Jonathan is correct here but this was the point where the leaders of the white people world decided there would be no laws or rules any more: they had won the Cold War, they were heroes and moral titans and they could kill anyone they wanted, destroy other countries for any reason they fancied.

America's richest 10% now hold 60% of the nation's wealth. The bottom half of America? It holds just 6%. Wealth inequality is eating this country alive.

Accessible summary from Goldthrope of his argument on description & causation in sociology (see also 'Sociology as a Population Science'). link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Cool. Just need some synthetic social scientists now. Much more efficient. 👍

Not to pull punches on the general political culture at the BBC, but the Moral Maze is unusually reactionary.

The Government finally published its Green Paper on the BBC today. So here’s a very timely piece from Tom Chivers on the future of the BBC as we go into the Charter Review. 'The choice is a democratic BBC or no BBC at all.' fabians.org.uk/whose-bbc/

How can we reconstitute the BBC as a public service mutual? There's a summary of the proposals from @tommills.bsky.social, Tom Chivers and me at the @cmmonwealth.bsky.social website. It will only happen if we insist, so let me know what you think. www.common-wealth.org/publications...

In which I wizz through the long history of the BBC in 17 director generals & 35mins. Thanks Paul for having me on.

In case you're also thinking of applying, here's the job ad for the new Director General of the BBC. careers.bbc.co.uk/job/Director...

Great to hear @dannyhinduk.bsky.social on the LRB podcast, about the political economy of the BBC. Have missed his insights ever since the Media Democracy podcast with @tommills.bsky.social stopped in 2021. Two of the only people I don’t feel like I’m going mad listening to when it comes to the BBC.

I've just signed a contract with @orbooks.bsky.social to write a book about the future of the BBC with @tommills.bsky.social and Thomas Chivers of @mediareformuk.bsky.social. The book, which will be published in the second half of 2026 will coincide with charter renewal.

Interviewed in this week's 'The Listening Post' show on the crisis at the BBC. You can watch the full episode here ▶️ youtu.be/BNAPd_ur4-s

Very good commentary from Tom eschewing reduction to the palace coup framing without dodging the issues of who has the power to determine accountability.

Spoke to France 24 English about, you guessed it, the crisis at the BBC. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgkP...

With the BBC discourse still raging, here's my take. www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-direct...

6/ Michael Prescott is an old friend of Robbie Gibb & was on the panel to choose the head of Ofcom when Boris Johnson was PM. Gibb tried to swing it for a Tory apparatchik but was overruled by (of all people) Nadine Dorries, who preferred another. bylinetimes.com/2023/11/21/d...

Delighted you all enjoyed Celebrity Traitors, & especially that the debate on the future of public media will focus on that fact.

Network of Reform donors who have donated to another 'regulated entity'. Basically the same methods as previous network I posted on Labour Together. £36,750,057 donated in this network.

Would the BBC stand up to a Farage government? Peter York's Culture Wars House Party podcast talks with @tommills.bsky.social Dr Tom Mills about the state of British media — press ownership, BBC independence, and what happens when funding cuts “smash morale.” 🎧 podfollow.com/peter-yorks-...

Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Thanks to Paul Holden’s ‘The Fraud’, the Labour Right’s vehicle Labour Together is in the spotlight again. Here’s the core of its funding network constructed from Electoral Commission data. Donors blue, ‘donees’ red.

‘Grudging acts are those activities in which we really would rather not participate but which we perform nonetheless’. Feel seen. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

None of us are safe in a world where basic norms in respect of the sanctity of human life are blithely disregarded. Those norms must be enforced, and enforced visibly. There must be political and legal consequences for every politician who made the genocide possible. The alternative is unthinkable.

This sweeping discussion is focused on the US, but there's so much that's directly relevant to the UK's dysfunctional political economy. Covers so much ill have to listen twice I think.

It was so clear to so many of us - ignored or ridiculed - the disastrous path we were on since 2008 (at the earliest). And here we are. We've arrived at our destination.

Still funny to me that academics have to organise 'retreats' to find time to write anything.

Interesting read on the roots of MAGA in early 90s conservatism. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Nigel Farage is the biggest charlatan in British political history. And here's what his constitutents in Clacton really think:

We now go live to our Westminster correspondent who will explain with inordinate enthusiasm why keeping all the same people but changing their roles is in fact extremely interesting & important.

One of the things I enjoy the most in life is producing a highly detailed Gantt chart for a project that will never be funded.

Great initiative. Transformative politics needs its own media. Mad Corbyn never did this.

Missed this. Very clever and interesting paper.

'...the International Association of Genocide Scholars: Declares that Israel’s policies & actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide' t.co/HigtT0Ldrl

Israel Accuses Al Jazeera Of Being Mouthpiece For Journalism theonion.com/israel-accus...

Quite. But if you understand terrorism as political actions - violent or peaceful - that threaten or disrupt the geopolitical interests of states, then it makes more sense.

In a new article in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social I propose an institution reform to make representative government less oligarchic: having elected politicians held accountable by randomly selected "Constituency Juries"

"This Weekend, We Saw the UK Descend Into Censorship, Brutality, and Authoritarianism" Keir Starmer government arrested elderly protesters, a blind man using a wheelchair, & others – all in the name of providing diplomatic cover for a genocidal regime, writes @graceblakeley.substack.com for Zeteo.

Ran a Multiple Correspondence Analysis and a Latent Class Analysis today. Admittedly neither are going to be any use for the paper, but pleased with myself and that's the main thing.

Palestinian lives mean nothing to the BBC.

Everything in the UK is punishingly expensive. But at least the politicians are cheap.

So much respect for Francesca Albanese. If only our politicians & journalists had even a fraction of her bravery & moral & intellectual clarity.

'All the decisions about our film were not taken by journalists, they were taken by [Director General] Tim Davie'. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/j...

Good interview from @declassifieduk.org. Mostly just the longstanding official FCO positions & statements of the obvious. But we've moved so far from that now. www.declassifieduk.org/israel-not-a...

New analysis of BBC reporting from @declassifieduk.org detailing how few reports mention Israel’s nuclear weapons (with a quote from me). www.declassifieduk.org/the-bbc-isnt...

Just listened to @tommills.bsky.social & Dan Hind from Common-Wealth talk about a model for mutual ownership of public media. They were discussing it through the lens of the BBC, but it made me start wondering if the model could be applied to CPR. www.common-wealth.org/publications...

Notice how BBC reporting on Israel/Palestine is shifting in line with the Foreign Office. Obviously more balanced position is welcome. But it's the same structural drivers that led to the woeful failures in the earlier phase.

New research article from the Danish elites powerhouse examining the power elite in Greenland onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Network of organisations connected to the BBC's commercial boards via shared directors.

Sangita Myska currently giving the opening keynote at the Media Democracy Festival in London.

Husam Zomlot: "There is no war in Gaza. War happens between two armies.. for the last 600 days, the world has seen that this is a campaign of mass murder, mass destruction, mass starvation of an entire people. This must stop unconditionally"