"... it goes after those of us who look like we could be immigrants. We have talked a lot about illegal immigration sitting at the heart of this debate, but what we are not talking about so much is race" Shabana Mahmood condemning the hostile environment back in 2018

BBC News: "the government believe refugees are deliberately bringing their children to avoid deportation" As opposed to doing what with their children??

My friend P just told me about this! Omg, how have we not been voting for Duchess…? Let’s get this done, people! lithub.com/what-was-lit...

State-endorsed robbery is no way to fix the asylum system.

I wonder if this old thing will make a comeback

<sigh> Looks like it's "no, the Labour party is not 'liberal', and especially not the faction in charge" time _again_. I cannot stress enough: the entire Blue Labour political project is "being opposed to liberalism, and its victories over the last few decades"!

We were not asylum seekers, but nearly 50 years on, my mum still wistfully talks of the jewellery she had to sell to pay for the plane tickets that got us here. Aside from this policy being unconscionable, it does make me wonder how many asylum seekers will have any such belongings to confiscate.

If you wrote this as a satire of the far-left the script would be rejected as being too far-fetched.

Extraordinary story in Poland. Yet more sabotage. Culpability not yet established, but all eyes will be on Russia. Poland has already arrested a total of 55 people only recently for illegal activities on Russia’s behalf. Hybrid warfare becoming part of European life. www.ft.com/content/485f...

Does he, like, know what happened to Prometheus?

Not one billionaire has ever finished the assigned reading even once, huh?

Does... Does Bezos *know* how that story ends, do we think?

Prometheus for an AI company works though because much like Prometheus, its claim to fame is stealing.

This is tremendously short-sighted - if you don't hire junior people, where are your experienced, senior people going to come from in 10 years' time?

on some level the real divide on asylum policy is between people who have the wherewithal of mind to imagine being forced from your home at gunpoint, and idiots

Nigel Farage is more wary of seeming to agree with Tommy Robinson than this. I'm not even kidding.

TL;DR....Friday 30th January 2026 @ Royal Vauxhall Tavern An Evening with Sooz Kempner. All funds go towards lead-up and recovery from an operation on my damn larynx. £10 TICKETS: www.outsavvy.com/event/31688/...

"You can't call the government fascist! That's a horrible thing to say!" I can if they're doing fascist things, which they are. If you don't want to be called fascist, don't do fascist things, which are horrible things to DO.

Lib Dem Max Wilkinson talking to the BBC: party has "significant concerns" about details of the government immigration plan. Says there's "unanswered questions" about time limited asylum visas and reports about seizing jewellery are "mean-spirited and un-British"

This is one of the problems I have when YouGov ask the question. I believe there is an immigration problem, but mainly around the way the government keep trying to stop it, instead of being honest about it and letting more people in.

Mahmoud has listened to same clique of senior Home Office officials who have advised for 30+ years that loud announcements of punitive policies will deter refugees from coming to UK to seek asylum. Labour did this extensively last time. It didn’t work. A history thread. +

I simply do not understand how the govt can simultaneously believe (1) they don’t have enough political capital to breach the manifesto on tax and (2) they have enough to political capital to pick an unwinnable fight with their own MPs on immigration.

How big a piece of shit would you have to be to buy the confiscated jewelry of asylum seekers at a government auction?

Uninstall Grammarly NOW. They've partnered with an AI company and actively scrape your writing to train its models.

If they didn't influence government or party policy, business wouldn't be funding them

Excl: the Electoral Commission is examining whether the Labour Party failed to declare sponsorship donations from drinks receptions with business on.ft.com/47JtHyv

I feel like the pope being an American cinephile is God finally rewarding Scorsese for a lifetime of devotion

Just heard re: some ICE agents who raided a Chicago taqueria, then went back to the same taqueria for lunch the following week and got confused when the owner kicked them out, and I realized "jesus these doofuses really do believe we're all living in a video game where the NPCs have no memory"

This is why I refuse to have one of those things in the house and if anyone were to bring one in I would reprogram it with a hammer.

Gonna restate my grand unified theory of Morgan McSweeney: He's treating the government like a CLP, ruling with an iron fist, trying to crush all opposition. The problem is, in a CLP, those crushed quit and cease to be a factor. In the PLP - and the country - they do not.

A sign that I don’t have a big enough hinterland is that I saw this and went “oh, THAT’s where the Lib Dem Glee Club song comes from!”

It’s really fucking unfair that so many of us have to spend our one precious life fighting for the fundamental right to exist just because some evil fuckheads have decided to waste *their* one precious life trying to eliminate us

a big runoff last night, in New Orleans: Calvin Duncan was exonerated after spending *28 years* in prison; he tried to get his own case records from the New Orleans city clerk—but the office dragged its feet. So Duncan ran to become city clerk himself, and yesterday ousted the incumbent.

Congratulations to Labour who have won the coveted Tommy Robinson endorsement. Excited for sensibles to explain to me why I have to vote for the people enacting actual fascist policy.

This is really very scary for any number of reasons, but mostly because fundamental human rights should be fundamental - they should not be subject to removal at the whim of a government. Article 3 is non-derogable (you are not able to deviate from it for any reason). It should not be up for debate!

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

Labour policy is being celebrated by Tommy Robinson. That's it. That's all you ever need to say to explain who Labour are.

Correctly, I think the Labour Party is best understood as the performance of a centre left political party put on by several political strategists but (unwittingly) in a manner akin the producers.

Ok these all sound like gay porn titles.

it's often very hard for extremely successful and powerful people to understand that mild criticism from those they have power over is not equivalent to actually being oppressed.

What I love most about this story is the NYT’s obliviousness to the fact that in other anglophone cultures the slang for tight male underwear or swimwear is ‘budgie smugglers’ www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/u...

Hi. Could at least 40 people buy a Life of Sharks 2026 Calendar? For a project I’m working on* thelifeofsharks.com *my overdraft

Just how morally, ethically, intellectually bankrupt do you have to be to argue that 15-year-olds can sell sex but can’t affirm gender

HOLY SHIT. They found the genes for fibromyalgia - and it's *not* autoimmune, it's the central nervous system. It's very cool to see some progress made on the thing that's ruined my life since late teenage years!

Twats

The far right aren’t bothered about the finer points of asylum rules they simply want NO people of colour to be in their field of vision at any time, and Shabana that means you. Trying to capitulate like this achieves NOTHING other than contributing more to the climate of hate.

Without asylum: Marks and Spencer wouldn't exist Queen would have been without a front man The other queen wouldn't have had a husband Judith Kerr would never have written The Tiger Who Came to Tea And thousands of less famous people wouldn't have been teachers, politicians, neighbours, etc

Somehow missed this in the news: Australia has denied AI companies the copyright loophole they requested!