Governments and voters are both reacting to algorithm-shaped “public opinion,” not grounded priorities. Immigration feels urgent because platforms amplify fear, pulling parties into hollow performances of toughness. The far right reads that drift as confirmation it’s winning.

we live in a one party state where policy is determined by the wealthy and the news media they own.

Labour policy is being celebrated by Tommy Robinson. That's it. That's all you ever need to say to explain who Labour are.

well this is how I spent 5 minutes of my precious weekend

From End Deportations Belfast on plans to make refugee status temporary: 'An everyday consequence of temporariness is to create a spectacle of refugees’ lives and give rise to uncertainty, exclusion, and protracted deportability. We condemn the UK Gov’s embrace of far-right appeasement politics.'

The only Legitimate Concerns about asylum seekers are concerns for their well being and safety. For a rich country like ours to incessantly whine about these people as if we are their victims is perhaps the single most pathetic spectacle in British politics over the past quarter century.

Labour: our extermination campaign against trans people is all about protecting women and girls Also Labour:

When Tommy Robinson is celebrating your policies it is time to take a long hard look in the mirror and then quit politics forever.

Olivia Nuzzi getting to turn a massive professional failure into a personal career success, sheerly by dint of knowing (and not offending) the right people, is such a powerful representation of how the industry demoralized & disgusted me too much to remain a part of it.

labour: if you don't vote for us you'll get reform. labour:

If these people are ever thrown out of power, I hope we all understand there is no reformist pathway for institutions like this as much as Dems might desperately wish and claim there is.

if you want to be referred for a psychoeducational assessment in a household where one parent brakes on the highway to pick up deer antlers and the other parent can't stand the sensation of pants that aren't tucked into their socks, you have to get creative

It's a great cosmic joke that neurodivergence both runs in families and gets diagnosed based on parent reports. I was diagnosed at 30 because a man who has eaten potatoes every day for 57 years and a woman who collects loose buttons decided I was a perfectly normal child.

It's going to fucking fall down before they fix it, isn't it? Somebody is going to have to be seriously injured or dead. Hopefully one of the buggers who keeps kicking this can down the road, not some poor cleaner or cook.

also it's kind of ridiculous that all of y'all STILL are SO hardheaded that instead of taking this moment to seek out and pair with sex work rights orgs you try and re-invent the wheel and ignore us and then get mad when it doesn't work. y'all are dim as shit ngl

Dershowitz’s claim is that Epstein wasn’t a “convicted pedophile” because the sexual crime against a minor of which he was convicted was against a 17-year-old. But as Julie Brown notes, that very case involved victims as young as 13.

This is important context from Julie K. Brown. With alt text.

I find it hard to explain centre-left/right party behaviour - inside and outside the UK - other than that mere fact of Radical Right parties converging on *the % you'd expect them to get when not actively proscribed/associated with the losing side of WW2* drives them mad.

wrote about the environmental devastation of gold mining in El Salvador via a vis Trump’s Oval Office aesthetic a bit ago. the uhhh… extractive process of acquiring Swiss gold is in an entirely different category

oh a kilogram of gold from Switzerland? where did they get that I wonder?

It's a bit disconcerting when an East German hears you're from Chicago and goes "oh. You are facing some troubles now, yes?" And then it's like "it will not always be so" thanks buddy, authoritarian regime Solidarität 😭

where's jk rowling? ( i love how this presents her as the victim rather than the one with the power )

More of her work: www.teenvogue.com/contributor/...

Read her work: bookshop.org/beta-search?...

Oh no I just heard we lost Alice. This is terribly sad. She was an incredible, talented, powerful voice of the disability community. She stood strong for herself and for all of us. She will be missed immensely.

those of us laid off from Teen Vogue were really fortunate to complete our fundraising goal — the laid-off staffers at VIBE deserve the same support, as Black media outlets and journalists continue to be targeted and discriminated against in “austerity” measures

Devastating piece on the human toll of Kavanaugh Stops. Especially infuriating to know that rich white guys like Brett K can simply close their eyes to the human suffering their racist jurisprudence has unleashed.

There's a maxim that if you give every 'psychosomatic' illness ten years, an organic cause will be found. (and warning to reply guys, this is my specialty)

Maybe a little bit less time playing politics and a little bit more time looking after the NHS wouldn't go amiss, Wesley? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The levy on foreign students is an export tax. Has anyone in government wondered why countries don't usually impose export taxes?

🧵 Rest in power, Alice Wong. @sfdirewolf.bsky.social A trailblazer, a fierce advocate, and a relentless voice for disability rights. Her work changed the landscape for so many. /1

A real loss. Rest in power, Alice Wong.

This is the Home Secretary's video about "why" A government which had the principle of *defusing* the salience by getting a grip with control, while maintaining compassion, would not use the rhetorical devices here to stoke up the salience of the issue they hope to defuse x.com/ShabanaMahmo...

The government just keeps doubling down on the strategy that’s taken it to genuinely historical unpopularity ever harder. The horse will be flogged until it sprints.

A reminder that this anti-trans panic is 100% bullshit and exactly none of our country’s problems are related to someone expressing their gender identity and everyone who isn’t a hate-filled weirdo knows it.

"Thank Heavens Reeves froze the thresholds," says the median voter in 2029 as they walk past the derelict sports centre and down the empty high street to cast their vote.

My youngest son was a fine young man With a wife, a daughter and two sons A man he would have lived and died Till by a bullet sanctified Now he's a saint or so they say They brought their young saint home today

My partner had never heard this so i sent it to her just now Incase you had not heard it:

70% of trans people believe BBC News is hostile. (And anyone who has listened to Justin Webb knows they are clearly right.) goodlaw.social/kyxv

HOLY SHIT. They found the genes for fibromyalgia - and it's *not* autoimmune, it's the central nervous system. It's very cool to see some progress made on the thing that's ruined my life since late teenage years!

Labour are now the "darker forces" Mahmood is scaremongering about. Depriving people who have fled unimaginable horror the ability to rebuild their lives in safety and security, which this does, is sickening. Labour is sickening. #r4today www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Question for The Times. Given undocumented immigrants are being given hysterectomies and then deported by ICE when they complain would you still call Donald Trump a "feminist hero"? www.npr.org/2020/12/22/9...

before megyn kelly said it was okay for her friends to rape 15 year olds she was ranting about how trans ppl are 'grooming' kids.

“The government is allowed to post real death threats on social media but you’re not allowed to post sarcastic death threats on social media” is actually a pretty apt distillation of power and violence

This isn't a new situation. I trained initially as a "special needs" primary school teacher about 25 years ago and funding was shot then. It isn't the fault of children, and they shouldn't be the ones to suffer. Especially when politicians are so quick to write them off as being "over diagnosed".

The "answer" to the pressure on the SEND system does involve better funding, better training and better systems. It does not, and must not, involve making it harder for children to access support. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Raising interest rates and cutting NICs would have taxed unearned income more and earned income less. Freezing or cutting income tax thresholds brings more income into tax, and hits lower and middle income taxpayers hardest. So the change is regressive.

This exact same reporter was ousted from the NY Times for soliciting a $30,000 donation from Epstein— and you're telling me that as an employer, the NY Times never bothered to circle back and review this person's correspondence with a convicted pedophile?

A Labour Party has jettisoned plans to increase taxes on unearned income - disproportionately enjoyed by the wealthy - and is increasing them instead on the earned income of normal people. What a shocking indictment.