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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 11h

Ultimately people want to feel wanted at a local level and there is a lot of anger out there at central government, but in the practical examples where tireless public servants are providing nice things for people it needs to serve as an exemplary model, not something we see as an exception

Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 11h

Our councillors sent a newsletter today hailing the community chess club for juniors that I help run (and where the council themselves have been invaluable). Power to everyone's elbows but also, you know, people can make nice and good things happen if they have the idealism and wherewithal

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 11h

Our councillors sent a newsletter today hailing the community chess club for juniors that I help run (and where the council themselves have been invaluable). Power to everyone's elbows but also, you know, people can make nice and good things happen if they have the idealism and wherewithal

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 13h

(See also John Bonham. My favourite drummer ever but most of us are living a different lifestyle for a reason)

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 13h

It really does. It's not too much to ask for music literature which is chiefly about the music, and ultimately the best reason to remember Keith Moon is the drumming

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Dan McCrum @mccrum.bsky.social · 17h

This isn’t funny. Judges only speak to the press when they’re in extreme distress

Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 20h

More judges speak to the press (the NYT) about what a disaster the Supreme Court (specifically the shadow docket) has been - “incredibly demoralizing & troubling”; a “judicial crisis”; a “slap in the face to district courts.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

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Gaz Bottom @garjones.bsky.social · 1d

Farage campaigning in Wales today said to the press he was the only one that knew him, contradicting the whole narrative from his chairman yesterday that he didn't.

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 17h

I have been on a Dylan binge recently and last night we listened to New Morning, Street Legal and Oh Mercy and with the possible exception of the chauvinism on Is Your Love In Vain? there isn't one thing I don't like on those (relatively) minor albums. Feeling gratitude he is still with us

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 1d

X is doing nothing about antisemitic abuse & hatred in the last week. (It is a breach of its legal duties to fail to offer an equal service to those with a protected characteristic, if the regulators want to do their job of keeping it within the law)

www.thejc.com/news/uk/excl...

EXCLUSIVE: Study reveals flood of blood-curdling Jew-hate following Manchester attack - The Jewish Chronicle

The Centre for Countering Digital Hate analysed social media posts following last week’s atrocity

www.thejc.com

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 22h

My grandmother and grandfather saw Hitler in the flesh on a walking holiday in Bavaria in the mid-1930s. My mother and aunt were caught up in the protests in Prague in August 1969 a year after the Soviet invasion. My trailblazers so to speak - but like you I'm grateful for what I've done too x

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Paul Marshall @pmarsha11.bsky.social · 1d

Religious hate crimes continue to rise as a result of Farage, Jenrick and Robinson’s evil, racist rhetoric that clearly aims to divide racially integrated communities.

Man and child sprayed with substance in racist Worcester attack - BBC News

The victims "suffered minor irritation injuries" and a 77-year-old woman has been arrested.

www.bbc.com

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Tom Hunter @onelifestand87.bsky.social · 1d

It is embarassing not to see the BBC pulling up Reform leaders claiming that Nathan Gill was just some fan who got photos taken with Farage - he was an MEP for them & their leader in Wales while taking cash from Russia to act against the UK! Literally the very basics of your job to point this out

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 1d

And now I can walk the 15 minutes up to where Pemberton Colliery in Wigan was not forty years ago and it is a beautiful little oasis of calm and greenness ahd tranquility, with wonderful sylvan footpaths all around. Sometimes I think we are looking huge gift horses in the mouth

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks for all the tireless and invaluable work you have done on this over the years too. It really is appreciated

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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 4d

A reminder that this week the Conservatives announced they want a “British ICE”

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 4d

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 4d

Here’s video of the incident

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 2d

This is nightmarish and every Dem politician, every media figure who is silent is complicit. This is not supposed to happen here. Masked thugs with guns dragging moms away in front of their screaming children. Trump’s government must be destroyed and his accomplices must rot in prison

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 2d

CHICAGO — Outside an elementary school during dismissal… horrifying. What have we become?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 4d

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between 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

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

Which meant having to do a huge U-turn on monetarism in 1985 in the process. As Hurd put it, a lot of Mrs Thatcher's governing style was actually 'No, No, Yes', and the right have simply not been able to grasp the nuances and the diversions of her eleven years in the long term since 1990

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

I hope so; it's just so sodding enervating after a while :(

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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 2d

And while China was surging ahead on solar power, Kemi Badenoch was pretending climate action doesn't really matter.

Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 3d

"While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors," says Kemi Badenoch.

I cannot be the only person curious about how these two things are related

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

That's a worse Labour result than 1931, and in 1931 they had a very good excuse

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

And that fact that Labour's travails are ultimately self-inflicted, even if the electorate is tetchy and restless

Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 2d

The genius of McSweeney and Glasman

Election Maps UK @electionmaps.uk · 2d

Seat Projection:

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

It has occurred to me that the Tories could have actually played principled Dracula at conference and gone 'yes we'll have fucking great tax rises, even bigger than Labour's, and fucking great spending cuts, and reverse our stupid NI cuts' and this would have been better than what they have done

Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

I mean, I don't vote Tory, but it's depressing because as Glen O' Hara said here yesterday and as you have said, it can't be anything but bad for public debate and policy if this is where we are heading

Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

Didn't Hague and co do that line post-1997 about how they had 'given the impression of not caring'? That at least gives you some wiggle room about whether you think you are right/being realistic about what the public thinks, but as you say she's not even up to that. It's a bit depressing actually 😟

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Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 2d

And also Keith Joseph sort of helped her in that way by declaring after the 1974 elections that he'd realised he'd thought he'd been a Conservative all his life but he'd realised that he was wrong. Contrition or a Pauline conversion might not have to be done by the leader