Pope Leo XIV, the first US-born pontiff, marks July 4 by traveling to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to pray at a migrant cemetery and “honor the tens of thousands of people who have died trying to reach Europe to find freedom and prosperity.” apnews.com/article/pope...

Independence day A republic, if they can keep it - as Franklin said A short happy birthday post - emptycity.substack.com/p/independen...

I am actually incredibly angry about this and I’ll post about it myself later but the Clarion sums it up pretty well here:

For me one of Starmers biggest failures is not cleaning house at the BBC at the earliest possible opportunity

And also let’s keep to an absolute minimum any reference to the fact that Brexit and huffing out of critical data sharing agreements made our border far less secure. And that £5Mill Farage wants to now flounce out of the ECHR, upending our already precarious and dismal post Brexit arrangements.

Old BBC: The UK is a powder keg of racial tensions, most of it fuelled by a man who is receiving millions in funding from questionable sources. Shall we do a big inves- New BBC: NAH. Let's do another 'exposé' on a brown criminal who managed to deceive authorities and is running a vape shop. 😶

I'm saying that investigations involve the allocation of non-infinite resources at the expense of other stories and, as someone who consumes news professionally, in my view the frequency, emphasis, and prominence of Reform-friendly racialised clickbait on the BBC recently, is notable and worrying.

Oh piss off. Six people, that's hardly "sinister". Reform will use this to scaremonger, Labour will use this to push yet more hostile policies, and all that changes is irregular routes get longer and more dangerous, not that people with no other option stop using them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Absolutely disgraceful that BBC World Tonight is being binned under a Labour government. @lisanandymp.bsky.social @dcmsgovuk.bsky.social Asleep at the wheel letting Robbie Gibb gut the BBC. Let's see if Andy Burnham has the guts to defend the BBC and replace Nandy with someone who fights Gibb.

FFS! How long has the #PaperStabVest Lisa Nandy been on garden leave? Isn't it about time her replacement has sorted out the BBC, to remove the evident bias, overseen by Robbie Gibb? /s

Not before time, but why has Lisa Nandy done nothing with regard to the BBC and its increasingly far-right Old Etonian board, plus Robbie Gibb? Gibb, the "invisible man," is one of the most dangerous people in the UK.

Left: Lisa Nandy complains about a lack of regulation on social media Right: Lisa Nandy quitting Twitter because of a lack of regulation on social media Lisa Nandy has been paid an extra £135,010 ministerial salary for the past two years to not do her job of regulating social media and run away

It’s not lack of regulation - we’ve got masses of regulation - it’s lack of courage. The government, and Nandy in particular, are terrified of offending Elon Musk.

We get the politics the few pay for. #democracy - it would be a good idea www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

"Narrowing the purview of the ECHR might sway decisions in a handful of cases, but it will not – and should not – revoke the underlying humanitarian protection. It does, however, give political succour to those who see human rights law as a liberal scam and want it all repealed."

There do seem to be quite a lot of these investigative reports into immigrant community activity. Personally I would value a focus on Farage’s connections and backing, to my knowledge they haven’t done that yet #R4Today

The claim "we suspect many more" alone shows that they are not focusing on facts just their own assumptions. The disproportionate reporting on asylum alone is already shown to mislead the public about the scale of people seeking asylum. The lack of responsibility around that reporting is beyond poor

This is far from isolated. It is instead part of a seemingly deliberate pattern by BBC of misleading, and dangerous reporting taking isolated cases and claiming they've uncovered massive misuse of the asylum system. Completely ignoring the reality of the system in favour of ragebaiting the far right

Labour’s outdoing the Tories in democratic backsliding

News of England taking the lead against Congo has reached the House of Lords, and the steel bill

BBC asks General Sir Richard Barrons to comment on the SDR without mentioning that he is the founder and co-chairman of (UDSS), a London-based strategic consultancy & advisory firm Universal Defence and Security Solutions that provides military, government, and corporate security services globally.

General Sir Richard Barrons spelling out the narrative thats being pushed: the sick & disabled, kids in poverty, pensioners, they all need to suffer so we can have more bombs.

I, for one, would read an entire book about the New York Times ham-fistedly sanitizing the behavior and illegal activity of this president.

‘If, as seems likely, Burnhamism turns out not to involve a radical departure from the post-2021 economic bind, the case for Burnham getting his hands dirty doing progressive politics will be all the greater.’ @will-davies.bsky.social on Andy Burnham’s choices: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

❤️❤️❤️👏

Trump's father was born in New York to a non-citizen mother who arrived six months pregnant

Yes, as I recall the words were “island of strangers”, “one-nation experiment in open borders“, “squalid chapter” and “incalculable damage”

Asked whether he accepts any responsibility for rising racism and hatred over the last two years he has been Prime Minister, Keir Starmer's spokesman tells me that "you've got his words about the responsibilities of parliamentarians in the space of this debate"

It does drive me slightly mad that race relations have worsened markedly under his time in office, to the point of summer riots becoming a persistent feature, and he points to a record that doesn't even speak to the question.

Don't believe everything from the BBC, it's not that they're factually wrong, it's the context/detail which they leave out when it suits them, which they do A LOT. 'Farage questioned over 5M gift' vs '5M 'gift' from Thai-resident crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne continues to dog Farage'

Revealed preferences suggest this 37% drop in small boat nunbers (first two quarters) is treated as ×10-x50 times less newsworthy than a 37% increase has been. Given high salience of the issue, should broadcasters try to check/balance that instinct?

This is a big problem. If the last information people receive is always “numbers went up” because “numbers went down” is never reported we shouldn’t be surprised that perceptions about immigration end up so skewed. Media should take some responsibility here - this is a salient and polarising issue.

“For Burnham, there is a risk that even before it exists his leadership is being challenged on its legitimacy,” says someone from Public First. No there isn't. Find me an example of a PM with a working majority who faced any meaningful challenge of this kind after taking over mid-term.

BBC mostly reports spikes but now includes fall as context, after being challenged in March 2026 (when many reporters, editors took a time to shift from "visas down, but boats still rising" as often hadnt spotted boats falling too since Oct 2025) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Give this a watch! Edd knows of what he speaks and speaks it very well.

FACT OF THE DAY. 1 July 1916. On the 1st day of the bloody Battle of the Somme 19,240 soldiers of the British armed forces were killed. It was the worst ever daily death toll for the British Army in military history.

The month of July Juillet, Palais Comtal de Poitiers Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry Illuminated Manuscript on vellum, 1412-1416 Musée Condé ⁦, Château de Chantilly

Nothing says 'speaking for the concerns of the common man' like being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to promote actual gold bars

Clarence Thomas says the 14th Amendment should be read narrowly because it was written for formerly enslaved people. By that logic, the 2nd Amendment was written for muskets, not AR-15s. Funny how that kind of originalism only shows up when it's convenient.

Okay, so theres this:

Definitely depressing

Summary of the Home Office Impact Assessment for Asylum Bill is hilarious (if it weren't so depressing). HO analysts say "basically no evidence to suggest *any* of these policies will work *even on their own terms*" (but will probably cost money). assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a43e1...

'A Nobel laureate has challenged the University of Nottingham’s decision to slash staff numbers in its prestigious physics department by a third, arguing that short-term budget difficulties should not lead to cuts in areas of internationally recognised research excellence.' 1/3

So 4 Supreme Court Justices think that the constitution is unconstitutional!!!

I have to admit the reporting on it has had me confused at times. Obviously I mainly focus on asylum here, but yep, it is misleading of journalists to make out it only affects asylum seekers. I suspect there would be a lot more backlash if people realised it didn't, which is telling in its own way

Another day, another breathtakingly amoral, cruelty-is-the-point abomination from the UK Home Secretary.

My Daily Routine with Shabana Mahmood 7am: wake up 7.15: breakfast 7.40: shower 7.55: Think of some vile, malicious, dehumanising thing to do to make suffering people's lives worse, release statement to that effect 8am: brush teeth

Thank you so much for all of your happy birthday wishes. Honestly, I don’t really feel 100. I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m only 98!

The Trump administration just killed a federal program that hundreds of small farmers relied on to survive, and the damage is already landing. The program paid farmers full market price for their crops, then routed that fresh food to food banks and the families who needed it.