They just can't stop, no matter how low their polling goes. I've no intention of reading it btw. Don't have time for that shit.

"...the more one relies on vice signaling as a style of action and communication, the less relevant and powerful the in-group’s moral compass is as a practical constraint on anyone’s behavior." latest for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/emp...

When the mother of a 6-year-old girl is murdered in cold blood by an armed and militarised agent of the state mobilised to perform a political function, it is unacceptable to discuss or even acknowledge the politics which actively generated her death. This is New Labour's theory of politics.

The death of a legal observer in Minnesota by ICE is a warning to the UK in so many ways. We’re tying ourselves to a violent, corrupt, racist nation which does not care about its citizens. Reform believes in its model, Labour is appeasing it. It is the public who will suffer.

This is also a pretty useful post for understanding why the political and media class are completely silent about the right-wing’s indulgence in and embrace of overt, 19th & 20th century antisemitism.

Gotta dunk on this then! Imagine writing this at the time Musk's purchase of Twitter - and abuse of its algorithms - has made it descend into outright Nazism and has noticeably helped pushed online politicians rightwards!

I've never said this before, but kudos to the FT. The only improvement to that headline would be 'deepfake porn and CSAM site'.

Nothing can tell you more about the absolute disconnect between the political class and the rest of us than their insistence that Wes Streeting is the key to electoral success.

I think this is a wider problem. NGOs also expend huge amounts of time chasing funding. Weirdly Local Authorities do too, partly because Westminster makes available tiny pots and makes LAs bid for them. Suspect this is the competition ideal of rabid free marketeers creeping into other funding models

Oh please say yes.

Imagine ending your article with this www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j... without any discussion of whether people want to be renting at all. Journalism is in a woeful condition.

People asking if Starmer will stand up to Trump over Venezuela have utterly failed to understand the nature of both the UK-US relationship and Keir Starmer's spine.

The way the press is treating chatbots, like they have agency and they “know” things all of a sudden, crossed the line recently from dumb and obsequious to something else entirely. Treating them as alive and making conscious decisions is an almost religious belief. It won’t age well.

Journalists have gone mad. LLM marketing has captured them because - and I don't want to exaggerate here so I'll be restrained - they are idiots.

I'd like 2026 to be the year environmentalists stop campaigning for things like paper straws and attached bottle tops. We've got to remake our entire energy and food systems and these trivial gains are unpopular and useless measures that make environmentalism unpopular. Please stop.

Today is essentially the last day of Christmas and then it is back to making billionaires, trillionaires Since 1970 productivity has increased 230%, you should be working a third of the time and getting the same amount of money as in 1970 Instead you work the same and get less.

And a lot of it arises from the cost of housing

Welcome to 2026. Join a tenant union if you haven't already.

What I love most about this photo is that it's ambiguous whether the man in blue has been involved in the fight, or if he's just a casual observer who sought his repose there by coincidence.

Merry Christmas to everyone except people who fail to have empathy for those less fortunate than themselves (currently running at around 30% of the population, alas). May this be the year the fightback against fascism gains momentum.

Chomsky is a dickhead, but right now the most annoying thing is all the clueless 'leftist' conspiracy theorists talking about controlled opposition.

Interesting, though I'm not sure strategically about calling for a stoppage in house building. We surely need to establish the alternatives in ways that can scale up first. It's all very difficult when we have a government in bed with Blackrock. What is the right next step besides get rid of them?

OMG. We all knew Fukuyama was an idiot. There was no need for him to provide conclusive proof. But he did. Because there's one person in the world who doesn't know Fukuyama is an idiot....

I would have dismissed this as too cheesy in the past. But in this moment it feels necessary. Not sufficient, especially in the face of the Labour Party's own racist policies and positions. But good.

I think the Green Party should stand up and say these crap bottle caps are nonsense. We're facing double environmental catastrophe on a global scale and bottle lids aren't part of either. Let people take off the lid but end fossil fuels within 10 years.

It's the lack of curiosity that's so stunning. WHY aren't people rejoicing in their historically high minimum wage, he says rhetorically. But he doesn't actually want to know why. Spoiler alert: the cost of housing sucking the life out of people is a big part of why.

Sometimes I feel like I'm going mad. THE AIM OF THE TORIES WAS TO REDUCE WAGES, NOT INCREASE THEM. THEY TOLD US THIS WHEN THEY INTRODUCED AUSTERITY.

Analysts told me that they agree with @amnesty.org in that Israel's genocide in Gaza is not over. The mass killing has slowed but the conditions for life & society have been destroyed and are not being allowed to be rebuilt. www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

Terminate this timeline immediately! It's fucked beyond repair. We need to abandon it and return to a core timeline where an 18 year old landlord activist is not a thing.

I really wish our government could understand that you can't make these people happy because they are deeply unhappy within themselves. They thrive on anger as a way of not addressing their own issues.

I remember when Western interventionists were proud of inventing the 'responsibility to protect' vulnerable populations and many were worried they'd abuse it. Turns out to be worse: it was just a fiction. They won't use it at all, in Gaza or Sudan.

Yes. Solutions are hard, partly because intergenerational mixing is quite low in our society.

Using the word 'popular' about Stratford, an absolute beast of a station that it's hard to say anything positive about.

Build. More. Public. Housing.

Er, guys, I'm really not sure about loads of the left lining up behind a toilet paper company that is not employee-owned, is constituted as a profit-making company, and is promising to donate all profits but with no safeguards on e.g. how much salary is taken by directors first.

I regret to inform you that the landlords and letting agents are at it again. Already.

A fine winter's night in the graveyard

Legislation is needed to restore the intended meaning of the Equality Act and end the legal confusion being exploited by the wealthy and litigious.

Renters Unite is the perfect xmas gift, now half price! What could be more important than giving the gift of knowledge about collective action to your loved ones? www.plutobooks.com/product/rent...

They might as well have set the mansion tax at £1m, maybe £1.5m in London. The screaming would have been about equal, because the point is that newspaper columnists and news presenters and their friends live in the taxed houses. Setting the threshold lower wouldn't have affected them any more.

Amazingly this opinion will actually make people angry.

This is the cheapest you'll ever get the ebook of Renters Unite - 80% off! www.plutobooks.com/product/rent... Except for illegal downloading of course, which, do that if you need to, but this is pretty damn cheap!

It's really not going to look great in the future that just as we needed to mobilise massive resources to replace fossil fuels with renewables, we instead mobilised them for fancy predictive text that guzzles energy.

Years of me having to hide the fact that every time someone said they loved Zizek my respect for them dropped. And now I don't have to hide it! My respect for Zizek respecters is low! Always has been!

This country seems to have a bottomless well of sympathy towards asset rich pensioners and only contempt for anyone under 50 who is putting half their income into paying their landlords fourth mortgage and a big chunk of the rest into skyrocketing bills.

This government continuing their campaign to be as popular as cancer I see. You think that's low polling? We can go lower!

Look, Pluribus is pretty slow so far, two episodes in, so if it's just going to be a reworking of Tepper's Grass for people who haven't read Grass, someone please let me know.

Psst! Rachel Reeves put up the effective income tax rate by not raising thresholds. In real terms she has increased income tax, while lying that she hasn't. Pass it on.

Darkly funny that Starmer and the Blue Labour lot currently squandering a generational opportunity to do something useful, are all inspired by a person who is 1) deeply unpleasant 2) profoundly stupid

But that's why GDP is a terrible measure. Where does that rent money go? Out of the country and/or to people who are already rich and don't need to consume more. It might as well be extracted entirely from the economy.