Apropos of nothing: God, The Holdovers is such a great movie

I know this sounds like I'm splitting hairs, and that's not what people want to hear right now – but no new anti-LGBT legislation has actually been enacted! Yet that's exactly what should terrify us: that so much backsliding can happen without our elected MPs ever being consulted

Hate to be that guy but tempted to say what do you expect if you invent a bunch of offices with no real power

And the people who do are generally more right-wing, so right-wing politicians attacking the banknote thing is doubly wrongheaded

I will confess I sometimes catch lunchtime screenings and take a meal deal into the cinema, though rest assured that I would never choose crisps as the snack

This is incredible youtu.be/pb7eWPEyK6w?...

Listening to a fantastic record this morning open.spotify.com/album/3tvEil...

Just speculating here but if your main reason for 'taxing the hell out of billionaires' is not revenue, is the tax system necessarily the optimum means of achieving your goal (which is presumably to constrain the political power of ultra-wealthy)?

Weighing up whether I should volunteer

It's remarkable, given our shared history and our many cultural similarities, that the US and UK health systems are essentially polar opposites. The NHS is possibly the most cost-efficient health system in the developed world, and most of its problems are a result of it being excessively so.

This had been rumoured for a while so it's nice to finally have it confirmed!

Exactly this!

Just discovered Alison Moyet tickets for October go on sale tomorrow morning. Thank you Spotify for letting me know. Hopefully I'll be able to see her in the UK this time instead of trekking to Eindhoven!

But the Christian understanding of Jesus comes primarily from Paul, and the Gospels were written down after Paul

Your own historical Jesus Someone with an archival presence Someone you’d reference

And a key part of why they managed to get gay rights legislation through in the second term was that Baroness Young – the Tory life peer who was the most passionate advocate of Section 28 – had by then died

Ruddy hell. This is incredibly powerful - well worth watching in full. No other comments needed. Huge props to @charlotte2153.bsky.social for speaking so honestly and directly. Just a awful thing to happen - and hugely impressive in using it to fight for others.

The UK's current fiscal setup both artificially restricts the supply of jobs at the lower end of the labour market, thereby harming the young, those with caring responsibilities, the long-term unemployed – while penalising aspiration and progression at the top end.

I still maintain that Reeves's mistake wasn't that she raised taxes via employer's NICs, it was that she did it in a way that was so heavily skewed towards the bottom end of the labour market

I'm sorry but do you even know what Methodism is

I would say I don’t understand the criticism for casting Beryl Reid, but I do (sexism), but she was great in the role, and demographically it’s only implausible if you’re a complete misogynist who thinks older women have no role beyond “granny.”

There have been a lot of apocalypse cults in Christian history, but I think this must be the first to be so bloody laid-back and jolly about the whole thing

Hemlocke Springs is fast becoming my new favourite artist open.spotify.com/track/2FcxFH...

Just seen Hoppers at the cinema and found it very enjoyable. Perhaps not up there with the very best of Pixar, but still fantastic.

If Axel Springer owning the Telegraph finally gives the UK a pro-EU ultra-right it will be low-key hilarious ngl

The evidence base for comprehensive education is stronger than possibly any other area of public policy in the UK, yet right-wingers consistently refuse to believe it because of vibes

The irony is that lots of workplaces have lanyards in order to satisfy safeguarding requirements legislated for by the same politicians who are now deriding them

From my experience, having only 2 scans during pregnancy (20 weeks before due date!) increases risk of something unforeseen becoming clear during labour. This would lead to *both* more c-sections (emergency) and a higher n. of deaths. My sister in Italy had scans every 6 weeks throughout pregnancy.

For the avoidance of doubt, this approach pre-supposes my party adopting a more realistic fiscal strategy. We're nowhere near as delusional as the Greens but we're still a considerable distance from where we need to be.

My approach would be something like 'I have a huge amount of respect for the Greens and share many of their aspirations. I admire their commitment to social justice. But I've looked at their economic plans and they're just not realistic. Likewise I think they're naïve about our country's defence.'

I've long thought that, for the median voter, it would be best to set a moderately high annual net migration target (somewhere in the range of 200k to 500k) and then plan for how you deliver that. That way you can increase confidence in govt and create a sense of stability and predictability.

It's worse than that. Mahmood genuinely believes that what she's doing is progressive.

In hindsight I think deliverism was a rhetorical scam, it’s purpose was to make it look like it was in fine, sensible and even smart for a leader and political operation to not have a clear political project and governing ideology

For a long time MH services did not screen for autism at all and because autism is, by it's nature, something that leaves people highly dysregulated in certain circs autistic people were at high risk of being misdiagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia.

Exactly. Had I been diagnosed correctly in my teens or twenties I would not have been put on a high dose of mood stabilisers for years which *only* made me more dangerously depressed and less functional.

Hard not to see the parallels with anti-trans rhetoric here, sadly

This is interesting – but also quite hard for me to read, as someone who was diagnosed with Asperger's at the age of 17. I wonder what her younger colleagues think. www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

You can tell I'm an Englishman because at the first sign of sunshine I feel compelled to wear shorts

The whole reason Labour broke through in the first place against the Liberals was that it was able to pick up votes from both progressive *and* socially conservative working class people (those in unionised industries, at least).

Yes exactly! I've taken to viewing this government as being the product of the dying convulsions of that tendency. The electoral map has been moving decisively against them for the past decade, and deep down I think they know this is basically the last chance they're going to get to be in power.

Is this another example of the MoD cult of gold-plated, bespoke procurement over generic, replicable stuff?

A revisionist idea that I'm currently pondering is that the post-war nationalisation of key industries wasn't really about ownership but instead about management. The British private sector, being so oriented around market finance and trade, is just not very good at management...

I've thought quite a bit about this, and I'm not sure 'shift taxation away from income and onto assets' is as straightforward as many think it is. Lots of potential for unintended consequences that would gum up the economy! 1/

I think it's perhaps more the lack of upward mobility for younger workers than it is *inequality* per se

I'm seeing lots of people who IMO are overinterpreting the economic left–right dimension of the Gorton and Denton result and not paying enough attention to the social/cultural dimension

Quite the opposite, the public are obsessed with getting all immigrants to integrate and become citizens and hate the idea of them still wanting to be apart, which is kind of why we never really got EU FoM in this country

The thing about Karl Turner's rant on LBC is that he doesn't have any substantive criticisms of the government's strategy. It's just 'why aren't you doing better?' and 'why did you block Burnham?'

I remember so clearly from canvassing in the 2024 general election that we were resoundingly winning the former group, and barely scratching yhe surface with the latter group. But that was largely by accident (of the Tories abandoning the former group) rather than by design.

On this point, this must surely be the least Keynesian Labour government since Ramsay MacDonald's? Of course they are spending more, but they're doing so in such a way that its transmission is very slow and which does little to boost short/medium-term economic confidence.

Political journalism in this country often treats Muslims the same way it treats white working class people – i.e. as some sort of hive mind rather than a very diverse group of people with their own views. It's so insanely patronising and elitist.