“There is no climate crisis,” Sean Matthews, leader of Lincolnshire council, posted on X last year. “We are all paying for these idiots to escalate their fantasies.” By my colleague @jonungoedthomas.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Poison

I was on Any Questions last night. I think it was a good discussion, which became quite fierce at times. We debated the vile attack in Manchester, the right to protest, the Tories' crazy climate stance and how to rescue politics. You can listen to it here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Stick this in your oil pipe and smoke it Donald Trump.

stuff like this gives me and extremely high amount of joy

Good work

Any time a politician says we should leave the ECHR, the very next questions any interviewer should ask are 🚨Which human rights are you willing to lose personally 🚨Which methods of torture are you going to allow people to be sent to face 🚨Which family members would you be willing to lose #r4today

I wrote a short piece for the Observer on the attacks in Manchester. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Reform UK’s Nigel Farage with the Russian Ambassador (that he denied meeting), and with Oleg Voloshyn's wife Nadia Borodi, Voloshyn bribed Nathan Gill. Farage is still silent. It’s deafening. #ReformRussianBribes

Mapped: The areas threatened by Reform’s controversial pro-fracking agenda revealed www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Yeah, I know fact-checking will convince no-one on her side of the argument, but kudos to the Grauniad for doing it anyway.

This about sums it up.

The steadily growing population of rare lesser horseshoe bats in the shed (roughly 100) attests to the level of flying insect life in the forest outside, since each bat catches around 3,000 per night. Healthy nature depends on healthy, wild, functioning *ecosystems*. Rewilding delivers that. 🌏

What a great responsibility and a great privilege to be directing the world's first Centre for Animal Sentience. Many thanks to the ~300 in the room and ~500 online who attended our launch event. Wonderful to have you there on Day 1. www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/s...

But, of course, the fuckwits. Dame Sarah Mullally makes history as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury and the Sky news headline fails to name her but it’s ok, her husband is named.

Badenoch commits to leaving ECHR Only 2 precedents exist: the Greek junta in 1967 & Vladimir Putin in 2022 Sharper response just to name them? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If you’re an Islamophobe you don’t get to complain about antisemitism And if you’re an antisemite you don’t get to complain about Islamophobia. It’s really that simple. (So many shameless hypocrites around.)

Right wing think tank (AEI) employee Roger Pielke Jr. has formed a cozy relationship with the Murdoch media as he spreads climate disinformation in Australia. It's right out of #ScienceUnderSiege (and yes, Roger is prominently mentioned in the book): www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The area of Manchester where the horrific antisemitic attack took place is one of the few in the UK where Jewish & Muslim ppl both live in large numbers. We must learn from & follow how these communities support each other, as we condemn the attack & send love & solidarity to Jews across the UK

At the moment I feel like the guy in Airplane: "It seems like I picked the wrong day to give up teaching military ethics"

Keir Starmer, on the day he calls the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child a "barrier" to implementing his policies, gets called a radical leftist by the Daily Mail... Either these people think that there's a magic barrier between us & the "Hang 'em from lampposts" stage, or they don't...

To add to this: Sadiq Khan took a big political risk by doing this, and it appears to have paid off - or rather, the policy has worked as intended. London Labour will be (quite reasonably) hoping voters notice...

Exactly this. That's the first thing that popped in my head when I saw hegseth calling the rules of engagement "stupid" and "overbearing." He wants our military to fight like russia's—which, incidentally, just exited the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture.

I just really hope we're all sitting with the fact that we're having a government shutdown in a year when ONE PARTY CONTROLS ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT.

Big-name comedians head to Riyadh festival amid accusations of entertainment-washing Riyadh Comedy Festival sparks outrage as global stars perform while Saudi silences critics northeastbylines.co.uk/news/world-n...

Greater Manchester ditching its Clean Air Zone is looking more short-sighted by the day www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Where @thenewworldmag.bsky.social leads…back in August, we wrote about how many of the immigration issues Nigel Farage complains about were the result of policies he advocated. Now both Ed Davey *and* Keir Starmer are saying the same. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-n...

What happens to your brain when you use ChatGPT to write your essay? MIT watched students’ brain activity to find out. The results are worrying.

Shocking figures, with the UK within the 5 countries in Europe losing the most nature & crop land: 604 km² in 2018-2023. Green MEP: "We are literally cementing over our own future". ...not to mention the future of all the other species whose habitats we've been destroying for a long time...

“I would gently point out to Nigel Farage that before we left the EU we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU. He told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that. These are Farage boats in many senses coming across the channel” 👏 PM Keir Starmer

In one of the most nature-depleted corners of this battered planet, with #biodiversity in freefall

Analysis: Half of global emissions covered by 2035 climate pledges after UN summit in New York www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-hal...

Hegseth's statements themselves are possibly prosecutable

Better late than never I guess. If this happens it will be a huge step forward. The two child cap has been shown, repeatedly, to be a major driver of child poverty. There's never been an excuse for keeping it in place. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

It's a fool's errand to try to figure out why each individual shooter did what they did; it centers one erratic, unwell individual (which is impossible to solve) rather than the structural problems (which are possible to solve). And the structural problem is this: guns. I explain more here:

Is there a reason I ask that the Times are using a picture of asylum seekers in a boat to describe rules for migrants who came on legal routes such as skilled worker visas for doctors?

New from me: a *free* short version of my Political Quarterly piece on universities... The issue is settled now: the massified and accessible Higher Education system we have spent tens of billions building since the 1970s is coming to an end. (1/2) politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/where-n...

The real generational divide is people who refuse to watch a video if it could be an article versus people who refuse to read an article if it could be a video

"There are other questions the CPRE does not ask. Chief among them: if there is so much brownfield land available in the middle of a housing crisis, then why on Earth aren’t we already building on it?" Everything continues to be awful so I've returned to my comfort zone.

So, Sunday Times runs with latest poll showing Farage winning if there was an election now. But makes NO mention of Reform’s collusion with Russia. And this is how democracy gets beaten to death in the dark. Voters are not being told the truth. Reform is given the stage but is NEVER held to account.

Nigel Farage's attendance record as an MEP was 748 out of 751, yet he turned up to vote AGAINST plans to tackle Russian disinformation. Now one of his MEPs has admitted taking bribes to spread Russian propaganda. Why is this not all over the media?

Come on, @theguardian.com, call it “mass deportation plans.” Those are the words Reform used, don’t obscure it. (Not quite as bad as that BBC push notification given the plainer second headline, but still, no need to water it down…)

Inside the everyday Facebook networks where far-right ideas grow

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200 pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

Feel the same about British pundits and politicians - the type that produces pieces like: « party loyalty is fragmenting and a populist far right party is threatening to take 30% of the vote. This is a uniquely British problem, no other country has ever seen this, it’s probably about Brexit. »

Bottom trawling BULLDOZES our ocean floor, decimating marine life. The UK Government must take action and ban this destruction in all offshore marine protected areas. Have your say via the link below, before it's too late. Act now! 🛑🌊 👉👉👉 https://bit.ly/42b3BBj

“The ECHR isn’t Brussels meddling. It’s the foundation that protects you from your own government.” 👏👏👏

"Modern American parallels are certainly not the only reason to reread Animal Farm. But they are a good reminder that Orwell’s fable was never just about the Soviet Union."

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...