Important to realise that one of Alice Sullivan's demands in her legal letter to University of Bristol is for the university to withdraw its Trans Inclusion Policy profalices.co.uk/wp-content/u... (the policy is already listed as under review by the university www.bristol.ac.uk/inclusion/lg...)

Christmas Day is 5 Nivôse, the day of the dog

Bristol in the news with a bit of lawfare from the "gender criticals" who seem to have deep pockets for this kind of thing

The lack of coverage is disturbing

Judging by the screenshots posted into my timeline (which, admittedly, dilute the beneficial effect) being blocked by James Austin has been an excellent thing

The immigration hostile environment encourages overzealous over enforcement because there is no penalty in that direction. But there are severe penalties for under enforcement.

I'm old enough to remember when @samuelmoyn.bsky.social thought "liberals" were overreacting to the threat posed by Trump

This will not have the political effect that this journalist and politicians expect because when many poll respondents are asked "is immigration too high?" too many of them hear "are there too many Muslims (and other brown people)", to which the answer in their heads is always "yes"

Looking on the bright side for Germany, there's a good chance that had she committed such murders in the US, Trump would have pardoned her by now.

How depressing is it that "normal" politicians can now utter this disgusting word? @stephenkb.bsky.social

I've been puzzling over this piece from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com but one thought I have is that if mainstream parties hadn't been "intensely relaxed about inequality" (P Mandelson) when there was some growth, they wouldn't be facing such abandonment from those at the sharp end now

After six years in court and a reported £1m+ spent on legal fees, Allison Bailey – co-founder of LGB Alliance and a friend of JK Rowling's – has lost her appeal against Stonewall. Bailie tried unsuccessfully to prove that Stonewall had caused her chambers to drop her for her gender-critical views 🧵

So many people believe in the magic labour tree

Unicorns!

For your enjoyment

Great piece, noting that ‘the political logic of “weakening the Convention system to save the system” is unconvincing and concedes a swathe of territory to radical right parties’ and the strangeness of ‘the living instrument doctrine being invoked…to call for regression in human rights protection’

This is called ‘Twenty Modern-Day Proverbs’.

The lobby has done such a brilliant job in recent years, without them (well with less of them) we will all be so lost .... </sarcasm>

I think that's Oliver! for the UK, so I expect 2026 to bring thin gruel, moralised cruelty to welfare recipients, an epidemic of petty theft, and a heavy dose of anti-semitism in the discourse.

If words have consequences (and they do) and if it is right to restrict some expressions and slogans after Bondi massacre, then must also be right to restrict some Islamophobic and white supremacist speech, given the use of murderous violence by the far right. But Labour are stalling on this.

"when you engage in a politics of cruelty to outbid those whose entire political agenda appears founded on cruelty, defeat is inevitable. Even if governments succeed in implementing “tough” migration policies... the far right will find other racial minorities to target, scapegoat and dehumanise."

Kuper is correct. Political philosophers who know Walzer's "Membership" chapter also know that even the most regressive liberal nationalists (ie Walzer) think this is a foul policy. That won't stop this abandonment of democratic norms and values.

Idly wondering if the Rolling Stones will manage to continue playing for 50 years after Joe Strummer sang "no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones, in 1977". Getting close now.

Quite extraordinary (except not) that the usual suspects (Telegraph, Times and Mumsnet) are frothing at the mouth about this academic paper which they describe as "pro-FGM", which it obviously isn't. The reaction being one more example about how culture wars make rational debate on policy impossible

In which I give an account of Robert Linhart's 1978 book L'Établi about being embedded in a Citroen factory as a leftist militant in 1968. It is really excellent stuff imo and I can see that @dsquareddigest.bsky.social and @sarahoconnorft.ft.com might quite like the final section.

Contra Layla Moran, it isn't that the UK government has a naive belief that Trump is trustworthy, they know he isn't. But treating him as untrustworthy would be taken by him as an affront and an excuse for retaliation. Hence they judge that it is prudent to pretend to the bully.

I took this picture of Joe Ely back in 2007. RIP

"Executive relief" sounds to me like a service you might once have seen advertised in a London phone box, but that was far more moral than this

People blame immigrants for their hardship > politicians restrict immigration > times get harder as a result

When a product fails, you write a long detailed email to the supplier and they respond 30 mins later saying that they've never heard of the issue before and giving a point-by-point lengthy reply (covering tech and legal issues) nevertheless .... I assume AI is involved

Here's what we get when politicians and the media, instead of trying to inform the public, chase after and flatter the "legitimate concerned" of the ignorant

Few things wind me up quite as much as having to argue against "1st amendment" absolutists who think that the US approach is both correct and definitive of what "free speech" is.

Some similarities between the schmoos and AIs (well, AI's + 3d printing maybe). But "the capitalists hated the schmoos", whereas they love AI ....

Languages with familiar and formal forms of address have ways of insulting and belittling people that are just not available to us anglophones.

My author copies have arrived just in time for Christmas!

Reminded today that in some English sociolects "Muslim" and "immigrant" are synonyms

Listening to the UK military on the radio talking about the need to prepare for war. Alarming use of "will' rather than "would" and much odious mention of "the nation" and "patriotism". Sense that some of these guys would love it. Trump's perfidy is the unmentioned elephant

It can be hard to know. When I wrote a long piece in French, I constructed all the sentences myself, but I wrote them first in the gmail interface which flagged errors of gender and agreement (entre autres). Was I "using AI"? Nice piece from @sarahoconnorft.ft.com

New post just out: "The Overshoot" Net migration is collapsing, and will fall further over the coming years. We could even have net emigration. What does that mean for the country and the political narrative as we head towards the next election? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Had my problems with GM, but he puts finger squarely on the issue that technocritical advocates of retreat to peasanthood ignore. (Their critique of modernity scores many hits, but you can't get round the fact that we have a population that is too large and too techno-dependent for their solutions)

Of course, if economic and social life collapsed, the process might go into reverse, and birth rates could be expected to rise again. But is that really what you want? For my part, I’m heartily sick of people who think collapse is the answer to anything. www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/t... 7/13

Finished. Probably the greatest book ever written by a Maoist, not that there's much of that detectable.

Since the online flag-shaggers are already obsessed by the dangers of “young men”, I doubt the Guardian’s “if you adjust for age and sex” take is going to help much.

Huge thanks to Sanat Sogani for this conversation for the 'Justice Everywhere' site, in which we discuss punk, anarchism, radical republicanism, and the relationships between them. justice-everywhere.org/general/beyo...

Despairing at the inability of people to separate thing in their heads. Everybody should be safe from murderous violence, whatever their race, religion, or political opinions.

This is why we cannot and must not rely on US tech giants. Amazon is among the worst but none of them is safe. They are all instruments of the Trump regime.

Citroen factory 1968: 3 levels of unskilled worker (M1-3); 3 levels of skilled worker (OS1-3). But actually, independent of real skill, Blacks are M1, Arabs M2-3, Spanish & Portuguese OS1, French OS2. (Linhart, l'Établi, p. 24) ... and people complain it is divisive to speak of "white privilege"

Salah in the squad, but on the bench #lfc

Shocking example of ideological victimisation at the BBC

Jason Kuznicki @jkuznicki.bsky.social preaching the true and correct anti-contractarian anti-nationalist gospel. www.liberalcurrents.com/they-were-al...