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Reposted by Matt Severn

JWexTheSpa @jwsidders.bsky.social · 1d

A ban on borrowing to fund government expenditure surely means huge cuts to all public services on a scale never seen before. The NHS could not survive this. Neither could the Triple Lock.

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

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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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 1d

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 1d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 1d

This deserves more attention than it has received.

Gove: "we were too anxious as a government to secure those deals in order to show that Brexit was working".

Exactly as so many of us warned at the time, and as the government denied at the time.
www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/country-and-...

Michael Gove admits that post-Brexit trade deals were bad for farmers

Michael Gove has admitted for the first time that the Australia and New Zealand trade deals negotiated by the former Tory government did not protect Britain’s farmers.

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

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Matt Severn @mattsevern.bsky.social · 1d

I think it’s good enough to share with some LD colleagues so that’s praise indeed.
You have absolutely nailed how foolish the 2024 Labour budget and preceding manifesto were. Mad to have jumped in the trap; madder still to have known it was a trap but jump anyway; insane to stay in the trap.

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Zoë Grünewald @zoegrunewald.bsky.social · 1d

"Until now, public knowledge about the relationship between Reform U.K. and the A.D.F. was limited to a single quote Mr. Farage gave to the group, which they pushed out in a press statement. But the A.D.F. has quietly been courting the party since at least 2024."

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

They Helped Topple Roe v. Wade. Now Their Sights Are Set on Britain.

www.nytimes.com

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Anand Menon @anandmenon.bsky.social · 1d

We'll know 'gold standard' apprenticeships really are 'gold standard' when politicians think their own kids should do them rather than getting a degree.

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Lewis Baston @lewisbaston.bsky.social · 1d

Also - it does make me wonder whether the current regulatory regime is adequate in that we have a foreign-funded organisation that is not donating directly but supplying assistance to a party. I’ve always thought think tanks were a massive loophole in the regulatory system.

Steven Fielding @polprofsteve2024.bsky.social · 1d

As this detailed report shows Reform is a Trojan Horse for the US Christian right to secretly reshape British politics along Trumpian lines. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

They Helped Topple Roe v. Wade. Now Their Sights Are Set on Britain.

www.nytimes.com

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Ed Davey @eddavey.libdems.org.uk · 1d

Last year I met Itzik Horn, whose two sons were being held captive by Hamas. Yair was released earlier this year and today I am overjoyed that Eitan is also going home.

I cannot imagine the trauma their family has suffered, and I pray they can now start to heal and move forward.

Ed Davey meets Itzik Horn, father of two men held captive by Hamas.

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Matt Severn @mattsevern.bsky.social · 1d

Britain is in the grip of an anti youth cult

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George Conway 🇺🇸🚫👑🐸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 1d

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAI, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 2d

Everyone knows at least one person (normally, but not exclusively, a guy) whose gone properly mental due to net rabbit holes.

We see public figures regularly go mad and destroy themselves.

And we have, at a policy level, just decided to put our fingers in our ears and go nahnahnah

Alastair Meeks @alastairmeeks.bsky.social · 2d

Last night I heard of another friend of a friend who has been lost to a rabbit hole of online propaganda. We need to start treating this as a serious public health concern.

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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 1d

Idly wondering what a public health campaign on this would look like, and why stuff we tried for, eg, drink driving, isn't being used.

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAI, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 2d

Everyone knows at least one person (normally, but not exclusively, a guy) whose gone properly mental due to net rabbit holes.

We see public figures regularly go mad and destroy themselves.

And we have, at a policy level, just decided to put our fingers in our ears and go nahnahnah

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Matt Severn @mattsevern.bsky.social · 1d

Reed is one of the worst

Matt Severn @mattsevern.bsky.social · 1d

We’ve just had a deadly attack on a synagogue

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2d

whole thing is even worse than the headline when you think about what 'play' means here

“I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”"

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 2d

Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein ‘we’re in this together’ in 2011 email www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein ‘we’re in this together’ in 2011 email

Royal sent email after Virginia Giuffre photo emerged but later claimed he had ceased contact with Epstein in 2010

www.theguardian.com

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Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 2d

Since 2019, the UK economy has barely grown if we adjust for immigration. Poland’s, however, has grown by more than 18% - and is set to overtake Japan in the early 2030s

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Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 2d

🇵🇱 My @thetimes column: Poland’s economic miracle

12 out of 17 Polish regions are now richer than West Wales. It has faster internet, cheaper electricity and more high speed rail than Britain

When it comes to regional development it’s the UK, not Poland, that needs to catch up

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