peasantry was so awesome that people immediately and almost universally abandoned it to work in horrifying factories as soon as they got the chance

Well, there goes that dream

"One thing is for sure – a heritage crime is being committed here and it stinks."

A perennial Q (for Biden and Trump recently) has been: Why don't voters care about the stock market going up? And the obv reason for me is that half of DJIA stories are "Widgetco stock jumps after company feeds 2000 employees to wild boars"

HEAD OF TEETH

Obviously there are a lot of reasons why antisemitism has become such a big force in US politics, but I think the fact that "socialist" ideas are so often transmitted through parasocial, online-mediated agitprop instead of mass organization makes the socialism of fools all but inevitable.

This (and the followup post) rather emphasise what @benansell.bsky.social has been saying about Labour being in the lead if they hadn't annoyed so many of the voters on the left.

I have a theory that it's been too long since an oligarch was, say, pulled from the wreck of their toppled, armoured limousine, dragged through the streets by a mob, and then nailed, upside down, to a gable post and left for the rats. I should think you'd only need one or two of these. Tops.

It's insane being one of the richest men to ever exist, and also just a massive, massive bootlicker

One reason why I have become fully subscribed to 'the phones are making us stupider' is the conspiracy theories about me used to be of much higher quality, based as they were on 'actual facts about me' and 'with an at least 75 per cent of the way accurate view of what my job is'.

Another day, another person who follows me who believes I am a really mouthy reporter and not, in fact, an opinion columnist. Yes, you are correct: I think the government should be pursuing different policies to the ones it does. Have a cookie.

A lot of commentary on here and indeed in the press is a bit like 'doesn't the Labour party understand their options for getting out of this burning building all carry risks?' No kidding, but have you seen that the building is on fire?

Sir Keir Starmer’s team was kept in the loop about Labour Together’s “indefensible” investigation into the background of journalists who had written critical pieces about the loyalist think-tank, according to newly released documents www.ft.com/content/9c56...

2. It’s also the 279th anniversary of Scottish doctor James Lind beginning one of the first ever clinical trials – the one which showed him that citrus fruits cured scurvy, which means...

Why Rejoin cannot be Labour's answer Labour keeps learning the wrong lessons from Brexit. Burnham has something which Labour has lacked- a theory of power. Something Rejoin would fatally undermine. Latest piece from me. goodallandgoodluck.substack.com/p/why-rejoin...

This looks odd to me. Two thoughts occur as to possible explanations: 1. The members unhappy at labour's immigration policy have already left the party in the fairly large exodus of recent years Or 2. There's something janky with yougov's sample

one of my favorite facts about the US coal industry is that it employs less people than Broadway

UK govt urges supermarkets to voluntarily limit price of essential food. Yeah, pigs will fly. Naming & shaming doesn't work. What about profiteering in water, energy, housing, banking, social care, opticians, veterinary services ... Govt isn't proposing price controls or greater competition.

Oh. Well, now I’m ashamed. Again. Super.

I am a footloose international traveler; you are an expat escapee; they are immigrant scum.

Billionaire Trump donor, private equity boss in line to make millions from Thames Water bid. Attempted to fund Robert Jenrick’s bid for Tory party leadership. Wants exemptions from sewage dumping fines. Will extract returns, customers will be fleeced. Privatisation of essentials has failed.

Both Left and Right of course blame Labour for our predicament, because Labour is mommy & mommy is always the boring one who ruins all the fun & gets blamed when the Brits balls up their country. To say it does my head in how scott-free Cameron & Osborne got away underestimates the size of my head.

I endorse this message 😜 [obviously @whstancil.bsky.social is referring to US "progressives" but it applies to quite a few people here who claim to be "leftists"]

The Uni paid tens of thousands to transport his cat and dog over from HK too

Very good on why the uk is in its current mess. (Like Wren-Lewis I think George Osborne is causally responsible for brexit - also Nick Clegg, therefore.)

I see you have concerns about your living standards decreasing and housing becoming increasingly unaffordable. What if I offered you a jerky bipedal robot emulating a dead pedophile before eating shit on the legal minimum amount of stairs to classify it as a staircase?

It's vile, but it's also just so insultingly stupid.

The governments plan to offer rapid routes to settlement for those earning six-figure salaries whilst punishing and making lower-paid workers wait appears to be based on the notion that care workers are “low-skilled” because they are low-paid - its an absolute disgrace. youtu.be/DI1arGGNP50?...

The Tory press blasting Labour for doing something they cheered when the Tories did it? Surely not?

This might be the purest Bluesky of all time

wHy iS sTaRmEr UnPoPuLaR?

In case anyone is interested, look at the waveform of the final bit of one of Starmer's (better) speeches. How even the segmenting, pauses, volume, pace, and inflection. It looks artificial. Worse, I can tell without listening that the speaker hasn't decided what he wants the audience to take away.

Let's not forget the '50 ways to save' doc published by DCLG & Eric Pickles that includes opening up a pop up shop/café, stopping translating docs, & getting rid of the chief exec. Boy these chickens have come home to roost. Link: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a797b...

Should we ban newspaper columnists from voting?

How it started: Ronald Reagan rips the solar panels off the White House roof How it's going: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is closed today as a fast-moving wildfire bears down on Simi Valley

to do almost anything in most of the country, you need to own a car. and to own a car, you have to have a long and uncomfortable conversation with a future Republican congressman.

Met Police will ask the CPS to consider charging up to 57 people & 20 companies over the Grenfell Tower fire Alleged offences include corporate & gross negligence manslaughter, misconduct in public office & fraud 72 people were killed in the disaster

Britain, 2335: The budget ceremony begins with the traditional Announcement of the Fuel Duty Rise. Two months later, there will be the traditional Postponement of the Fuel Duty Rise, continuing a ritual begun centuries earlier by Chancellors in the Fossil Fuel era

you know, I sometimes wonder whether there may have been some long-term downsides to a political economy that loaded housing costs and student debt onto young people in the expectation that growth would probably come back one day yeah

Everything the Brexiters said was bollocks, and most of it was hateful, delusional, bigoted bollocks. That we cannot say this publicly is pathetic.

UK Govt to nationalise British Steel, but not other steel companies receiving public subsidies. No plan to nationalise water, energy, mail and other essentials. Rail passenger services will continue to be nationalised but lucrative freight and rolling stock companies won't be Industrial Strategy?

In this parliamentary session Europe is the key to securing paid parental leave for all parents - share this and ask your MP to join me ensuring our dads and second parents have the same rights as their EU counterparts. This is the second video in a series - please watch the final one too.

I think two things can be true, namely that French food is overrated and that it's still better than both British and American food

the paradox of this is that if you have a personality that *doesn't* value getting sucked off by a chatbot, you're in a much better place to make intelligent use of a powerful set of tools.

The Spanish court also cleared Shakira of making false declarations on her self-invested personal pension That's right, her SIPPs don't lie www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thread. I learned to make a living from writing late in the 20th Century. My first book came out early in the 21st. That means I was conditioned to believe those who decide the books I am & not allowed to write are privately educated people in London. But is that still true? I'm wondering this...

No Lisa Nandy, that is not what wanting to rejoin the EU means at all

Sarah Beeny's Property Ladder, a 2000s show in which each an amateur developer would make a series of terrible decisions and then still somehow end up in profit, has been unexpectedly catastrophic for the British economy. Welcome to my TED Talk.

A gem this. A beautiful rendition of one of Coward's greatest songs.