Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

The i Paper @theipaper.com · 2h

Opinion | Starmer has not prioritised growth, not really. He has done what British governments have been doing for over a decade: prioritising anti-immigration policy and focusing on growth only where it does not interfere with it

🖋 @iandunt.bsky.social

Read more: trib.al/HHn51XN

9 29 120

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Tim Sharp @timsharp.bsky.social · 3h

A really welcome announcement on employment tribunal fees.

www.theguardian.com/money/2025/o...

David Lammy rules out charging workers for employment tribunal claims

Justice secretary says right to challenge unfair work behaviour is core to Labour work plan after union backlash

www.theguardian.com

1 2

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 9h

I’ve just learned that John Searle, whose Chinese Room thought experiment is often used to challenge ideas of “understanding” in LLMs, died at age 93 on Sunday. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

John Searle obituary

American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do

www.theguardian.com

2 17 45

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Richard Morton @accessibleweb.bsky.social · 1d

I am recruiting a Senior Accessibility Specialist to be part of the Government Digital Service accessibility and digital inclusion team. Applications open until Sunday 26th October. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

#a11y #Accessibility #AccessibilityRegulations

Quick Check Needed

www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk

17 6

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 7h

tbf I remember the meeting. We were all sat down preparing a plan for three nukes. There were maps and everything; someone had just asked where Angelsey was. Then a voice piped up, "hold it a mo, what is a woman?"

Cue pandemonium. When we had got through it, everyone had forgotten the nukes.

Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 10h

"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

2 6 34

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 12h

You can't have a successful economy by kowtowing to bigots who want to close the country to the rest of the world. It'd be nice if a politician had the brains or guts to point this out.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 14h

Wilful ignorance of how trade and migration actually work in a globalised economy.

The idea that the (short and long-term) movement of people -especially between India and the UK - has nothing to do with trade and investment is (obviously) wrong.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

4 20 52

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 12h

Whereas stealing artists’ work is killing their industry, so…

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

9 40 160

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 13h

This is my basic theory for a lot of what is going on with the centre right atm

The ideas failed utterly and now there is a total crisis of intellectual confidence

Indy @indy.bsky.social · 2d

It nags at me that people are dancing around the fact that one reason centre-right think-tanks are in an intellectual crisis moment is because we've spent over a decade where lots of their ideas were tried out and didn't pan out as advertised.

24 42 250

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

PoliticsHome @politicshome.bsky.social · 1d

The Tories are focusing too much on culture wars, according to former long-serving Conservative MP Sir Nick Gibb

In an interview with PolHome, the former schools minister also said the UK should lead efforts to reform the ECHR, not grab at the “most immediate superficial solution" of leaving it

Nick Gibb: The Tories Are Focusing Too Much On Culture Wars

Former schools minister Sir Nick Gibb has accused the Conservatives of focusing too much on culture wars and not enough on “the real lives of peopl...

www.politicshome.com

1 10 19

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 1d

Birmingham, my home city, is a fantastic city, with fantastic people- a success story. It has its problems, like anywhere. But the obsession the online right has with it is as transparent as it gets.

41 120 980

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

130 1.9K 7.3K

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

Deleted!

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

"It’s a lot easier to assert what the right call is when you’re not the one who has to make it." Fingers crossed that the November budget is not Option 2. Clear piece by @samfr.bsky.social: samf.substack.com/p/staying-al... [subscription needed, possibly]

Staying alive vs taking control

Labour's budget choices

samf.substack.com

2 2

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 1d

I've responded to Robert Jenrick's vile comments in @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

I sang Jerusalem with Robert Jenrick at school — he’s wrong about race

The Conservative MP has complained that, visiting Handsworth in Birmingham, he didn’t see ‘another white face’. You can’t judge whether someone is integrated by skin colour, argues fellow Wulfrunian S...

www.thetimes.com

47 180 670

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Major Clanger @majorclanger.bsky.social · 1d

Jenrick complains that there are immigration judges (presumably he means the part-time ones) who spend the rest of their time representing immigrants.

Wait until someone tells him about Recorders (part-time Crown Court judges) who spend the rest of their time defending the accused.

10 41 170

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

This point was expressed with great clarity by @torstenbell.bsky.social in this snippet from a 2022 discussion with Duncan Robinson and @lewisgoodall.com:

Torsten Bell with Duncan Robinson and Lewis Goodall: "Britain in the 2020s is combining the high inequality we gave ourselves in the 1980s with the total stagnation we've had for the last 15 years. No other country has done the two to the same extent..... You put these two together and it's a totally toxic combination for low and middle income Britain, because the only people in Britain that are comparable to their opposite numbers in Northern Europe in terms of their income are the rich, with high inequality compensating for low GDP per capita.... So the middle in France is almost 20% richer than the middle in Britain, and the bottom is 25% richer..... To make it concrete, taking five countries we think of ourselves as comparable to (France, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Canada), they are now way richer than us; and they are all more equal than us. If we had the same inequality as them, the typical British household would be £8,800/year better off. That is what it (the fuel crisis) feels like a catastrophe: because we are paying the same gas prises as them. That is what economic failure looks like over decades." [Newsagents podcast, 18/11/2022.]

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 1d

Behind most Nobel prize winners were a team of PhD students and postdocs who did the actual work, and may even have come up with the idea, but will likely never be recognised.

These are the people we should celebrate. The hidden figures behind the figureheads. The scientists behind the ego.

Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · 1d

The Nobel Prize is the wrong way to think about science.

My heroes aren't the people with the endowed chairs at the Ivies. They are the people who do the hard work, day in and day out, and who would take a bullet rather than inflate research findings or block others' competing research.

4 38

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

There's an unusual profusion of honey fungus in Leeshall Wood in Sheffield's Gleadless Valley this year.

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

"It’s a lot easier to assert what the right call is when you’re not the one who has to make it." Fingers crossed that the November budget is not Option 2. Clear piece by @samfr.bsky.social: samf.substack.com/p/staying-al... [subscription needed, possibly]

Staying alive vs taking control

Labour's budget choices

samf.substack.com

2 2

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Nicolas Chinardet @zefrog.eu · 1d

"We can't have particular communities where there's a heavy preponderance of one group or another. That's the kind of country I want my kids to be growing up in," says Jenrick, who lives in Herefordshire where 96.9% of the population identified as white in 2021

Best for Britain @bestforbritain.org · 1d

Wow. Robert Jenrick doubles down by branding a black journalist's questions "ridiculous" and saying that the problem is not his comments, but "journalists like you who pop up and try to knock me down", adding that "this is the reason why terrorist attacks happen". ~AA

10 73 240

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Anand Menon @anandmenon.bsky.social · 2d

‘After highlighting the lack of white people, the shadow justice secretary said it was not about “the colour of your skin or your faith”’ www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Robert Jenrick complained of ‘not seeing another white face’ in part of Birmingham

Shadow justice secretary criticised for suggesting he could tell how integrated Handsworth was based on short visit

www.theguardian.com

20 50 120

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

So according to Jenrick, 'not integrated' means black/brown faces outnumbering white faces. How very dare they. Nothing to do with whether they're actually integrated – just what they look like.

Absolutely shameful.

He'll probably become Tory leader.

Adil Ray @adilray.bsky.social · 1d

Jenrick says, Handsworth the area I went to school in isn’t integrated as he didn’t see a white face and the closest he has seen to a slum? So is he saying we should pay minorities much more for their low paid jobs and welcome them to The Cotswolds with their mosques and temples???

39 100 460

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Seb Schmoller @schmoller.net · 1d

This report brings back memories of identical issues in Further Education, and of having to go out on a limb closing a big FE college while DFE continued to assert that colleges would stay open. [They didn't.]
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Lack of school closure plan ‘an extraordinary dereliction of duty’, Covid inquiry told

Academy trust head Jon Coles says he nearly fell off his chair when Gavin Williamson said no plan was in place

www.theguardian.com

2

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

SpinningHugo @spinninghugo.bsky.social · 2d

I hate to sound like some ancient old throwback, but I don't recognise the country I am living in.

When did racism become acceptable again?

Why do we have to rely on ageing retired Engand fullbacks for guidance on the misuse of flags?

/1

SpinningHugo @spinninghugo.bsky.social · 2d

What on earth has happened to the Tories? This wouldn't have been acceptable in 1965 let alone 2025.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Robert Jenrick complained of ‘not seeing another white face’ in part of Birmingham

Shadow justice secretary criticised for suggesting he could tell how integrated Handsworth was based on short visit

www.theguardian.com

10 45 200

Reposted by Seb Schmoller

Billy Bragg @billybragg.bsky.social · 3d

Free stickers suitable for flag-bearing lampposts. Send a large A4 envelope with a 1st class large stamp to me at Bragg Office, PO Box 6830 Bridport DT6 9BH and I’ll send you a sheet. #ReclaimtheFlag 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇬🇧

85 430 1.1K