A refugee comes to the UK from Iran, gets asylum, marries, has kids, who also have kids. Thirty years later, a revolution overthrows the current regime. Are we seriously saying that person will immediately be deported? The only point of this language is to demonise.

Torsten Bell?

“A working-class kid from Sheffield living in the same house as the Prime Minister of Norway,” (Howard) says. “It made me realise in Norway they don’t have that hierarchy that we have here.” (How Sheffield's Terry Howard changed public access to UK's land) www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/for-the-futu...

I know it’s always like this. But one striking thing from the budget kite flying and kite pulling back in, is how major policy decisions are constantly being buffeted around by iterative forecast changes. All feels a bit of a silly way to be making major economic policy & political decisions.

It would be interesting to know if the same phenomenon applies to AI use in exams. (You'd assume it would.)

Section 21's days are finally numbered. In 168 days' time landlords will no longer be able to evict a tenant to raise the rent, to punish them for complaining or simply because they're having a bad day. Thanks to everyone who has campaigned with @generationrent.bsky.social for this!

Yay, the even worse option of lots of small taxes upsetting noisy lobby groups.

Murder at the BBC, by @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social is well worth your time. Not least the Prescott-focused footnote. open.substack.com/pub/davidaar... [The snippet below, from the main piece, particularly caught my eye.]

More detail on the history and statistics in the full post available here. futurenorth.substack.com/p/is-the-nor... 7/7

🚆Has the North’s rail service improved? 📈 I’ve had a look into the punctuality and cancellation statistics for Northern and Transpennine Express (TPE) as my recent experiences suggested things might have got better – from a low base back in 2022 as pictured! Short 🧵 1/7

And now we’re back to the trope of the mythical wild African. Was only a matter of time..

Police and crime commissioners to be abolished, government to announce

Murder at the BBC, by @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social is well worth your time. Not least the Prescott-focused footnote. open.substack.com/pub/davidaar... [The snippet below, from the main piece, particularly caught my eye.]

X is in clear + systemic breach of its legal duties in the UK to remove unlawful content from its platform. Proof: when X users abuse + harass others with the racial slur "paki", X reporting system defends the racist abuse in more than 90% of cases reported. A new thread documenting this.

Good piece by David Aaronovitch on the Prescott dossier: observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Big piece on how the UK is not getting the data it needs and how this is affecting policymaking. A key issue seems to be that the shift from surveys to admin data has not worked well as govt departments have not allowed the ONS access to the data it needs on.ft.com/3WSCN6h

What on earth is this nonsense from a Blue Labour MP? What, you want a policy targeting zero illness, no full time caring responsibilities, no skills mismatches or career breaks and you think we should heavily crack down on migration until we get there? Just not serious policy/politics.

A good example of someone using "economically inactive" to mean "available for work but choosing not to" and forgetting it covers students, early retirees, carers, severely disabled people, parents with very young children etc...

This is an appalling judgment to read. Two Chief Constables found in contempt of court for misleading the court about the existence of video footage. But this was only discovered when the matter made it to the Court of Appeal. Incredible perseverance. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWC...

In my field we have a special cartoon for ours. Not shown: the hackers who have compromised the repo and backdoored the package.

Back in the day (~2010ish), I was involved in turning a scholarly journal from closed to open access. So it's interesting and encouraging to read this report by @theblochian.bsky.social: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

Read this alongside Reeves' inability to make a coherent case for her policies and the BBC's atrocious journalism (of which the editing of Trump's speech is but one example) and we have a picture of a political culture characterised by plain technical incompetence.

It remains astonishing how ably the modern British and French political classes, despite the *absolutely constant* banging-on about their countries' respective uniqueness, are both propelling their electorates towards choosing fascists, through essentially identical failure-cascades.

No 10 briefs to embarrass Streeting, knowing he’s on the media round Streeting excels at morning round, embarrassing No 10 Another triumph

Back in the day (~2010ish), I was involved in turning a scholarly journal from closed to open access. So it's interesting and encouraging to read this report by @theblochian.bsky.social: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

Intelligent question: what, if any, social democratic policies might rejuvenate the economy & defeat the far right? Stupid question: should Streeting replace Starmer? The fact that the political class are discussing one rather than the other is the problem.

Very interesting and informative

An impassioned and convincing piece by @lewisgiodall.com: substack.com/@lewisgoodal...

PSA: tips to protect yourself from scams on Signal. Every major comms platform has to contend w phishing, impersonation, & scams. Sadly. Signal is major, and as we've grown we've heard about more of these attacks--scammy people pretending to be something or someone to trick and abuse others. 1/

To defend the government for a moment, this isn’t a “we’ve found a cool £10bn and want to spend it in a crazy fashion”, this is a “our reasoning for not spending £10bn might have been wrong and we need to do it again” one.

Informative thread:

On the benefits of Park Run. By David Taylor-Gooby in @bylinetimes.bsky.social: northeastbylines.co.uk/lifestyle/he...

A thread that cuts through:

Read about our #GetTheNationLearning award winners in @feweek.bsky.social! 🏆 And discover their stories in full on our website: getthenationlearning.org.uk/award-winners/

I’ve walked into a parallel universe where Farage of all people is accusing the BBC of bias and electoral interference. Yes, that’s the same Farage to whom the BBC has relentlessly given a platform.

So David Yelland is pretty much saying that Robbie Gibb both procured the Prescott report and then deliberately leaked it It’s hard to see how on ANY basis Gibb can continue

excoriating Observer editorial on the BBC departures observer.co.uk/opinion-and-...

A thread that cuts through:

Seeing so many posts about who “Starmer and Nandy” will appoint as director general. Easy mistake but the government does not appoint the director general! The BBC board, whose members are appointed for rolling terms by the culture secretary, appoints the director general.

“Heat pumps are superior in efficiency to condensing boilers, even if the heat pumps are powered by electricity from a power station burning natural gas.” Not me saying that but the late Prof Sir David MacKay. More in my @carbonbrief.org article 👇 interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/he...

Kind of familiar. Isn't it.

It’s ironic but predictable that the BBC duo -who tried so hard to please the right wing papers-are removed by the right wing papers.

Excellent and courageous investigative journalism. The fact that it is (apparently) legal to do this to people is utterly disgusting.

www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/sometimes-it... I wrote last week about two villains and one hero in the battle between truth and lies. Well here’s another hero - the Sheffield Tribune, one of the Mill stable of independent news sites, had the courage to publish an important story despite legal threats..

I'm so, so sick of hearing about immigration. It's like a foghorn 24/7. On the news. In the papers. In the shops and the pub. In the coffee shop. For God's sake just knock it off - yeah it's important, but it's not the only or even the main thing going on. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Interesting LRB piece by @morganj0nes.bsky.social highlighting the different, but in each case confident, approaches to migration taken by social democrats in Spain (embrace it) & Denmark (be hard on it) www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc.... [Sadly, UK Labour seems unconfidently poised to emulate Denmark.]

As Stephen says, this is an incredible line. The previous government cut National Insurance by 4p and had future spending plans that the independent forecaster basically called fictional! They seem to have expected reality to be more respectful of their manifesto.

Interesting LRB piece by @morganj0nes.bsky.social highlighting the different, but in each case confident, approaches to migration taken by social democrats in Spain (embrace it) & Denmark (be hard on it) www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc.... [Sadly, UK Labour seems unconfidently poised to emulate Denmark.]

You're gonna be unpopular. Be unpopular because you're fixing things, not because you aren't.