This is a very important story in the context of Nigel Farage’s publicly expressed - if apparently unconnected - admiration for Putin and other links with a regime that only wants to harm our country.

Is it supposed to be annoying to get set up on LinkedIn? I've avoided it until now because.. well.. it's full of professionals.. but now there is a thing I'm doing and it's based on LI. I have been through one tedious set of security and now it wants me to do another I don't have the hardware for.

Technically speaking my concerns are around the outcomes. I am amongst a lot of residents who feel like the implementation of the Regulation of Social Housing Act has not borne fruit on genuine accountability, and so am also concerned about the areas where landlords have lobbied for 'flexibility.

In this exclusive article, HQN associate @simplicitly.bsky.social questions if the implementation of Awaab's Law will be affected by the Regulation of Social Housing Act – and if residents should be concerned hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion... #ukhousing

I shall refuse this stupid card, and I look forward to my day in court when there's a slot in the rota in 2076.

it's *infuriating* to do every silly thing the home office demanded of us, go mad with stress in case we got something minor wrong, only to find out ukgov thinks my spouse is some sort of untrustworthy street gang and now you all must suffer ID cards as a result

it would be interesting to note how many Labour MPs are seemingly going out of their way to not mention that we have done, and do, all of this already. the physical biometric cards we had from 2015 *expired* under labour. what a terrible shower of cowards we have in power

I imagine Fujitsu has some capacity to set this up.

UK: pls can we have a crumb of affordable homes and non-cost-of-living-crisis Starmer: so you're saying you want *spins wheel* ID cards

Petition to call the new digital identity cards ID Integrated Online Technology

Not like there's any realistic chance of going to jail for not having an ID card, given the state of the courts and prisons, but there's no money for them, I guess.

After being used in WW2 compulsory ID cards were abolished in 1952 because of the widespread sentiment that they are fundamentally at odds with British values and civil liberties. That was true then and it’s true now. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Every single other party has said something better about digital ID than Labour. I haven’t seen the SNP comment yet, though.

This MP PR thing this afternoon seems bonkers. Just handing out £20m willy-nilly to MPs and places that seem to have no idea what to do with it. What if people in Swansea want to use it to battle the stupid ID card scheme?

I lose work by posting messages like this. But I'm watching America and if the people on the centre and left don't say what they're really thinking because they're worried about their mortgages, well that's where we'll end up too... And in the not too distant future.

It's also worth noting that Torsten Bell - ex of this particular parish - knew this to his core, yet sat there on the flipping tellybox defending NOT lifting it. If the people who do this research and lobby for this change then go into government and...do nothing...where do we stand? I don't know.

🚨NEWS🚨 £24.1 billion in benefits will go unclaimed in 2025/26 says new Policy in Practice report. That is 12x the government's planned benefit cuts. The highest unclaimed amounts are found in: 👉universal credit 👉council tax support 👉carer’s allowance www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/%C2%A32...

Nothing in this acknowledges the economic reality of why many brownfield sites don’t get away as housing: they’re not financially viable unless someone (usually us, in some form) pays for them to be cleaned up and made ready

The @natfednews.bsky.social response to the new Decent Homes Standard was hidden* behind a Members link, safely away from tenants. I still saw it & looked at other sector responses with a hastily convened tenant panel for this opinion piece for @hqnmedia.bsky.social hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion...

Like an hour-long televised Policy Exchange paper.

Ah, goddamnit simplicitly.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/k...

This is a power the Regulator has had since before last year's Regulation of Social Hosing Act. Where it got a lot of new powers it isn't using, either.

Certainly options for localised problems or smaller failing RPs, but genuinely stumped at whether there are quick/easy answers for large ones with systemic culture/systems problems.

share.google/iyKcBkpWoR3H... This statement by Bromford flagship apart from the issues that are different, is pretty much word for word the same statement made by them a year ago in our case with the housing ombudsman, our case is almost four years old and still ongoing. #sacktheboard

The govt could revive and reform the Right to Transfer regulations that enabled the tenants of Westminster Council to set up a CLT called WECH in 1992 - wech.org.uk It'd be hugely unpopular with HAs, of course.

They should be forced to transfer the stock to a more capable landlord.

Ah, goddamnit simplicitly.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/k...

Most people working in this area have known for years that DWP's figures on trends in out-of-work benefit caseloads are complete junk but have struggled to find more accurate figures. Ben has now produced an estimated time series and the discrepancy is huge. Nobody should be using these stats!

Wow, @raskin.house.gov's commentary here on Mr Farage deserves wide circulation here in the UK, and reflection by those making editorial decisions in our main news outlets bsky.app/profile/adam...

There is still time for residents, as well as individual staff members to put the Home into Decent Homes 2 before the consultation closes on the 10th.

In this article, Resident's Network associate @simplicitly.bsky.social encourages tenants to take part in the government's new Decent Homes Standard consultation, which closes next week hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion... #ukhousing

Now who lives in a house like this?

Brave to have made a private landlord the homelessness minister in the first place, really.

If MPs wish to be less busy with casework, they should change the policies that are driving the majority of people to seek their help. Better housing enforcement, restoring local authority funding and stop driving people into poverty with welfare nonsense.

Right to buy in England ‘fuelled housing crisis and cost taxpayers £200bn’ www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Racheal Maskell's speech during the welfare cuts debate was one of the few things that made it seem that maybe the party hadn't been taken over by complete lunatics.

Another petty counterproductive move from Starmer. Punishing MPs who stood against a widely unpopular policy won’t endear him to the public or improve discipline in the party. It just makes him look like he hasn’t learnt a thing - morally or practically - from the disability cuts. Because he hasn’t.

Maybe dehumanising and criminalising people through extra-judicial sanctions for - often structural - unemployment hasn't been a glaring success after all.

Labour backbencher Rachael Maskell tells Commons welfare reforms that would cut the Universal Credit health aspect would be a 'stain on this great party' Stripped-down welfare Bill will still see hundreds of thousands of disabled people lose £3,000 a year by 2030 www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

MPs and much of the media have spun a false narrative about tonight’s Universal Credit vote. The PIP pause has created the myth the government has fully u-turned on its disability cuts. But £2 billion is about to be pulled from the sickest and poorest people in the country.

This is nonsense. The impact assessment starts from an imaginary baseline incorporating reforms planned but never implemented by the previous government In the real world, the cuts that remain in the Bill will push around 50,000 disabled people into poverty www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

100% Hard Bastard

What about biggest success? Here it’s not a particularly cheery verdict from the public. Asked in their own words, nothing dominates the word cloud, followed by the NHS.

So much to like in this thread and the announcement, sensible detailed housing policies after years of awful decisions. But there are questions: crucially why only 60% for social rent? Why less than 30% for London? How much social rent is expected from s106 and regeneration? Not clear so far.

Brilliant news for #ukhousing thank you @matthewpennycookmp.bsky.social @teamlabouruk.bsky.social make it so @stevehilditch.bsky.social @simplicitly.bsky.social @alisoninman.bsky.social @martinhwheatley.bsky.social @tomemurtha.bsky.social Free at last, good god almighty, free at last

Not sure I'll read it all but lots of questions remain until we have more detail on Step 3: Establish an effective and stable regulatory system. Arguably it's already stable. Effectiveness is still very much split on whether it's Viability, Governance or Consumer standards. 1/n

The original reforms, that have now been battered into an odd an confusing shape thanks to campaigning and climbdowns, were Mel Stride's idea. Labour just picked them up and ran with them at first.

“It’ll take days bedbound to recover, but if we don’t fight our own corner, who will?” I spoke to disabled people fighting the welfare bill - and got their reaction on last night’s chaotic vote. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"People who declined to be identified because they were talking balls."

Expectations vs reality