1. The big news this morning is that both the governing Labour party and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, have hit an all-time low in popularity. I’ve just re-subscribed to The Times (for £1 for three months) and here’s their take on the story, Labour at record poll low with Greens just one point behind https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-election-poll-voting-intention-269v5xz7w and here’s The Daily Telegraph version of the same story, Farage would be better PM than Starmer, voters say for first time https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/63a97c9c5a2223b0 Ask your advanced classes to compare and contrast those two (and their choice of photo to illustrate their article) with each other and with The Guardian, who don’t seem to be running a story with quite the same focus but have a piece by Polly Toynbee seeking to put a positive spin on Starmer’s unpopularity, Yes, Keir Starmer is Britain’s most unpopular PM ever. That could liberate him? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/28/keir-starmer-britain-unpopular-prime-minister-reform

2. There’s an Andrew Marr piece on Starmer and Labour in this week’s New Statesman https://tinyurl.com/3ut9myjm which the NS have kindly made available as part of their sponsorship of next month’s Cambridge Literary Festival, Doom loop: My trust in Labour to get us out of this mess was misplaced. Britain has become ungovernable.

PDF below as well.

3. World Teachers’ Day completely escaped my attention this year, I’m ashamed to say! Here’s the recordings of the three-day British Council event earlier this month https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/world-teachers-day-2025

The programme included:

Cecilia Nobre talking about Rethinking professional development in a connected world https://www.youtube.com/live/sohokXiGV4Y?si=zS9SZDpafVBL0aky

Amol Padwad, Yiviri Rasifatu Tombir, Adrienn Szlapak & Kim Beadle discussing Multilingual approaches in the classroom https://www.youtube.com/live/glugi3xo-ac?si=6-Yr9okAbcVUx9bb

Christopher Graham talking about Making sustainability part of daily practice in ELT https://youtu.be/-4PZdLQ_YsI?si=MkpZv93TyLIkycdC

and lots more besides!

4. Very sad news last week: the Bell schools will cease trading at the end of this week https://bellenglish.com/ Hard to conceive that there won’t be any more Bell – they’ve been at the heart of ELT all my career.

5. And, finally and not at all decisively, a piece by James Hamblin for The Atlantic, The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period about a new study which proves that half of people are correct. The other half is also correct https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/two-spaces-after-a-period/559304/ (You should be able to read this article as part of your monthly free articles allowance.)