John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 50mThis position can surely only hold if tories in their base continues to buy that there's something fundamentally silly about trying to rejoin. If that ITSELF begins to look silly - which it might quite quickly - they're going to have to turn round very fast, or they'll be left with just nobody. 031
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 59mThe US right rails against "Shari'a law" in the UK and elsewhere in Europe; though everywhere it's subordinate to the law law. Meanwhile they have, what, pretend university cops handing out essays like forfeits to people who should be facing decades in jail? 010
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Tice's dumb and mendacious climate change denial on a flagship programme needs more than contradiction from panelists. It needs to be properly rebutted by the BBC. #bbcaq 051
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026If it's not THE shirt, I'm afraid it's not a story. #wato 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Just seen an advert from the DWP saying "if you're telling other people about a change in circumstances, tell us too" which to be fair is excellent advice for fraudsters, keep schtum lads. 000
Reposted by John DeansStephen McGann @stephenmcgann.uk · 30/09/2026I need a transation of 'fannies'. 13363
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Amazed to find that this article is talking about a spike *this year*. I'd have thought/hoped we were already a decade or so past peak-cow. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...theguardian.comUdder madness: why are highland cows suddenly everywhere?This shaggy beast is now plastered across everything from mugs to hot water bottles. Or you can sit on her, wrap yourself in her, wipe your feet on her … 010
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Maybe half a dozen policy ambitions clear enough there'll be 10-year-olds talking about them at school today. "Why do you just talk about the 1980s and not think about the future?" 🤦🏻♂️ #r4today 110
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Not sure what this weather is, but how sustainable really is it to insist on calling it 'late September'? 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I feel Burnham has the BBC's support as Prime Minister, in a way that Blair, Cameron and Johnson all previously had, and before that PMs routinely used to have: despite fair challenge, what the Americans would have called "respect for the office" (at least before their current travails). 020
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Tedious is the word Nick. As you yourself say, we'll find out in five hours. #r4today 070
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026God I know the easy thing to do in troubled times is wish for a strongman; but isn't it time we all just had Peter Sissons and the 9 O'clock News? 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I'm a bit late to Slow Horses, but I think Ken Barlow must be River's *other* grandad, is that right? 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I've just learned that there's an infectious dog cancer which still carries the genome of the individual domestic dog it cloned from six thousand years ago. It's a dog that grows on dogs, my god. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026The problem with "eurorealists" like Jenny Chapman is they're just saying 'rejoining is really difficult. it can't be an explained to an electorate, so it can't be done'. 22 countries have joined the EU. More will. It didn't happen by magic, it happened by deciding to do something difficult. #wato 130
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026In the rightwing mind, London is simultaneously: · the most dangerous place in the world · a place where the policing priority is to stop people jumping the barriers. I know we must respect their legitimate concerns, but here's mine: they're simpletons. 010
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026There's a clade of dinosaurs called Macronaria because of their enormous noses, quite funny. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I guess what happened is... Trump overheard a briefing he was meant to be listening to about how the US and China could agree to shared governance and emergency escalation protocols on the approach to Super Intelligence; which is sensible but safely locates the problem in the indeterminate future. 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Follow the link for some biting political satire. quest.pistolsatdawn.net/flagshagger/quest.pistolsatdawn.netFlagshaggerDrive round town hanging flags nobody asked for, while relentlessly polite locals make you angrier and angrier. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Sure, it makes a cute puppy, but it's still a hyena. Learn from William and don't repeat his mistake. 010
Reposted by John DeansDamien Scully @dazzlingdamo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026It turns out I am oddly bad at driving a van 011
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I don't suppose most of the three and a half years the Botley Rail Bridge took were spent on designing the bikelane junctions, but in both directions the way they put cyclists back on the road is confusing and dangerous. 110
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Trump's climate denialist on #bbcaq accuses those concerned about climate of "burying their head in the sand"; which I think is what's known as chutzpah. 031
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Absolutely nobody in the country can currently *first* complain about "men of fighting age arriving in small boats": Daniel Thomas has made sure that can only at most be a person's secondary "legitimate concern", by sending men of fighting age in shorts wherever he chooses in Southern England. 140
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026I don't know it would be that hard to turn 60ish% into an overwhelming demand for return to the EU, the kind of demand that would mean - aligned as we mostly are - we'd be in within a decade. A govt which wanted it, which laid bare the bones of foreign interference and local corruption, could do it. 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026This appeal seemingly not a 🤣 To be fair, if they can gather in a threatening manner outside a police station with impunity, it's a victory for them. The police should exclude them and arrest them if they don't comply. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Asked ChatGPT if it could shoot someone starting from a 3D printer loaded with filament and it already wants me to set it up. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Clegg has "never written a line of code in [his] life"? Unusual I think for any British child born since 1965; but really something he should have done to qualify himself for debates like this, or for his long well-paid job justifying a software firm to the world. Just a line or two. #r4todaytwo.to 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026It turns out I've got some white privilege which – 10 years since it was fashionable to mention – I should. I was born in England, and though shortly after that brief indiscretion we moved "back" to the country I consider myself from, I've also lived most of my life in England. 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026It's getting harder and harder to tell me from a robot - Wes Streeting 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026"it's four times the mass of Jupiter, but about its size; and its orbit is further from its star than Pluto" is excellent and clear science communication and is really disrespected by "I'm nodding along like I really am following that". #r4today 011
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I understand from sources that Trump didn't actually want to do this, but was bullied into after being outsmarted by a TI-81 and a Casio-FX9300. 110
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026The point is if the non-human route works as well as companies will claim, then the human line *won't* be overwhelmed. It's a very sensible requirement. #bbcpm 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Ed Davey's the nicest bloke to lead the Lib Dems since that last nice bloke they had, Tim. That's about it, isn't it? #bbcpm 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 21/09/2026We're at a point where this, to a very large number of people, is transparently satire, perhaps the only way to do it effectively; but to another large group, indistinguishable from reality. We need commentators able to parse the difference between this and disinformation, not lump them together. 100
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Anyway, the world ends with the *last* Trump, for reasons of literary style I doubt that's Donald. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026When you get AI to advertise your lollipops it comes up with some interesting shapes. 000
Reposted by John DeansRobert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 20/09/2026I generally ignore royal stories, but there's something deeply tawdry about the saturation coverage here. It's basically one person's word against another, involving the parents of two real people who've probably suffered enough from their private grief being treated like primetime entertainment. 2026030
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Not the sort of thing you'd necessarily expect a near-superhuman athlete to admit, but fair play. 002
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 18/09/2026There's an English guy opposite me on the Eurostar with (good French and) a blazer and a scarf and he's consistently being addressed in French, I think this is the secret. 010
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Horrific how many of us are bound to this site which grinds our souls to flour. 000
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026People ask how I keep my skin looking so youthful. Simple: spots. 110
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026The problem being described is in the first instance one of corporate AI psychosis - I'm confident that if Anthropic are sincere, then they're just wrong about their models' rights and expectations of them. #r4today 010
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 16/09/2026If you want a game about being a fash, you should play mine instead. quest.pistolsatdawn.net/flagshagger/quest.pistolsatdawn.netFlagshaggerDrive round town hanging flags nobody asked for, while relentlessly polite locals make you angrier and angrier. 0128
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Nonsense. He wasn't being asked what he thought about Israel, he was asked what he thought about artists' right to freedom and integrity. He's given his answer, so he'll play alone. www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/new...independent.co.ukEd Sheeran in an ‘impossible position’ over Macklemore Gaza row, says Lisa Nandy 020
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I say I say I say, what's French for I'm done with The Smiths? Johnny Marr. 221
John Deans @jjbillyd.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Do you know in the whole period between 2012 and 2020, 32 pedestrians were killed by people jumping red lights? 000