Crime writer, among other strange things. Joint owner of the Solus Or Writing Retreat on the Black Isle. New book: https://nitter.gq/t.co/Tc0ZHWoh7a
Black Isle, Scotland.
Joined September 2011
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Has anyone shown Matt Britton ‘W1A’ yet?
Matt Brittin told employees today that he wants the BBC to “be more Elvis,” by which he meant: “A little less conversation, a little more action.” Welcome to the Silicon Valley-isation of the BBC. deadline.com/2026/10/bbc-sil…
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Joy Division supporting John Cooper Clarke. Also saw the Pogues supporting Richard Thompson at the mildly infamous Dominion gig.
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Hm.
This is a huge shock. I am incredibly saddened to hear this news. He had sent me a lovely message just this morning and was always a great source of encouragement to me personally. I can’t believe he’s gone.
He was a dear friend to so many of us and the Conservative Family will be reeling at this news.
Our thoughts are with Dame Mary and all their family at this time.
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When I was a child, my late mum used to use the word ‘storyteller’ as a euphemism for liar. In other news, I see the ‘master storyteller’ Jeffrey Archer has died.
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You don’t have to answer any job interview question.
The job interview question you don't have to answer bbc.in/4j6nd2J
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I don’t think the Brexit slogan was ever ‘Brexit: not as damaging as your might be fearing’.
'The idea that it's done a lot of harm is just not true.'
The numbers prove that Brexit's damage to our economy was 'much smaller than expected', @David_Goodhart argues.
@TomSwarbrick1
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The story of the high street, particularly in the UK.
Toys R Us was profitable. Private equity bought it anyway, and 33,000 people lost their jobs with nothing.
In 2005, Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado Realty Trust bought Toys R Us in a leveraged buyout for $6.6 billion.
Here's the part that gets skipped: the company itself was making money. It wasn't failing. It wasn't asking to be saved.
But in a leveraged buyout, the firms don't pay with their own money. They borrow against the company they're buying, and the debt becomes the company's problem, not theirs.
Toys R Us went from having almost no debt to carrying over $5 billion in loans it never asked for and never benefited from.
Every year after that, a huge share of the company's profit went straight to interest payments instead of stores, inventory, or staff. The stores got run down. Amazon and Walmart kept eating market share. Toys R Us couldn't invest its way out because there was nothing left after the debt.
In 2017 it filed for bankruptcy. In 2018 it liquidated completely.
33,000 employees lost their jobs. Store closures. No severance for most of them.
Giovanna De La Rosa worked there for years. She testified before Congress on November 19, 2019, describing what it meant to lose her income with nothing after decades of loyalty to a company that had been profitable the entire time she worked there.
The firms that bought it walked away having collected management fees for over a decade, regardless of outcome.
Here's the sentence that explains the entire model: the buyers cannot lose. The debt belongs to the company. The fees get collected either way.
They didn't buy a business to grow it.
They bought a business to extract from it, and left 33,000 people holding what was left.
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‘Israelophobic’?
I hereby challenge @Ed_Miliband to produce specific, verifiable evidence to back up these Israelophobic claims.
If he can’t, he must admit that he has articulated lies and propaganda and withdraw the video.
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Warms your heart, doesn’t it?
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has claimed that Reform UK are too 'woke' for her to strike a deal with
Nigel Farage’s party has hit back with a 'neo-Nazis' jibe
All the latest 👇 thenational.scot/news/264421…
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‘…in the Telegraph.’ That famously tolerant newspaper.
I wrote this morn in The Telegraph. It fits given news later in day.
'More and more, I feel that the true measure of a person is the ability to live with disagreement and not to demand compliance. That, when all is said and done, is surely what diversity actually is.'
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It’ll probably turn out he’s a big arthouse film buff.
It’s amazing how many factual mistakes you can find in a footballer’s autobiography.
Like here in Michael Owen’s, where he claims that he wasn’t even in the squad for Kevin Keegan’s final match in charge of England against Germany in 2000.
He actually played the full 90 mins.
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Is it alcohol?
It’s possible to drink all night and wake up feeling like you’re 25 again. You just need to make one easy substitution. slate.trib.al/syvRvb1
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Not to mention your sanity.
Instant access to Trump’s thoughts now costs $100,000 a month motherjones.com/politics/202…
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Stop threatening me with a good time.
BURNHAM TO DRAG US BACK TO THE 1970S
🗞️ Tomorrow's Scottish Daily Mail front page: #TomorrowsPapersToday #scotpapers 👉️ Read more on #mailonline
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Say cheese!
Internet rumors suggest a man's smile can foreshadow his penis size. There's more to this than you might think. slate.trib.al/zxdZoZA
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Easily done.
£10 billion Covid PPE waste was ‘honest error’ says Michael Gove
channel4.com/news/10-billion…
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