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I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve.
I would have been three and a month.
The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.

But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you

For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6

My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4

Yes, that too.
I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.

I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module.
I think my older brother got the Saturn V...

I was born in 1975.
I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible.
I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember.
I certainly remember the Falklands War.
My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus.
My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport.
My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old.
I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)

If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing

We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.

I find most of them profoundly moving

Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”

These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…

Always moving when we remember our childhood. Even gnarled and ruined wretches like me long to glimpse back through the mists to when Dad was as big as the fiercest of bears and Mum could perform miracles before breakfast. It was safe and warm because they made it safe and warm.
I guess when we have the chance to remember that we are lucky, we had the ones to protect us who made it worth looking back longingly.
Its funny, whenever I look back and remember Mum I can hear her telling me I need to go forward, and somewhere there I'll see her again.
Now I'm all wistful

On recent polling; Labour are having a terrible time but are not losing further ground; Reform have peaked for now and are not gaining from Labour's woes. Four years to go.

I think the bookies are right in making Labour favourite for most seats. Such a result almost certainly excludes a Reform/Reform led government.

It is not easy (though possible) - to imagine Labour being worse in the next four years than they have been so far.

Payroll/public sector vote, benefits class vote, liberal middle class vote, BAME vote/stop Farage vote/young people vote/Tory vote splitting Reform + me should see Labour home.

Spanner in this works: the biggest by far is a Tory/Reform electoral pact.

Bet accordingly. DYOR.

Four years like the last 12 months, might see public patience with Labour completely exhausted.

That said, I’d expect Reform to be winning 150-200 or so seats, next time, with Labour winning somewhat more.

That's the unknown.

How far will this government continue to drown after being thrown in the deep end? Or will some of its members start to do a fair approximation of swimming?

How much will some of the longer term bets (energy, planning, Europe) be seen to have paid off by 2028/9?

The electorate are far less patient than in the past. But with no election imminent, that doesn't matter. And most governments would be happy with second place and a single-figure deficit at this stage.

It didn't get thrown, it jumped in. And, unlike Cameron and Osborne who laid out austerity (such as it was) from the start, Starmer and Reeves didn't bother with anything like that. Which may not have been terribly clever.

I won't argue Starmer and Reeves seemed ill-prepared for coming into Government - perhaps they didn't brlieve the polls (some on here didn't) but we all knew the Conservatives were exhausted after 14 years running the Government - they were out of ideas and were reduced to kicking the poor old can down the poorly-maintained road.

Across a range of issues, it wasn't that the Conservatives tried things and got them wrong - they simply gave up trying, perhaps understandable after Covid but nonetheless countries can't drift on inertia which is why you change Government but the new Government faces the same problems and has to come up with responses if not solutions.

The problem is across a range of inter-connected and inter-dependent issues there are no easy solutions - at best, there are costly and unpopular schemes which might pay dividends a decade or more down the road but that's not how modern politics functions and so frustration sets in.

Adult social care is an enormous issue but neither Labour nor Conservatives have felt willing or able to tackle it despite big Parliamentary majorities. That's a damning indictment of where we are or rather where we aren't.

The Revolution is eating its children.

Which one of Trump or Musk is cast as Robespierre?

On the subject of Citizen Robespierre, I have been listening to a fantastic podcast on the French Revolution. It’s part of a series called “Revolutions”

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/revolutions/id703889772

of which I have completed three.

The first covers our civil war (however people want to name it) which was good, then the American Revolution which was better and the third series is the French Revolution which has been epic.

Absolutely jam packed with detail over 66 episodes (about 40 hours I think) and presented in a deeply knowledgeable but clear and witty way.

The amount of times during each of the three revolutions where I did an eyebrow raise about things that had parallels to today’s world was instructive but for anyone who likes a good bit of in depth history it’s a brilliant series so far. If you only have time to listen to one then the French Revolution is an extraordinary podcast.

"A council chief executive has defied the authority’s new Reform leadership by refusing to take down a Pride flag.

George Finch, the new leader of Warwickshire county council, ordered Monica Fogarty to take down the banner flying outside county hall in line with the party’s manifesto policy to only fly British flags.

But Ms Fogarty, who previously headed the county’s race equality partnership, refused and said: “I am afraid I will not be taking the action that you are requesting.”

Zia Yusuf, the head of Reform’s department of government efficiency, claimed the refusal showed that “a coup d’etat is under way in Britain”. He accused Ms Fogarty of “subversion of democracy” and acting like the “monarch of Warwickshire”."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/30/warwickshire-county-council-boss-defies-reform-trans-flag/

This, in my mind, is a real problem.

We are heading to some very dark places if public servants defy the will of elected politicians because they don't agree with their policies.

It depends on whether the power to decide which flags get flown over the town hall has been delegated to the individual councillor who is leader, which I suspect is most unlikely.

As a Conservative, surely you should be defending having things done properly? Otherwise we are simply on the road to Trumpism.

Iti minority leadership can’t change what was previously desired without a council vote.

Reform has 22 seats there are 57 seats in the council.

The only thing I’m concerned about is the crap reporting which may be because Warwickshire council didn’t say that Reform needed to hold a vote to change council policy and didn’t it may be because the Telegraph missed facts from the story.

Either way Zia is not an elected Warwicjshire councilor and doesn’t seem to grasp simple maths. Reform can easily implement these things in Durham (because the councillors there will vote through the changes) but can’t in Warwickshire because were it to go to a vote Reform would lose by miles

Do we know that there was a vote on the original flag policy?

That’s irrelevant if the policy was X, and it’s going to be controversial (as this was intended to be) you want it approved.

If you think about it (which clearly you haven’t) the end result of any disliked decision would be a vote of no confidence in the Chief executive. And that is a full council vote - which reform can now ask for and lose.

If the chief executive has removed the flags it would be someone else asking for that vote and the chief executive would be losing that vote 35 votes to 22.

No it's not irrelevant, if the policy was merely a request from the previous council leader, or if the policy was never requested by any elected councillors, just a decision to put up some flags, it is rather ludicrous to suggest that a vote is needed to change the policy.

The 'controversial' nature of the change is something you seem to have decided. What's your evidence that it's controversial, or tgat the original policy wasn't?

From Warwickshire Pride:

In response to a request from the acting leader of WCC and member of the Reform party that the flag be taken down, the Chief Executive pointed out that it was not within the acting leader’s purview. The Chief Executive has delegated authority over which flags are flown. WCC councillors would need to amend policy in order to revoke that delegated authority.

https://warwickshirepride.co.uk/2025/06/30/statement-regarding-the-flying-of-the-pride-flag-outside-warwickshire-county-council-offices

That scheme of delegated powers will have been through a council vote. And until very recently, flag days are the sort of thing that was uncontroversial and fairly sensible to leave to.an officer.

Strip away the bunting, and the issue is this. Are the council officers there to do the wishes of the leader, or the council as a whole? If there's a single party majority, it's easy because those two things will coincide. In a minority situation, they don't. The leader might want X, but a majority on the council haven't said that they do. And the Chief Exec is doing their duty by the whole council in pointing that out.

I blame the poor quality of citizenship education on our schools.

“Kill the IDF” and “fuck the British” rappers Bob Vylan have had their visas revoked and can’t tour the USA. They have also been abandoned by agents and management.

Go woke, go broke

I’m all for free speech and I’m also all for capitalism teaching stiff lessons to hateful morons

I wonder if Glasto will ever quite recover from this

You're falling into the same trap that many 'anti-woke' idiots do: "If I don't like it, it's woke'

What they're saying is in no way woke. If it has any purpose, it is to get them publicity.

"Kill the IDF" and "Fuck the British" is pretty much textbook woke. They just need a "trans women are women" and they've covered all bases.

Trump's America tying itself to the albatross of fossil fuels as China advances at pace into the middle 21st century:


Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
Ok, so Republicans just introduced a 900 page bill none of them have read. But my team is going through it line by line and on this 🧵you can see the hidden provisions we found. Will update all day.


Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
·
2h
2/ It was bad enough they cut all the tax incentives for wind and solar energy - they added a NEW TAX on these projects to make sure America never builds any new renewables.

Remember, Trump promised the oil industry provisions like this in exchange for a $1B campaign donation.

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1939702968409866471

Wind and solar were the two fastest growing job sectors in the US, IIRC. We should offer a four-year visa for renewables technicians with a possible extension to match this stupidity in the US.

We've got 40GW in the pipeline in Scotland alone - let's get it built now with ambitious young Americans.