Oi. BBC. Many experts are not skeptical. It is utter bullshit and you should call it out as such. This is the MMR bollocks x 1 million

You should buy Lewis' book. It's very, very good. Goooo ooooon...

Moscow is literally "encircled" by Ukrainian drones. Russia has closed the airspace over its capital. Airports have implemented the "Kover" (Carpet) plan.

At the Nuremberg trials, Karl Dönitz was convicted of war crimes for the sinking of civilian vessels. This is not a complicated question, it's been illegal for centuries.

it is - and I mean this as a very sincere compliment - exactly what Paddy would have done.

Well I guess one party isn't going to have a glittering, unbalanced BBC OpEd written about their conference this week...

And with the largest Parliamentary majority in over twenty years that can basically put in place any progressive centre-left policy it wants with minimal legislative pushback. Boris' win in 19 (pre-Covid) was treated like the Tories had a legislative carte blanche with less than half the majority.

Seen a lot of direct comparisons with Turkey's 2015 downing of Russian jet. There are parallels, but some do ignore the fact that Russia was not seeking to destabilise, attack or even invade Turkey. That being said, red lines here are needed - even if Putin is looking for an incident as pretext.

Poland will shoot down enemy aircraft if they violate its territory, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said today.

Retrospective removal of Indefinite Leave to Remain from "hundreds of thousands of people" in the Reform plans is obscene. They talk about "preventing disruption to businesses" but have no regard for what this means for the people themselves, their families and communities which will be torn apart.

The Reform Party policy of abolition of indefinite leave to remain is supported by 3% of the public

Yes, you can and should argue that Reform’s new policy would lead to an economic crash that could resemble a full-on depression, not just recession. But you should also be able to straightforwardly say it’s *wrong*. Not that it should matter but: It’s not even bad politics to say that!

Imagine you're in a weird romcom where Paul Hollywood is your rival. Do you go "let's have a bread baking competition" or do you emphasise your own relative strengths? Because that in short has been the central problem with the traditional two's approach to anti-immigration voters and Reform UK.

Not sure about anyone else but with each Monday's news cycle I am becoming increasingly angry, rather than necessarily dejected.

There was a time, not so long ago, where announcing major policy to upend another party's conference was a complete no-no. Quaint times.

I'm reminded of when Sunak tried to raise the spousal income requirement to nearly £39k - there was as much uproar from the right, including his own MPs, as the left over fears it would make even people close to them ineligible and facing deportation. Notable silence from those same critics today.

Unquestionably the right argument for any decent person to make, one which extends and has resonance far beyond the boundaries of the M25.

.@SadiqKhan responds to Farage’s deportation plan “Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain. They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city. Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.”

*endless never ending screaming*

This is great

It was obvious when EU citizens had the terms of their settlement here retrospectively revoked that a precedent was being set and that, in time, the argument would move on to other categories of migrant, always tending towards a purity test of who is ‘indigenous’. Unless resisted.

I'm sure it'll pop up between "completely non-racist man says "I'll be arrested for flying my flag (among other things)" and "god, remember the Reform conference? Wasn't it so much fun"

Amongst all the grimness I'd missed the £234 billion number, which makes "£350 million a week" look almost trivial in comparison.

This is important. In Poland, PiS had to back away from the more vicious aspects of its persecution of LGBT+ people when it became clear that quite a lot of people with negative views on LGBT+ rights nevertheless found bullying vulnerable people rather distasteful.

really dislike that "Boriswave" used to be something you'd exclusively see being used by racist Twitter accounts but it's now made its way to the political mainstream, including today's Playbook headline

There'll be a lot of arguments in the coming weeks about whether this policy is workable, economic costs and legality etc. It would be good to see mainstream politics argue first and foremost that it is morally repugnant to en masse uproot the lives and rights of potentially millions in the UK.

The fact they don't have detailed plans. The fact it's ethically repugnant. The fact that it would be an economic disaster. All of these things are what chaotic authoritarianism looks like. As we're seeing in the US.

Did they have fireworks at Horst Wessel's funeral, too?

The extent to which 'mass deportation' is now a policy acceptable to be discussed has ramped up exponentially since the AfD adopted it as a policy earlier this year. With each policy announcement Reform edges closer to a position which even the BNP felt was too extreme to publicly campaign on.

I got a new phone with a fancy pen so this was the first thing I did...

Lots of people on the other site seem to not realise that recognition was not a reward for the horrors of 7/10, but a response to Israel’s extremely heavy-handed retaliation.

Err...

The annual festival of “stop hitting yourself!“ aka the BBC’s commentary on Lib Dem conference.

So while it might be a slightly disproportionate characteristic of far-right voters, one must also ask why it is a belief that doesn't lead millions of people who feel it towards the rightmost ends of the spectrum, as well as which specific factors (not this) only drive people there.

Which movie do you consider "perfect"?

Lemme be absolutely clear *every* H-1B visa employee at my (large cap) US firm was summoned back to the office from wherever they were in the world today for this crap. For some, it was utter panic. Appalling.

Chainsawing 191 years of the Conservative Party one gaffe at a time.

Why does it feel like this is somehow going to end in a US airstrike on a Venezuelan mental institution?

Trusted followers, does anyone have any experience with Nothing phones?

I’ve just seen the new orange iPhone in real life, and I can only assume they decided on that colour to appease the orange megalomaniac.

How do you deal with Russian fighter jets flying into NATO airspace? “Shoot them down” says Czech President Petr Pavel. Turkey did just that in 2015, and it didn’t happen again. Only now Europe doesn’t want to find itself in confrontation with Russia, without an ambiguous US.

Ooft this qualifying session is nuts even by Baku standards

Thing is, while Ed Davey has unusual ways of creating publicity, the Lib Dem’s policies typically have substance and are workable. Meanwhile, Reform is often treated as credible despite its policy agenda being two elephants short of a circus. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

i don’t think people on bluesky understand the severity of this situation. i woke up to literally hundreds of texts from friends and family thinking about either moving back home to india or applying to other countries for jobs. this includes me.

My general reaction:

Azerbaijan in 2020.