Just picked up my contributor's copy of The Cambridge Urban History of Europe, a MIGHTY three-volume tome extending from antiquity to the present day in which I am lucky enough to have a chapter co-authored with @cpdickenson.bsky.social on Zoning the City.

This! 👇 It is also a good reminder that we are not experiencing polarization but right-wing radicalization!

The UK isn’t a “soft touch” on asylum. UK asylum seeker benefits are similar to European neighbours No right to work before 12 months (it’s 6 months in France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands) UK settlement after 5 years (it’s 3 or 4 in Germany) Let’s cut out the alarmist rhetoric.

I'm just sucking up to a murderer. Nothing to see here. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Does he even own a suit?

Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest."

I remember a time (not too long ago) that we had the collective moral decency to agree, that if a politician spoke this way to a female reporter, that would be the end of their political career.

X, Spotify, and ChatGPT all down due to Cloudflare outage. Let it ride imo

'continuing to send financial aid to Ukraine is like sending another case of vodka to an alcoholic' says Orban. This might also apply to giving money to Orban?

Twenty years ago the default position on the merest suggestion of things that are being said and done now politically—in the US, Europe, the UK—would have been outrage and condemnation across the board. We need to get back to that being the default position ASAP.

Nice of Netflix to let me know they’re “updating” what I’m paying them. Makes me feel so much better that they’re actually “raising” the price.

Assistant or Associate Professorship in Public History with a specialisation in Modern #History- Aarhus University - Department of History and Classical Studies #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK808/a...

‘GDP reduced by 8%’ – Nine-year study reveals how Brexit decimated UK economy www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/bre...

The Home Secretary says "we have become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world" That is a factually untrue claim: the Home Office shows that the UK is fifth, getting 1/10 claims, while Germany gets 1/5 claims

Starmer’s anti-asylum policies show how utterly clueless he is about the right-wing media’s role in politics. He’s trying to fix a “problem” contrived by Farage, GB News and The Telegraph. He’ll never win, because ultimately he’s fighting a ghost – he’s fighting something that doesn’t really exist

Is it what a liberal democracy would do? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

New York City billboards are displaying the president’s 91 felony charges.

Donald Trump destroyed public service broadcasting in the US - it's little surprise Nigel Farage wants to do the same thing here. Trump’s America, don’t let it become Farage’s Britain.

Do the British people want Trumpism? I don’t believe they do. Will they get it if they elect Reform? Yes. Why are they planning to vote Reform then? Because few are making the case against Trumpism because to do so would offend Trump and the UK government is running scared of him.

Not the first to make this point. But there is a tyrant in charge of another country who is accused of being heavily linked to a paedophile sex ring - and supposed ‘patriots’ in this country are passionately willing him to take down our national broadcaster. Madness.

Don’t back down BBC!

From BBC website: « BBC now faces tough legal battle with world's most powerful man. What happens next? » Personally I want them to use their global heft to expose his role in the Epstein scandal, vote rigging and systematic extortion, to bring him down.

Asked a question by Kuenssberg about whether her proposals on refugees would mean refugee families being broken up, Shabana Mahmood immediately started talking about illegal migration. Eventually, she’s admitted that yes, Labour’s policy will break up settled families. Vile.

One third of the country supported the January 6 2021 attempted take over the government & are the same ones who voted him back in. They are traitors in my book.

Trump’s decision to sue the BBC is exposing the Rabid Right’s hypocrisy. For all their flag waving, its extremists would rather side with a foreign despot who shares their fanatically anti-progressive doctrines than with a British institution that most of their compatriots cherish.

We don’t need an Epstein revelation to tell us Trump’s a POS. Everything he does and says demonstrates that. It’s depressing that that’s apparently what it might take for some people to turn against him. Even more depressing that it’s apparent that even that wouldn’t be a deal breaker for some.

Yes, it’s crunch time. Stand up for British democracy or keep running scared of the wannabe dictator in the White House www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

They should hit back hard with serious—and responsible—journalism exposing his assault on US democracy and his efforts to spread that agenda abroad, including to the UK.

Farage, Boris Johnson & Rees-Mogg apparently plotting assaults on UK democracy with Bannon, who was reporting back to Epstein. Nothing to see here, newspaper folk… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Perhaps the BBC should release a tape showing what Trump said before the election about the Epstein tapes spliced next to what he said after it. Publish in full becomes only publish the bits that my opponents don't like. He wants his own sleazy behaviour left out. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is a statement I received from a Epstein survivor who is a Jane Doe. Share it widely.

BBC must say to Trump "See you in court - let lawyers examine your actions on the day that Congress was stormed and you tried to overturn a democratic election" His behaviour won't stand any form of fair scrutiny and it will harm him far more than the BBC. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So Trump’s going to sue the BBC in an American court? No doubt Nigel “Sovereignty” Farage will be taking to the airwaves to speak out against this outrageous assault on Britain by a foreign tyrant and foreign legal institutions.

The president of the most powerful nation on Earth is so terrified of the tales that an imprisoned sex trafficker can tell that he plies her with a comfort puppy and custom meals and is holding out the prospect of a pardon. 77 million people voted for this.

Can’t people just stop reposting Trump’s deranged rants on here? They’re all the same anyway—incoherent, narcissistic bile and ugliness.

Garland’s pathetic weakness and profound dereliction of duty not only allowed people who planned and executed an insurrection and attack on our Congress to walk free, it also paved the way for them to get MILLIONS in tax payer money from our treasury by way of a complicit, corrupt and broken DOJ.

open.substack.com/pub/robertre... Great quick read from Robert Reich Trump is a monster. He is an aspiring dictator who wants to wield the same power as a Stalin or Hitler, and he wants to be remembered through statues, stadiums and ballrooms. He should be remembered as both a liar and traitor

As a piece of academic phrasing, it is genuinely impressive that we have developed "they were, no doubt..." as meaning "I have no actual evidence but I am asserting it strongly anyway"

“If releasing the Epstein files would end your presidency, then your presidency should end.”

They’ve rejected the compensation claim. Good. They’ve agreed not to show the programme again. Why? Edit the offending segment, add a disclaimer saying the programme has been changed and broadcast it again as soon as possible www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

This perfectly encapsulates why we need the BBC

There are four leaks to plug for Trump: the survivors, Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein Estate, and the 1000+ FBI and DoJ employees he locked in a building and forced to remove his name from the files. Good luck, asshole.

Is Trump going to war to deflect from the Epstein files ?

Imagine telling someone in the past; living under the most evil despot about a political system where everybody could peacefully choose their own rulers. They’d never believe people would actually choose to put the very worst that humanity has to offer in positions of power.

I truly believe that Wes Streeting has the ideas, the charisma, and the likeability to be an even more historically hated Prime Minister than Keir Starmer