"In some places, French postal workers now pick up prescriptions, return library books, and deliver flowers. Last year, only twenty eight per cent of La Poste’s revenue came from sending mail." Services can evolve in positive ways to meet new and growing needs.

The community note has it right.

It is a discriminatory requirement that may penalise people for their age or economic means. Rather like how IDS made digital the default for labyrinthine welfare systems in the 2010s, as the UN Rapporteur Philip Alston documented in his 2018 report which rightly exposed cruel austerity politics.

Fascistic dream machines flood that void with slop -affective conduits for feelings that don't care about the facts

I’ve been struck by how the British far right is using deepfake technology — less to deceive about specific events, more to tap into fascistic affects & desires. This is really frightening. My dispatch from grim corners of the Internet, for @lrb.co.uk online. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

The objections to Burnham's manoeuvres would be easier to sympathise with if Starmer didn't do something pretty much every day that made you think "Dear god, *anything* but more of this shit..."

We have 80 on full fact. We got 17 of them done. 17/80 in a year and most of those 17 are pretty niche change with no vast change in living standards. fullfact.org/government-t...

I fully agree with the sentiments here. It would be easy to reflexively brush this off this as 'it's divisive cruelty from a fascist US president', yet we can't, given how Nigel Farage - who is in his pocket - has effectively backed these comments & Reform UK lead the polls: they must be stopped.

Someone sent me this recently and it’s so perfect

100% this. Nail. On. Head.

The truth is Farage has 'hacked' the political-media system so is able to fill large chunks of it unchallenged. He has twigged its need for gossip, clicks and 'column inches', and so exploits this. The media shouldn't be going along with it. They should be putting in place measures to stop it.

This is what happens when you use a parrot to do your research for you blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

The National Front had this policy in the 70s. And now it’s mainstream. What a time to be alive

'Doctor Who' has nothing to do with the world of private members' clubs...does it? A deep dive into how the 3rd Doctor came to have a London club - and which one - and how it was probably the 1st Doctor who first put his name down for it. clubland.substack.com/p/clubs-in-p...

A baseline is leadership thst notices and commits to useful action. Has this Labour government yet noticed it is presiding over the de facto decriminalisation of racist harassment + abuse? It has not identified it has tools to change that Civic society needs a clearer practicable theory of change

Reform UK now holds control or minority control in at least twelve UK councils. Early performance has raised serious concerns about its capacity to govern, marked by operational failures, cancelled meetings, and a lack of transparency.

"You don’t fight the politics of violence by quibbling with the details. You stamp it into a million pieces! You draw a f*cking line!" If Keir Starmer won’t even make a moral case against deporting our friends and neighbours, then what is the point of him?

#RIP Danny Thompson youtu.be/s-ZY4j-9NwI?...

Wonder if the detainees will get the treatment Kirk got because they’re fathers right? They had spouses right? Oh wait never mind let’s use the ICE agent who got their mask dirty from the blood splatter to talk about violence on ICE 🤬

Reform’s plan, which it claims would net huge savings over the coming decades, would actually cost the UK about £70-90bn over the next ten years alone, new analysis of official statistics and forecasts suggests bylinetimes.com/2025/09/24/f...

Oh yeah I fucking hate each and every one of them, but they can all get in the big tent of "Lets not build a fascist ethno state".

10/ Instead of centering men who missed the boat (and still don't seem to get it), let's lift up the work of Paulina Borsook, who saw it all very clearly and tried to warn us 25 years ago. Someone should do a profile of her very interesting life. And hey, let's drop some cash into her GoFundme!

It's got everyone in it from Paul Young to Young Marble Giants, and from Salt-N-Pepa to Chas & Dave. #IntoTheGroove, my new book, the month-by-month story of 1980s pop, out on Thurs 2 Oct from @eandtbooks.bsky.social. Pre-order from everywhere and anywhere, eg: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/into...

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s... danny wasn’t just wildly talented with one of the most recognisable double bass tones ever produced; he had a wonderfully disarming sense of humor, a dominant voice that loved sharing a good story of which he had countless. no airs, all round good fella. missed.

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Interesting The Hack (written by Jack Thorne, starring David Tennant, Robert Carlyle & Toby Jones & produced by Mr Bates vs The Post Office alumni) selling well globally after Mr Bates struggled to sell abroad, as ITV said didn’t appeal to international audiences; but perhaps it paved way for this?

I have to say that all those millions spent giving President Trump the fanciest ride in a golden carriage behind the castle walls have really paid off eh? Starmer’s grovelling backfires as Trump goes on the world’s biggest stage to rubbish the UK with Islamophobia. Notice no push back from Starmer 🤔

1800 *Disappeared*???? Why aren't the press asking Trump about this at every chance?

Deleted my academia.edu account. Really, after c. 2016, I barely used it & it had little use. I did a whole PhD & it didn't prove useful, whereas having access to a University library *did*. This article outlines reasons to quit. Pilfering for AI LLMs is another... www.alberthaig.com/post/scholar...

Will the free market absolutists who spent the last year and a half enthusiastically promoting Milei’s libertarian model retract that endorsement now that the U.S. is offering a massive taxpayer funded bailout for his government?

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

You can catch up with @philralph.bsky.social Keynote here www.linkedin.com/pulse/common... we will be sharing highlights and updates in the weeks to come! Stay tuned!

I have years of experience in financial services & used to dealing with insurance companies Believe me you do not want an commercial insurance based NHS

I see that Reform UK have said they will completely scrap Indefinite Leave to Remain for all migrants. On the 8th September I lead a debate on this and Reform didn’t even bother to speak. 1/5 hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025...

the Brazilian right is attempting to pass measures through the legislature to shield Bolsonaro and other legislators from the legal consequences of the failed coup, for which Bolsonaro was recently sentenced to 27 years. these photos are of the massive protests in response.

It was very exciting to hear Dr @jessaiston.bsky.social on the latest episode of the "Word of Mouth" podcast, discussing her work on the language of the manosphere. Listen here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #langsky #forensiclinguistics

I hope @ottoenglish.bsky.social will forgive me for screenshotting his short thread. It is just perfect, so much so that I thought it should hit it one single blow, with no scrolling involved.

Farage’s new think tank, the misnamed ‘Centre for a Better Britain’, is very clearly planning a ‘Project 2025’ for the UK - ripping up the Climate Change Act, Equalities Act, even the ministerial code A recipe for chaotic authoritarianism www.ft.com/content/2260...

Appalling editorial judgement

Probably my favourite Kate Bush song. The old band covered it in 2011, I love our version, video done by my friend Andy, who later made the Benefits video Warhorse. youtu.be/wwN2IPOp4xU?...

What's effectively happening here (in the British media at large, too) is the construction of "anti-racism" as somehow a "political alternative" to racism, rather than as a minimal civilisational standard, which in turn (further) vindicates racism as *also* an acceptable political position.

So Reform / Farage want to deport hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of UK residents, turning the country into an effective police state, breaking treaties, and impoverishing the economy and health service? Just focus on all that. The moral gutter of politics.

Excellent piece on basic income for the arts by Mick Gallen. One of the most talented and hardest working artists I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Amazing to read what the scheme did for him. www.thejournal.ie/readme/opini...

Fash overwhelmed by anti-fascists in Glasgow. As always, we're joyful, singing ABBA and chanting, and the fascists are just standing gloomily, not even bothering to chant or sing.

That was fast. This is also why you don’t surrender to autocrats - you fight them and beat them.

I heard it when Peel first played it, was immediately knocked out by it and got it on import. Kept off number one only (probably because of those import sales) by what was essentially Hatfield and the North. Youngsters, those were some times.

I’ve just realised that I haven’t listened to BBC radio 4 routinely now for years. I stopped the news programmes including the today programme over a year ago when they became unashamed mouthpieces for Farage. I was a lifelong radio 4 listener. I wonder how many others there are.

What a lovely write-up for #IntoTheGroove. Thanks so much to Tom May (@dreamcargoes.bsky.social) for giving it such a thoughtful launch-pad. Soon it will be out in the wild, and Tom here gives you some idea of what you can expect. @eandtbooks.bsky.social

Young Punctum blog update - it's November 1976, I am finding out more about my own independent tastes in music, and the music here (note: some of the links aren't "music") doesn't confine itself to the one year, OH NO: funthirty.blogspot.com/2025/09/nove...