Do you have a heat pump on HeatPumpMonitor.org? If so, we need your help to compile real-world maximum output test data. Watch the video below for how to contribute. There should be some cold temperatures tonight and tomorrow. Thanks! ❄️ 🤞

What if: Immigration is actually really beneficial to a country and helps secure its future prosperity and long term health of its culture and isn’t a really bad thing like all those rich sociopaths who moved to Dubai say it is?

Today the news will be about the government's proposals for juries. Please read this thread so as to be informed about the actual practical problems in the criminal justice system - problems which will not be solved by this misconceived and illiberal tinkering.

I don’t know how many ways there are to say “Manchester’s economy is growing, so if we’re not going to do much proactive on infrastructure, can we at least not do stuff that’s actively damaging” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This quote from Rebecca Solnit is exactly what I needed to read today.

Removing the two-child limit accounts for less than 1 per cent of social security bill. To remove 450,000 children out of poverty, that's pretty good return on investment.

The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.

Headline on The World at One just now: "Sir Keir Starmer has denied putting the Labour Party before the country by ending the two-child benefit cap". Can we please go back to reporting the actual news, not someone's partisan take on it?

BREAKING 🚨: The government has just announced that they are ending new oil and gas exploration in the UK and have started a plan for workers and communities to transition away from fossil fuels. 🧵

Good morning, while everyone is waiting for the budget to be announced it’s a good time to say that immigration is a source of prosperity for the UK and painting Britain as a hostile state is sabotaging the country. Thanks!

Opinion from Alphaville: OpenAI is a money pit with a website on top. That much we know already, but since OpenAI is a private company, there’s a lot of guesswork required when estimating the depth of the pit. on.ft.com/44xy39L

Still no better heuristic for revealing a politician or public figure's deep unseriousness than checking whether or not they are a climate sceptic.

"It’s ludicrous that aviation doesn’t pay fuel tax, especially now that Rachel Reeves is making noises about a tax on electric vehicles. If we’re looking for easy wins for revenue, just look to the skies." ~ Flight Free UK Director Anna Hughes in the Guardian today 👇

Did you know that wood burning is the most polluting way to heat your home? Save the date for #CleanAirNight! To find out more visit cleanairhub.org.uk

“In my work with cities, one of my messages that resonates most is that the truth about the cities aspirations isn’t found in its plans and visions. It’s found in its budget. A budget may be the most powerful public policy lever a Council has, and the most authentic one because It reveals so much.”

AI seems to be an expensive way to do someone else’s job as well as you reckon they probably do it, whatever, but no use for anything you do yourself, where you can professionally tell it’s hopeless. Good luck with the bubble, lads. (Clipped from The Wrap, about Disney giving up on its AI R&D.)

Reading about AI being subverted by adversarial poetry and Russian drones' navigation systems jammed by Ukranian folk anthems, which suggests the opening future 'human rebels' scenes of Terminator may now have to be revised.

With the disappointing progress at Cop30, evergreen reminder it isn't "we" or "humanity" failing to address the climate crisis — oil-producing nations and fossil fuel interests are actively obstructing action, despite heroic efforts by developing nations, Indigenous peoples, and many, many others.

The continued freeze on fuel duty is a scandal: a subsidy to the people who drive cars a lot, who are disproportionately wealthy, from those of us who pay taxes but never drive.

Anyway. I repeat here what I wrote on a football message board I'm on a few weeks ago when Heatherwick Studio were first announced:

It's a good job Heatherwick spent a whole radio series telling us about the importance of beauty in architecture.

This is hard to argue with, by @edwinheathcote.bsky.social www.dezeen.com/2025/11/17/e...

To give an idea of how damaging this change is, a typical dual fuel household will see their bill rise by £2.50 in January. A household using an electric storage heater - already most at risk of fuel poverty - will see a £100 increase. That is deeply unfair and needs to be addressed

So, below is EU President von der Leyen saying that the EU is "not fighting fossil fuels, only emissions." And here is the Saudi envoy to COP30 saying exactly the same thing. I'm telling you: climate politics are unified around the lie that we can keep fossil fuels & still deal w climate anyway.

All those people, including current government, who falsely claim migrants are to blame for failings with the NHS, along with infrastructure in general, are in for one hell of a shock with how much worse things will get with Labour's anti-immigration policies. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

From @philipjcowley.bsky.social - thanks to a happy coincidence we have a much more rigorous than usual understanding of the impact of Keir Starmer's "Island of Strangers" speech. As Cowley puts it "It is not obvious this was the intended outcome"

I very much like @moreincommonuk.bsky.social. Their work on bridging divides is critical to tackling far right and anti-democratic slides. However, this polling on disillusioned men is a huge missed opportunity to engage critically with men and masculinities www.moreincommon.org.uk/media/bjxgkk...

As renewables eat into the energy market + EVs reduce demand for petrol, fossil fuel firms aim to step up production of plastics + chemicals made from oil + gas. By mid-century, half of growth in demand for oil is predicted to come from making more plastic + chemicals. A must read 👇🏾

It sounds all cute calling it otter ai until you realize you're the oyster in this situation

Excellent thread on Barbara Castle and the introduction of the breathalyser! It's an episode with an important moral: that having the courage to do the right thing, even if it's unpopular at the time, can save lives and bring public opinion with it over time.

The net zero transition is going to create a lot of jobs. www.businessgreen.com/news/4522066...

My blog from February on the government's lack of a clear strategy for housing

#communityenergy Awards 2025 - congrats to our energy advice team - winners of fuel poverty award + our founder Gi, of energy champion award... But most off all, to all finalists ⬇️⬇️⬇️ read more on their excellent work @commenergyengland.bsky.social site communityenergyengland.org/guidance/cas...

Your periodic reminder that climate change means levels of migration will increase sharply in the coming years and we either find an effective and humane way to manage that or we invite ever more chaos and suffering.

It isn’t simply the lack of empathy, they've ensured that is costed in. It’s that they know no one who’s fled. No one who can share stories of jewellery stuffed into socks in bags, in soap containers, carefully kept in tiny bags and taken out carefully, each with a story kept close to the heart

It really is worth taking the time to hear from people like “Mary,” who fled from Zimbabwe 20 years ago, to understand what life is like when the law denies you the chance to call the country where you’ve made your life home

Very disappointed none of you told me that Lewis Mumford made a 1963 film about car dependency, and it's available on YouTube. "The motor car inflates our private ego, proclaims our social status, and provides us with the illusion of freedom and power." www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIKZ...

Just read (via @ruthmalan.bsky.social elsewhere) and it too feels related cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-389-ov...

I get endlessly sick of middle class southerners posing as “the voice of the working man” speaking as if everyone north of the Watford Gap (or doing a job outside the professions) is an unreconstructed racist homophobe.

Deep breath, once more for those at the back, seeking asylum is not illegal. No matter route used, which considering Labour has closed pretty much all the last remaining alternatives means irregular ones. Anti-immigration sentiments are stoked by politicians like Mahmood, not people seeking safety.

Reform councillor on Politics North West comparing those fixing flags to lamp posts to the gilet jaune protests. I thought it was meant to just be about 'pride'?

Evergreen.

If you want people to feel that their day to day lives are improving then make sure that local government is properly funded. You could call it “the pothole theory of everything”.

Should David and Ed Miliband retrospectively be denied citizenship because Ralph should have been sent “back” (to Belgium? to Poland?)

This statement not acceptable and I suspect not sustainable. Large majority of public support principle of asylum, support letting people stay permanently. Majority for that among Labour and other progressive parties’ voters is overwhelming. The Reform voters this is aimed at will never vote Labour

We're stuck with it, but determining someone's legal rights based on a nebulous combination of birthplace and parentage is actually pretty fucking weird, and it'd be better if we talked about it as an unfortunate practical necessity not a natural phenomenon

Remembering talking to a Chilean refugee who had finally been able to visit Chile after decades in UK. "It was nice, but it is a different country now." She had put down roots in the UK and raised a family. Her life was, and is, here. This is the human reality that Mahmood and Labour want to destroy

Born on this day, 1897, Nye Bevan, Minister of Health and Housing when Labour built 805,000 council homes between 1945-51. He believed high-quality council housing should reflect 'the living tapestry of a mixed community'.