It's Blue Labour and Reform that are tearing the country apart, by weaponizing the issue of asylum. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

June: ‘We’re an island of strangers’ September: ‘We’re in a fight for the soul of the nation’ November: ‘No residency for 20 years and we’ll take the family heirlooms that are all you have from the homes you fled’

When you go to Auschwitz they have piles of jewellery and watches which were confiscated from those arriving.

I've written to my (Labour) MP. This is abhorrent, and the Labour Party won't see a vote from me again.

Mayor Khan rejecting the racist undertones (and sometimes overtones) of the rhetorical attacks on London today. It remains a fantastic city and it's safer in many ways than it has been for decades. The fact it's led by a liberal Muslim means parts of the Right simply cannot accept it succeeding.

one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard, not only from a Labour government but from any government.

Just wilful performative cruelty that is entirely out of step with the majority of British people. How many Labour MPs got into politics in order to vote for stealing jewellery off of people seeking refuge from war and persecution?

Hats off to whoever at TFL decides which poem is having its moment

Here’s what you won’t hear from some commentators on social media: in the year to October, London recorded 10,000 fewer violent crimes leading to injury than it did in the twelve months before I was elected. More on the progress we’re making ⬇️ www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Late to this, but if the Sunday Times is correct that Morgan McSweeney spent one and a half hours last week with Lord Glasman then he isn't fit to fill any senior position in government.

Israel accused of 282 ceasefire breaches in Gaza over one month - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israel-accused-282-ceasefire-breaches-gaza-over-one-month

Transphobes may be issuing death threats & attacking trans women & men, but they are also limiting the choices of young girls, supporting the patriarchy & undermining a century of growing independence for cis women. Or as a particularly foul gender critter said to me, ‘stop mansplaining’.

Transphobic ideology relies on redefining women as child bearers, physical entities & blank homogenous minds. No room here for the Marie Curies or the Paula Regos. Just victims of bogeymen reliant on men to define who & what they are.

…insist that the idea of woman is a physical one, a monolith, one in need of protection, one that sees women S lesser than men - reliant on men & at the same time sees trans women as a threat [a threat that is statistically significantly less than cis straight men or even the UK police forces].

…bodies? Would I claim that we are all the same to the point that there is a common experience that only men would understand? No. Because that would be ridiculous & I’d be swiftly told to catch myself on. Yet the trans panic engineers, the gender critical ideologues, the TERFs & the transphobes…

… this is patriarchy. Then with a final smirk the message is ‘only a real woman would understand’. I’m not a woman [I was female for 6 weeks as an embryo] so I ask would I turn to a room full of men? Would I tell them they must wear cod-pieces, assert their masculinity, define themselves by their…

… acts of kindness by small children. We bring up millions of children over decades to be better than we are. But the trans panic insists on a different narrative. Women must look like 1950s Hollywood starlets, every woman has the same experience, every woman is a victim. This is not feminism…

…guardians. There’s also the thing we drill into kids since the ‘70s. You can be what you want to be, there are no girl jobs, no boy jobs. Your sex does not define you - it is your mind, your aptitude & your experience that counts & the ability to have empathy & be kind. And I have seen awesome …

… & we identify where the kid has aptitudes. In fact the strongest memory I have of teaching & being taught as a child is the idea of justice. The battle cry of a mob of 7y olds is ‘that’s not fair’. Justice is a rigorously calibrated instrument in the eyes of children. That’s how we want it as…

These ideas are so central to society that we teach kids not to judge by looks, but by behaviour. Furthermore we teach kids the value of diversity & that everyone is different. Maybe John is not great at football, perhaps Ann struggles with language. It doesn’t matter, we say, you are good at…

…decades of feminists, in particular, campaigning that ppl should be judged by their brains, not their physicality. That beauty standards have no place in a meritocracy, it’s the aesthetic genius of the mind, not the waist. Women are more than big breasts; men more than rippling biceps.

i want to put this in front of conservative pundits who defended this raid bsky.app/profile/raws...

Palestinian coalition rejects US new colonialism plan for Gaza - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-coalition-rejects-new-colonialism-proposal-us

My granddad was a refugee, my wife, our close friends and those of our kids are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Do ministers ever think about the message their rhetoric on "handouts" and "golden tickets" for migrants sends about whether this is a government for people like us?

Tony Vaughan MP who needs to make the case for control (and compassion) in his Folkestone constituency in Kent says the government should rethink its rhetoric and policy on removing people granted refugee status here

If Shabana Mahmood wants to talk about what's 'tearing Britain apart', let's start with billionaire tax evasion, the cost of living crisis, overflowing prisons, sewage spilling into rivers and streets full of people sleeping rough

@owenjones.bsky.social has every right to express this. He predicted, and kept on predicting, that Starmer would fail. He was right, yet still some in the Labour Party, the Guardian, Independent & other “centrists” seem to think otherwise. Centrism is dead. Good riddance.

Interesting to see so many great British patriots right now begging an American president to bankrupt one of Britain’s last remaining truly national institutions.

Someone should ask Starmer and Mahmood whether they think the Kindertransport, for example, should have been a return ticket. Whether Alf Dubs, rather than becoming a Labour MP and now Lord, ought to have been sent back with his family to Czechoslovakia once it was liberated from German rule.

Congratulations to Labour who have won the coveted Tommy Robinson endorsement. Excited for sensibles to explain to me why I have to vote for the people enacting actual fascist policy.

*the Overton window is how left or right wing a society moves. Here Irish extremist Robinson is delighted that Labour politics is the same as his politics. He is far right & a much convicted criminal. Current far right demands include ending asylum for refugees, transphobia & Islamophobia

It’s easy to dismiss LGBTQ ppl when they describe a govt as fascist, or far right. After all, as one Irish paper put it, we’re always ‘dramatic’. Is it as easy when the UK’s most infamous far right criminal says it*? UK Labour = Fascism

“on article 8 of the ECHR in particular the right to family life ..we want to constrain in legislation the way that that is applied in immigration cases” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood tells Sky’s Trevor Philips Who would have imagined we would ever hear this from a Labour government

You would think so. But Trump doesn’t expect to get to court. It’s a shake-down. He’ll tell Starmer to instruct the BBC to settle or he’ll increase tariffs on something. The RW press will carry on baying for blood and Starmer’s a coward and will cave. As he’s done every time so far.

Trying to imagine what this policy would have meant for my grandfather and his friends, facing the constant uncertainty of when and whether they would have been deported, after fighting to save this country from the Nazis

Wes Streeting accused of ‘chaotic and incoherent approach’ to NHS reform

As a Londoner (with familial roots back to the 19th century), I’m finding it *extremely* difficult not to take the co-ordinated right-wing defamation of my home VERY personally, so the other social media apps are now intolerable. London is not perfect, but it is a beacon of multicultural hope.

On Trans Awareness Week, we recognise and celebrate the contributions of trans and non-binary people to our society — as well as recommitting ourselves to ensuring they can live in peace and dignity, with proper access to basic rights, healthcare and culture.

The levy on foreign students is an export tax. Has anyone in government wondered why countries don't usually impose export taxes?

Legend says that Robert Kirk was taken away by the fairies, in revenge for revealing their secrets. A relative had the chance to rescue him but failed at the last minute, & Kirk was lost forever. A later minister at Aberfoyle, Rev. Patrick Graham, tells the story in his SKETCHES OF PERTHSHIRE (1812)

“These Siths or Fairies… are said to be of middle nature between Man & Angel… somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud” Robert Kirk’s SECRET COMMONWEALTH OF ELVES, FAUNS & FAIRIES (c.1691) sought to unify the natural & supernatural worlds #BookWormSat #C17 www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2016/12/the-...

This is exactly what they're saying

Can we please talk frankly about the thousands of people losing their jobs after enduring chaos and stress for months because of Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer’s actions? Because I can’t see a *single* media outlet covering this… 🚨 open.substack.com/pub/jujuliag...

Indeed, he did.

This millimetre-size robot from @ethz.ch can be steered around the body in real time using magnetic fields. Once it arrives at a blockage or tumour, it delivers its cargo of drug and dissolves. So far only in pigs and sheep; human trials are next. My story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Priorities.

I cannot begin to properly articulate how upsetting it is to have had people baselessly accuse trans people of being groomers and pedophiles only for it to come out that they were deliberately doing this as part of a project to provide cover to actual groomers and pedophiles in positions of power

Thatcher's government did this with Section 28, banned the "promotion of homosexuality" as a danger to children, while actively protecting Jimmy Savile and who knows how many other pedophiles. It's the same damn playbook.

BREAKING: President Trump to imminently strike Venezuela to distract from the whole paedophile thing x

British-Egyptian activist stopped from flying to UK, says family