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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 2h

This is really worrying.

This is the kind of thing the current government should be dealing with. They could be protecting the country against Reform.

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 3h

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

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UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation

Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 7h

*lying in bed, gasping for breath* call… the priest. And an employment support worker.

Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 11h

BREAKING: Specialist employment advisers will be based in GP surgeries and mental health services as part of government plans to get people back to work.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden speaks to #BBCBreakfast about the government’s plan to tackle long-term sickness

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 7h

It makes perfect sense - if being sick can keep you out of work, forcing sick people into work will make them well again.

Basic logic.

Also, there's nothing employers want more than seriously ill people on their workforce. It's a real winner in interviews.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 7h

Some of them were members. They must absolutely loath Zack.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 9h

Another confusing "who's this for?" policy from Labour's weird policy people.

Hannah Fearn @hannahfearn.bsky.social · 21h

Why are the vibes so off with this government. The whole culture at the moment is about moderation and harm reduction, especially among the young and middle aged voters that Labour needs to cling on to if it's going to retain a coalition of support.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Pubs to stay open until early hours in push for UK growth

Exclusive: Plans for England and Wales would help the ailing hospitality sector but have attracted criticism from health experts

www.theguardian.com

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 10h

Nobody with significant wealth reads the bloody Express, do they?

Or are they all Princess Diana conspiracy theory nuts?

Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 10h

Starmer's Digital ID system will be a one-stop-shop for criminal hackers.

Madeleine @bustyboudica.bsky.social · 11h

And Starmer thinks the entire populations data will be safe on their servers..

I think not

ID photos of 70,000 users may have been leaked, Discord says - BBC News

The platform says hackers targeted a firm that helped to verify the ages of its users.

share.google

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

I think they wear suits and look grumpy so as to cover for their lack of depth.

Irritatingly, it works for a lot of commentators, and we had to keep hearing about how the "adults are back in charge", with the superficial evidence of their appearing "professional".

They're cosplaying better people.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

That's all very well, but what was her knee-jerk assumption about the situation?

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

🥲 beautiful

Bob From Accounts 🚲 @bobfromaccounts.bsky.social · 1d

It's impressive how quickly Paris has transformed car-dominant roads, prioritising more efficient modes of transportation. One lane for drivers on the right side, made to wallow in their own stop-and-start inefficiency, two giant lanes for bikes.

Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

Who could possibly have imagined that was what was going on? What a unique situation.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

It's the "I saw a guy put his own wheelchair in his car" school of willful naivety, but at a political level rather than just for carpark busybodies.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

Those overspecific vocational courses seem to be an attempt to make degrees useful to the workforce, in a way that is surely a distortion of the original concept of a degree. The supposedly frivolous traditional-style courses seem to still be more likely to be beneficial.

Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

😁 That is a fair point.

Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

The people of this country have had enough of experts in this knowledge economy.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

That's the thing, it's not only the jokes she finds funny. She probably laughed her way through all of the philosophical stuff, too.

Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 2d

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

Paul Haine @paulhaine.bsky.social · 2d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

He's terrible at politics. Can't see the wood for the trees.

Any idiot can put on a suit and say some vapid crap and Ian just laps it up, because for all of his detailed recordings of the goings on in Westminster, his takes are 100% vibes, and the vibes he likes are dull but authoritarian.

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

Remember this next time someone is hand-wringing about children being rushed through gender dysphoria diagnoses so they can get fast-tracked to reassignment.

It's a total fabrication.

What The Trans?! 🏳️‍⚧️ @whatthetrans.com · 2d

Gender Identity Clinic's Waiting Lists from Shortest To Longest

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

The Tories are always wrong about which degrees are worthless… Media Studies was the punch bag degree of the supposedly feckless for years, but it turned out to be a great choice in a changing media environment.

The Bear @bearlypolitics.co.uk · 1d

So, the plan is to cut English, the arts, and sociology - the degrees that actually study culture - while on another part of your platform claiming to “defend” British culture.

It’s performance nationalism with a reading age of seven.

Badenoch: Curb students taking 'rip-off' degrees such as English
The performing arts, sociology and anthropology are among the subjects the Conservatives would like to cut

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

a close up of a man in a hood with the words `` good '' written below him .

Alt: "good", but it's emperor Palpatine and he's really old looking and wearing a dressing gown

media.tenor.com

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

Nice 😎

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

😁

Such is the black art of DNS settings 🫟

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 1d

a man in a black shirt is flying through the air in a scene from the movie mission impossible

Alt: Tom Cruise being lowered into a big vat of air

media.tenor.com

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Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 2d

Um

John A Dracula Cullen @nellucnhoj.bsky.social · Nov 23

the things we love

A 6-panel comic parodying both Garfield and the Simpsons, starring Homer-Jon & Bart-Garfield mashups.

P1: Title panel, showing "Barfield" on a grassy hill, eating a pair of shorts.

P2: Hojo is on left of frame, while Barfield is on the right. Howjo says:

"Boy. We should allow new generations to build & create new forms of culture, rather than recycling & repackaging the old for them, ad-nauseam. We should let the things we love die."

P3: the same image, complete silence.

P4: Barfield speaks: "Ay, lasagna."

P5: Hojo closes his eyes in exasperation, letting out a breath before he does what must be done.

P6: A closeup of Hojo --tears in his eyes-- as he chokes & throttles Barfield by the throat.

Gavin Deichen @gdeichen.bsky.social · 2d

Reform Dunning-Krugering their way through politics has a certain schadenfreude to it.

I fear they'll just tell their voters that it was all a tremendous success and get away with it, but we'll see…

Dr Tess Machling @tessmachling.bsky.social · 3d

Meanwhile, in 'ya don't f*king say' land, Reform discover that governing ain't quite so easy...

' "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. '

Reform poised to raise Kent council tax as Musk-inspired attack on costs falters

ANNA GROSS - KENT

Kent's local authority will probably raise council tax rates next year as Reform UK struggles to find big savings under an Elon Musk-inspired cost-cutting drive.

Kent was one of 10 councils that Nigel Farage's rightwing populist party seized in a swath of local election victories in May. He vowed to save "a lot of money" by abolishing "wasteful" spending.

But Diane Morton, Reform's cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services were already "down to the bare bones". an

"We've got more demand than ever before and it's growing," she said, stress-ing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. "We just want more money." As with many local

authorities in England, the bulk of Kent's budget went on adult and chil-dren's social care, as well as on children with special educational needs, which together accounted for about 50 per cent of its £2.5bn annual expenditure.

All councils have a legal duty to bal-ance their books and will set next year's budgets in February or March. Ahead of that, most councils in England are expected to increase council tax by 5 per cent, the maximum allowed.

"I think it's going to be 5 per cent," Morton said of where Kent would land on tax rises, adding that every 1 per cent increase equated to an extra £10mn.

Council leader Linden Kemkaran, a former BBC journalist, said Kent was a test bed for the party's national policies and the "shop window through which everybody is going to see what a Reform government might look like". She

declined to say whether council tax would be raised but other Reform coun-cillors said they wanted to avoid hitting the full 5 per cent.

Reform's experience highlights some of the obstacles it may face in national government if it won the next general election and pursued its pledge to slash taxes and spending. "Everyone thought we'd come …

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