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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Cleona @cleonaw.bsky.social · 2d

It's almost like the country's been sucked dry by the super wealthy, leaving public services stripped to the bone.
Those people who Nigel sucks up to, and whose interests he serves.

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 2d

Really fun how we get to watch every conservative government in every country go on this journey after every election.

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 1d

Even Reform voters think Brexit is shite.

We have to make Farage take responsibility for this mess.

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Renew Economy @reneweconomy.com.au · 26d

We often hear experts tell us that the global shift from fossil fuels is glacially slow. The reality is that we’re living through the fastest energy transformation in human history.

reneweconomy.com.au

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 1d

Which one was the worse Prime Minister?

Answers on a postcard.
#Johnson #Cameron

Tony Dexter @timbleman.bsky.social · 1d

It was him guv
Oh no it wasn't
Oh yes it was

Panto land

Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 1d

Farage's Brexit? It's the root of all our problems.

"nearly two-thirds of voters believe Brexit has been “a failure”, with 62 per cent of those surveyed stating their disappointment with the decision to leave Europe. Just 11 per cent believed it had been a success."
inews.co.uk/news/politic...

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 2d

*gasp*

“Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t,” said a third senior Reform cabinet member in Kent.

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James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · 3d

I know this is obvious when you think about it but we don’t think about it enough: fascists have to cow & persecute decent journalists to prevent them from reporting exactly what they, the fascists, are doing. Fascist-adjacent ‘journalists’ help by insisting that we shouldn’t call fascists facsists.

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 2d

Uh-oh

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social · 2d

“Bivalve records are really amazing. They are like the tree rings of the sea. They offer a continuous, annually resolved record of ocean conditions.”
New study finds #AMOC destabilization since 1950 "suggesting that the region is moving toward a tipping point."🌊
insideclimatenews.org/news/0310202...

New Study Shows Disruption of Ocean Currents That Stabilize the Global Climate - Inside Climate News

Clam shell growth rings contain clues about the looming potential for a tipping point into climate collapse.

insideclimatenews.org

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · 2d

Yup.

Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 2d

if that HIGNFY Euan Blair fuckup had been about a right-winger it'd have had full front-page scandal coverage in the Mail followed by frontpage coverage across the board for the next week, days of "BBC in crisis" headline coverage by the BBC, and parliamentary questions about Tim Davie's future

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 2d

"The result is Nigel Farage and Reform, whose unseriousness and divisiveness is now not a novelty, but business as usual."

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 2d

"And it was the Conservatives who went out of their way to play down the presence of institutional racism, who launched culture war after culture war about nonsense such as the content of the BBC Proms, and embraced the politics of government by controversy and spectacle.

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 2d

"It was under the Tories that rhetoric about the supposed failure of multiculturalism became something a government minister would say.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don’t despair, Tories: look upon Reform and see your rightful and fitting legacy | Nesrine Malik

If Kemi Badenoch wonders why her party conference looks and feels like a sideshow, perhaps she should reflect on the Conservatives’ 14 years in power, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

www.theguardian.com

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 6d

If you like trains, don't vote Reform. They've already told contractors not to tender on Northern Powerhouse Rail because they will cancel all the contracts... www.itv.com/news/granada...

Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 6d

"the Northumberland Line, which... reopened last year, reconnecting Ashington, Bedlington and Blyth to Newcastle's job market and city centre... was anticipated to carry around 200,000 passengers a year, but... saw over 250,000 journeys in just three months"
bettertransport.org.uk/research/mak...

Making the connection: Rail and the sustainable growth opportunity

Campaign for Better Transport's report, Making the connection: Rail and the sustainable growth opportunity, highlights the economic and wider social value of the railways.

bettertransport.org.uk

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Biggerthanfrogs @biggerthanfrogs.bsky.social · 6d

"Investing in Gatwick expansion is a choice. It is a choice to prioritise frequent flyers over repairing the UK’s broken transport system, strengthening the NHS, or investing in climate resilience. More flights mean more emissions, worsening climate change for everyone."

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 6d

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plays the same role in aviation as CCS/BECCS/DACCS play for other fossil-fuelled sectors: more a stalling tactic than solution. Good engineers work on SAF, but CEOs/politicians/etc deliberately mis-sell their role in mitigation.
climateuncensored.com/gatwick-expa...

Gatwick Expansion: A Direct Assault on Climate Commitments - Climate Uncensored

Comment on UK Government announcement of Gatwick Airport expansion by Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr. Lois Pennington, of Tyndall Centre, University of

climateuncensored.com

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 6d

Absolutely hilarious! Recommended 😆

Alasdair Beckett-King @misterabk.bsky.social · 6d

Sound on for The Railway Children (1970). It looks like a folk horror film, so I added scary noises to the trailer. Listen to me and @eleanormorton.bsky.social for more: linktr.ee/readthat

Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

ＺÖＭＢＹＷＯＯＦ @steveshark.bsky.social · 6d

Rowley needs to look up the definition of "systemic", because that's what this toxic culture is.

Robust responses to individual transgressions are all well and good, but these only scratch the surface of the problem.

Met chief says he will not resign over ‘vile’ BBC footage of toxic police culture

Mark Rowley says Met is dealing with misogynist and racist officers who undermine force and ‘want him out’

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Peter Foster @pmdfoster.bsky.social · 6d

Living. Working. Paying taxes. Contributing. This is a desperately poor editorial.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 6d

The Times finds it "unacceptable" that people who came here legally in 2021 and have been living and working here since should allowed to stay.

The sad decline of a once great newspaper into ignorant xenophobia and casual racism

archive.ph/TFZY9

There is a more pressing issue. Ministers must ensure that the vast numbers of immigrants who arrived in the so-called Boriswave of 2020-21 are not automatically absorbed into the permanent population. They are about to cross the the five-year threshold into ILR, yet Labour continues to dither. Ms Mahmood must freeze the status of this huge cohort while a new residency regime is finalised. A million or more extra permanent residents in these islands, let in on the nod, is simply unacceptable. Finally, the home secretary must acquaint herself, and the public, with an accurate estimate of the actual number of foreign nationals living here, what taxes they pay and what services they consume. Without hard data, all the political parties are fumbling around in the dark.

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Orange Dick Tater Hater @realbiscuitspaw.bsky.social · 6d

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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 6d

“Farage “broke Britain" with Brexit and is now, outrageously, capitalising on the vast damage he caused”

Article argues there’s no need to mention Reform’s racism as the Brexit shitshow is failure enough.
But that had its roots in racism too. So let’s do both.
app.independent.co.uk/edition/uk.c...

Yet it's a potentially fruitful line of argument.
Many of the UK's current problems stem from something most of us would prefer not to dwell on - Brexit. Depressed investment, low productivity, stagnant economic growth and living standards, the strain on the public finances and thus public services, food prices, the "Boriswave" of more than 2 million (legal) immigrants, increased red tape and border hassles for businesses, farmers and travellers... all can be traced back, to a greater or lesser extent, to 2016 and the EU Referendum. And who, as he reminds us again now, spent 30 years of his life campaigning for Britain to leave the EU? Farage.
It is he, Farage, who 'broke Britain' with Brexit and is now capitalising on the vast damage he caused

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Dr Matthew Hardy @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social · 6d

"the Northumberland Line, which... reopened last year, reconnecting Ashington, Bedlington and Blyth to Newcastle's job market and city centre... was anticipated to carry around 200,000 passengers a year, but... saw over 250,000 journeys in just three months"
bettertransport.org.uk/research/mak...

Making the connection: Rail and the sustainable growth opportunity

Campaign for Better Transport's report, Making the connection: Rail and the sustainable growth opportunity, highlights the economic and wider social value of the railways.

bettertransport.org.uk

Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Liam Thorp @liamthorp.bsky.social · 9d

Very good stuff from Sadiq Khan at the Labour Irish society event. He said there are two reasons he loves coming to Labour Conference.

“One is the reception at the Labour Party Irish Society reception.

“The second is to get away from all the Sharia Law in London”

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 7d

Can someone ask Farage or Zia Yusuf why, if they're so concerned about incitement to violence, they had Lucy Connolly as a guest star at their conference?

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Reposted by Dr Matthew Hardy

Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 7d

“That Brexit has made control of immigration more difficult, damaged our economy and weakened opportunities for future generations should make people think twice before putting Brexit's chief proponent in charge of running the country”

Times letters: a lonely oasis of sanity in the far right storm.

Differing political definitions of patriotism

3 of the 6 letters (4th quoted in the post) criticising Phillips 😊

Sir, Melanie Phillips expresses a very specific and slightly odd definition of patriotism as "love for the Crown, the armed forces and the common law, and attachment to faith, family and flag" ("Sorry Keir, you don't understand patriotism",
, comment, Sep 30). Perhaps that is why she concludes that Nigel Farage offers “the only patriotic force on the horizon". Personally, I regard
someone who had a very direct hand in diminishing the United Kingdom's
GDP by 4 per cent — as a direct result of our leaving the European Union — as confirming Samuel
Johnson's much-quoted remark that
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". Acts rather than words
still count for some of us.
Shaun Leavey
Sherborne, Dorset

Sir, Over thousands of years these islands have been invaded and occupied by various tribes, who, at any given moment, represented some kind of "Englishness".
"In 300 years'
time there might well be another kind of "Englishness", doubtless defending itself from the incursion of escapees from another foreign disaster, and claiming a threat to its purity". We were never pure, and attempts such as the present one to somehow freeze a manufactured notion of "Englishness" are doomed to failure.
Jerry Stuart
London SEI

Sir, There is a fundamental flaw in Melanie Phillips's article. She talks of British patriotism as "attachment to faith, family and flag".
°. She doesn't
indicate which faith she is referring to, but presumably means the Christian faith as the traditional faith in Britain. However, the faith of Jesus of Nazareth shares much more common ground with the values she seems to dismiss - decency, reasonableness and compassion - than it does with the militarism and flag-waving she seems to endorse. I surely cannot be the only person getting worried when the Christian faith is conscripted into the support of strident nationalism.
The Rev Paul Dowling

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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 8d

Ugh
This man
This paper.
Using the same rhetoric as Trump’s lot, jumping on the Kirk bandwagon to claim victimhood and cancel free speech if it criticises him.

Farage incites riots on our streets, then acts all ‘poor me’ when his ugly racist ideas are called out.

No one should pander to this shit.

The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 8d

Nigel Farage: Labour rhetoric incites violence against Reform

Reform UK leader will claim in a speech today that Keir Starmer’s labelling of his migrant plan as ‘racist’ has endangered the safety of his candidates and activists ⬇️

Nigel Farage: Labour rhetoric incites violence against Reform

www.thetimes.com

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