Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 14h

Here’s the story

Bristol Labour councillor suspended over racist comment

Councillor Fabian Breckels is being investigated over a comment he made on Facebook.

www.bbc.com

Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 14h

Bristol Labour have suspended a councillor for an allegedly racist social media post. But tbh, if the same content had appeared in a speech by a Cabinet minister, the lobby would hardly have blinked

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 14h

Finished! Thank you @leaypi.bsky.social for an excellent and moving read. I loved the way Rousseau’s Contrat social illuminated the story!

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 17h

I imagine those in the initial invasion force were professional soldiers. As valuable resources they're probably alive and deployed elsewhere while new recruits get fed into the grinder and die.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 20h

They are failing us, but these are consequences of much older legislation

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 21h

I read elsewhere that the recruits last 11 days, and ten of those are before they arrive at the front, and that they mostly consist these days of drug addicts and others that the Russians are happy to get killed

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 21h

Well, perhaps more the transition from social democracy to a left-liberalism not all that distinguishable from the US Dems.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 22h

Interesting piece from @jderbyshire.ft.com. But worth noting that the US has ceased to be exceptional in its lack of a mass socialist party as the vehicles that bore that name in Europe came to bear it in name only over the past half-century or so. What's socialist about Labour, the PS, the SPD?

Will Zohran Mamdani’s rise mark a new dawn for American socialism?

Tens of thousands of volunteers mobilised by the Democratic Socialists of America are working to elect a torchbearer for a beleaguered US left

www.ft.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 22h

For those for whom the reference is too obscure

A Groundhog Day Wake Up

YouTube video by rychietim

www.youtube.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 22h

Sébastien Lecornu must have "I got you babe" as his morning alarm. The trouble is, so does the rest of France.

Emmanuel Macron maintient Sébastien Lecornu à Matignon, malgré l’hostilité des partis

La nouvelle nomination de l’ancien ministre des armées pour former un « gouvernement de mission » qui sera « déconnecté des ambitions présidentielles » a ravivé les critiques à l’encontre du chef de l...

www.lemonde.fr

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 23h

The postwar campaign to strip Britain’s former imperial subjects of their rights claims another victim, let’s hope temporarily

‘Clear parallels’ with Windrush as UK-born toddler denied passport

Campaigners say lessons not being learned as three-year-old’s mother is asked to prove right to free NHS treatment

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 1d

daft banker war stories (with no moral, that might come later). backofmind.substack.com/p/secrets-of...

secrets of sydn

my great unpublished book

backofmind.substack.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 1d

Digital ID for children

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

Chris Brooke @chrisbrooke.bsky.social · 1d

"Look, I love the right to protest. But I also love my ex-husband, and he's really quite awful."

Rosie Holt @rosieisaholt.bsky.social · 1d

MP defends government plans to restrict repeated protests.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 1d

Well, let's hope the Nobel Peace Prize goes either to the ICC or Greta Thunberg: step back and watch all the world's worst people explode with rage

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

Either the barbers or the wig makers are going to be annoyed at their disenfranchisement, but I can’t remember which

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

Shouldn’t the realist anti-moralists,who say that moralists risk splitting the left and that compromise is needed, take account, in their realistic calculations, of the need to keep the moralists on-board?

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

Thee Headcoats

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

The last time I went for an evening drink with a mate, it was a struggle to find a mutually convenient nice pub that wasn't closing at 9. We found one open until 10, but after 9.30 it was just the two of us and the barman, and he was visibly keen to go. Admittedly it was a Sunday but it was Bristol.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

We were together!

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

Important piece by my fellow Timberite @himself.bsky.social. Russell Hardin's insight was anticipated by Étienne de la Boétie in his Discours de la servitude volontaire (1576).

Opinion | Where Trump Is Vulnerable and How to Act on It

www.nytimes.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

Usually a fan of Tim Harford, and i suppose the "what if we just thought of it in terms of economics" approach is intellectually useful. But to know a bit more about actual subject than he does. A predictable outcome of charging everyone $100k (or £ or €) would be massive debt-linked exploitation

Should we put a high price on work visas?

The US wants to make the immigration of skilled workers more expensive; the UK cheaper. Who’s wrong?

www.ft.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 2d

A great publishing moment. Very pleased to see this.

The Poems of Seamus Heaney review – collected works reveal his colossal achievement

The complete works, including previously unpublished poems and expert notes, are brought together in one volume for the first time

www.theguardian.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 3d

The real scandal is that he is not getting the Nobel Prize for Literature for his posts on TruthSocial, given his innovative approaches to both form and content

Donald Trump looms large over Nobel Peace Prize

US president pressures Norwegian government and independent committee to select him on Friday

www.ft.com

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 3d

We'll face exactly the same checks, only without accumulating lots of stamps in our passports. A complete non-story

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