TELECOMS ANNOUNCEMENT! After tomorrow, 20 February, my landline will be hung up. If you need to communicate, call or text me on my mobile or email me. Anybody who has mislaid those details, DM me.

Anybody else reminded of “Sous les pavés, la plage”?

Sally Rooney is a seriously brilliant novelist. But to order her publisher to withdraw her books from sale in the U.K., and then claim to have been banned by the government, is borderline flakey behaviour.

BBC News’ single justification for acting as a daily PR service for Farage and Reform disappears on the day they drop to third in the opinion polls. Chris Mason should disappear with it.

It’s some consolation, following recent precedence, that an American firing squad will end shooting each other.

The Swedes are sending 100 soldiers to defend Poland… Eric Hobsbawm calculated that the longest and healthiest male lifespans in 19th century Europe were to be found in the Swedish army.

Fewer than one reader in two will get the source of the Fanny and Johnnie Cradock characters in Kate Atkinson’s Our Noble Selves, but they’re a triumph. That getaway whelk…

Good luck Rachel Jupp. You’ll need it at BBC News.

That Carlson/Rees-Mogg interview a good signifier of the relative states of the transatlantic right. Trump, Fox, GOP: beyond reason, post-factual, Nazi to the core, mad as a sack of cats. Old Tories: still staked to logic and actual history, articulate and clinically sane.

Marina Hyde a serious loss to The Guardian. Frequently their only remaining columnist worth reading.

Very good Andy.

What a fine newspaper is the Glasgow Herald! Thanks again Sandra.

Whatever else transpires about Fairford… Trump yesterday just made a whole scenario up, to put himself centre stage!

“Let them drown.” Plage Hardelot, Pas de Calais, two days ago. Photo by Sameer Al-Doumi.

If this is AI, it’s an outstanding composition. If it’s not AI, if it’s an actual photograph, we need to start greasing the tumbrels.

Are we supposed to take sides in the Spencer v Windsor Diana feud?

We don’t do well in the Eurovision Song Contest because we don’t want to do well in the Eurovision Song Contest. It is and always has been garbage and a million miles beneath British music culture. We’ll stick to producing Beatles, Stones, Oasis etc etc etc. No inquiry needed.

Cut Piddington loose.

Be There or Be Square.

NB:

This great statue in London is currently getting the Incel Right’s knickers in a twist. The sculptor may not welcome the connection, but does anybody else see a link to the work of R Crumb?