Thanks to BBC news, we've learned a new adjective today: "blistering" which means rambling, incoherent, insulting, and ineffectual.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I've read a fair bit of SF and future history, but none of it featured moments like this.

The even more unbelievable crime fact (which I learned relatively recently) is that burglary has fallen by more than 90% since the 1990s. Did anyone notice? Nope. Does anyone believe it? Nope. But is is true? It is!

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

On the one hand, better late than never. On the other hand: why so late? The case for doing this was just as obvious in May as it is in September.

The Labour Party has a tradition of antiracism campaigning. It’s supposed to be in the party’s DNA. That they cannot say it’s just straightforwardly wrong to alarm families who choose Britain to live, work and raise children in is a total moral failure.

Reform’s new position on indefinite leave to remain is even more extremist than Donald Trump’s crackdown on US immigration. If any of Reform’s political opponents fancied saying they publicly, that might be nice. Handily, it’s even true.

I am skeptical this will change Israel’s position in the short or medium term. But the signal it sends about America’s loss of leadership is immediate.

In which more Welsh Labour v UK Labour tensions come out into the open.

An inconvenient truth for Shabana Mahmood to ponder. See comments.

wrote about this last year and sure I wasn't in any way the only one but imo people voting for populist politics in the 21st century *is* a sign that they do just have too much faith in institutions, as opposed to not enough - they want to have their little tantrum but assume things will just hold

Reform's contempt for the rule of law is very obvious

I may be late to notice this, and I don't use Tik Tok and left X over a year ago, but Facebook seems to have become astonishingly toxic in the last couple of years, the comments on the posts served by the algorithm an endless stream of bile, prejudice, bigotry and mostly right-wing extremism.

This is extraordinary. A country that was until very recently the global powerhouse of biomedical and public health research.

I wrote something about feeling like a guest in a country that is my home. bestforbritain.substack.com/p/my-place-o...

Private Eye

The Sorbonne's justification of its decision to leave the Times Higher Education league table game raises key issues for universities in an era of attacks on science and for UK science (SHAPE & STEM) & the escalating growth of proprietary bibliometrics. 1/4

Weak, weak, weak. As a previous Tory leader would have said.

Yes, yes you are. Stop cosplaying "legitimate concerns". When you join a far right rally, organised by well known far right leader Tommy Robinson, with a host of speakers who outright say they are far right, you are a racist. No ifs, buts or maybes. There are no excuses for being there.

Crucial 🧵 for journalists to ponder

Fantastic column by @stephenkb.bsky.social "Racism in the UK remains the preserve of an extreme minority — but one that is emboldened and growing louder. It is the result of a year in which neither the government nor the opposition have been willing to draw red lines." www.ft.com/content/fbbd...

Bear with me, I anticipate your disagreement. There is a clear pattern to the advice given to those who want to press back against rising racism. What it boils down to is that if you point out that racism is often being dressed up as “legitimate concerns” you will alienate people. /1

SO sorry about the treatment your specialists and engineers received at the hands of our secret police goon squad. That's normally something we reserve for a different race of people who we like even less, hope you understand. Please come back

So many Liberals and Centrists have become so accustomed to punching the Left that they've become blind to how quickly much of the Radical Right is sliding from fighting a culture war to hankering for a full civil war.

@mattparlmer.bsky.social: "Absolutely gargantuan fuckup, Hyundai now saying that spinup of that battery plant will not restart until 2026 at the absolute earliest"

I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday. As leaders, we must stand together and make clear Musk will face serious consequences for these actions.

There is a serious failure in UK govt, politics & media to take sufficiently seriously what Musk said & meant with "fight back or die" = Violence (interethnic civil war) is inevitable so pre-emptive violence - vs migrants, minorities & political opponents - is necessary to avoid existential erasure

It's time for the academy to take back control of scholarly communications.* *I may have tweeted this in 2009

For there to be no comment from the government on Musk's call for violence, let alone action against X, is unconscionable. An utter dereliction of its responsibility for national security and an affront to every member of an ethnic minority, who is being put at risk by this rhetoric.

Make this futile and embarrassing grovelling to the far-right stop @mainstreamlabour.bsky.social @andyburnham.bsky.social

Musk is inciting violence on London's streets.Tommy Robinson is financed by US tech bros. These are all very direct attempts to destabilise the British state. Starmer needs to stand up to this. A government that doesn't defend its country's values against these blatant attacks is not doing its job.

Keep thinking of arguments for why it would be completely insane to dump a prime minister with a huge majority just 14 months in, and also about how if he's not going to say a single word in opposition to the kind of shit we saw today then I no longer feel convinced by any of those arguments.

"The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to this nation," tweets Shabana Mahmood, a week after 890 peaceful protestors were arrested. "But I condemn those who have attacked and injured police officers. Anyone taking part in criminal activity will face the full force of the law."

Agree. And Labour members should be passing motions at Branch and CLP level asap to demand action.

Musk has addressed the Far Right rally by video calling for a “change of government” in the UK. If this was the US, he’d be banned from entering the country and his businesses shut down.

Don't buy a Te$la. Other great EVs are available.

Yes, Wales! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿💪 😂 www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-n...

London Trans Pride six weeks ago was the last March of a roughly similar size www.google.com/amp/s/www.bb...

The need for Andy Burnham to lead the Labour Party well before the next GE is visible from space. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

The far right turnout today is much smaller than the number of people who came to protest at London Trans Pride this year, but the far right will of course get infinitely more press coverage.

We don't do propaganda to make you believe something. It's to make you believe nothing. So you do nothing.

I need you to understand what this country feels like right now for those of us who look different. I'm sitting here, trying to plan for Saturday, make sure I don't even need to go to the corner shop for milk, like it's Christmas Day or lockdown. Why? Because I live near where Yaxley-Lennon will 1/

BBC Radio Four just had the Chairman of the Young Republicans of Texas to do a long and touching eulogy for Charlie Kirk. Absolutely love subsidising this sort of content.

Free speech news

I've written a lot about disordered discourse and counterpublics, but given recent events I want to cover a key part of disordered discourse, which I call the four pillars of disordered doubt.

This is how ethnonationalist violence typically works. It doesn't rise up out of some great upswell of popular support, but out of the thugs desire to coercively keep the community in line.

I do worry about the implicit argument [people know we are anti-racist] as a defence of going mute this August on dehumanising racism, because of anxiety at being unable to differentiate immigration, integration & asylum political challenges from overt racism, violence, vandalism, neo-nazism

The Labour government's response to a summer of open racism, including physical attacks and the demonisation of some of its own Cabinet, has been to hide. 'Anti-racism' is something you actually have to do, not something you are. Seriously, why can't people like this hear themselves?

The Government, the PM, and the Home Office have been AWOL during this summer of hate. An early task for @mainstreamlabour.bsky.social is to wake them up on this issue.