Jonathan Calder

‘It means missile defence on data centres’: drone strikes raises doubts over Gulf as AI superpower Iran’s targeting of commercial datacentres in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare

reminded of my ISO 27001 days and wondering how many people had "data centre hit by Iranian missile" on their risk register?

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Reform UK Leader in Notts Mick Barton advised that 1000 potholes could have been fixed with the £75k wasted on putting flags up. His response 'Shut up about the flags, listen we've run out of money'.

4 panel comic Panel 1: A Pink Guy and an Orange Guy are sitting in the cinema. Pink Guy is munching popcorn and Orange Guy is slurping fizzy pop. Pink Guy points up at screen and says “is that guy cool?” Panel 2: Orange Guy pauses drinking and replies “he just blew up a school full of kids” Panel 3: Pink Guy says “No, I know“ Panel 4: We see the anti-hero on screen. He is wearing a purple t-shirt and a baseball cap facing backwards. Pink Guy continues, “but his cap is so BACKWARDS”

media literacy 2026

his killer being a man who murdered three people including a pregnant woman who he also raped is a perfect demonstration of how ‘paedophile hunters’ are just violent men looking for a socially acceptable target for their violence

Our final runner up for the Winter Curlew Photo Competition is this stunning pair by John Ibbotson.

We think you'll agree this captures the beauty of Curlews perfectly!

The LNWR branch line from Weedon to Leamington Spa It's time we had another good disused railway video. This one follows the route of the old LNWR branch line between Weedon and Leamington Sp...

Wolfhampcote is mentioned. Here you will find a deserted medieval village whose church still survives, two abandoned railway lines (the one the video is about and the Great Central main line) and an abandoned meander of the Oxford Canal, complete with a tunnel.

A sign with information about a play, that says a gun is shown but not fired

I'm calling Chekhov

We are looking at the Hall on a sunny spring morning. An old cherry tree is in bloom with soft pink petals behind which is the brick and timber framed medieval hall. Both are basking in spring sunshine.

Stop!

Spring! 🌸

Carry on.

This is depressing enough as it is, but The Guardian haven't provided any figures to confirm how far it's true, what dropout rates are across the board or anything. Tickell's rhetoric is the usual "what does the public want", forgetting that some of the public want to go to university.

Liberal England: A German bombing raid on Dublin in May 1941 killed 28 people liberalengland.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-ge...

Mel Stride calls Britain "too economically risk averse" at the Conservative Spring Conference. Not sure that will chime with voters whose mortgages rose sharply under Liz Truss in 2022

Every time Stephen Fry’s voiceover kicks in on the Sainsbury’s adverts I just think “What the fuck’s it got to do with you?”

Another lost outground ... Clarence Park, Weston Super Mare which hosted a regular week for Somerset between 1914 and 1996. It was held in August to attract holidaymakers and was usually well attended

1. The European Parliament’s attempt to ban plant-based foods from being sold as “sausages”, “burgers” etc is a direct response to livestock industry lobbying. This is a short thread on how utterly bleeding ridiculous it is. 🧵1/6

Alice Cooper and Dolly Parton at the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Los Angeles where Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2022

#AliceCooper #DollyParton

In reality, you thought of "fox populi" and then begged your editor for a commission that would allow you to use it.

Good news! World Curlew Day competitions are BACK!

We can't wait to see your poems and art 🎨

Deadline 10th April

www.curlewaction.org/world-curlew...

I do have A levels, but didn't get the grades I needed because at 18 I was more interested in partying than studying. I went to university 8 years later as a (supposedly) mature student and got a 2:1. Later I did an MA with the OU and was awarded a distinction. So there.

This isn’t a hallucination, Michael Gove. You’ve never explained the millions you disbursed to buddies with your crony Covid Contracts.

Cashing in on the worst public health crisis in a century should disbar people from public life permanently.

www.bylinesupplement.com/p/we-need-to...

It is overlooked that the Conservative party is the historic party of coalition in British politics being the sole recurring party in all three peacetime formal Coatiion governments under first past the post since universal suffrage (1918-22, 1931-39, 2010-15) against one informal Lab-Lib pact.

Many years ago, on one of the rare occasions I was signed into the Colony Room club, he was in there having a good old drink with some of the disreputable members. At that point I realised that he had created a persona as much as those who he interviewed. This interview also pierces the construct.

Write a guest post for Liberal England I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Why not try writing one yourself? It could be on the Liberal Democrats, politics more...

Write a guest post for Liberal England

A print from a lithograph of a painting, depicting a huge borown horned ox, behing which a man can be seen apparently measuring the beast, while another stands nearby noting down its immense statistics. It is entitled ‘Portrait of T. W. Coke and North Devon Ox’, by W. H. Davis, c.1837, animal painter to the Queen from 1839. The ox was bred at Holkham in Norfolk and was considered to be the perfect specimen. Image courtesy of the Museum of English Rural Life, obviously.

119 years ago today, that most prestigious of journals Nature published Francis Galton’s account of a visit to the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition at Plymouth. You may know the story... 🧵

Two witches, a devil and a frog are jigging back to back in a circle. The two witches are wearing skirts, waistcoats, and a shawl and frilly cap on their heads, respectively. The devil has the legs and head of a horned goat, the torso of a man, and long, clawed fingernails. He is holding a long taper with a flame burning from the end with a bright light. The frog has a rather goofy facial expression.

Two witches, a devil, and a frog shaking their groove thing at the witches' sabbath.

An illustration by Louis Le Breton for 'Danse du sabbat', in Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, 1863. Wikimedia Commons, public domain #WitchSky #illustration #art #ArtHistory

Liberal England: A German bombing raid on Dublin in May 1941 killed 28 people liberalengland.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-ge...

How the right-wing British press became Trump’s trumpet Churchill would be appalled by the kinds of things Donald Trump says and does. But Fleet Street is happy to ignore history for the sake of some political point-scoring, writes Alan Rusbridger

“You’d think he’d be busy monitoring the wildfire consequences of the war he’d just started. But, no, he entertained himself by slagging off the British leader to any British journalist who’d listen.”

And they did more than listen. They disgraced themselves.
www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump...

#PostboxSaturday Market Harborough

Nissan ‘says Sunderland plant could close’ if UK excluded from Made in Europe rules Reports of carmaker’s warning come as lobby group says EU proposals could damage £70bn cross-channel trade

All the Brexiter lies before the Brexit referendum about Brussels sending the UK car industry to Turkey look richly ironic now.

Director Lewis Gilbert, born 6 March 1920.

Antony Beevor: Trump shows signs of dementia. He can’t be controlled The bestselling historian, 79, has written about some of humanity’s darkest moments — and believes the West is totally unprepared for the threats it faces

1/3 There is and End of Days feel about Western Hegemony right now. A half millennia in which the West hoarded much of the world’s wealth, plundering, colonising and burning through fossil fuels, is ending in a paroxysmal, Trumpian blunder.

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...