Best Of

The nativity is the first public sorting most children experience, and it’s definitely sorting rather than sortition.

Some parts have lines, others don’t. The narrator, Joseph, the innkeeper, the wise men and the angel Gabriel have meaningful lines.

There are no female parts with dialogue. As I discovered when our daughter was given the seemingly plum role of Mary only to discover it’s a completely silent part. You just sit there looking demure. Hence the most articulate young girl tends to get the narrator part, and/or they treat the Angels as ladies.

Those vote shares are pretty close to what you’d expect with current class and educational differences in party support, but there’s something else going on too. Look at the Lib Dems: Joseph the top performer, but narrator way down. I would hazard a guess that says something why some people become Lib Dems. We are Josephs, rather than narrators.

My teachers realising my greatness cast me as a wise man.

I was an innkeeper. The only “baddie” in the story.

King Herod surely...

Herod was only taking targeted and proportionate action against terrorists.
#themostmoralpalaceguardintheworld

The nativity is the first public sorting most children experience, and it’s definitely sorting rather than sortition.

Some parts have lines, others don’t. The narrator, Joseph, the innkeeper, the wise men and the angel Gabriel have meaningful lines.

There are no female parts with dialogue. As I discovered when our daughter was given the seemingly plum role of Mary only to discover it’s a completely silent part. You just sit there looking demure. Hence the most articulate young girl tends to get the narrator part, and/or they treat the Angels as ladies.

Those vote shares are pretty close to what you’d expect with current class and educational differences in party support, but there’s something else going on too. Look at the Lib Dems: Joseph the top performer, but narrator way down. I would hazard a guess that says something why some people become Lib Dems. We are Josephs, rather than narrators.

My teachers realising my greatness cast me as a wise man.

Also not to boast but I was the king carrying gold. That's quite a sought after part, I believe.

Eng in Aus since 2013

Or: How I Learned to Stop Hoping and Realise We’ll Never Win a Match There Again

Played: 18*
Lost: 15*

Smallest defeats:
by 120 runs or
by 8 wkts (3 times)

Innings defeats: 3 (one where Aus only scored 267)

Draws: 2 (one was a wkt away from a 117 run defeat)

1st innings leads: 3
1st innings deficits < 50: 1

AUS Scores of 400+: 9
ENG Scores of 400+: 2

*match ongoing

#ashes

https://x.com/HackBlackburn/status/2002263828264788288

It is almost a different sport in Australia, not far from a rugby league team playing union. If the Ashes is really so important we pick sub optimal squads vs other nations to get the "right" players in the team then it is also important enough that we should be arranging three proper warm up matches across a long tour.

Well this is unexpected...

UK borrowing costs are expected to fall further next year, according to the average forecast from nine big investment banks, as investors increasingly price in interest rate cuts from the Bank of England (BoE) after a prolonged period of restrictive monetary policy.

Britain's 10-year bond yield, which hit a 16-year high of 4.95% at the start of 2025 — due to worries about near-record debt issuance and a global bond sell-off — is expected to come down to 4.32% by the end of 2026.

Investment bankers expect UK gilts to be the best performers amongst peer countries. They are impressed by the brilliance of Rachel Reeves budget.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bond-market-2026-060013107.html

Just highlighting the bit that doesn’t appear in the article but which you have formatted to make it look like it does

I paraphrase of course.

Gilts rallied in the run-up to the budget on the expectation of such an investor-friendly shift and gained in price on the day, helped by the government announcing that it would sell less long-term debt in particular.

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer doing a decent job according to bank economists" probably shouldn't be newsworthy. Given the general vibe of catastrophe that people condemn Rachel Reeves for, it actually is newsworthy.