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

NEW @phenomenalworld.bsky.social @polycrisis Its a Plastic Planet. You are poisoned by plastic, the world is plastic. @katemac.bsky.social & I asked @vbivar.bsky.social to analyse the fossil fuel industry's latest trick. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

“It's not just that I think that they're going to herald the rise of Reform because they have no ideas for governance…

Remembering that hideous Daily Mail story about Jews hiding their gold and jewellery when arriving as refugees. Of course they did if they had any. Would Daily Mail journalists and editors do any differently if they were in a similar plight? Such a failure of emphethetic imagination and compassion.

Excellent & revealing read.

Just another of those days when I hate this government www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I realise that I previously had some vague, weak, feeling of respect for the British flag. No longer. The “Union Jack” and the “Cross of St George” are just cheap rags that people tie to posts. Any meaning has been exhausted.

Strongly recommend (free) subscription to The Polycrisis www.phenomenalworld.org/series/the-p... Latest issue: Plastic Planet - environmental catastrophe.

Jonathan Chait has disparaged the NYT Contributor Boycott as an “insidiously illiberal maneuver” that abandons “faith in public reason.” He is right on this point. Antifascism undeniably involves—at least outside of dinner parties—a conscious measure of illiberalism. www.newarab.com/opinion/no-o...

… and themselves.

Notwithstanding McSweeney’s alleged machinations, the prospect of Wes Streeting being Prime Minister is awful. His being SoS for Health is awful. Change for the sake of change can make things worse. The parlous condition of our public services should be enough evidence of this.

Lessons to be drawn, mistakes to be avoided. The importance of contrasting the motivations behind anti-Zionism and the Right’s anti-Zionism, based on analysis of conversations between Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens and Norman Finkelstein. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

Events at the BBC look like a scripted reality show. This is how the cast was assembled, waiting for the act to be triggered. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

What?

Here are a few of the things for which Ministers ought to be held liable if they are foolish enough to ban VPNs: the economic damage done by industrial espionage; personal loss due to identity theft and data breaches; violation of privacy rights through data monetization. At national scale.

Trying to cover bad legislation with worse legislation : and tipping public money into slop surveillance to justify it. This government cannot do anything right.

I’m no longer a commuter and only an occasional user of trains, and off-peak only : but subjected to delay/cancellation on about 1/3 journeys.

Awful idea. Lazy, shallow, policy making. The carelessness - even callousness - with which our politicians treat education and the teaching profession is scandalous. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Been in touch with a medical provider in Gaza who says “this ceasefire is even less of a ceasefire than the last ceasefire” — nothing’s getting in, no one’s getting out, people are still being killed and badly injured every day

Of course, because this is precisely why they were put up and what they’re for.

I received this email about Democrats caving to end the shutdown from one of the SNAP recipients I spoke to:

It’s vital to keep reminding people, or helping them see for themselves for the first time, that Israel is a violent, oppressive, authoritarian ethno-state. By design. It is the dream of ethno-nationalists everywhere because what it does whatever it wants to with complete impunity.

The BBC shouldn’t be plaything of the political/wealthy elite. It should be reconfigured as a truly public institution; overseen by and for the public.

The suspicious may wonder if the BBC’s senior leadership is a part of the right wing establishment.

The populist right doesn‘t rank absolute improvements in their own lives as highly as they do improvements relative to their enemies. Indeed, they will gladly take absolute losses if their enemies take bigger ones. The biggest constituency of their enemies is their fellow citizens.

For (yet another) example: bsky.app/profile/edwi...

This is really important. The main thing that makes it hard to achieve integrated nature and green in cities isn’t density of buildings or density of people — it's density of cars. And the more well-designed and integrated density of people & buildings you achieve, the fewer cars you need or want.

Utterly chilling reporting from the Prospect and NY times on trumps war in the Caribbean www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/w...

“… society is dominated by wealthy mountebanks and literally demented politicians who are happy to take on all the risks of AI because it promises to create workers who cannot even conceptualize quitting, much less striking.”

This is an entirely uncontroversial view in international law and usually taught in 101.

“Julia Lopez, the Conservative MP for Upminster. Lopez is close to Uniserve – literally: her constituency office was on the company’s site, in effect, Liddell is the MP’s landlord” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

What happened, @nytimes.com? Why not stand by your original headline? Because it’s absolutely an accurate representation of this trash conversation. To publish this at all should be a fireable offense - but to publish it as women’s rights are being decimated is deeply immoral, bordering on evil

Highly recommend this series and this episode 2/2 from syriapodcast.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s...

If you’re trying to catch up on what went down with #SNAP late last night at #SCOTUS, here’s my attempt to read the breadcrumbs on the “administrative stay” issued by Justice Jackson—and why a justice so critical of the Court’s grants of emergency relief to Trump still granted temporary relief here:

Lower the maximum wage.

Biden knew that Israel was committing crimes against humanity in Gaza and then decided to keep US commitments to Israel, shortly before handing it over to Trump www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-...

"Over the course of the war in Gaza, the press often portrayed international lawyers as “divided” "In response to this misleading depiction, ... an eight-point statement that attracted more than 270 signatures, reflecting how unified international law scholars are on this topic."

Currently experimenting with these settings. Opening some up (threat, rudeness, hostility to certain groups) has improved my feed without (yet) anything unwanted appearing.

Shareholders of an epically overvalued company that’s epically taxpayer-subsidized overpay an epically overrated & unengaged CEO who epically underpays taxes while the U.S. faces an epic economic disparity, affordability & hunger crisis fuelled by that CEO’s epically evil actions. “USA, USA, USA…”

I helped make a film, out this week, called “Rovina’s Choice,” about the deaths this man without conscience or accountability has caused — already 600,000, ⅔ of them children.

The Trump administration’s military strikes on alleged drug boats are “blatantly unlawful as a matter of U.S. domestic law—and a quickly spreading stain on whatever is left of the executive branch’s commitment to the rule of law.” Me on “extrajudicial killings” in the latest issue of “One First”:

We’ve known about most of this for a decade. That use of extreme language and threats makes posts more likely to be shared has been known since 2014 and before - there’s specific research on it. It’s been in research papers. I’ve cited it in several books. And now everyone’s surprised? #Cassandra

ICYMI, good stuff from the folks at @cmmonwealth.bsky.social.

This seems to support Shuringa’s criticism of analytic philosophy’s use of “thought experiments.” Stop wasting time on the “trolley problem”. Stop taking rides on the Ethics Express. ( #thegoodplace ) podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

Seems all to obvious, really: we have to disrupt business as usual accretion of vast wealth by the already wealthy, and turn fossil fuel infrastructure into stranded assets.

Much praise for reportage on X by sky news, rightly, but which shows how low our expectations of news media are. Reporting factually and in depth is just journalists doing their job.

Still trust the “employment” figures? Then look up the definition of “employed”.

This obviously racist comment is revealing in a way: racism isnt about 'skin colour' per se, but stereotypes that justify discrimination against people. For the racist 'Black' just means bad/dangerous person, an attribution of negative pathologies & cultural stereotypes to justify wrongful treatment