I am tired of people saying that women who oppose the idea that some men should be able to self identify into the sex class of women are somehow jumping into a right wing (maga) bandwagon. Feminist women have been talking about this for 50 years. Lisa Tuttle's 1986 Encyclopedia of Feminism says this

The Afghan women's football/soccer team, who relocated to the UK to escape the Taliban's removal of female rights, including exclusion from all public life #WomensArt #AfghanWomen

'Edwards became a symbol of sporting bravery, overcoming the terror of the high seas and the chauvinism of male opponents convinced that her boat would sink before it even rounded The Needles ... but some of those honouring her feats on stage were frightened simply to be in the same room as her'.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/19654... Thread from the other place by Nancy Hogshead.

The Starmer loyalists - a small but noisy group which seems, against all rational expectations, to exist - told me off for this, and demanded I wait til Friday when he would obviously be doing this. "The right was correct, immigration IS bad," was not quite the line I was looking for, if I'm honest.

Nigel Farage is “endangering women’s health” by failing to condemn l claims that using paracetamol during pregnancy causes autism, Bridget Phillipson has said in an interview with the Guardian. She had used the painkiller throughout her second pregnancy. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The sheer parochialism of a tabloid newspaper pretending that ID cards would turn Britain into the GDR AT A TIME when a Russian dictator is trying to destroy the post-Soviet order of 1990 in Europe, and the USA is flirting with authoritarianism, is something to behold.

Starmer really strong and authentic here on defence in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Labour MP Clive Lewis' Robin Cook Memorial Lecture last night was very interesting... "Where is our government? Where is the leadership this moment demands? Where are the voices for truth? We can look but all we see is a PM fighting for his political life."

A good line via Neal Lawson: "Every compromise with your values becomes another bar in the cage that awaits every politician in the future. Build enough bars and eventually you find yourself in prison of your own making."

The Shadow Justice Secretary is setting out conditions for party candidates to stand, that is the role of the party leader. He may expect to be the party leader by 2027 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Billy Bragg on fire

After the London march organised by Tommy Robinson + the epidemic of racist flag raising, Starmer's response is to accept the premise that too many people were allowed into the UK.

EXC from @pippacrerar.bsky.social - Keir Starmer’s head of communications Steph Driver, has announced she is leaving, the latest in a series who have left No 10 in recent months. Driver had been with Starmer for many years in opposition and was one of his closest and most trusted advisors.

Surely this is just an innocent mistake…

While she’s like 75% correct (I did the math), I’d have a lot more respect for people like Suze Orman if even once, she said “if everyone made a dollar more an hour they could make a million over a lifetime and investing it” than making everything a matter of personal financial responsibility.

Starbucks is closing stores and cutting 900 jobs in a restructuring move. 1,100 jobs were slashed earlier this year. Reminder that Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666x more than the company's median employee in 2024. This was the widest CEO-to-Worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500.

not surprised. it's the same - or worse - hot garbage as most of the AI being pushed at us. Grateful to Mr. Zitron for staying on this, digging out the details and exposing this giant folly for what it is.

🚨 BREAKING: James Comey posts a video statement following his indictment "My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump...But I'm not afraid. And I hope you're not either...And I'm innocent. So let's have a trial and keep the faith."

A must-listen on why the attacks on democratic institutions are at the core of attempts by Maga to destabilise the EU, Europe and especially Germany. @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social @geraldknaus.bsky.social

Yep, that's great. Just fantastic. We were told that Starmer would lay out the patriotic case for diversity today. What we got was an article in the Telegraph, behind a paywall, about how the left failed to tackle immigration and now we all have to have ID cards www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...

I really hope the Starmer speech on patriotic renewal is better than this summary of it, which basically argues that New Labour and the Tories let in too many immigrsnts but this one is going to give you a youth club instead so please don’t vote Reform www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f9444c6...

Morning.

NATO is split on shooting down Russian jets, CNN reports. In the emergency meeting called by Estonia, Poland, the Baltics and the US pushed for a “forceful response” in future. Germany and Southern Europe urged restraint, fearing escalation. Final statement: no firm “shoot down” policy yet.

European diplomats have privately warned Russia that NATO is ready to respond to further airspace violations, including shooting down Russian aircraft, Bloomberg reports.

Ukrainian drones hitting Volgograd and Saratov oblasts and occupied Crimea. #explodey

Really wonderful evening at the Southbank Centre hearing wonderful performances of Beethoven’s third piano concerto and Saint-Saens organ symphony, plus a lovely new piece by Gabriela Ortiz. On Radio 3 on Monday and on Sounds for 30 days thereafter!

I see references to the 'cost' of nationalising things again, now Burnham has started talking about it. Need to bear in mind that this is the price of an asset that might have a yield. The 'cost' is the difference between the interest rate on the loan and that yield. Which could be +ive or -ive.

“Labour must grab the microphone from Reform UK and stand up for true British values” @lucympowell.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Uh oh. Poland has urged its citizens to leave Belarus immediately and avoid traveling there. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urges Polish citizens remaining in the Republic of Belarus to leave its territory immediately, using available commercial and private means.”

A German Airways passenger jet en route to Aalborg, Denmark, was forced to return to Amsterdam due to new drone intrusions in the Danish airspace.

Also economically. The argument is explicitly 'New Labour's economic approach was wrong'. Okay, Keir...what is yours? Do you have one?!

That joke doesn't work, but that Telegraph intervention - the fact they're doubling down, yet again, in a newspaper that hates them; what it suggests about tomorrow's bloody speech - really has me wistfully imagining a world in which he just goes "I'm bad at this" and fucks off again.

Another Russian official has been found dead in Moscow. The body of Alexander Fedotov, former chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Transport Infrastructure. Russians claim he committed suicide. He was discovered yesterday under the windows of the Sheraton Hotel at Sheremetyevo Airport.

The absolutely chaotic energy of Devon refugee protests continues, as it turns out that the local protesters ended up feeling sorry for the refugees and moving the flags somewhere else so as not to bother them eastdevonnews.co.uk/2025/09/09/a...

More and more such incidents happening daily www.bbc.com/news/article...

Our elders who’ve seen the pre polio vaccine era will tell us stories about those terrible days I got to see this iron lung during a visit to South Africa and will never forget

My art teacher walked with calipers because of childhood polio An elderly gentleman, paralysed from the chest down, used to propel himself along the road in an enormous bathchair. We who grew up with this knew why we took vaccines, and gave them to our kids: Vaccines cause adulthood #VaccinesWork

What to do about Russian drones and fighter incursions? We thrash it out @crisisroompod.bsky.social that’s just dropped - listen in t.co/luXewz0bIr

Hi #allergy people - there’s a new FB group for sharing UK based #freefrom products and recipes. Join up here: www.facebook.com/share/g/1Rg5...

Thus isn’t a perfect policy but it is a good thing and definitely better than the status quo. Universal ID offers many benefits.

This is a positive development as Sam says because Labour have finally broken with the demeaning, wasteful and divisive Whitehall begging bowl model. But breakdown the money and its £1million per community per year - that’s not going to touch the sides of the problem is it?

Great that gov isn't setting up yet another pot of money that councils have to bid for. Much more efficient to allocate money & let councils and local people decide how to spend it. Community power to buy assets & decide what the high street looks like is also positive. www.gov.uk/government/n...

This is a broadly good thing but a personal bugbear of mine is how everything is framed as "to take on Reform". There are other reasons to do good things! news.sky.com/story/pm-to-...

This country made significant progress against racism in my lifetime - but we did not do so by chance. There is a visible visceral regression in experiencing of overt racism because the toxic fringe with the most extreme views have a sense of permission & impunity www.easterneye.biz/racism-in-uk...

Quite. So many Labour people on this website visibly have no idea of just how bad things have got for ethnic minorities since they came on, and how their visible indifference lands.

This is a welcome shift but it should have been the strategy from day one. The rise of support for Reform is not really about immigration. Support for Reform is highest in those areas with *low* migration, but high deprivation. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

As I set out in this post focusing on the local is key to beating Reform. But another regeneration fund, while welcome, isn't going to be enough. samf.substack.com/p/burn-it-do...

Also frankly I am quite desperate! A party that’s at best ambivalent on the question of whether I’m English and wants to deport my friends is 9 points ahead in the polls and the current leader is floundering and visibly out of his depth!