Running Dog
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runningdog.bsky.social
Running Dog
@runningdog.bsky.social
720 followers 230 following 2.1K posts
In the early days of our movement, it was mandatory that all members smoke cigarettes and refrain from speaking, but we realized those traditions were stupid. He/him/his/bark
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runningdog.bsky.social
Oh no the Telegraph’s gone mad. Perhaps uh *Paul Dacre* will make it nicer 🤠
www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
Tim Walker, a former Telegraph diarist, contrasted its current guise with the staid, establishment-friendly paper overseen by the editor Bill Deedes in the 1970s and 80s. "The Telegraph is now less interested in news and more interested in comment," he said. "It's become a very shouty paper. Perhaps Dacre, as a news man, might change that."
November 29, 2025 at 10:25 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
Having another good lad to stay 😇
Greyhound lying on a duvet
November 23, 2025 at 3:14 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Cool how you can get a flawless victory on the Guardian’s “budget game” simply by soaking the rich. Has anyone told the politics desk
Budget game 2025: surplus £29bn, markets status: ok, polls status: ok
November 20, 2025 at 2:05 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Pretty amazing to choose Starmer as the example of a politician who tells the truth but looks like he’s lying. Even the tame political hacks are constantly saying he doesn’t believe or even comprehend what he’s saying half the time. He’s famous for it!
This perspective also explains why populist politicians are often described as "honest", even by people who regard them as habitual liars. A cautious centrist politician such as Keir Starmer or Kamala Harris can seem verbally constipated: they may be telling the truth, but they give the strong impression of not saying what they really think. In contrast,
November 13, 2025 at 6:57 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Kiran on Politics Weekly here. Perhaps ironically, it sounds like it’s Labour who need to hire an ambitious hypnotherapist
And there are ways, basically, you convince the incumbent that they've got no hope and they're going to have to stand down. And I think that is the only way, by the way, that Keir Starmer goes. I think if he decides in his own mind, if I fight the next election, I'm going to lose it, and that will taint my legacy. Whereas, if I go now, I will always be remembered as the man who saved the Labour party and then went with his dignity intact. That's the way it can be done.
November 13, 2025 at 9:14 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
“Sir Keir, your people yearn for regional press conferences”
Strategists brief that Starmer will be more publicly visible, take more questions from the public, travel the country more and spend less time on a plane. Yet it does not materialise. Between party conference and the budget, Starmer will have been out of the country three times. He has not held a press conference since his trip to India - more than a month ago. Reform have held at least five.
November 12, 2025 at 9:35 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
Plotting will continue until paranoia improves
It has been a real twist to see so many now with an appetite for regime change. They are not - by and large - people who came into politics to practise coups, but have instead been driven to the brink by the party's woeful standing and their own very thin majorities. As one Labour MP said: "They could try not being paranoid and just try being better."
November 12, 2025 at 9:21 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
“He can’t chair a meeting. He can’t draft a minute. He can’t stay calm in an interview. These skills look vital but they’re not, and they’re simple.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Like Farage before him, Polanski is staggeringly underqualified for Downing Street - the highest elected office he has held is on the London Assembly - but he has the storytelling skills and creative political imagination that the more obviously qualified Keir Starmer lacks.
November 11, 2025 at 1:55 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Choose your fighter
The Guardian: Publishing Al can help authors beat writer's block, says Bloomsbury chief 08.41 GMT Detection firm finds 82% of herbal remedy books on Amazon 'likely written' by AI 22 Oct 2025 18.42 BST
October 27, 2025 at 10:03 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
Nominating a Sun journalist for an award, specifically citing a fluff interview with Farage about how councils spend all their money on DEI? Feels like a flex imo
Politics Journalism, sponsored by Find Out Now Anushka Asthana - ITV News • Details of more than Ebn in welfare cuts revealed • Liz Kendall refuses to say how many people will lose out on PIP under cuts announced • Committee of MPs urge Starmer to pause disability cuts amid poverty fears in letter seen by ITV News Pippa Crerar - The Guardian • 'We all hope it's teething troubles - but worry it's something worse' the inside story of Labour's first 100 days in power • No 10 rethinking winter fuel payment cut after Labour slump in local elections • Starmer under pressure from cabinet to recognise Palestinian statehood Kate Ferguson - The Sun on Sunday • Angela Rayner buys THIRD home as she splashes out over €700k on luxury apartment 'while hiking taxes on family homes • New Angela Rayner hypocrisy storm as Deputy PM's boyfriend works for lobby group whose client got government cash boost • Nigel Farage vows to be UK's Elon Musk and wage war on council waste as he reveals the millions spent on barmy projects Matthew Holehouse - The Economist • Nigel Farage leads a movement that is hungrier and better organised • Nigel Farage's Big Night Out • The rise of Nigel McFarage Beth Rigby - Sky News • White House talks: Was it a win for Starmer? • Sky's Beth Rigby challenges Nigel Farage on the news a Reform MP was jailed 18 years ago for repeatedly kicking his girlfriend according to released court records • UK will play its 'full part' in peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine, says Sir Keir Starmer Steven Swinford - The Times • Rachel Reeves to raise employers' national insurance to fund NHS • Louise Haigh resigns over stolen mobile phone fraud conviction • Peter Mandelson picked by Starmer as UK's ambassador to US
October 26, 2025 at 3:52 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
LOL keep saying this shit lads, it’s amazing
This summer, Anthropic, a leading AI firm, released a study indicating that its model Claude appeared willing to blackmail a fictional executive over an extramarital affair in order to prevent being shut down - a behaviour, it said, that was consistent across models from major developers, including those from OpenAl, Google, Meta and XAI.
October 25, 2025 at 1:45 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
This week, Tim explains that Reform fare badly head to head nationally against a strong establishment party, but will pick up Tories if they can say Labour will need the Greens, Plaid & SNP to govern, like in 2015. There’s not much to be done about it, but it’s interesting to hear the thinking.
Not another one podcast: Caerphilly by-election: is this the death of the Labour Party?
October 24, 2025 at 8:59 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
It is So Interesting how the hacks long for scrutiny of political leaders, and also have absolutely no interest in the half dozen times Polanski’s been asked about the Sun hypnosis thing. Like you can say you don’t buy the answer, but it’s wild to keep implying it hasn’t been addressed yet
I think that there will be a lot of scrutiny of Zack Polanski and his deputies though, because once you start rising it to a certain level, you do get asked difficult questions. Even apart from his background as a hypnotherapist who made money out of telling women, he could talk to their boobs to make them bigger.
October 19, 2025 at 3:33 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Miranda is Very Concerned that the Greens are pivoting to not being “indistinguishable from the Lib Dems” in some seats where that is popular. Mate, *you are a Lib Dem*, you should be happy about that!
So, you know, they themselves are going to have problems as a party because a lot of their voters and a lot of their activists and indeed their councillors are rural areas where they're almost indistinguishable from a Lib Dem agenda and the votes are kind of fungible in seats like that one that Adrian Ramsey won for the Greens at the last election in North Suffolk, North border. That's a whole different ball game politically to the Polanski message in kind of urban areas, student seats, where it's this left populist agenda. It's not the same electorate.
October 19, 2025 at 3:17 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Instructive scenes on the UK’s Most Nuanced podcast. Iain has no idea why the Greens appeal to anyone and has no intention of finding out. Miranda has heard about/is terrified by the idea of degrowth, and also thinks they’re not focused enough on the environment. My guys need to find A Line asap
Not Another One: what can we learn from the rise of the greens?
October 19, 2025 at 2:56 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
“Oh so serious unrest is bad now? So much for the kinder, gentler politics” - me for the Guardian
www.theguardian.com/football/202...
On a sporting level it makes no logical sense. Who are we not going to ban now? How are the England team, source of vastly inflated police bills around the world, going to get away with showing their face anywhere if this is the standard? How about Paris Saint-Germain, whose Champions League celebrations led to mass arrests and death on the streets? Or any trip to Napoli, a city-wide parkour of buttock-stabbing rage? But no. We will instead draw the line at a few hundred Israeli supporters. This is based, as far as anyone knows, on some serious unrest last season during the trip to Ajax, where 62 people were arrested, 10 of them Israelis, 49 of them Dutch or residents in the Netherlands.
October 19, 2025 at 10:11 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
MPs are so overexcited they’ve forgotten they’re literally talking about the police service
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
The former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron described the ban as racist: "We can't have Jews watching football, people might get violent towards them' - are we seriously saying that we are incapable of protecting football fans from racism? I'm flabbergasted. This is shameful. "We're not banning them because they're Jewish, it's because they're hooligans...' is the risible defence for the ban from people who know nothing about football or hooliganism, but are desperate not to acknowledge or admit their own racism. This is a stain on Britain."
October 17, 2025 at 12:06 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Come on lads, does Starmer’s strategy of flags, deregulation & more flags look non-simplistic to you. Does it indicate thoughtful trade-offs
It's also true to say that one of the reasons Starmer and, let's say, centre-left forces or centre-right force struggles to deal with populists, whether it's left or right, is because populists very often will speak in deeply simplistic solutions. They won't often engage with the politics of trade-offs, which, to be fair, Polanski doesn't really do either. Some things I sort of pressed him on, you know, to say, well, we'll be able to just solve all of this by rewiring the taxation system or whatever.
October 16, 2025 at 7:20 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Incredible horseshoe scenes on the News Agents, as the team explain that Farage thinks *literally they themselves, the News Agents team & people like them*, are the real problem, and Polanski thinks it’s very rich people, and conclude that nobody knows which is more accurate.
It's just they disagree about who the elites are. You know, Farage would say that the elites are kind of liberal, people like us, liberal cultural elites, right, who dominate the media and dominate universities and dominate politics and dominate all of our institutions. And they're the things, they have, in whatever way, basically denuded ordinary people of the ability to get what they want. It's an economic elite who might coincide with some of those people, but they might not. Indeed, Polanski would say that Farage embodies that economic elite. But it is the same fundamental approach. Now, I'm not saying that one or other is right or wrong, but it is the fundamental kind of unit and building block of politics, and it is what unites them. Well, if you think this is a uniquely British problem, it ain't. Look at what is happening in France at the moment.
October 16, 2025 at 7:06 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
What the fuck
www.scientificamerican.com/article/open...
Unlike the original Sora, Sora 2 isn't a mere video-generation platform; it's a social app with a Tik Tok-style feed of short Al-generated clips, and it allows you to authorize a "cameo" of yourself so friends can drop your likeness into their skits-and to revoke it later once you've seen too many videos of yourself fleeing police or crying on game shows.
October 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Well basically you can try conserving water using “rain” or “rivers”, but livers and colossi are what really move the needle
Mad graph purporting to show “water conservation methods”
October 15, 2025 at 10:36 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
“I know not with what materials a 2040 Tesco will be built, but a 2050 Tesco will be built with sticks and stones”
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Existing buildings and infrastructure should be upgraded to withstand temperatures of at least 2C higher than normal by 2050, instead of the 1.5C nations are hor ing to keep as a limit, the committee said. Any new constructions intended to last decades should be prepared for 4C above preindustrial levels - a level at which the world will face global devastation.
October 15, 2025 at 9:24 AM
runningdog.bsky.social
Lads what the fuck are you talking about. Is Big Meat lining up to write a cheque for socialism
the eco doesn't stand for ecology, it stands for economic. In other words, it's a tax-the-rich party, it's a socialist, it wears socialism on its sleeve, and it says, we will stop rip-off Britain. That's one of his phrases now. He's made a very good fist of saying, all of you, you're getting ripped off, right? So there is a world in which he even appeals to kind of reform voters because what they care about most is being left behind, is being priced out, is the cost of living, all the rest of it. But they probably don't care about the ideologies of a green party that says no money from X, no money from Y. So I think that's going to be the next thing for Polanski now, decide where are your green ideals now? Is it more important to just go left, get the money and enlarge?
October 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
DW lads we’re all going to die on a burning planet but perhaps [checks notes] Keir Starmer will build a utopia of values
archive.ph/1ByM3
Mainstream politicians like Starmer need to present their own version of utopia. It's unlikely to be economic. Even before the UK's debt crisis, British governments hadn't managed to grow real wages in nearly 20 years and hadn't found a use for most of the economy outside the southeast for much longer. But leaders can credibly promise voters better lives - something that probably appeals more than economic growth. Working from home is wildly popular. A four-day workweek looks feasible. Restrictions on cars have improved cities. The new multifunctional weight-loss drugs could prove the biggest medical innovation since antibiotics. Left-liberal politicians can also offer their supporters a values utopia - that is, a society that honours their beliefs. Starmer has begun trying this: after initially aping the far-right Reform party's attack on legal migrants, he has belatedly condemned it as racist. He has also finally dared to mention the failure of Brexit.
October 12, 2025 at 8:01 PM
runningdog.bsky.social
Tfw somebody makes a nonfactual statement on the show with which you’ve become synonymous
Ian Hislop holding up a cracked mobile phone. The screen reads “NEWS”
October 10, 2025 at 12:56 PM