No Keir, what I want to see is someone from Labour punching Farage in the face, while calling him Nazi scum. Ideally you. But I’ll take Dennis Skinner if need be.

Seems like a good time (again) to share the guide I developed with @freedomfromtorture.bsky.social, which tells you how to talk about refugees and asylum in a way that actually convinces the undecided - based on testing 🧵 www.freedomfromtorture.org/changing-the...

Might they have any gold fillings?

Fund the asylum system by randomly choosing a billionaire per year to have their assets taken down to a reasonable sum (say £50m - who needs more than 50 million pounds in a lifetime?) and the rest used to help refugees have nice stable lives in the UK.

As soon as a UK government of any party appoints a brown female politician as a Home Secretary my heart sinks because I know the only way she has reached that position is a willingness to cheerlead the most racist , cruel inhumane policies that no senior white male MP would dare to announce.

The western media’s failure to report the reality of Gaza didn’t start on 7 October 2023. It’s always been like this. After years of personal experience reporting from the region, I explain why journalists won’t tell you the truth about Palestine: www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-11...

There is no reason why this should have made me laugh so hard a bit of gas escaped.

Move Any Mountain by The Shamen just came on my playlist, and I could cry for the hopefulness a counterculture band could still have in 1990.

Thinking of the awful, despicable stuff Mahmood is proposing on refugees, and thinking many years to when I interviewed Claus Moser for my PhD on post-war UK higher education. Moser was born in Berlin in 1922. He was Jewish. His family fled Nazi persecution in 1936, and settled in Britain. /1

If Shabana Mahmood wants to talk about what's 'tearing Britain apart', let's start with billionaire tax evasion, the cost of living crisis, overflowing prisons, sewage spilling into rivers and streets full of people sleeping rough

Oh Jesus fucking Christ.

Appeasing the far-right gives the broader public the impression that their narrative is true. There is no way to stem support for Reform by endorsing their policies. Either you are fighting against them or you are, regardless of how you see yourself, fighting for them.

Labour is a “godsend” for Farage says the far-right.

In 2023 @tom-clark.bsky.social got me to write a chapter for his book on UK poverty about how immigration limbo, which Labour wants more of, makes people destitute. It was the most distressing piece I've ever worked on. We sent a copy to every MP. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society/6081...

I’ve been circling around this idea for awhile but didn’t have the skill to summarize what others have now done extremely eloquently: Proposing the concept of misinformation exposure as a social determinant of health. Read on if you’re interested.

I came to this country as a child refugee. No English, no certainty, no idea what my life could become. Britain gave me refuge. Not on a timer, not with conditions attached, but with a chance to grow roots. A thread 🧵 1/8 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The kind of sociopathic personalities who crave control and domination - and are thus likely to have form for domestic abuse, coercive control, child abuse & exploitation etc etc - are strongly attracted to extremist movements, including proto-fascist ones.

I think ‘neoliberalism’ was a very odd term to choose. When they could have called it something like hyper-capitalism.

They think they're parking Labour's tanks on Reform's lawn, when they're actually parking Reform's tanks on Labour's. It's difficult to see how supposedly intelligent people can be so stupid, unless they really want Reform to win

More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists granted access to the Cop30 climate negotiations in Belém (Brazil), 12% up from last year’s talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. What should be the most serious, urgent talks on the planet continue to be a farce. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups."

Last week's elections showed the power of women voters, who delivered decisive wins for Democrats across the nation. Now, there's a surge in calls to repeal women's right to vote. Could this radical Christian nationalist agenda splinter the MAGA movement or pull them further toward extremism?

Re Adrian Chiles - is there really a career in being a grumpy old man about something mildly annoying that happened to you yesterday? I’ll tell my Uncle Mick, he’ll be delighted. Well he won’t, he’ll moan about it. Obvs.

Does this sound like the parliamentary wing of the trade unions speaking or does it sound like standard issue toryism

TIL that Basil Rathbone (early Hollywood actor) really was an excellent fencer - he was British Army fencing champion twice.

Well today’s been a bit of a washout. But I’ve got a great plan for dealing with it. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up with a completely different personality and be super efficient all day. Great!

I’ve got a 3.5 banana bread banana backlog. Adulting is hard work.

Epistemic violence against sexual abuse accusers—smearing them as deluded, crazy, or incompetent—is something rapists know works, and they conspire to do it.

Today is a good day to remember, and to say, that the #MeToo movement was right, and was righteous, and has been vindicated over and over again. There was no overreach. There was no excess. There was no they-went-too-far. So much work remains to be done.

OMG, comedy truly is illegal over here. What's is wrong with you people??? Also, regarding "safety", how did it take you over a month to realize there was a "safety" issue? Weren't you endangering this poor WSJ from crazed Sarah fans for a whole month? (this is sarcasm, just to be clear).

This really isn't the first dodgy @BBC edit but it's certainly the one that counts because delegitimising striking miners in 1984 or undermining Corbyn in 2019 apparently don't matter. Some thoughts for @LRB blog www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/no...

Is it because they are a bunch of venal snakes with no vision or plan?

I’m listening to the audiobook of Vulture Capitalism, by @graceblakeley.substack.com , and it’s so brilliantly quotable that I’m going to have to buy a paper copy, just so I can underline bits.

And ultimately, looking after young children is the fucking point of the human race. Or we die out. Everything about human society should be structured around it. Instead of it being treated as a failure to do the important work of serving the economy.

Candi Staton, You Got The Love comes on the radio. I’m spotting all the other old ravers in the Morrisons queue, bopping our shoulders.

Absolute scenes on second hand clothes-selling site Vinted. For no good reason they’ve changed the sizing on every item on the site, so that now everything is wrong. It’s nuts.

Apparently, these days, every single thing you can imagine is a way of transferring money from government coffers to private shareholders.

Once again, my feed is full of arguments about someone I’ve never heard of. I googled Noah Smith and got a ‘people also search for’ gallery of smug white guys, beginning with Nate Silver. I’m fine continuing in blissful ignorance.

If you’ve not come across her, Sarah Kendzior is well worth a follow. Everything she said in Trump’s first term about how it was all prep for an authoritarian coup has turned out to be 100% accurate.

Bluesky suspended Sarah Kendzior today for no reason whatsoever. She just shared excerpts of her articles, which were as always incisive and not offensive at all. Hey @pfrazee.com this is super not OK. I know her- we've interacted a fair bit via chats and her work is essential.

Find her here substack.com/@sarahkendzi...

There is never, really, such a thing as balance, or impartiality. Everyone’s viewpoint is situated. The BBC has always been the voice of the establishment and the status quo. In ways that I think most of the people who work there can’t even conceptualise.

Well yes, because despite the BBC board being stuffed with tories, the media and politicians keep repeating the accusation that it’s full of woke lefties.

I don’t really want to be focusing on this - I’d rather spend my time helping home educators support their kids learning what goes *into* the GCSEs. But there’s no point doing that if they then can’t find a centre or can’t afford to sit the exams.

Hearing more and more stories of exam centres overwhelmed with private candidates and considering cutting down or stopping their support. In a context of >3% of KS4 children EHE. This is very bad, and no-one is paying any attention. @johndickenssw.bsky.social @jonsevers.bsky.social @tom-richmond.com

The Telegraph routinely spreads myths about a range of subjects - especially climate change. It has been forced to publish over 100 corrections this year so far. Yet it has the gall to lecture the BBC - and whip up a national panic - about journalistic standards

Like the whole world is a dysfunctional family with an aggressive and coercive dad.

TIL that owls’ eyes are shaped like tubes, so they can capture more light. And that’s why owls turn their heads like that. Because their massive tube-eyes can’t move side-to-side like ours can.

The CURRENT sitting MP for Clacton earns £511,000 as a presenter for GB News and took £281,000 as a brand ambassador for Direct Bullion. So maybe sit this one out, you rancid herring.