I'd call it "Nostromo" Nostromo Rail.

🔴 Nigel Farage’s Reform is more reliant on super-rich backers than any major party in modern British political history 75% of *all* Reform donations *ever* have come from just three rich men Is this what democracy looks like? New on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/75-of-refo...

It’s now just a priced-in detail that Trump gets a made-up award on stage, in front of the world’s media. The sheer cringe of it is overlooked quite quickly because we are used to this now. It is an age of fascism moment.

Thought this was an interesting answer re: dynamic pricing. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Sorry but late capitalism and FIFA and the US are making it hard for me to get on board….#worldcup2026

I’ve been listening to #r4today for 1 hour. I’ve heard the veneration of Shakespeare (again); Michael Gove on Roger Scruton; some coded trans bashing (again, usual names involved); immigration as the cause of economic inequality. A discussion on how to repair division recommended more high culture.

#wato, so amidst all the defending the bbc against accusations of its left bias, an item where a formal general argues for military impunity, followed by Laffer himself arguing for tax cuts! Without an opposing view. God, they make it hard to defend them…..

The gallbladdering numbnuts who complain of the BBC’s bias while lauding GBNEWS et al. The BBC are as left wing as John Major. And still they howl. Man, it’s a big slide this new popular fash….they won’t be happy until the news is read every night from a Spitfire.

I am going to get Glasgow City Council to make a formal bid to control this constellation. I mean weegies *controlling* the Sun. Imagine.

"It is advising passengers not to travel to or from destinations on the line north of Preston." This line is the kind of statement that drives me crazy. What, are those of us with train tickets and houses "north of Preston" just to wander nomadically around the south of the country until the fix?

If any journalists would like a copy of Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain to review, please get in touch w me /MUP. It's a rigorous history of wind energy written for a wide audience, with plenty to say about today's energy challenges. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182968/

Gotta take my hat off to British alertness to potential issues in digital culture, as I receive a message from kid's school saying 'hey be aware there are child settings in Minecraft and Roblox!' Like, a decade or so after the event. What next? 'Hey, there are these mobile phone things, right...'

As I shoot you, please know I shall return to not shooting you after I have shot you.

Maybe just dial down the excited tone a bit? #r4today

What's amusing, from Scotland, about the current discourse on here re Burnham's Prince-over-the-canal manoeuvres is the North-South, London-Manchester fretting and flyting. "Man from INVERNESS pitches bid to be FIRST MINISTER!!" just doesn't have the same torque. Like, get over it.

the shit that floods the zone is pretty endless, gotta say.....

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Will 'Migrant Deportation Watch' replace 'Spring Watch' in the nation's captivated hearts? truly deranged stuff going on here

We are now at the stage where the BBC - THE BBC - is reporting 'a second migrant is being removed back to France.' Accompanied by photograph of the plane. This is a sign of media derangement and tells you all about how this issue reached such levels of toxicity.

We can build a people's railway for the 21st century 🛤️

The word “civil” doing a lot of heavy lifting rn. A reminder: you can be “civil” in delivery, in tone, style, comportment. What matters is the ‘civility’ of content. To emphasise the civility of the former at the cost of focus on the latter - esp. when it is extreme - is political. And strategic.

If the BBC wants to push a neutral reporting line that Kirk was a free speech warrior, fine. But we should hear more *actual quotations* from the range of extreme views of Kirk - because they were extreme. The summaries given are not representative. #r4today

"Speaking to the You Tube channel Harry Cole Saves the West" News. 2025.

This (once) astonishing story signals the extent to which the far right fascist culture of organised violence has been fostered, emboldened and extended by MAGA politics. Disgusting and frightening. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I know that this is niche Scottish cultural politics, Bluesky, but someone smart needs to write an essay on “The Jim Spencification Effect.” Mr Common Sense Man is here to tell you he is the one true source of left wing values by espousing very right wing ones. What a walloper. Niche post ends.

#wato why does no-one mention the responsibility of social media companies to moderate hate speech and extreme content? They retreated from it, to farm extreme speech for profit….and they sit there benefitting from the chaos it has produced.

How long have you sat in front of your Union Jack today? [...] Admit it, you could have spent *just* a little longer, right? Do Better.

So, in the UK, we now have: 1. Burn Baby Burn (return to fossil fuels) 2. Remigration, Warehousing, Big Racism redux 3. Worship the Flag 4. More, Bigger Weapons Now.... When are we getting: 1. ICE Equivalent? 2. All Vaccines Be The Work of The Devil?

I am in the library early and horrified by forgetting to do my morning sit-in-front-of-the-Union-Jack session. I cannot believe there are no flags in here for me to catch-up. I must remember to ask the librarians where their flags are! Do they not have any?!

Why is #WATO headlining a totally minor local political story about a Glasgow Labour Councillor “defecting” to Reform? Are we to expect this whenever any local councillor anywhere defects to another party? Hard not to be very cynical about BBC editorial policy right now….

The BBC et al informing everyone loudly that Reform are willing to “rip things up” and “pay the Taliban to take back people”are pretty good outcomes for Reform’s press blitz tbh. The liberal response continues to be hopelessly outplayed by the politics it fostered.

why is the main BBC Radio News World at One using a figure from the far right Heritage Foundation as an ostensibly neutral commentator on an issue of Trump controversy, without stating the ideological bent of said foundation? #wato

Today I finished a very interesting novel and used a grouting pen for the first time ever. Both were equally satisfying.

suffering hell, what a lickspittle is Infantino. Was going to say that football does not deserve him, but ofc, this is what elite football *is* - what it has become in its accumulation of profit. It deserves to be dragged by this supplicant clown all over the world's media. Full. Fat. Embarrassing.

I want to do a 🧵 about the Sidney Sweeney thing, because it's *extremely* revealing & educational. First, to be clear: I could not give less of a shit about the details -- the ad, the rhetoric, the jeans, her boobs, whatever. Good lord, who cares. Let's look at the *structure* of the episode.

Oh, really? Zero surprises..... www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The gift that keeps on giving www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

RIP to Allan. If you know, you know, etc..... Spent a LOT of time with this classic and many others of the Ahlbergs. Thanks to them.

Does anyone have access to this review of Josh Jewell's and Thomas Waller's books in @mmodernity.bsky.social ‬, which starts out with a belated account of our WReC book? Maybe it will also take ten years before the journal mentions "Pentecostal Modernism," a supplement to WReC's?

More AI puffery on #r4today. The comparison with photography pales when we consider AI’s accelerated global pervasiveness, the scale of its energy consumption and its threat to multiple job roles. The ownership of the personal camera took years. AI is already everywhere. But otherwise, sure.

English Premiership football: pure, unbridled extractivism. Use the power of the hedge fund to pull out the best young player from a storied “big” club. Not even 20. To become “one of your options.” @afcajax.bsky.social The EPL is a vampiric enterprise that sucks the lifeblood of “smaller” leagues.

My kids, who live in Glasgow and Edinburgh, use free public bus transport in Scotland all the time. In the city, between cities, all over the country. They love it. My (anecdotal) sense is that out there, beyond the cities, car culture retains a powerful grip and many kids do not use buses enough. /

Turns off the #r4today radio…from Sweet Caroline to spitfires and palaces and Royal assent. YAWN.

👇Continually surprised at the number of British people on this website and indeed in British politics who haven’t grasped this.

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

the depravity of it, the depravity.

Ah,”Sweet Caroline”, the sound of Summer Mordor…

Galling, all the way down. But surely this idiot politics can be squashed? It has huge holes all the way through it.

Breathless, giddy embrace of AI on #r4today is so dissonant with what I, my colleagues, my friends and my student kids are experiencing- a jobs crushing machine, an ethical nightmare, a creative and cognitive cheat code, compromising and twisting human learning- reading, writing, thinking.

Looking forward to Nick Robinson flat out asking if Farage et al are “militant far right” the next time he interviews one of them. The “militant lefty” query was pathetic - and revealing. #r4today