Exactly this. The idea that Labour has been afraid to talk about migration is ludicrous. They have been perfectly happy to demonise migrants again and again and again. That Controls on Immigration mug in Zack's post was the breaking point for me. It spoke of a party that had sold out its values.

"on a technicality" Not really. A failure to get necessary consents to a terror charge is not a slight error. They are safeguards when a person faces a serious charge. Prosecutors should take such safeguards seriously: this is terrorism law they are using. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s...

The contempt — theirs for us, mine for them — grows more intense by the moment.

Do they think: A) People are morons who will see this and not detect the inconsistency? B) People’s media consumption is siloed and they simply won’t notice the inconsistency? C) The inconsistency just doesn’t matter? Trick question! It’s “all of the above”!

Strange not to note that Ed’s polemics of Ed’s are built on deep analysis and supporting data. Maybe you disagree with his diagnosis, but he’s done the work, he isn’t just shouting at clouds. He often cites fellow travellers in the media, too, so that critique’s ofd. But good to see him cut through.

8pm on a Thursday and this is the state of the Picturehouse Central Members’ Bar… Thanks, Asif Aziz! Really rubbish. Badly need someone beyond @jim.londoncentric.media at @londoncentric.media and the @londonermag.bsky.social team to stand up to this nonsense. Any hopes, Sadiq @london.gov.uk?

If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.

This is such horrendous science communication from the Guardian I almost don’t know where to start. The appropriate takeaway from this is that the SRY gene is a poor proxy variable in isolation. It isn’t that there were 50-60 people who were secretly “biologically male”

A long-term Leoni injury would be a much worse outcome than going out even if he hadn’t had such an excellent debut, given the lack of specialist centre back options if he’s out; after that showing, it’d be heartbreaking. Also: Chiesa looks increasingly viable as an option for “meaningful” games.

aargh journalists you do not get to say "Many experts are sceptical" in the face of this bullshit, you say "This is not true". You are at a rare point, maybe a few years every century, where your willingness to doing your actual job would be crucial and heroic, and you're blowing it

Just a really, really big problem with the dominance of the lobby — political journalism having become almost exclusively about *politics*, Westminster theatre, and poll numbers — to the detriment of analysis of policies and their impact on people. The gossip-mongers cannot meet the moment.

Not even an endorsement of the Lib Dems. Do you have any idea how shit your political instincts have to be for Ed fucking Davey of the Liberal Democrats to seize on a bunch of wide open goals that you’ve been neglecting for weeks, if not months? Embarrassing.

Anyone who saw Chris Mason’s wide-eyed missive from Reform conference would instantly recognise the bellend in this exchange. Incidentally, does Playbook do any actual analysis of the interview and draw a conclusion, rather than simply present Mason’s retort as if equal in weight to the criticism?

A vital point: None of this would've been possible in the UK context if our political and social spheres weren't dominated by a resentful aristocratic, political and media elite desperate to enact petty revenge fantasies against a plebian class that dismantled their pretensions of prestige.

It’s also this!

It’s this (good thread)

I hate to say it but if we can’t even manage the basics of organising to stand candidates without publicly suing each other, then we absolutely deserve to get clowned on by horrible people like this.

The point here is that you can improve your defensive record by improving your attacking and getting clear in games before the defence is really tested. Our defence is constantly under duress.

The entire premise of Starmer's 'Sycophant's Bearhug' strategy was that it would allow him (and the UK) to bear the tumult of Trump 2.0 with dignity in tact, and this is the result: Zero progress on tariffs, a vague statement about Putin, and a right-wing press crowing about how he got dog-walked.

Reading through One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This a second time with a pencil in hand and I really gotta say it’s standing out to me even more this round that this book is saying some piercingly real shit about much more than Gaza and genocide

This kind of shambles was always a possibility. Just join the Greens and make them better.

As ever, Neil really meets the moment in his commentary on the politics of Hillsborough — but more importantly, the (in)humanity of it. This piece is particularly good for two things:

I would be asking: “If he is as bad as I think, if he is failing to do what he’s asked, why would Slot — who knows infinitely more than me about football, the player, and his tactical plan — continue to pick him, not sign a replacement, and not call out desired improvements as with other players?”

Here's a better idea: every data centre you build, you build enough renewable energy to power it, and you supply the waste heat from your cooling system to power homes and businesses nearby. Simple. Common sense. And fair.

2.07 vs 0.34 on xG created. 6 vs 0 on “big chances” created. Only went 2-1 because of a mad decision not to recognise an offside player interfering with play. 2-2 goal took a massive deflection. Salah hit the post. Atleti created *very* little else. The Arsenal fan sickness is so real.

Is there some nuance to the law that I don’t know? Because that looked like absolutely textbook interfering with play…

Pretty fucking weird ad to be running in PureGym Lambeth lads

??? Where’s the olive branch? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

a), b) or a) because b)

Plenty on the left will gleefully rag on Oliver and Last Week Tonight for not going far enough on some issue of other, grotesquely undervaluing the impact the show has in bringing rigorous reporting and progressive arguments on any number of under-reported topics into the light of the mainstream.

And the immediate response was a panic not about a Nazi murdering an MP but about “social media abuse”, and I probably don’t need to tell you why MPs and commentators found the latter a much more congenial topic than the former.

Cannot be stressed enough that there is a crucial and fundamental aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein story that directly corresponds with the Jimmy Savile story, to wit: Everybody knew.

Adjusted for inflation Spirited Away cost $22 million to make. The Triplets of Belleville cost $16.5 million, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers cost $14.28 million, and Oscar winner Flow cost only $4 million. These critically acclaimed, made by real people films, cost less than this pile of actual vomit.

Yes! Fuck her! She done fucked up — if was one of the most scrutinised politicians in Britain and I was recommended to seek expert tax advice, I simply would! — and it’s time to pay the ferryman. And she has not remotely been the great leftist force so many people are trying to paint her as!

Look, I get why some well-meaning folk might want to minimise the error and generally engage in wider apologia for Rayner — could never be me — but by squirming “Get why she had to go, but…” they are kind of engaging in the same double-standardsing.

Does it suck that moral standards in public office are inconsistently enforced? Of course it does! Does that warrant “progressives” hand-wringing over a politician ostensibly of the left being “forced” to resign over dumbfuckery directly related to her area of ministerial responsibility? Hell no!

So: she was advised to seek specialist tax/trusts advice and did not. Idiotic. I — a normie, not one of the country’s most prominent/scrutinised politicians — had to deal with a property in a trust when my mum died, and I was *terrified* of getting the tax stuff wrong even *after* expert advice!

Honestly, this feels like disingenuous bullshit. As LOTO/PM, Starmer and his team have repeatedly sought to undermine and oust Rayner, and — taken on deeds rather than words — this Govt seems determined to make life grim for people in the sort of challenging circumstances she once rose up from.

“I have done something wrong and/or detrimental to the Government’s media coverage polling, and I resign… “Now! Several paras about my and this Government’s extraordinary political achievements, past and future, to launder my reputation and convey some key messages for you on my way out.”

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of Rayner’s conduct in this matter, this is a prime example of the weirdness of the ministerial resignation letter as a genre of content. 90% of it isn’t for the recipient, but for the media, voters, political biographers and historians, etc.

Reading the latest Capital Letter and it appears that at least one person at @thefence.bsky.social is a @beefanddairy.bsky.social fan. Love it when two icons collide.

"When it incites violence in the terms very clearly laid down in long-existent statute law." Thanks for asking.

On the one hand, the Guardian headline writer’s sympathetic framing of Linehan as activist is appalling. On the other, the final paragraph of the article - quoting his own words from a recording he both made and published - gives him so much rope they might as well have kicked the chair themselves

Not just sports journalism. Could write exactly the same about the lobby.

‘Very cranky’ statements that directly mirror those made by the leader of the largest economy in Europe three months before him.

imagine being arrested just for posting! out of curiosity though, what did they post? because i notice you haven’t seen fit to quote them. was there a lack of space?

I bet this will be great. But — hopefully @stephaniefaye.bsky.social has already been in touch about this and I’m just lending weight to the suggestion — I’m here to plead for the people to be given the marathon/season they *really* want and need…

Indeed! A plausible incitement to violence against a vulnerable, marginalised minority group — i.e., a plausible *crime*. People tend to like folks arrested for those. His (questionable, now) status as a “comedian” is irrelevant — he didn’t say what he did on stage, it wasn’t obviously a joke.

these tits smother fascists

I do sometimes wonder if there is a certain kind of person that takes refuge in despair because it absolves them from having to do anything. No, you do in fact have to help maintain the social norm against racism in the UK! That is your moral duty as a British citizen! Giving up on that is immoral!