Denmark still has a monarchy but I believe the Danish royals have almost zero legal powers unlike in the UK where they retain more control than a lot of people realise.

The United States was founded on the principle of secular governance, republicanism and freedom of speech and religion. As a British person who supports all of these principles, I feel the Republican Party is trampling on almost every one of the principles that it was founded on in the 19th Century.

Ukraine, which should be an ally, got the standard 10% tariff, the same as here in the UK.

What, like Russia? Not exactly the most democratic of places...

US isolationism is about the worst thing that could happen for its traditional allies in the West. The US should be thinking of itself as a global defender of liberal values - if I were American, this would make me feel far more patriotic than Trump's unpleasantly jingoistic agenda.

My own view would be that there are two versions of the US - one which is open and cosmopolitan, influential globally, prosperous, and believes the US has a role to protect and defend its allies, and another which seems to want to turn the clock back and isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Tariffs don't do good for anyone. All they will mean for Americans is a higher cost of living and less consumer choice. All they mean for the rest of the world is a higher cost of living and a strained relationship with the US (which has traditionally been an ally for most Westerners).

Most New York Times content does seem factual although I'd agree that it's weird for an adult not to have heard of congestion pricing - it's existed in numerous countries for several decades, and I was aware of it existing in London when I was about 7.

Swindon was, as recently as the 2000s, quite a good place to live but has in recent years become quite neglected feeling, and today it's really more of a commuter town for people who work in London and Bristol. I'd say it used to feel not unlike Reading whereas it now has more in common with Slough.

Sadly SOX seems to be becoming about as rare in a lot of areas as what mercury had previously been as local authorities have been moving their entire streetlight stock over to LEDs. Why have UK authorities been truncating brackets in doing so when this hasn't been the case in a lot of countries?

Swindon's Railway Village had a few functioning mercury lights until a handful of years ago. While they were definitely mercury bulbs (I captured a photo showing the text on one) and gave off a very slight green tinge, they were nothing like as blue as the one I saw in 2016 in Church Stretton.

Was it common to see mercury streetlights much going back to the 1990s and early 2000s? While a few remained until the recent switch to LEDs in most areas, I think most were replaced with SOX retrofits between the late 1970s and early 1990s.

There are still a fair number of old, usually non-functioning concrete streetlights in places like maintenance depots.

Swindon (both North and South, which have existed since 1997; it was previously a single seat) has voted the same way as Britain as a whole in every election since 1983. I think it also voted for Brexit in 2016 by a similar margin to the English average.

Did that still have a working mercury lamp at the time you took that photo? There aren't many of these left. I remember seeing a mercury streetlight on the outskirts of Church Stretton in 2016 and it had an unusually blue/green glow to it that I found mildly creepy and also fascinating.