Best Of

Decanting my older child back to uni today. As she’s at St Andrew’s, and has a ton of stuff for the new year in a new house-share, it’s a long tough job. We are overnighting in Lancaster

What an attractive town! I’m v pleasantly surprised. Normally and sadly British towns surprise on the downside these days. But stone-built Lancaster is ruggedly handsome, with a bracing location, and feels actively prosperous (in the centre, at least)

Flag report from 6 hours of driving

A few around London. Basically none from Luton up to Brum. Then a couple. Then a LOT in the north - at one stage almost every bridge had one. More 🇬🇧 than 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Do you go the M6 route to Scotland because there is no A1(m) past Newcastle?

Even when you live a couple of miles from the A1 it is quicker to cross the Pennines to the M6 (though the A66 desperately needs dualing too, and has done for 40 years).

The Edinburgh bypass adds 30 minutes.

+1 - I for anywhere in Scotland (bar south of Edinburgh) it's A66, M6, M74, for Edinburgh it depends where we are going but the only reason for going up the A1 is if going via Barter Books.

And the most direct route to Edinburgh is the A68 which starts about 200 yards from this house..

Who thought that using stage pyrotechnics when Farage arrive on stage at the Reform conference would be a good idea, is this an American import?! While it might have gone down well with his membership fan base in the conference hall, it was distracting and looked utterly bizarre on the news and certainly didn't convey the statesman like gravitas you would have expected for the leader of the party currently leading in the polls.

As for Andrea Jenkins cringeworthy entrance on stage, I thought I had been transported back to Eurovision about forty years ago, again hardly conveying the gravitas of a party that is supposedly seriously waiting to form the next government. And thanks to the Angela Raynor resignation from all her front bench roles in the Government and the Labour party, Keir Starmer then took the opportunity to hold a reshuffle to shore up his own position which resulted in the Labour party leaving Farage and the Reform party conference as a footnote in the televised news cycle and knocked them completely off all the front pages.