Bellend Sebastian

Those 400,000 folk have done well to keep it tight, haven't they? Imagine if everyone in Leicester had to keep a secret from everyone outside the city. Someone'd be on the phone before they'd finished saying "and you mustn't tell anyone about this"

I suspect it may have to do with a struggle to justify the costs of a programme involving 400,000 personnel when the novelty has warn off. That and that there's sod all there apart from moon rock and we've got some of that now. Seen one moon landing, seen them etc

Apparently the drivers that were killed had stopped after their cars were in a minor collision. I know that you're supposed to exchange details but on a 'live' lane of a motorway? I'd be reluctant to stop even on the hard shoulder unless I really, really had to. I'm always astounded when I see people stopped on the hard shoulder that are clearly just going for a piss. But yeah, no hard shoulder smart motorways seem to be proving to be as shit an idea as they sound

He'll NEVER go away, will he? Lozza, on the other hand I suspect will have rather less staying power. I'm not sure he's chosen a great time to try and monetize acting like a twat, especially in an already crowded field

Has anybody else noticed there being a bit less right wing noise on social media over the last week or so. I don't follow many actual right wing 'commentators' but I follow people that do, and a lot of the usual suspects have gone quiet, with the notable exception of Laurence Fox. I was wondering why this might be. The Trump administration going down like a Zeppelin? COVID out of control? Brexit looking (so far anyway) a bit shit? Then I thought, that's quite a few headwinds for anyone at that end of the spectrum. Maybe they just can't be arsed. I'm sure the

Oh, absolutely. I think even it being this way round is still helpful if it happens often enough, but it doesn't. That's one of the reasons why the binning off of the Leveson inquiry in this country was such a lost opportunity. I cannot remember the exact details but I think one of the proposals that came out of that was where a newspaper story was found to be bollocks, the 'clarification' they would be obliged to publish would have the same prominence as the original article, instead of on page 29 next to the adverts for fur lined slippers and solar garden lights.

Forgive me if we've had this already, but there are occasionally crumbs of good news to be had in the ongoing battle against the world of complete bollocks: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/online/conservative-website-admits-its-stories-about-dominion-were-completely-false-in-massive-retraction/amp/

I understand that having simple answers to complex problems is appealing, however frustrating I might find that, so if we are going down that route I propose we blame Toby Young. In fact, let's blame Toby Young for everything

I can see why the marmalade gammon joint is heavily discounted. We had one of those at Christmas from Sainsbury's and frankly it was awful. Never been more keenly aware that a pig had to die for that

What's your goal, chap? Saving for retirement or something in the nearer future? If the former, pension is by far the best option because of the tax treatment - tax relief on contributions is basically free money. The downside - you cannot access the money until you're 55 (and this will increase to 57 before the decade's out). Are you self employed? Personal pension if so, and if you're employed your employer's workplace pension will probably be your best bet as they're usually very cheap. An ISA is just a wrapper around an investment/investments that protects the profi

Being unable to travel if unvaccinated was raised (not by me) but dismissed as an issue as they "weren't bothered about going abroad". Would it surprise you to hear that, we went, without missing a beat, from vaccine scepticism to criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement? "All lives matter", apparently, hot new take there

Almost certainly completely unrelated: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fishing-boris-johnson-brexit-trade-b1786993.html%3famp

Interesting conversation with member of public this morning. "Absolutely no way" she is going to take the vaccine unless she's forced to. She's the mother of a paramedic who despite having taken loads of COVID sufferers to hospital, isn't interested in taking the vaccine either, partly as they have been regularly tested and have apparently "had COVID 3 times"

Could we be headed into a golden age where being a massive c*** actually has consequences? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-55633245 An arrest does not appear on all criminal records checks, but it does on some. Imagine if you went for a job and you had to explain that

I'm seemingly part of a movement around my local area of keeping up our Christmas lights because they look nice and we're maintaining community morale, like Vera Lynne or something. I know this is supposed to be unlucky, but having previously always taken our decorations down by 12th night and been rewarded with a global coronavirus pandemic for doing so, I think that might be bollocks