Stephen McGann

"This....is..... YOGAAAAAA!!"

Loving this thread. Progress is quieter than the reactions it provokes. But that isn't the same as defeat.

I think the Bank of England can probably relax.

I'm sure I read more posts from Twitter on Bluesky than when I was on Twitter.

Amongst the more important stuff, I'm tickled by the 14% who are vehemently opposed to removing passport checks: "We like our long queues at airports! It's proper British!"

So... before the midterms then...

How I arrived on Bluesky

He really needs to get rid of those creepy shop dummies from 1972.

That's one in the eye for the cultural elite. (I'll get my coat)

I think I had my conveyancing done by Manly Jesus.

We've all been there.

My money's on Javier Bardem.

Yeah, justice. Fairness. Consequences. Appalling. Think of the mess.

A deeply underrated skeet.

Now *there's* some scripted reality I can get behind. x One where both participant and director can end up freely questioning any scriptedness or bias. Unique, thoughtful, emotional, beautiful, unrepeatable. Anthem For Doomed Boomers. Love song to past TV idealism and life's slow realities. My life.

An article so Guardian it risks reaching what physicists call "muesli-cruncher criticality"

There's a genre of TV called "Scripted Reality". (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripte...) Never been much of a fan of this mutant. Pick one or the other, I say. The disguised hybrid is a low-dose poison in the contract with an audience. Lucrative though. Premier League football should pick another genre.

A message to the people in #70Up: we have grown up together, and I’ve always watched with fascination, but the current series fills me with such unspeakable joy and grief at the same time. Thank you. A true epic. I salute you x

FT letter makes a grim point on how the first AI war could start - www.ft.com/content/b912...

He's going to build a lavish ballroom at the Hill Dickinson...

"And IIIIIIIIIIIII will always Love Youuuuuuuu"

"Don't fight back", says sexual predator

I dunno....looks like they had cloning in the old days...

I was looking something up on Google Maps, and I think I might have found out why successive governments have been so bad at delivery.

"Are we the Truman Show?"

Yep. The path from "fed up with experts" to "I do my own research" to "SAVE US FROM SATAN'S TRAFFIC LIGHTS!" is reliably straight.

My country has achieved the feat of making the most universally loved and respected charity in the land afraid for its own safety. And yet the dark pantomime of aggressive grievance and its media legitimation continues. If Hippocrates is a traitor for not cherry-picking lives, then are doctors next?

One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.

It seems to me that if one wishes to have a citizen protest, then one shouldn't be able to do it with a preemptive masking of one's identity. In a democratic context, a citizen protest is an open conversation with the state. Visible. Identifiable. Hidden subversion is something else.

There is a 'no good deed goes unpunished' factor to the dilemma facing the UK that no UK govt has the courage to confront. Doing the things necessary to save the country from long term ruin risks the enacter suffering short term job loss. 'Country first' has a price. The alternative is far pricier.

Grandiosity, corruption and fancy dress. Those great triple pillars of British politics.

Nah, you blew it mate. That lanyard should be parchment.

If it looks like a Nazi and quacks like a Nazi, then what you've got there is Donald Dönitz.

Ah, that would be the devout Christian soul I was reading about this morning, yes? www.ft.com/content/c2d0...

Labour currently doing more shelving plans than a kitchen designer.

Evidence of a British productivity recovery. God knows we need it... www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releas...

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Dining across divides is older than the Guardian. Have we lost the knack? My brother Joe on the differences that can bond us. substack.com/@joemcgann/n...