s intelligence. But the client wants to go bigger this time. Think huge, guys.
Maurice Glasman: MISSILES FOR MONARCHY
MC: keep talking sir, this is gold
A few months ago all the media talk was about how the uk military is shit & we can’t have nice things til it’s ready to fight Russia & possibly also China. Just wondering if this has had effect on Brits’ enthusiasm for fighting a separate, unrelated war. Maybe someone should check.
Man’s so angry about trans rights that he’s gonna try to make this Labour Party care about the environment. Sisyphean scenes
Dear Shabana, I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank. You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to make a perilous crossing on small boats.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division. When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney. As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I filled water tanks and picked up litter. What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country. Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it. It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and croissants to refugees and food parcels. When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas.” She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …
Dear Shabana,
Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.
“Skeptical of multinationals” seems like very careful phrasing considering how much Reform relies for its funding on hedge funds investing in fossil fuels
Iain explains that his sensible moderate centre-right friends are now all asking whether they need to vote forReform to stop Polanski. LOL I mean this was inevitable but I didn’t think they’d be saying it out loud just yet.
I assume he thinks the lanyard is a state of mind, like those fancy new Italian coffees that people drink now
When Rajan was media editor he went through a phase of constantly musing “is data the new oil?” like it was a profound question he’d just thought of. When he asked interviewees and they explained that Well, yes in a way but no they’re very different, he would be dissatisfied & try again next week.
Oh not to forget people who voted Labour but definitely didn’t want Labour to win, a huge voting bloc which is under-examined in psephology because it’s only visible when commentators stare really hard at a graph they don’t like.
One consequence of UK commentators refusing to acknowledge the 2017 election is it’s led to a sort of assumption that Labour got 12.8m votes purely from rich champagne socialists, deadbeat hippies & Russian influence campaigns
“The Tories did open borders” is such a wild line. It’s impossible to answer any follow-up questions without immediately getting tied up in massive lies. And yet that is what they are choosing to do, with their historic majority.