Afaiui - he used to be a hypnotherapist and a Sun journo went as a client and asked if he could help her think her boobs bigger. I am unaware if this was a genuine request or part of a sting op. Apparently he agreed at the time anyway

The arrogance of it is mind-bending isn't it? Aside from how wrong it is, who leaves a club then demands the club changes its rules to make their life easier?

Link to article, apologies www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Is this subconscious racism in the Guardian just a couple of weeks ago? Pointing out how reliant the NHS is on foreign workers? Or is the problem actually the other things Polanski says and thinks, the only person in frontline politics who challenges what now passes for orthodoxy?

Saying this in the sense of "this is clearly ridiculous" rather than "oh no this could happen to me"

There are a lot of English people who qualify for Irish passports through grandparents (I'm one though I personally haven't applied for it). I imagine many nations have similar rules. Half the country could be eligible to be deported if it's just "people who could get a passport for another country"

He's already almost totally despised rn by everyone & will be remembered only for how he unforgivably gave cowardly quarter to the international fash & paved the way for the electoral success of the domestic fash making himself a figure of universal revulsion & opprobrium in the process

At least when Neville Chamberlain threw the rest of the world under the bus in vain, it was in the belief it would save us from catastrophic war. Why is Starmer doing this? In dogmatic service to Atlanticism? An ideology the US is mad keen to tell everyone is dead already.

Apropos of nothing, it's been a while since anyone's said to me "any Labour govt is better than a Tory one." They just call you an idiot for not appreciating all the joy they're spreading.

Just make sure your new alliance partner beats the bad guy then go home and let them get on with what they need to do. You know, the things you have a massive problem with.

It's a while since I read "aal with smiling faces" by @paulbrownuk.bsky.social but maybe he would know

I grew up thinking the stone was black everywhere. I remember them sandblasting the church in the suburb I lived in, probably in the late 70s and it was like when they draw the curtain back in the Wizard of Oz to me

Also I got quite excited for a moment there as I live quite close to the actual Jesmond Dene, a wooded area in Newcastle. There is a Jesmond Dene Hotel here too, but it's kind of palatial and wouldn't have fit in with the movie at all so I should have known better.

I was just explaining this to my daughter the other day when she'd been asking about the yellowy-brown buildings in Newcastle city centre. I got the impression she didn't quite believe me but every now and then you happen upon an outlier, still coal-black inexplicably