iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

First three elections I voted in were a European election, a Mayoral election and a Parliamentary by-election, just to keep things weird.

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

No Peter Lewis?? For shame

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I'm a big fan of Badenoch's main criticism of Number 10 North being that "number 10" isn't actually its address - fits very well with her "well, actually" persona!

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

That makes it the perfect way to bring people together

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Does the first film end with a post-credit sequence where Jean Monnet turns up and says, "Charles... I'm putting together a team"?

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

(sorry, bit of a deep cut, this)

Anthony Quayle in "The Guns of Navarone" (1961). (In the film Quayle's character breaks his leg; it turns gangrenous and there is some dialogue about the smell)

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Lots of times I've been in councils where a report gets published which is embarrassing/controversial, senior officers brace for local press interest and... nothing!

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don't think a lack of resourcing for council comms teams helps with this either. It leads to some councils acting weirdly defensively when the press *do* get interested

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The underlying logic of the LDRS is sort-of sound but LDRs don't have the time (and in some cases the skill) needed to do key aspects of the job properly. Too frequently council-facing journalism feels like stenography

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Not even sure what that outfit's meant to be. Sort of a cross between Talented Mr Ripley and a WW2 commando trying to disguise himself as a Greek fisherman. Then again, I've coasted on the same fashion styles since 2004, so what do I know

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Clothes that say, 'Sharon, I've changed'"

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Mind you it's nice they've chosen to conduct the interview on a recreation of the set used for "Breakfast with Frost"

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Meloni looks like she's doing in-vision continuity for HTV in 1985 (this isn't a criticism)

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Hold on, are those Jewish scare-brackets around "Disney"?

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Sarah Cawood ate my hamster"

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Exactly the kind of irrefutable evidence I'm talking about.

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Reassuring that today on Bluesky has been much like any other day except interspersed with the occasional post featuring a graph and someone saying "oh no OH NO", with four replies saying variants on "yup, we're screwed".

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Be fair - TNG noticeably improves after the first 57 episodes, you just have to stick with it. Seventeen of the 100-odd episodes of Enterprise are quite watchable too, if you fast-forward through all the scenes featuring Dominic Keating!

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In the 90s, the posthumous Dennis Potter series "Karaoke" and "Cold Lazarus" were a colossal TV event, brought to the screen by a groundbreaking collaboration between the BBC and C4 - now slipped into obscurity (deservedly in my view, they were quite bad)

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Edge of Darkness - at the time of broadcast considered by some one of the best TV series ever made - has been largely forgotten en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of...

en.wikipedia.org

Edge of Darkness - Wikipedia

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Of course on looking at this again it appears that the links to the images themselves have all broken - classic

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

During the pandemic when work was a bit stop-start, the research officer at my former employer did a light-hearted analysis of council logos, in two parts - www.cfgs.org.uk/council-logo...

cfgs.org.uk

Council Logos, Part One - CfGS

Whilst our recent content has focused on COVID-19 and the associated fallout, I thought this lockdown side-project of mine might serve as a welcome interruption from the more serious content out there...

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My all-time favourite is "London's top borough" for Enfield (because it's furthest north)

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I have a joke with my wife where we describe something we vaguely want to do but have no intention to do anything concrete about (doing more exercise, cleaning the shed, sorting out the children's clothes) as a "third term aspiration". I have tried this with other ppl but no-one understands it

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thank you for respecting my boundaries, Plumbworld

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I went to a conference dinner once where at least a third of the women in attendance were in actual ballgowns while I counted four men wearing cargo shorts.

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Network Rail has a *lot* of design guidance on wayfinding - the most recent iteration was issued in late 2024. It was therefore amusing to me that the new signs at my station don't conform to any of it. Wrong pictograms, wrong weighting on text and arrows - the lot! Honestly impressive

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The footbridge opens on Friday (lifts to follow) and in the last week new wayfinding signs have appeared across the station

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

My local station is currently benefiting from the biggest Access for All investment in the country - the construction of a big new footbridge that is coming in under budget and ahead of schedule

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I do often think about mid-century cultural juggernauts - Dick Barton, Dan Dare, Quatermass, and even stuff like The Navy Lark, the Goons - and how quickly they have disappeared

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"Not much fun in Stalingrad, Mr Hilter!" with its grudging response, "Not much fun in Stalingrad, nein." is one of the great comedy exchanges

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

(in the manner of Donald Pleasance in that episode of Columbo) "well I suppose to an unsophisticated palate that Burnham speech may have been impressive... But us connoisseurs, well, we are doomed to appreciate only the very finest oratory and, sadly..."

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

He was in the RAF Catering Corps doing food for aircrew in forward operating bases in Italy. Once through a series of complex barters with the Yanks and the locals he got the ingredients together for choc pudding & choc sauce. You can imagine the uproar (positive) this caused

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My grandfather was a pastry chef by profession and could make spectacular cakes but he always did them in industrial quantities (so he'd do eccles cakes, but make 250 of them)

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🚇 Tubed #180 · 🔥 Hard · solved in 1:32 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨 1 min off optimal route ✨ No hints used 🤔 Think you know the Tube better? ➡️ playtubed.co.uk I dispute this - I deliberately chose two stations with cross-platform interchanges to avoid the horror of Green Park

playtubed.co.uk

Tubed - Daily London Underground Puzzle

Find the fastest route on the Tube. A new puzzle every day.

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is like the HQ of the FA being in Lytham for some reason

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

time was, in some interviews, you'd be offered an alcoholic drink as part of the interview! "Sherry?" "Oh yes please, Moscatel if you have it." "Hmm."

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I don't really understand how anyone with any affinity at all with Labour's ideological tradition (and the party is an exceptionally broad church!) could believe, in earnest, any of the second paragraph. I mean, it's Monday Club / Freedom Association stuff.

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

mmm, all a bit "Nick, 30 ans" this, isn't it?

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If you haven't danced around the room to the sound of the mournful oboe music, have you really lived?

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Reposted by Ed Hammond

Hettie O’Brien @hettieobrien.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My latest Guardian long read is about the people trying to get their ideas into Britain’s new government and whether Burnham is really prepared to be that radical. Grateful to the many people who spoke to me for this - read it online or in Saturday’s paper: www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

theguardian.com

Labour’s last chance? The people shaping Andy Burnham’s grand plans for Britain

The long read: The new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical?

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I presume this includes recipients of the state pension?

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I think the luckiest event of my life was getting a five-year fixed mortgage offer the week before this happened

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I spent a lot of my time as a primary-age child sitting in the boot of various parents' cars

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Ed Hammond @se13ed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I was on a train on the weekend where a man goaded his 7-ish year old son to chant "F*ck the blacks! F*ck the Jews!" at the top of his voice. (yes, I obviously called the police, yes, called the MASH team at the council as well)

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