Despite many excellent correspondents, BBC News and current affairs is now a complete joke. And it seems from Chris Mason’s comments that it has a very thin skin. Ed Davey is quite right.

“The trend in recent years has been for the great majority of extremist-related murders to be connected to some form of right-wing extremism. That is also true for 2024: for the third year in a row, all the murders identified were tied to right-wing extremism.” www.adl.org/resources/re...

Buying a retirement flat for £60k and having to sell for £40k sounds like a depressingly familiar story from that sector. But having to pay another £25k in 'deferred service charge' (despite already paying a service charge) to the developer is a new one on me www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...

Shocking: less than 3% of private rentals in Britain are affordable for people needing housing benefit. People are being pushed towards homelessness and ill health. @RachelReevesMP can fix this in Nov’s budget by restoring housing benefit to the real cost of rent. Act now: bit.ly/3V1d76a

35% ‘affordable’, presumably only a share of it social rent, on a council-led development is really just not good enough.

So, the more candidates there are the harder it is for anyone to get to 80 except for the govt payroll candidate. Democracy in action.

Holding govts to ransom. Head of UK's banking lobby warns chancellor about additional tax on banks. Banks happy to be bailed out, take £895bn QE, £10bn+ interest a year on central reserves. Banks make excessive profits, must face windfall tax.

So much humbug about Angela Rayner in the right wing press. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of MPs, Ministers (and journalists and newspaper owners) will have inadvertently filed a tax return with an error. Her actions are conceptually indistinguishable from theirs.

Given how many grifters infect our politics, media and business I see no reason why Rayner should resign given the complex family position she has explained and the advice she had. There are many many reasons to criticise her and the govt but this is not one of them.

This is the enduring lesson of Weimar: extremism never triumphs on its own. It succeeds because others enable it—because of their ambition, because of their fear, or because they misjudge the dangers of small concessions www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...

Much the largest UK protest on Friday was a Palestine solidarity protest in London at the Embassy of Israel, with a small pro-Israel protest. That isn't being covered as newsworthy by UK mainstream print/broadcast outlets who are following the smaller asylum protests www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/pr...

I have not heard anything at all from government ministers nor the opposition nor many media outlets about the dangers of this epidemic of sweeping casual racism. It is sometimes seen as comical - as with Rupert Lowe and the rowers - but it is dangerous and dehumanising

UK Govt to kick off public-private partnerships in England. It is new name for Private Finance Initiative. Private sector invests £1, gets £6+ back. The state guarantees corporate profits. Nothing learnt? Govt can create money, borrow, do QE, tax the rich ... why hand free cash to corporations?

This is what Labour members think about the government's ban on Palestine Action. 👇

BBC covers small boats/asylum seekers almost every day, often repeating lurid gutter press headlines, and then we’re surprised it has become a top issue for people.

What if the wealthy disappeared tomorrow? youtu.be/YtNJN9fOksU?... Are the wealthy essential to our economy? In this video I examine whether we need the wealthy, their taxes, their consumption, or their ideas. And I explain why redistributing wealth could make us all better off – even the rich.

Time to challenge the cosy consensus about taxing and spending. Taxing the rich is the best thing to do.

Yep.

Almost every BBC news and current affairs programme, from Politics Live to Newsnight, regularly leads with ‘the papers’. It is a huge source of right wing framing on the BBC. The papers are commercial organisations that get endless free advertising on the national broadcaster. End #bbcbias

Shouldn’t she be arrested for sedition?

Shameful www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

How is it possible for Starmer to sign this and still not do anything?

Brilliant analysis of the pressures constituency offices are under as they try to mitigate the effects of austerity, bad policy and bureaucratic inertia on constituents. From Karen Buck @queensparkkaren.bsky.social , who probably knows more about all this than anyone.

I was honoured to be invited to today’s memorial service in Srebrenica, 30 years since 8,372 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered while the world looked away. In their memory, we speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and governments — including our own — enabling it.

Difficult to express how I feel about those in our politics and media who are more concerned about what some rapper said at Glastonbury than fact that, as a matter of deliberate policy, the Israeli government is paying mercenaries to murder starving civilians for fun. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great if there is a reasonable discussion on this important announcement on blue sky. The responses to Matthew on X are just awful and show why that platform is dying as a place to debate issues.

So much to like in this thread and the announcement, sensible detailed housing policies after years of awful decisions. But there are questions: crucially why only 60% for social rent? Why less than 30% for London? How much social rent is expected from s106 and regeneration? Not clear so far.

Rather than cuts to disability benefits and how to manage the decline in public services, this is what Labour should be debating.

Starmer offers ‘massive concessions’ on welfare bill to Labour rebels. Not so massive. Disability benefits will still be cut. New claimants will be hit hard. Consultation after the Bill is passed - So why not delay the bill. Shambolic. Tell your MP to vote against.

On LBC @zoejardiniere.bsky.social lists 3 previous instances where military aircraft have been targeted by campaigners in order to prevent them being used in war crimes, and she describes the govt banning Palestine Action as terrorists as an abuse of state power. Well said.

Keir Starmer endorses an attack which his own Attorney General has advised may be illegal

Don’t agree with Starmer much but here is the far right bandwagon.

The crisis in Sudan has become ‘a grave human rights and protection emergency’, the United Nations mission says.

It is of course possible to both accept Louise Casey’s conclusions and to believe that the despicable Tories and Reform jumped on a far right bandwagon.

The full report is still available on the @nfa-councilhousing.bsky.social website along with the presentation from the event which makes very interesting reading then and now. www.almos.org.uk/wp-content/u...

The best idea came at the lowest point for social housing. Still totally relevant. #shout #socialrent

Something to be proud of.

Fingers crossed.

This would be hopelessly inadequate.

Panorama: an exercise in economic misinformation www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/06... Last night's Panorama on 'Is Britain broke?' on BBC1 got nowhere near finding any useful answers to the question it posed, and that was the result of our journalism.

Like a herd of sheep the media ask the same old questions. Not a word about the assumptions, the analysis, the strategy behind the policy. Nothing about America’s or NATO’s role in creating an unstable world. Nothing about who benefits from militarism. Nothing about investing to prevent wars.

What an incredibly disappointing #panorama on public spending. Such traditional framing & one dismissive sentence on redistribution and taxing the richest - already highly squeezed says Paul Johnson. @BBCRosAtkins is normally much more analytical than this.

The consequences of developer-led ‘regeneration’. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Celebrating our volunteers at a community party today at @citywestminster.bsky.social Happy Hub with @adamhug.bsky.social, Lord Mayor Paul Dimoldenberg and many councillors and other friends. A real joy to give the first Barrie Taylor community prize to local young people.

Let me be clearer. I was former head of UK Foreign Office humanitarian affairs, incl policy on war crimes, genocide. I helped craft policy for international criminal court. I’m in no doubt these are war crimes. Disproportionate, indiscriminate, collective punishment by an occupying power.

As with many planning controls, ‘red tape’ gets the blame when the truth is strict regulation is needed because developers can’t be trusted to get it right.

Proper journalism on the carers allowance story. 👏👏👏

Councils have no planning and few licensing powers to prevent concentrations of these places. It’s a good example of how ‘economic growth’ is not always a good thing for communities.

“Unprecedented”. After what has happened that’s a terrifying thought. Starmer must speak up and act - end arms sales, end cooperation on intelligence, sanctions.