Saw Coming To America fairly high up and became confused as to why, when I hadn’t seen Trading Places. Not going to scroll back through, but is Trading Places not there at all?? Where is Life of Brian? It’s all very bizarre, this list, very bizarre.

He also said that Levon Helm’s father wouldn’t let them leave Arkansas for Canada until: “Levon had his high school degree. Ha, boy - I don’t think even the teachers could read and write in Marvell, Arkansas.” He was great value.

I visited Ronnie Hawkins at home a while back and it was amazing - he had a whole bunch of <exotic plants> in the entrance to his house, and enjoyed telling me how Bill Clinton had to pick his way through them when he visited.

The most revealing statements in Ferguson’s thread were later on: “but if you want to take back territory & try Putin, you have to win the war”. I notice he doesn’t say “if you want territory you don’t hold, want to limit the army of the other side, & impose demands, you have to win the war”.

There are encouraging signs this morning that Europe is planning to tell the US to fuck off, despite the shameful blackmailing. But I guess the danger is that, even if rejected, this “plan”, rather than the Ukrainian formula, then becomes the reference point for all future negotiations.

Instead they are currently engaged in some puerile tiff about how much the UK should pay to join the rearmament programme. Arguing about pennies and the minutiae of what constitutes “cherry picking” while smoke rises from the horizon and the barbarians approach the gate.

Good luck. And it’s not just her - there’ll be people in her office who’ll see your reply, some of whom I’m sure are already feeling a little queasy. Some moral pressure on them will be a good thing.

I left the party on Monday and posted my thoughts about it this morning - I had a final message specifically for her.

But mainly - why does she think that pursuing the type of action that has repeatedly failed, and boosted the far right, will work this time?

www.aftershocks.co/p/immigratio...

Fuck that’s a terrible movie. By complete happenstance was discussing it with a colleague just yesterday: it was transparently an opportunistic studio scramble to find an answer to First Blood.

Interesting challenge because, yes, they are all mainly shit after those. Let’s see…

4. Total Recall
5. Conan
6. True Lies
7. The Running Man
8. The Last Action Hero
9. Red Heat
10. Raw Deal

Get “Why On Earth Didn’t They”, the new Sunday Times Number 1 Bestselling biography of the Starmer Years.

All it takes is for someone to call it, refuse to settle under any circumstances, obtain a humiliating defeat of Trump in court, and this whole shakedown racket will fall apart. I really hope that the BBC can be the one to do it.

He exploits calculation of financial and business risk that companies (& their insurers) make. CBS caved because it feared its merger might be threatened - it would have won on a judgment.

The BBC is a foreign, state-owned corp. It’s in a good position to expose and negate this type of shakedown.