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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 15h

What 5 events defined your childhood

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

Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 19h

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 · 19h

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 20h

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 2d

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 · 3d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

*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 · 4d

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 · 3d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

See yer da’s got a new car.

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Ben Stanley @benstanley.eu · 4d

“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 · 5d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 5d

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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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 4d

JFC the man has not one ounce of shame in him.

He went to private school and Cambridge. He owns three homes and rents a fourth!

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 4d

I know plenty of politicians 'working classify' their backgrounds, but this from Jenrick is taking the piss.

His father's linked in is here: uk.linkedin.com/in/bill-jenr...

He was a managing accountant who ended up as the Managing Director of Cannon Industries

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fascowell.bsky.social @fascowell.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote a book on treaty withdrawal. This is wrong. Various parts of the TCA are automatically affected and the TCA as a whole is contingent on respect for human rights. There is no sense whatsoever that this continues on as it does now.

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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 4d

It is also deeply unhealthy to have local govts who don’t provide many visible/valuable services for most residents (because they lack the resources). Encourages distrust and populism - “what am I paying my council tax for? The council does nothing for me.”

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 4d

Amazed this is still going ahead - basic and obvious problem is that essentially everything local government does now is for the poor. You can’t move it around without really hurting poor people somewhere!

Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 5d

Some of London’s poorest areas could see their share of the children’s services funding formula halved under Labour’s plans to reform local government grants.

By me, for Politics Home: www.politicshome.com/news/article...

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 5d

Badenoch on #r4today saying they will "have returns agreements", yet we already know that many countries won't implement them. Now spreading it to "third party countries", such as Rwanda. The Rwanda plan was not stopped "because of the ECHR". The lack of honesty about what the ECHR does is massive.

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

The Israeli invitation to Tommy Robinson has initially been reported with headlines that largely reflect the glowing terms of the invitation by the extreme Israeli minister involved - even by the Daily Mirror - rather than reflecting how contentious, controversial this will be

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 7d

Great thread. Badenoch’s complete lack of interest in Ukraine in particular is just utterly bizarre to me. She talks as if she is engaged in a battle for our values. What does she think Ukrainians are fighting and dying for? Why does she think Boris and Ben Wallace helped to arm them?

Dylan Difford @dylandifford.bsky.social · 7d

It is genuinely amazing the extent to which the Conservatives' current strategies are basically the complete opposite of what they should be doing.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 7d

The most recent net immigration figures were 431,000 year ending Dec 25. However, net immigration was already far lower than that even before the rules tightened Jul 25. Visa grants are much lower now than in the first half of 2024 primarily because of the Mar/Apr 24 salary threshold rises (2/x)

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 7d

With the government bringing in new restrictions against immigration, many people assume net immigration will nevertheless remain high. However, the evidence actually suggests that immigration will fall dramatically over the coming years and reach lows not seen for decades (pandemic aside). (1/x)

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Simon ⚒️⛩️🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴‍☠️🇪🇺 @sulaco68.bsky.social · 8d

The view from an ANTIFA landing craft June 6th 1944

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 7d

if I drink three glasses of wine and I eat a large cheesteak and I get home to find the lift in my building isn't working then there should be someone I ought to be able to sue, in a court of law

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