

Mensen vergeet het geëmmer over de begroting het is tijd dat ze in Den Haag bezig gaan met de PRIORITEITEN. Zoals carnaval. CDA-mevrouw Inge van Dijk, gisteren nog verkleed als Henri Bontenbal, is door de BRABANTSE CARNAVALS FEDERATIE naar voren geschoven als eerste ambassadeur. Heeft allemaal te maken met regels en gezeik want een carnavalsfeestje organiseren is tegenwoordig vooral administratief gedoe. Eén pionnetje erbij maakt de ketting langer, maar de schakels korter, ofzo. Lang verhaal kort: als u begin februari om deze tijd het vierde worstenbroodje wegspoelt met de volgende pitcher lauwe Bavaria, denk dan ook eens aan mevrouw Van Dijk. Én aan Hubert Bruls, naakt, verkleed als smurfin.

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:
Trains passing the Bragg Centre and SAHMRI building at dusk
Vickrum Digwa also challenging the length of his jail term, with his KC describing it as ‘manifestly excessive’
Vickrum Digwa, the killer of Henry Nowak, should have received a longer sentence because of his false accusations of racism against his victim and his abuse of a religious right to carry a knife, the court of appeal has been told.
Digwa, 23, was jailed in June for life with a minimum term of 21 years for murdering Nowak, 18, in an attack in Southampton in December last year.
Continue reading...Tom Curry injured during training on Wednesday
Brother Ben has not played for England since 2025
Tom Curry has emerged as a major doubt for England’s autumn opener against Australia on Sunday, handing Steve Borthwick a huge blow before a crucial November campaign, with twin brother Ben leading the race to start at openside flanker.
It is understood that Tom Curry sustained his latest injury during Wednesday’s full bore training session, throwing Borthwick’s plans for his back-row configuration into disarray. Borthwick will finalise his team selection before announcing it on Friday afternoon but as things stand, Ben is in pole position to wear the No7 jersey.
Continue reading...Cohort who were told they could apply for indefinite leave now face ‘distress and uncertainty’ over 30-year ‘earned settlement’ plans
Shabana Mahmood has been accused of causing “distress and uncertainty” to hundreds of thousands of refugees by quietly introducing plans to force them to wait up to 30 years before being granted the right to settle in the UK.
The Refugee Council said the home secretary’s hardening of plans came despite her personal reassurances last year that only “illegal entrants who are not refugees will face a 30-year wait for settlement”.
Continue reading...Review by ex-Met chief, expected to be published within weeks, calls for reduction from 39 forces to between nine and 18
The number of police forces in England should be cut from 39 to as few as nine super forces, an official review ordered by the government has concluded.
The review, carried out by the former Met police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, is yet to be published. Doubts are growing among some chief constables about the radical plans contained in Lord Hogan-Howe’s review.
Continue reading...The actor answers your questions about trapeze lessons, Bond villain ambitions and Michael Caine’s top tips
You looked as if you had such a good time on Celebrity Traitors last year – you had them hanging on your every word. What was it like? Who have you kept in touch with? breezehillpete
They absolutely didn’t hang on my every word. I’m fascinated to watch it now, because at a distance, I can see how people follow each other. That herd mentality is very evident at the round table, but I always went in a different direction and people didn’t follow me. Then, of course, I accused Alan [Carr] at the end: “I think you are one, aren’t you?”, so I had to go the next day. I didn’t quite know what I was letting myself in for, but I had a great time.
Kate [Garraway] and I had to go on that Uncloaked thing after. She turned to me and she said: “Oh, but Celia, we’re now all one big happy family, aren’t we?” I said: “Well, frankly, I don’t want to see any of them ever again in the whole of my life,” and everybody laughed. But truthfully, we haven’t really run into each other since. Nevertheless, I think I was with a marvellous company, and I liked them all.
Continue reading...Gong simmers with rage, loneliness and humiliation as the ‘fourth mistress’ navigating the intimate political savagery of her husband’s compound in Zhang Yimou’s 1991 thriller
Revisiting Zhang Yimou’s grippingly addictive psychological drama from 1991, adapted from a novella by Su Tong, is a reminder of what a great impact this movie made on western audiences. They responded to its arguably westernised tale of a young woman’s desperate loneliness in a sinister environment that resembles something by Charlotte Brontë or Daphne du Maurier. Like Jung Chang’s memoir Wild Swans from the same year, Raise the Red Lantern opened our eyes to 20th-century China’s secret theatre of cruelty and misogyny; elaborate domestic rituals of submission and servitude coexisted with infinitely subtle plotting, resentful manoeuvring and covert denunciation, habits of thought that could so easily be absorbed into Maoism.
Gong Li gives one of the great performances of the 1990s as Songlian, a beautiful, intelligent young woman in 1920s China who is forced to abandon her university studies after just six months because her father has died and there is no longer money for the fees. In the unforgettable opening scene, which unfolds with a single unbroken shot of Gong’s pale face, incandescent with shock and pain, Songlian announces to her callous stepmother (who remains off camera) that she is ready to accept marriage – and then her eyes brim with tears. Her suppressed rage, loneliness and humiliation are to simmer below the surface for the rest of the film.
Continue reading...
Sergiy Galyonkin has added a photo to the pool:
Pedestrians blur across a crosswalk as a train passes behind them in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Black and white, July 2026.
BRUSSEL (ANP) - Het is nog te vroeg om te zeggen of de bommeldingen in de Europese luchtvaart aan elkaar zijn gelinkt, zegt Eurocommissaris Apostolos Tzitzikostas (Transport). Deze week kregen meer dan twintig passagiersvluchten te maken met dit soort meldingen, waarvan een groot deel op donderdag.
"Elke dreiging tegen burgers is onaanvaardbaar", stelt Tzitzikostas in een verklaring. "Het waarborgen van de veiligheid en beveiliging van burgers blijft een prioriteit." Hij laat weten dat Brussel de situatie nauwkeurig in de gaten houdt en in contact staat met de getroffen EU-lidstaten en het Europees Agentschap voor de veiligheid van de luchtvaart (EASA).
De landen onderzoeken de meldingen, waarbij voor zover bekend geen explosieven zijn gevonden. Tzitzikostas zegt de nationale autoriteiten te hebben gevraagd samen te werken met luchthavens, luchtvaartmaatschappijen en wetshandhavingsinstanties om incidenten te onderzoeken en voor "passende veiligheidsmaatregelen voor de luchtvaart".