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Bo Jacobs Strom @bojs.bsky.social · 1d

Headlines going to the English requirements but I'd completely missed this part of the plans, yet another act of idiotic self harm. Completely incompatible with the government's stated aims on housebuilding, growth, etc.

The immigration skills charge is being raised by 32%

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 1d

Looking forward to reading it Glen was interesting seeing your presentation on it at the Labour in Government conference in Jan last year.

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 2d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Alice Lilly @aliceolilly.bsky.social · 4d

If we can’t even talk in general terms about MPs’ workload- which MPs of all parties agree is v casework- heavy and getting heavier- without a lot of responses being to assume that MPs are not telling the truth/just whinging/ working on the wrong things etc- then I think we’re in a bad place

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 2d

Sure, yelling posh or rich is a bit pointless. But isn’t the point going to be that keep watching how much it is and where it comes from, because at some point there will be a “he got a £100k for doing that for them JFC that’s bad” moment.

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Emily ✨🎃 @emilyoram.bsky.social · 2d

Good morning, somehow this has only just come up on my instagram but it’s well worth 30 seconds of your time.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 2d

"You're going to need a bigger buffer."

The OBR isn't some shadowy institution gleefully blocking elected politicians. What gives it real power is successive chancellors *choosing* to leave themselves precious little fiscal headroom.

✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/rachel-ree...

My newsletter, out now.

The government is rushing through its planning and infrastructure bill not because of the urgent need to build more homes or accelerate the green transition, but so that the OBR has time to run the numbers — and, ideally, score the reforms positively. The hope is that this will reduce the amount of savings (or tax rises) the chancellor needs to find.

As a payer of taxes, a liver in houses and a consumer of energy, sign me up. But as an observer of public policy, my eyes hurt. This is a completely wild way of making policy! There is always a bit of teaching to the test in any system, but at times the UK government engages in the equivalent of a school sending its low-performing students on a ‘field trip’ during exam week to artificially raise overall test scores.

The OBR is not some shadowy, underworld institution gleefully blocking elected governments from serving the people — or whatever Truss is mumbling in her sleep. Politicians created it. They can abolish it. What gives the OBR real power is simple: Reeves — like her recent predecessors — has chosen to leave herself precious little fiscal headroom. That is not imposed from on high. It is a decision voluntarily taken.

Back in the mists of time, Philip Hammond took OBR downgrades on the chin. They barely changed policy, because he left enough margin to absorb the hit. It will be painful in the short term, but Reeves is surely right to follow suit. To do anything less would be to hand the OBR power it should not — and frankly does not want to — have.

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 2d

What would be different was that “ref 2” would take place with Trump 1 in the Whitehouse - presumably cheering it on. This would have been a lot trickier background situation for a circa 2019 leave campaign having a second go in 3 years.

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 2d

Had we remained 52-48 by now there would have been another referendum because “facts had changed”. The media-political system is Euroskeptic and no proper counter movement if we narrowly remain

unlike a 2nd ref when art 50 triggered there’ no restriction on domestic referenda when an EU member

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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 3d

It's almost exactly four years since Tim Shipman's notorious "Boris Johnson squats like a giant toad" tweet.

Seems like important context given how we often talk as though the next election – four years away – is a done deal.

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 3d

What 5 events defined your childhood

Gulf War 1
Post 1992 European integration
Grunge Music
1997 General Election
Google

Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 4d

What five events defined your childhood?

The first moon landing
Thatcher stealing my milk
Vietnam war
Star Wars
The Clash

Dragonrider Sue #fbpe #ktto 🐠🐟 she/her 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @topsyscatmum.bsky.social · 4d

What five events defined your childhood?

Poll tax riots
Brixton riots
Fall of the Berlin wall
Sex Pistols
Jaws/Grease/Poltergeist

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 4d

The Right are doing this because they want you to believe there is a systemic problem with free speech in this country.

But there isn't.

bsky.app/profile/rola...

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 4d

There is no systemic free speech problem in Britain that needs fixing. There are some tricky fine lines between free speech and incitement – a balancing of rights – as has been the case for a *very* long time and was the case here. Nothing more.

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 4d

A man born in Pretoria, 1971, left for Canada in 1989, might want to wind his neck in (though apartheid South Africa was not necessarily too traumatic place for those who could benefit from apartheid if could manage to resist being too troubled by the racist principles of the state and society)

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 5d

hmmmmmmmmmmm

surely the point of being a digital native and being Online is to be able to sniff out stuff like this

not sure the BBC gets to put this on our people

Michael Savage @michaelsavage.bsky.social · 5d

NEW: A false claim about Euan Blair found its way into Have I Got News For You.

It was from an X post seen almost 3m times - and it was wrong.

Production chief blames a "digital native" culture.

A very online media class drinking in social media = danger:

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

BBC airing false claim about Euan Blair blamed on young producers ‘marinated in social media’

Broadcaster apologised after Have I Got News For You falsely said former PM’s son had won digital ID contract

www.theguardian.com

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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 5d

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

SHOCK POLL:
NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW
IN an amazing poll conducted
by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions
may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like.
However, 99 percent of journalists
agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when
Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

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Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 6d

And yet the sector is a punchbag, despite HE probably being the UK's single most successful industry.

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Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 7d

This is a good game.

I have an English degree and boosted a major publishing house’s share price, and saved a high street retail chain from closure.

If a Mickey Mouse degree lets you create actual Mickey fucking Mouse, it’s probably easily as good “for the economy” as business studies.

Patrick Ness @patricknessbooks.bsky.social · 7d

*deep sigh* Again, I have an English degree and have contributed rather extensively to the British economy, including writing a show that pumped £10 million into Wales. But the stupidity is the point here, of course.

Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 7d

Badenoch and Co see education only as a means to a massive income in some soul destroying career.

Devoid of imagination and the power of knowledge they view life entirely through the prism of the CV.

My advice always is to study what interests you and the rest will follow

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 7d

No, it's not. It's all a lie. The blunt truth is across the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them.

Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 7d

Outstanding piece by Stephen Daisley.

Ethnicity is no barrier to Britishness - it's culture and integration.

That means 'smaller cohorts and aggressive integration policies' - and tackling the institutions that 'have amplified grievance narratives and radical anti-Western ideologies'.

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Richard Gadsden @po8crg.gadsden.online · 7d

As @mthrjo.bsky.social has pointed out while this was sitting in my drafts:

This is worse than the Tebbit test, which we all regarded as awful and prejudiced *in the 1980s* - this is saying that even if they support the England cricket team, that's not good enough for people with brown skin.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 7d

Spot on from @stephenkb.bsky.social. And the other aspect of this nasty turn is the eliding of British ‘culture’ with ‘white British’, which will shock anyone who has watched TV or football, or listened to music, or read a book, or indeed breathed since 1980.

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Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · 7d

One of the reasons I’ve become a convert to “just scrap Grade II” is because of mission creep. What fundamentally is gained from keeping 8 cooling towers around? This isn’t like Bankside/Battersea Power Station where you can get an art gallery or a mall out of it.

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Andrew R @excelpope.net · 7d

See yer da’s got a new car.

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Ben Stanley @benstanley.eu · 8d

“The advantages of a first past the post system, of course, are that it prevents an overly fragmented parliament in which a stable governing majority cannot be found, and that it keeps the radical right down.”

Election Maps UK @electionmaps.uk · 8d

Westminster Voting Intention:

RFM: 27% (-2)
LAB: 20% (-2)
CON: 17% (+1)
LDM: 17% (+2)
GRN: 12% (+1)
SNP: 4% (+1)

Via @yougov.co.uk, 5-6 Oct.
Changes w/ 28-29 Sep.

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Craig Grannell @craiggrannell.bsky.social · 7d

Also, I find it incredible that successive governments keep trying to knacker industries where the UK punches above its weight, such as an awful lot of the arts.

Tim Worthington @outonbluesix.bsky.social · 7d

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 8d

I asked Chris Philip this.
- the last govt passed laws saying those who came without permission could not claim asylum
- the government cleared a backlog well, but then ceased to process claims in the last year.
- they had 60,000 people in hotels. Surely over 50k of them were never going to Rwanda?

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 8d

Not a serious person. Zero mention of what this would mean for the over a million British citizens whose own access to welfare in the EU is protected by the withdrawal agreement.

EU citizens living in UK shouldn’t be allowed welfare benefits, says Tory rising star

Katie Lam — who is earning plaudits on the Conservative right — calls for Brexit withdrawal agreement to be reopened.

www.politico.eu

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