If rumblings about Special Needs changes are true,they'll place huge pressures on schools, in the absence of the necessary resources.Also, taking rights away & putting schools in the driving seat would be a retrogressive move: the Labourism of institutions rather than the empowerment of families 1/2

👀 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

This Times “speculation” had better be wrong—It would actively cause harm to children—there isn’t the expertise or infrastructure needed for this cruel plan. If it’s accurate, we will campaign against it vigorously. Which parent or school would back it? archive.is/KFcWB

This is really good www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Top read each month of 2025. Too many to choose otherwise(107 books this year) Loved discussing several of these on the podcast. Which have you read? Any thoughts?

Up with the clouds on Cold Kitchen Hill nr. Warminster today... quite surreal

Of the #books I have read this year these are my faves. Including @keithcameron2.bsky.social @johnharris1969.bsky.social @atahualpavasari.bsky.social JL Carr was a rediscovery in the lovely new Quince Tree Press edition. #booksofbluesky💙📚 #reading

As mentioned in today's episode - two of the extremely positive reviews that 'Stay Together' received upon release, from @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social at Melody Maker and @johnharris1969.bsky.social at NME respectively. Listen now to find out how much I agree! (Spoiler - Quite a lot really)

No.2 in a series #autism #AutismAwareness #thesmiths #Neurodivergent Order the book (for Christmas) here linktr.ee/maybeimamazed

One of the greatest Christmas traditions, thanks to lovely @rhodri.biz - here's the link to contribute if you can ❤️

One last Christmas thing. My book Maybe I'm Amazed is a 99p kindle deal on Amazon for the next 8 hours, so knock yourself out www.amazon.co.uk/Maybe-Im-Ama...

Happy Christmas, and thanks to everyone who read, supported & recommended Maybe I'm Amazed... along with the brilliant people who made all those events so great. This was filmed in Lynton, Devon

Maybe I'm Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs by @johnharris1969.bsky.social is a bargain 99p on Kindle today #affiliatelink amzn.to/44GQE3o

Happy Christmas from the M6 Southbound near keele, a veritable rave

Orders still being taken! Get hand delivered local journalism gift cards delivered to your letterbox before dawn on Christmas Eve! Terrible handwriting optional!

Nice to make a recent return to radio thanks to Kate and her excellent @darktrain.bsky.social show. I pulled together a mix to celebrate the Winter Solstice. If you'd like to listen its now online here 🎄❄️x www.mixcloud.com/katebosworth...

Joyous, defiant & full of sense of the times: here's my end of year op-ed about the amazing CMAT www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I love this letter from a reader on why “we’re not doing presents this year!” is often a miserable, middle class pursuit. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Just a reminder that there's still time to buy someone my memoir Maybe I'm Amazed - a Times & Mojo magazine Book Of The Year - for Christmas. Autism! Kraftwerk! Beatles! Joy! Order here! linktr.ee/maybeimamazed

And this is great. Ballard was a social clairvoyant - see also High Rise, The Drowned World www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Superb by @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Excitingly (for me), Everything Must Go is on the New Yorker's list of the best books of 2025 www.newyorker.com/best-books-2...

The lobby may be an imperfect system, but these briefings give journalists from every outlet, regardless of editorial line, a chance to ask whatever they want. This move is bad for transparency, bad for accountability, and a bad look for a government that already struggles with its communications.

Grim and cynical, not surprising

New Politics on the Couch! A conversation with the peerless @jayvanbavel.bsky.social about polarisation, digital divides and reweaving the fibres of social connection shows.acast.com/6462652801a2...

Even by my low expectations for Kemi Badenoch ‘violence against women and girls is something done by immigrants and nobody else’ has shocked me.

The spectacle of Labour anxiously waiting for May is going to be quite something

Huge new poll puts Plaid ahead of Reform with Labour and the Conservatives on just 10% each. willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/bombshell-...

Richard Tice here. The funny thing is, we'd like our kids educated in, you know, schools

The right-wing media vibeflation around Badenoch is noise. The Tories are polling in the doldrums against a world-beatingly unpopular government led by a prime minister who is detested by everyone except a few Bluesky clowndorks. Ed Miliband's Labour had ten-point leads. Come the fuck on already.

One ofthe strangest things about the modern Labour Party is that its ranks contain the U.K politician with the best approval rating, but this fact gives some of its people the fear

As the film world and people of good taste around the world mourn the sudden death of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer, President Donald Trump jumped to make the apparent double homicide about himself. Read: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

I wrote this about the rising sense of a)social media's decline (in all senses), and b)some kind of return to Real Life www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Armed ICE agents trapped US citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside, MN. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers. Every person present was a US citizen.

The "backwards masking" de nos jours

Help me out here. This is very good, but the bassline is a see-through lift of something I can't quite remember. What is it? open.spotify.com/track/67iFZL...

She’s getting absolutely SMOKED. Good.

Labour’s shift away from “immigration is good but it needs to be managed” to “it is bad” is a gift to essentially everyone they compete with, because it means that they don’t have the right position to be able to attack *anyone*.

I'm talking about protest songs alongside proper pop stars like Holly Johnson, Jerry Dammers and Smokey Robinson in a new series called The Sound of Protest, available now on Sky Arts mercurystudios.tv/catalogue/pr...

Columnists! People who make videos of their own heads! Do you know nothing about autism & its complexity? Never read a word about it, but seen something about SEND reform and what Badenoch/Tice said the other day? Top tip: Just sound off about "overdiagnosis" and get another week's beer money

Ain’t life wonderful: all these people who have never given a shit about autistic people suddenly becoming experts on ‘over diagnosis’

I can’t help thinking that when, in future, people ask what UK political leaders said as it became undeniable that US saw European liberal democracy as its no1 strategic foe, Starmer and others will regret that the answer is “not much, shuffled awkwardly, looked at their feet”.

Thank you to @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social & @leebrackstone.bsky.social for choosing Maybe I'm Amazed as one of their books of the year, esp in such great company

London Centric has got hold of Reform UK's internal candidate training plan for next year's local elections, where it hopes to make big gains in London. "Don't drink and tweet", focus on bin collections, and copy the Lib Dems' tactics. www.londoncentric.media/p/reform-uk-... (£/free trial).

What a great thing this is, correct version on the new Mondays compilation too open.spotify.com/track/45cXEj...

What do you get when you combine pressure on the public purse with a growing and sinister political obsession with homogeneity? You get a convenient new buzzword: ‘overdiagnosis’. This is a must-read, and a must-follow substack from one of the best journalists around.

Credit where it's due, Suzanne O'Sullivan states explicitly in the opening chapter of The Age Of Diagnosis that she is not arguing for welfare cuts. So I assume that will now get as much coverage in media reporting as her other views, right? ... Right?

This "overdiagnosis" rhetoric is getting too frequent for my liking. The absence of politicians refuting this narrative, is quite telling and alarming to say the least.

New Substack post from me... it's free, so subscribe if you fancy it maybeimamazed.substack.com/p/thank-you-...

Really worry about this. One of my kids receives PIP - autistic/ADHD with severe anxiety - which we use to pay a mentor (who we are hoping will support him into employment). Abandoned by the education/health systems. It's no surprise that, given the state of SEND/MH services, these kids are not /1