Richard Courtice

"Fulsome is not a close relative of full, and does not mean generous. It means gushing, cloying, effusive or sickeningly fawning. If that’s how to want to describe a speech or tribute, then this is the word for you." BBC News Style Guide 2003 See also #f" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide…

First 4 million integers marked on their being prime or not - white is prime.

@devlin_jp Inspector Clouseau?

Guess who? The protruding lugs are a dead giveaway.

@paullewismoney Since remarkably few cars keep to the 60/70mph limit, it's hard to see the point.

Some papers reporting govt is considering a nationwide 50mph speed limit on cars to cut fuel use. Which is great news as I am limited to 20mph on almost all roads near me!

"How amazing that we’re all still alive for one thing, and able to turn up together in a rehearsal room...” Siobhan Redmond chatted to @paulenglishhack for The Herald ahead of #TheHighLife. Read the full interview here:  heraldscotland.com/news/25909957.…

I see @TfL has restarted its Shit Saturdays Scheme on the underground. Over an hour from Paddington to Kings Cross. 😠

This tickled me (posted by Rhoda Bracewell on the other place)

Oh boy! What a headline... Ask yourself: "What am I being asked to believe?" "Who am I being told to blame?" Take a few seconds to imagine what the Daily Mail (And Telegraph, GB News and Express) WANT you to think is going on. Let's see what's ACTUALLY happening...🧵 1/21

We are aware of recent reports regarding targeted phishing attacks that have resulted in account takeovers of some Signal users, including government officials and journalists. We take this very seriously. To be clear: Signal’s encryption and infrastructure have not been compromised and remain robust. These attacks were executed via sophisticated phishing campaigns, designed to trick users into sharing information – SMS codes and/or Signal PIN – to gain access to users’ accounts. 1/4

Hi @tntsports The sound quality on the football web streams since you moved your distribution to Techwood has been very poor. Will the sound improve when you become HBO?

Whoever it was at BBC iPlayer who added that extra second before you can "skip trailer" should be smothered with honey and thrown into a bear pit. Along with the cunt who programmes "This operation is not available" into DVD trailers.

Well done to David Sedaris. No complaints getting pipped by a such a talent 👍

The best Iran analysis on today’s round of Sunday politics shows has come from the former BBC presenter @ranarahimpour . As ever, she was well informed, balanced and realistic. It’s a hard task on this story but even more so given the Iranian Republic’s previous threats to her:

In these troubled times, very good coverage of Iran this morning on @bbc5live with Eleanor Oldroyd and now Stephen Nolan. An echo of the radio station’s origins in the rolling coverage of the Gulf war in the 1990s.

This is of course nonsense bult once out there people believe it uncritically and use it for policy. Listen to More or Less bit.ly/3OBHlwx if you want to understand where it came from and what it means - and doesn't mean

The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It's beautifully made, but it's still telling the wrong story. A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened? Have kids ever been shipwrecked on a deserted island? It took me a year of research, but I found it. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga stole a boat, got caught in a storm, and drifted for eight days without food or water. They washed up on 'Ata, a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific. They stayed there for 15 months, and what happened on that island was the exact opposite of William Golding's novel. These boys set up a small commune. They built a food garden, stored rainwater in hollowed-out tree trunks, created a gym with improvised weights, and built a badminton court. One of them, Stephen (who would later become an engineer) managed to start a fire using two sticks. They kept it burning the entire time. Of course they fought too. But then they argued, they had a rule: go to opposite ends of the island, cool down, then come back and apologize. As one of them told me: ‘That's how we stayed friends.’ Back home, everyone assumed that the boys – Luke, Stephen, Sione, David, Kolo and Mano — were dead. When they were finally discovered by an Australian captain named Peter Warner, he radioed their names to Tonga. After twenty minutes, a tearful response came back: ‘You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!’ Peter commissioned a new ship, hired all six boys as his crew, and named the boat the Ata, after the island where he found them. They remained friends for the rest of their lives – Peter and Mano even became soulmates. I tracked them down, and it became one of the central chapters of my book Humankind. Here's what struck me most: William Golding (the author of Lord of the Flies) was a troubled man, an alcoholic who once said ‘I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature.’ I think he was projecting his own darkness onto children. And we turned it into a lesson about human nature that we teach to millions of kids around the world. I think the real lesson is the opposite. When real children found themselves alone on a real island, they didn't descend into savagery. They cooperated, they took care of each other, they survived. I'm not saying that the Tongan castaways were representative of all kids everywhere. But I am saying that every kid who has to read or watch the fictional Lord of the Flies also deserves to know what actually happened when it played out in real life. Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.

One of the greatest bollard walks in history. #WorldBollardAssociation

Three, from a long list

Latest! Peter Mandelson’s advisory firm Global Counsel to go into administration in the wake of clients walking following Epstein revelations via @FT ⁦@PickardJE⁩ ⁦@LOS_Fisher⁩ as.ft.com/r/743f218e-2d2…

OSR questioning the Covid Inquiry's claim that modelling 'established' 23,000 fewer deaths if mandatory lockdown imposed a week earlier on March 16th. In fact this estimate is not only very uncertain, but also assumes voluntary measures were brought forward a week, to March 9th

Friendly reminder to anyone not familiar with some of Jose Mourinho’s off-pitch behaviour, that he effectively ended the football club career of an excellent, highly respected doctor, Eva Carneiro, for absolutely no valid reason.