I was able to use a VPN in China. Are we really saying we're going to more restrictive than China?

I bear no ill will to people pretending to be someone they are not. I do bear ill will to people seeking to deploy state power to force me to join them in their pretense. The former is a mostly sad and injurious thing that some people have convinced themselves is their truest source of happiness in a way that I cannot prevent them from believing. The latter is an attack on my right to belief and disbelief that violates my personhood.

If I had a time machine, I’d use it to show the voters of 1945 what electing Labour would eventually lead to. I suspect Mr Attlee might not achieve such a landslide.

The British government has plenty of money, it just has absolutely no idea how to allocate it in the interests of the taxpayer.

Cracking headlines in this 1983 TV Choice magazine.

We had the conversation. Your side lost. Truly a band of fanatics.

Just when I thought Alan Arkin's Inspector Clouseau film couldn't get any worse, along comes Anthony Ainley and his French accent.

RIP to this sweet bunny, a regular presence in my garden this week. I'd rather not describe what's happened to it.

I think possibly the best thing about Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire is how angry it makes a bunch of losers who've never built a thing in their lives.

Nepo baby of director Dominic Dromgoole. These plays of hers are real, by the way. Not a parody.

I imagine that if you created a character to satirise flighty posh midwit actresses, no one in Equity would want to play the part for fear of being labelled right-wing for the rest of their career.

Don’t worry about Elon becoming rich with his own money. Worry about politicians becoming rich with your money.

Over 4000 workers just became millionaires by owning the means of production and the socialists are pissed

I’m too much of a philistine to watch the Criterion Collection closet videos. We need a version where it’s just walking around CEX and going “I pissed myself watching that” as you hold up Euro Trip for 50p.

Got around to watching The Greatest Showman, in which handsome, funky PT Barnum puts together a Victorian freakshow - but he's a great man, you see, because it's an inclusive freakshow that celebrates diversity.

Most of the obituaries and tributes to David Hockney will, I imagine, focus primarily on his extraordinary craft and brilliance as an artist. Perhaps they might also mention his brilliance as a communicator (he was such a fine writer and speaker). But there was something else rather unique about him too. He was also strikingly honest about the tricks/techniques artists use and used to paint. His book Secret Knowledge is a rather wonderful detective work into how renaissance and Dutch golden age painters used glass and mirrors to help them master perspective. It's a pretty compelling case (see this video clip from a BBC doc he made alongside the book👇) though I'm sure some art historians will raise their eyebrows. Many will be aghast at the notion that greats like Vermeer might have been using lenses and camera obscuras to help them draw and paint. As if it were in some way "cheating". But Hockney was so self-evidently brilliant he was one of the few people who could document this without anyone gainsaying his own talent. There are very few artists, living or dead, who have this degree of self-confidence. Not just to know their craft, but to be bracingly honest about how it works. One other who comes to mind is Paul Simon: not just an extraordinary musician but is also an extraordinary communicator about the tricks and techniques of how to write and perform music. For many great artists, the temptation is to cloak their crafts in mystery, like a member of the magic circle. Hockney wasn't having any of it. So yes, he was a legend in all the obvious ways. But also in a few other less obvious ways as well. RIP.

Your steam engine is British. Your Industrial Revolution is British. Your railway is British. Your underground railway is British. Your modern railway timetable is British. Your suspension bridge is British. Your iron bridge is British. Your modern lighthouse is British. Your marine chronometer is British. Your global time standard is British. Your time zone starts at Greenwich. Your telephone is Scottish. Your television is Scottish. Your radar is British. Your jet engine is British. Your tank is British. Your programmable computer is British. Your World Wide Web is British. Your fibre-optic communications were pioneered by a Briton. Your modern telecommunications network was transformed by British inventors. Your antibiotics are Scottish. Your vaccination programme was pioneered by an Englishman. Your modern nursing profession is British. Your public sanitation system is British. Your modern sewerage system is British. Your clean drinking water infrastructure was pioneered by Victorian Britain. Your weather forecast is British. Your life boat service is British. Your modern fire service was pioneered in Britain. Your parliamentary democracy is British. Your constitutional monarchy is British. Your common law is British. Your independent judiciary is British. Your trial by jury is British. Your presumption of innocence is British. Your habeas corpus is British. Your rule of law is British. Your modern police force is British. Your modern civil service is British. Your modern banking system was shaped in Britain. Your central banking model was shaped by the Bank of England. Your stock exchange model was pioneered in London. Your global insurance market was built at Lloyd's of London. Your international maritime law was shaped by Britain. Your global trade routes were mapped by Britain. Your anti-slavery patrols were British. Your modern university model was influenced by Oxford and Cambridge. Your scientific societies were pioneered by Britain. Your peer-reviewed science was advanced by British institutions. Your laws of motion are English. Your theory of evolution is English. Your economics is Scottish. Your electromagnetism was transformed by a Scot. Your geology was pioneered by Scots. Your thermodynamics was advanced by Britons. Your stainless steel is British. Your carbon fibre is British. Your steam turbine is British. Your hovercraft is British. Your ATM is British. Your cash machine is Scottish. Your postage stamp is British. Your modern postal system is British. Your football is English. Your rugby is British. Your golf is Scottish. Your tennis was codified in Britain. Your badminton was codified in Britain. Your cricket is English. Your worldwide language is English. Your newspapers were shaped by Britain. Your global news agencies were pioneered by Britain. Your public broadcasting model is British. Your music charts are British. Your modern popular music owes a great deal to Britain. Your neighbour may be an immigrant. But a fair chunk of the modern world is British. Pull yourself together.

Granada Televisions' The Road to 1984' with James Fox as George Orwell (1984) youtube.com/watch?v=1fNz5RkC… [Thanks to spotter David Ryan]