#OtD 20 Dec 1973 Spanish fascist PM due to succeed Franco, Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated and dubbed "Spain's first astronaut" as his car was blown over a five-storey building. His death was credited by some as hastening the return to democracy stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9258...

🌊 Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The number of people providing full-time unpaid care has increased massively, as the social care system approaches breaking point.

I'm Jewish. I'm also Mancunian. Every other national party leader was interviewed by Laura Kunesberg during their conference. Maybe the BBC thought as someone who also supports Palestine - I had nothing to say? Let's keep growing: join.greenparty.org.uk

In case you missed it - here's this weeks episode of @boldpolitics.bsky.social with Gary Stevenson. 100k views and growing! youtu.be/WRVfmQkCSdk?...

What an admirably clear statement from the Jewish Leadership Council, especially when all of those involved must surely have been dealing with so many other urgent challenges in safety, security and grief + shock today before having this further divisive and distracting intervention to address too.

Actor & campaigner Hugh Grant tells ITV News why he feels Labour has ‘betrayed’ hacking victims. He says seeing Keir Starmer forge close relationships with major newspaper barons is hard to stomach for the families who were promised things would change.

BREAKING: Keir Starmer has tasked a Conservative peer with writing a new planning bill to remove the ability for environmental groups to delay projects such as Heathrow’s third runway with judicial reviews www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The success of the far right is not only measured in votes and seats but in its impact on rhetoric, policy and ideology. The fact that a (nominally) social democratic head of government with a huge majority choses to say and do this is maybe the biggest success of the far right in Europe yet.

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.

Let me get this right. Gaza is to be a new Las Vegas and the Palestinian West Bank is to continue being fragmented into micro portions. In this dreadful context and late stage the heroic British ‘Empire’ recognises the Palestinian state. Well you have to keep up traditions in empires, heaven forbid

Kudos, indeed, to Spain and PM Sanchez for breaking the taboo in Europe. At the same time it is worth noting that, from a global perspective, Europe/OECD lags well behind world opinion on Palestine. (Source: @theguardian.com )

Britain needs affordable housing in the right places not a free hand for developers to build what they like, where they like, regardless of environmental consequences. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The result of #ChurchillsSpaniards is both a military and human history: one that illuminates the personal sacrifices of men who fought for a country not their own, in pursuit of a cause larger than national boundaries. Paperback 👇🏽 www.helion.co.uk/military-his...

The sight of opposition politicians being arrested has become quite common in the US.

UK: No LGB Without the T: solidarity in the face of attacks  www.fbu.org.uk/magazine/aug...

Good grief...

Yet more compelling evidence to support @greenparty.org.uk policy that public services should be in public hands 👇

Shouldn't need saying - but sadly it does

There has always been ambivalence with the English 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 flag. Its status is not clear or important as England is invisible in the British state. There are moments (football events) where it plays some ‘unifying role’ but its use by the far right ironically undermines it & debates on English politics.

Kevin Maguire: "If you're put up in a hotel & you get meals you get £10/wk.. all these terrible myths.. free iPads.. myths & lies have gone mainstream & we've got to challenge them.. we've gone back to the worst aspects of the 1970s where racism is becoming mainstream" Well said

Whether it's Brexit red lines, immigration, or EDI (this isn’t the US ffs) Blue Labour really are on a mission to alienate most of their electorate, and to thrash the UK economy in the process. Why is Starmer listening to these fools?

The contribution of overseas students to the economy as students & when allowed to work has been substantial. The manner in which they are shortchanged by the UK that has benefitted from migrant labour & labour in its former colonies is unreal. Labour especially really should be ashamed of itself.

New jobs here! I'm on the Advisory Board of this Leverhulme Trust-funded project investigating 'The long-term impact of New Labour’s social and economic policies', and there are two Research Fellowship posts available: jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

This is what you're supposed to do.

Voices from the European Parliament: "...this agreement is not an opening; it is a surrender. It sells off our agriculture, weakens our environmental standards, and locks us into massive dependence on the United States."....

I wouldn’t have thought many Labour MPs came into politics to strip the rights of torture survivors to be reunited with the spouses & children. They need to take a long hard look in the mirror & ask whether Starmer, Cooper & Reeves are really the leadership their careers should be remembered with.

A Labor Day reminder: today there isn't a single city, metro area, or state in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment. Millions of people with jobs—even multiple jobs—aren't safe from homelessness in this country.

A very good piece on changes in industrial conflict in terms of form and content which mentions the research of two very close and innovative colleagues morningstaronline.co.uk/article/afte...

There was an opinion poll the other day suggesting the left wing parties (the greens and 'your party') were very popular and gaining ground. Expect the volume to be turned up by the media on anti immigrant rhetoric every time this happens. They fear wealth taxes. They fear wealth redistribution.

Unions do more than just improve wages and benefits. They build stronger communities and strengthen democracy. A new report from @epi.org shows that where unions thrive, communities thrive. Imagine what we could achieve if more people had a voice at work. www.epi.org/publication/...

This is all becoming very dangerous and the Government's failure to show any kind of resistance to it is a disgrace www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

The Ukraine peace deal seems to be that Russia gets Donetsk and Luhansk, which keeps Putin happy. Then Ukraine is forced to buy $100bn-worth of US weaponry, paid for by Europe, which keeps Trump and the arms trade happy. What a stitch-up.

Thatcher and sons … The jobs never done … There’s nothing ever new (Words mixed but care if Cat Stevens and Simon Jenkins) www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

🚨NEW STUDY: Do Americans support a woman president? Our list experiment during the 2024 election, when @kamalaharris.com was on the ballot, reveals hidden bias, and it's more widespread than you'd expect. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The upward redistribution of wealth over the past 50 years has shifted $80 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.  That’s $80 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of the working class. The greatest trick of all is trickle-down economics.

Shall we sort our university system out so it doesn't eat itself? No! Let's organise a bankruptcy process instead! Britain: the country that prepares for failure. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

📢New article! WEI members Eva Herman, Jill Rubery, Isabel Tavora and Alejandro Castillo along with colleague Abbie Winton (University of Leeds) have published a new article in the International Labour Review! Have a read of the article here 👉 en.ilr-rit.org/article/pubi...

Another chilling example of how “free markets” are often anything but free for those whose labour makes those markets function. jacobin.com/2025/08/corp...

I often think Oasis (who I kind of like) are a sort of tribute band of themselves & Manchester scene. The words of the late academic Mark Fisher were damning - a kind of retro re whitening re masculinising of British popular music like BritPop that marginalised alternative UK currents in the 1990s.

🔴 Starmer & The Sun: An Appointment that Shows Everything that Is Wrong with Power & the Press in Britain The PM has signalled the direction of his Government by hiring a former Sun Editor – who has a criminal conviction under the Sexual Offences Act – as a communications advisor, writes Emma ...

I wonder if a better tactic to protect the conditions of “working people” (a term used here in a way that barely even pretends not to be a synonym for “white”) from precarious labour might be to use the state to force said companies to treat all their workers better.

Every day one sees a governing party that has lost its way and is now in panic mode being guided by the language of the far right. This strategy is out of sync with much of what has been argued before. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Any mediocre relative indicators immediately become more beautiful in absolute numbers when the country is large. And there are many scales to choose from. Does that make a country "great"? Is this a normal question at all, or does the question itself already have a slight psychopathic connotation?

Nigel Farage is arguably more to blame than any individual for creating the UK's "small boat crisis". Yet due to the unwillingness of the Labour govt and Tory opposition to say anything negative about Brexit, Farage not only gets away with it but can weaponise it. nation.cymru/opinion/why-...

Trump planning the next financial crash...

The Russell Group universities will on the whole take whatever they like from non RG universities and pass the problem onto the sector as a whole. The absence of coordination within UK HE, the absence of supportive coherent state policy & a manic short termism is getting worse.

Fascinating thread on the myth of the overspending state