Walk home from station a tad more glorious than usual today

“Reform has the most extreme policy on energy and climate the UK has seen since modern science on the subject began. The party opposes solar; it opposes wind; it opposes batteries… Once again: Reform is largely funded by fossil fuels” Private Eye on the anti-thought, pro-corruption threat of Reform

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Yes, I believe that’s the point. 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

The Green Party opposes free zones. greenparty.org.uk/2024/09/08/g...

Is it the policy of any party/parties to abolish these?

The problems with theodicy become glaringly clear when politicians start riffing on the same rhetoric.

Reform UK wants to shut this down. If it did so, it would throw a million people out of work. Why? because it is beholden to the fossil fuel industry. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Memory of uninteresting songs for attainment of objectives. (I feel like this somehow ought to be cheating but nullum crimen sine lege)

God, reading about UK politics is depressing. There is a massive, coordinated media attack on Net Zero, led by the RW press (& accelerated by Musk's X). It is *wildly* out of sync with public opinion, but it is slowly working, convincing even labour MPs that the public is more right than it is.

Labour is worsening the already fairly dire issue of unaccompanied asylum seeking children being wrongly classed as adults. The findings from their own consultation into AI for facial recognition revealed that the margin of error alone was too high for this use. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Scrutiny of politicians in general is a good thing. If it's false, rebut. If you aren't capable of rebutting false accusations then you probably aren't cut out for high level politics. If it is genuine then it is fair game. People get far too defensive when those they support get scrutinised.

It's been proven again and again that AI tools embed and replicate racial bias. Their deeply flawed, dangerous decision making cannot be treated as accurate. To give these tools the power to strip vulnerable children of the protection they need is abhorrent.

My wonderful friend and @transsolidarity.bsky.social colleague Alex talking about the lived reality of trans+ people in the shadow of the new Equality Act CoP www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I really think Trump II is going to rock up 20th century dictator bodycount when all is said and done and all accounted for, Leopold in the Congo kinda stuff here. Just wildly evil.

Should be an interesting evening!

Here is the apotheosis of the insanity: we must burn through our remaining fossil fuels in order to "take advantage of #AI". AI can give us NOTHING that will make worsening & accelerating climate crisis worth it. This 'last gasp tech-as-saviour' attitude is cult-like.

Critical safety equipment in many train systems is vulnerable to disruption by space weather, which could lead to fatal accidents

🔴 Nigel Farage was paid £50,000 in personal speaking fees by two cryptocurrency businesses in October 2025. That same month, he told Reuters he was “not aware” of crypto businesses funding his party. bylinetimes.com/2026/05/22/n...

The institution of the Lords Spiritual is pretty obviously discriminatory against non-Anglicans, but the fact that it also excludes even Anglicans outside of England should surely be objectionable to any sincerely egalitarian British unionist too.

I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, and wish th' estate o' th' world were now undone

Polly calls for an early election if Burnham becomes PM in order to get a mandate for electoral reform and other things. BUT an election under FPTP could easily deliver a Reform government on only 30% of the vote, the thing Polly warns against!

this is why I find climate dooming so frustrating there is no point - none - at which throwing up your hands and going “well we’re fucked” is the correct response every tenth of a degree matters and can make a big difference and is worth fighting for

You'll need to go for a long walk to calm down after you read how the UK got to here on trans rights. If you're only ever going to read one piece on trans people, this would be the one.

Recall Doctorow himself said that he's quite happy for the term's usage to evolve? Not sure we need to constrain definitions in order to be adequately informed about the extent to which things getting worse is attributable to the profit motive. It's no less important when caused by something else.

"Britain has created a new breed of political prisoners through the systematic incarceration of people acting to prevent climate breakdown and the annihilation of Gaza" One of the most unforgivably shameful indictments of the current government. What the hell were they thinking

It's time to permanent bury Enoch Powell and his fascist ideology immediately. This push to try and normalise people who pushed this or similar agendas that seek division should be stopped.

What I still find rather enjoyable about the Acts 2 Pentecost story as an unbeliever: 1. In one cataclysmic moment of wind, fire and diverse linguistic exuberance, a bunch of illiterate cowardly fools are transformed into courageous speakers of truth to power, skilled orators and capable leaders...

Misleading, conspiratorial & absurd. The candidate wasn’t smeared for standing up for Palestinian rights, he stood down after himself sharing baseless conspiracies about the Golders Gn arson. The Green Party should & did recognise for itself that that’s unacceptable in a candidate.

🔴 Wes Streeting has said that Palantir is “absolutely critical to the future of the NHS.” But Palantir’s £330m NHS platform is “slow an clunky” and eight to ten times slower at analysing data than the current NHS tool in use Massive scoop on Democracy for Sale: open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

If you acknowledge that the richest man in the world is a Nazi is has all sorts of unsettling implications about the moral valence of success and the arc of society, so it's easier to just ignore it entirely.

Hm. If this diagnosis of the problem is correct, what difference would it make as to how the left should most effectively counter such forces? I suppose it's at least an important counterpoint to raise in response to all those who seek to downplay the irrationality of xenophobia or transphobia.

Obviously very revealing as to Labour's inclinations, but what power do they even have to enforce this? Aren't councillors elected with their own mandates?

When politicians say they can't hold corporations accountable, remember: they can. They just choose not to.

Spectacular new exhibit for the Museum of Cakeism

it is INSANE to me that none of this stuff is checked (as well of course being a fucking gross thing to post!) like I don't expect there to be some in-depth vetting for every candidate, but for a singular and very visible byelection, you couldn't even check their fucking social media??

Telling migrants, trans, disabled individuals who are having rights stripped away by Labour they should suck it up because Reform will strip your rights just shows you don't care about human rights, you care about your own. Labour is stripping rights right now, if you care about rights stand up.

The winning motion called on the CWU to “reject First Past the Post and support the introduction of a form of Proportional Representation that maintains the constituency link and in which all votes count equally and seats match votes.” buff.ly/pZxxq61

Also even on its own dubious terms I'd take endless unstable coalitions and legislative frustration over one majority of the cruel right. It bloody matters *what* a party intends to do with the ability to pass laws with ease!

Good.

This would surely make more sense if the checks were conducted purely for the purposes of informing voters before they vote - not springing a surprise veto on their decision immediately afterwards.

Unnerving to me that literal MPs do not see why “security vetting gets a veto on whether elected MPs should take their seats” is not a good idea.

In the light of the recent success of the SNP and Plaid I think we should also be asking ourselves whether current policy and attitudes to minorities is good for the health of the union. When "Britishness" is pitted against diversity you can hardly blame minority nations for being put off.

The barrow wights. Their recent on-screen portrayal really didn't do justice to the simple eeriness of this description:

Trump's special envoy to Greenland came to Nuuk with the stated goal of "making new friends". It does not seem to be going particularly well. Nobody wants to speak with him, the Greenlandic politicians unanimously call him disrespectful, and on day two he is quarreling with the Danish press.

really really deeply depressing that even in its dying days, this is the best the Starmer govt can come up with.

Graham Platner is sounding more and more like Malcolm in Act 4 scene 3 of Macbeth, except unfortunately he's probably not kidding about having all of the vices.

As @buzzbaum.bsky.social has been saying...

Consistent humanism means opposing the genocide in Gaza, AND antisemitism. It means opposing the US/Israeli invasion of Iran AND the Iranian regime's murder of its own people. It means opposing the US/UK invasion of Iraq AND the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It means confronting violence everywhere.

Love that there's an account here that just slowly reads you Hesiod's Theogony with a detailed linguistic breakdown of every line.