I remember standing in those late-Soviet lines as a kid. The Public Aesthetics of the line are terrible. And the Gas Line is the opposite of Kuran's preference falsification: a public assembly of everyone privately doubting the government’s capacity to provide basic necessities.

Which isn't to say I hate HS2- I literally helped build chucks of it!- but let's be realistic about what it is people! It's a project designed by a London-centric elite, for the benefit of a London-centric elite, and no amount of whinging nimby farmers in Oxfordshire will change that basic fact

The problem with saying HS2 can't be London-centric because it benefits the whole UK economy is the fact the UK economy itself is incredibly London-centric, by design.

People say i dont understand why unreconstructed communists side with modern Russia, it's not even communist and yes you are correct it is silly but also it makes complete sense because they if believe insane things about our past they will believe them about our present

I do feel the obvious way to ensure HS2 got built in its entirety was to start in Manchester and work towards London, rather than the other way around tbh

Watching russians fight for fuel at gas stations

in russia this is regarded as villainy, somehow

i will say you should absolutely read one thing by Pushkin and that's Poltava because it really does unintentionally demonstrate the sheer insanity that Russia has had towards Ukraine for literally four hundred years

"Russophobia" is a real thing but it's like "anti-Americanism" or "Anglophobia": those are countries that deserve your contempt, actually.

The National's uncritical platforming of a group who explicitly support Vladimir Putin is an affront to SNP members who believe in the right of nations to be free.

there is an actual trivially obvious reason why you should not allow the broadcasting of russian cartoons in the west and it is that the country is under goddamn sanctions

People need to ask themselves if they'd be willing to die on a hill defending an Israeli cartoon like this. If not, there's a double standard there you need to address within yourself.

Pov: you're a Lefebvrist and thought Leo was just playing when he said you'd be in schism

"Humza Yousaf is secretly a homophobe" is one of those racist conspiracy theories that will never really die but should be called put at every opportunity for what it is: vile racism and base Islamophobia

hi i was the co-convener of the snp lgbt+ wing at the time of the leadership election and have met humza multiple times, knew his staffers etc he's the only leadership candidate who engaged with us seriously, answered all of our questions, actually understood what conversion practices entail, etc

The rightmove listing to end all rightmove listings. If it wasn't for popbitch I wouldn't have caught this one. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/9...

Since Brexit, the UK no longer has a data-sharing agreement with many countries in the EU, making it more difficult to check criminal and immigration records of asylum seekers.... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Alternative headline. John Swinney urged to implement Labour's Holyrood manifesto which the voters resoundingly rejected www.heraldscotland.com/news/2624491...

Matt Walsh's new pro-colonialism "documentary" is worse than you can possibly imagine. youtu.be/tIKUpIuYUVE

The horrific Upstairs fire solidified a community's resistance against bigotry and hatred, finding some hope in a terrible event. Let us not forget those who have been lost, and in their memory, ensure that we individually do what we can for a better future. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuyg...

The lefebvrians being angry the Pope isn't authoritarian enough then going 'how dare the Pope tell us what to do!' is deeply funny.

A bunch of Maga freaks and French Nazis just split the Catholic Church??

They're genuinely proposing to get the skull calipers out

Yanks will say shit like this and then be terrified by Spanish easter processions as bizarre pagan rituals

It's fairly wild that we when people say we shouldn't hold Russian civilians accountable for the actions of their government because they live in a dictatorship- up until May of THIS YEAR most Russians would have disagreed, apparently!

THE VATICAN IS CALLING IT A SCHISM I REPEAT HOUSTON, WE HAVE A SCHISM

The 4chan sports board is going to be very normal about DR Congo beating England, I am sure

Ben Cullen, a leading figure of the "Raise the Colours" campaign, will stand trial for three separate charges regarding a total of 78 indecent images of children. I have only seen this covered in local newspapers, so far. Grim as it is, it needs wider coverage www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2624087...

Stop the War are mask-off Putinists. They blame the West for Russia's war. They use Israeli and American crimes to deflect from Russian atrocities. They whitewash Russian aggression. Our working classes and those opposed to imperialist aggression deserve a better voice than these Kremlin shills.

"Manchesterism" is the UK's new big thing. Unemployment in Manchester 6.5% Unemployment in Scotland 4.3% Child poverty in Manchester 37% Child poverty in Scotland 21% But Manchester DOES have loads of empty luxury flats. Seems the UK needs less Manchesterism and more ScotGov.

Pointless cruelty.

Refugees should not be a money-making scheme for the government. These are the most vulnerable people in our society, who already face systemic and legal barriers to earning a living. Cruel, callous, and xenophobic.

Anti-trans blogger guests on actual BBC Scotland podcast, getting weirder there this year. Keep begging for the licence fee I suppose

If I were trying to make a moral case about how refugees risk being displaced into the dark economy and exploited by traffickers, I probably wouldn't then introduce a £10,000 tariff to let them take up legal work and gain residency.

This is absolutely disgusting. Asylum seekers are banned from working or renting because of racist Labour policy, and now Mahmood is going to force them to pay for the accommodation they had no choice but to live in because she won't let them work or rent. Abolish Labour, abolish the Home Office.

The United Kingdom is a nation state made up of four (4) nations, one (1) of which was invented in 1921 and is widely seen as a mistake. The largest nation in the UK also refuses to think of itself as one, having long since forgotten where it begins and ends

I have many criticisms of the SNP's view or presentation of Scottish history but you genuinely cannot fault them on the British Empire front. They've been solidly anti-denialism since the historiographical turn against empire and slavery in the 80s and 90s.

JOKER: Not so fast, Bat-JERK! My LAUGHBangs will leave you BLIND as a BAT! BLUESKY BATMAN: Oof. Many people suffer from reduced vision. Not funny. JOKER: It's like, it's a pun. It's just wordplay. BLUESKY BATMAN: Sorry if I'm not in the mood for "jokes" while SCOTUS shreds our constitutional rights

oh. oh ok. as.ft.com/r/a1bfe3af-e...

The Scawdish Labour bods really think Daddy Burnham's going to bring it home

Dundee already has too much local government tbh. Bring back Tayside council.

Some absolute classics of the genre in this speech—reindustrialisation, renewed council house building, apprenticeships for all, rejuvenation of high streets, rewiring govt. My dear friends, this will all evaporate like piss on a hot pavement.

let's be frank and honest here: every time labour speaks of allegedly insufficient devolution of power to scottish cities what they are actually trying to do is undermine the scottish parliament's legitimacy. that's the real thing happening there

Uh oh. The "real devolution" to justify interfering with actual devolution argument.

Just give us money. Just give the existing local governments of these places a few million each to build some parks, or fix up some tenements or something. This will produce actualy, concrete results and generate significantly more goodwill than giving us another fucking election to turn out for

Once again metro mayors in Scotland is in the discourse and once again I have to point out the simple fact that no one wants or asked for this. It is being imposed on us by a government in London

What's absolutely, stunningly fantastic about this patter is that any conceivable thing that could be "devolved" (STILL THE WRONG TERM IN THIS CONTEXT) to local government in Scotland is *actually* already devolved to Holyrood, so this requires effectively overruling the Scottish Parliament...

no they do not lol

A key point in Fahrenheit 451 is that books were banned because they made people depressed and uncomfortable. The novel's protagonist, Montag, is taken into custody after he reads a poem that makes a woman cry because she realizes the emptiness of her life.