It could be, looks a bit like him. They should have thrown away the key IMO.
It could be, looks a bit like him. They should have thrown away the key IMO.
Letter in The Observer today. “I am a refugee. The UK made me a surgeon.”
And soups.
OK fair dos, but then how do you distinguish between shitposters and those who are, if you'll pardon the expression, shit at posting?
True enough. It's well known fact that California only got gun control when the Black Panthers started open carrying. White people with guns - no problem Black people with guns - big problem.
Good point.
35-6" waist here. Been a long time since I could wear skinny jeans, and I don't really care now. I associate them with Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood and copious smoking.
Wow, I didn't know the Black Panthers were still going?
Yes. I wonder why they didn't do that when (Peter) Beattie and Anna Bligh were Premiers?
Ah that's a relief :)
The exception in Australia seems to be Queensland, which seems to skew very right in some areas (they elected Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen for years).
Yes, America also has the electoral college which gives rural states like Wyoming equal representation in the senate with much more populous ones like New York and California, which makes it much easier for the right to gain a foothold in politics. Australia doesn't.
It's also because you're a largely urban culture and most Australians live in cities, which tend towards the liberal. You don't have the rural redneck and hillbilly culture that exists in the US (or at least not in such numbers).
I'm old enough to remember Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. That wasn't that long ago was it?
yes, this. I have autoplay turned off and I do not want to see images of death. You do not need to share them. You do not have the right to shove them in other people's faces.
Looks like I'm safe for at least one of those reasons :)
Lovely!
Anyone fancy ten-plus minutes of non-emotive charts on what's really going on with immigration in the UK? Well, either way, here you go👇 youtu.be/zTs3PDEkB2w?...
If even the BBC is resorting to clickbait it's a sad day for journalism.
I've been trying to say this on the other place and was quickly met with words to the effect that "oh, no one's going to care about that unless they don't want to support him anyway (thanks Zoe)." Rightly or wrongly, perception matters in politics. twitter.com/GrahamGiles7...
The Lib Dems were contesting the Littleborough by-election in 1993, and part of their platform was tnat they wanted a debate on the legalisation of drugs. Mandelson saw a political opportunity to smear the party as being soft on drugs and took it. The Lib Dems lost, and other parties took note.
The point (and this is why I dislike him so much) is that Peter Mandelson was one of the key people who made our politics the way it is. When the Lib Dems were trying to jump start the move to a different and more open kind of politics in the early 90s, Mandelson killed it practically at birth.
"Don't get me wrong, I totally get that this is where politics is right now and that as a Tory peer (Julian Amery once said, if you try to play by the Queensberry Rules in politics you get knocked out of the ring."
Justin Webb just referred on Today to "platforms like Bluesky, where you can see the celebration of the killing" of Charlie Kirk. What I'm seeing on here is overwhelming condemnation; despair at the violence of US politics; alarm at where this might go; & calls for equal horror at other shootings.
They lost any moral advantage they might have had when Starmer abandoned the Ten Principles that had gotten him elected as leader. They should just admit they're another power-grubbing party with some throwaway line such as "that's the nature of politics" and get on with it.
Could you talk about beetles, and show some slides? Coleoptera are really interesting.
I really like the Christmas specials of that series, there's so much in them.
Hi all, Why is Bluesky making me verify my age (which I can't do anyway, because I don't have a webcam, a 'phone camera or a credit card) before I can access my messages?
I do wish them well. Good for them and I must admit I found her attractive at the time despite our political differences.
Good luck!
You can't let your personnel or policy choices be decided by bullies though. That's all the more reason to show that you're not afraid and to dare your enemies to do their worst.
Yes I agree (unfortunately).
At £95 I think I'll pass. Cult Pens are a good company though and I've ordered several pens through them.
Thanks for the like Kate, he's on here too; bsky.app/profile/seba...
Sebastian Salek posts a regular series of threads at that other place where he outlines the government's achievements.
Jack Kerouac's On The A46 Warwick Bypass
amazing post from @stonekettle.bsky.social
On the other one, if all you have to do to get elected is be a little bit better than the other side, that's probably all you'll end up being because it's where most of the votes are.
The trouble as I see it is that both sides of the argument are right. On the one hand, if you don't get elected you can't do any good at all, so your positions can;t stray too far from the political consensus at any given time.
If Farage wins the next election, it will be down to one person. His name is Keir Starmer. This thread explains why. 1. Destroying faith in democracy. The UK decisively voted out the Tories, only for Starmer to give us a Continuity Tory government, shamefully beholden to economic power. 🧵
I agree with Ken Livingstone on this. When he was MP for Brent, he said that if he was in any other country in Europe, he would be just one more socialist politician. Because he was British, he was Red Ken the Loony Lefty.
like all life advice, this only applies if you are *like me* and not if you are *the opposite of me* if you are like me: it has been a real turning point in my middle years to stop endlessly pursuing people who don't want to be my friend and instead recognising when people *do* want to.
It's a difficult problem, I agree, and we saw the same thing in Stockport last year. I just don't go along with the "shut the whole thing down" line that Kate's pushing, which strikes me as a counsel of despair.
Yes, my only problem with requiring everyone to post under their real names is that it doesn't protect people who want to speak out against a vindictive cult such as Scientology, or victims of domestic violence.
I love this piece; www.joe.co.uk/news/why-gar...
Kate's got a point about noisy people dominating and distorting the narrative but I don't think shutting it (BTL comments) off is the answer. They're also a very useful safety valve when something big has just happened.
Yeah. Ange is a very divisive character too (I was a fan of hers, but I know a lot of people aren't), and so it's not surprising that a lot of people wanted to weigh in with their opinions.
Rare Black Sabbath concert from Paris in 1970! Saw them play in 74. I could not hear the next day! youtu.be/2aXoOuenwkU?...
Oh I agree. Moderation takes up a lot of time and energy if you do it properly, and the people who have to do it understandably want to be paid; budgets are very low for local papers now and many of them are struggling to survive.
I think you need both, the quiet people and the noisy people. The noisy people are the ones who are inclined to come in first and sketch out the broad lines in the picture, and the quiet people bring nuance; they fill in the gaps and also say when a particular principle applies and when it doesn't.
In my experience, a high proportion of the people who comment below the line in newspapers are older, often retired, and thus have time on their hands - that's also a factor - so the comments to tend to reflect the concerns of older people (like me I suppose).
She got absolutely hammered in the comments, and IMO she deserved to be because she clearly hadn't done her research properly for an article I assume the Guardian paid her for.
An example was Barbara Ellen's article a few years ago about the attempt to get Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name" to the top of the charts, which she wrongly assumed the band knew about and approved in advance. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
They can be that, but they're also a chance for people to post corrections when appropriate especially when the article is based on a faulty premise.
Very underrated that film he did as Bond (On Her Majesty;s Secret Service). I think the trouble was that cinema goers didn't want or weren't ready to see anyone else in the role.
Anna Coote (former editor of the New Statesman) used to say that politicians should be honest brokers between the experts and the general public (the voters), and I agree.
There should be a minimum qualification for a career in politics, in my opinion, and part of it would be that people who propound utter bollocks about matters where there is a strong scientific consensus shouldn't even be there.
And how many of the people sneering at her would last even a week if they had to do her job? (I wouldn't, but I don't pretend any different.)
Lavenham in Suffolk is a delightful town absolutely ruined by car brain and over parking. Miserable to walk round. A similar french town would have limited parking to the minimum, pedestrianised using great materials and provided edge of town parking for visitors. We are crap at this stuff.
She was a good woman (with whom I shared a birthday).
Hi Monika, good to see you here!
Wow!
If you want to hear Pete speak a bit of Maltese... He recorded this message to honor Times of Malta's 90th anniversary — the top newspaper in his father's native country. In the message, he talks about the need to protect freedom of the press. #Buttigieg timesofmalta.com/article/watc...
Ouch!
Yes but that's when I talk to my cousin who's two years older than me (and has a music degree), or I post it online where no one cares how old you are.
The thread I wrote last week around Angela Rayner's housing affairs was written based on all the publicly available information at the time. https://bsky.app/profile/monkemma.bsky.social/post/3lxkgz6oolo2c Following a statement from Rayner, I want to keep you updated! 🧵1/7
Great. Is this the same Rockaway that the Ramones sang about?
I think "Greensleeves" was No 1 in the charts
I don't think I'd wish rabies on anybody, but I take your point.
#Seaweed farms are a dual solution for climate change & sustainable energy. - don't require freshwater, fertilizer, or arable land to grow, making it one of the most eco-friendly resources - naturally absorbs massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis helping 1/...
When dividing lines and fault lines are in different places, you end up with bullshit. Right now the political dividing lines are light years away from actual fault lines - the real problems that actually need addressing. And so we're drowning in bullshit.
Yes, thanks for replying. I had one (despite the warning of a friend of mine at university to "avoid Sinclair - they're shit"). It wouldn't lie down flat with the batteries in, and constants like pi had to be approximated to by fractions - they weren't built in.
At least it inspired some great music; www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPnR...
It's the weird thing about tech nostalgia, how it defies reason. The old Sinclair Programmable calculator in the 1970s was terrible by today's standards and yet one in decent condition sells for good money on EBay (especially with the original manuals).
Good luck Hannah.
I didn’t know it but now I need a baby donkey 😂💗
Thanks. Look I'm sorry if I'm in a bad mood at the moment; you seem cool and are clearly very knowledgeable about history and politics. I could really do with a break from social media (and probably the news too).
I like what bylines are doing. I wish they had more money and / or prominence. bylinesnetwork.co.uk
What, this one? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolut...
I take back what I said about Glasman. I didn't know he's supporting Trump now; I just knew that he was close to Blair in the noughties. Fox sake.
I don't like Spiked because I think they're right wingers hiding behind the label of (one time) communists. It's that simple.
That's true, because I didn't need to; there wasn't any contrast needing to be made at that point because we were just discussing the Spiked crew. As soon as Glasman entered the picture, I thought it made sense to mention the difference between them and him.
Little known fact; whatever his faults, Nixon started the ball rolling on a comprehensive ban on the use of chemical and biological weapons. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateme...
He at least has an academic record to back up what he says. What does anyone on Spiked have (apart from perhaps James Woudhuysen or Joel Kotkin)?
Did anyone outslde the RCP (including mainstream communists) ever think they were communist? I'm not aware of any.
Lovely!
Molly Ivins was right IMO; getting big money out of politics has to be the first thing, because as long as politicians get bought you can't do anything else.
Yes there was a good joke in the other place about that, something along the lines of; "Special episode of Newsnight tonight. Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Sarah Pochin and Lee Anderson get together to discuss the question of whether or not the BBC is giving Reform too much attention."
Very good. Heligan?
Thanks, that's good to know.
Emily, I don't mean to pry but have you had a break from maths and classroom stuff over the summer?
Quite (Sarah Vine in the Mail's just as bad).
Went to an Afghan pop up restaurant last night- the food was all cooked by Afghan refugees who had settled in my town Amazing food, lovely people, a great night. Thank you Oh, and fuck you Fartage
Yes, the late Molly Ivins was trying to tell us that in her last book. Did anyone take any notice?
You also don't have the NRA or any even more extreme gun advocacy groups.
Yes, your country once believed in science so strongly that they sent a manned spacecraft to the moon. I'm glad I'm old enough to remember it.
Neil deGrass Tyson: "How sad it must be believing that scientists, historians, scholars, economists, journalists devoted their entire lives to deceiving you, but a reality-TV star proven in court to be a lying felon is your beacon of truth & honesty"
I don't know but my guess is that Mr Ashworth-Hayes isn't a scientist of any kind never mind a space scientist.