Absolute utter proof that First Past The Post needs burying deep in the annals of UK democratic history, to be marvelled at as an aberration by generations to come.

Trump Ramblespeech remix…

Chasing the votes of those who'll never vote for you while simultaneously losing the votes of those who may is a rare gift.

I feel seen

The thing is we've known that housing the homeless is cheaper than neglect, we've known that Ubi is effective at eliminating poverty, we've known that heavily subsidized housing and education leads people into the middle class, we've known all of these things in some cases for 70 years.

If Rachel Reeves Wants A Simple, Low-Cost Yet Progressive Tax Reform, This Is It One tax reform should be easy for Rachel Reeves, writes Dan Neidle, who says an obscure technical change has become an ‘automated wrecking ball’ fo...

"People who owe no tax are statistically the most likely to be fined."

Nobody should face a late filing penalty when they don’t owe any tax. It really is impossible to resist this suggestion from @danneidle.bsky.social.
www.politicshome.com/news/article...

New YouGov polling. That’s a peak for the Greens. Amazing how a good communicator with vision can turn around a party’s fortunes.

RFM: 27% (+1)
LAB: 17% (-3)
CON: 17% (=)
GRN: 16% (+1)
LDM: 15% (=)

Also Labour’s lowest in a YouGov poll.

Timothy West & Prunella Scales - 60 years of marriage (interview) (UK) 15/Nov/2023 YouTube video by Mark 1333

@mrjamesob.bsky.social - this is beautiful

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AZl...

Comet Lemmon taken from my backyard

Despite a very strong wind, I managed to salvage about fifteen minutes of exposure out of an hour and a half of tracking before it set, just enough for a last-minute farewell to Comet Lemmon, capturing it a second time after my first shot in early October. 🔭

#Astrophotography

Opinion Yes, Keir Starmer is Britain's most unpopular PM ever. That could liberate him Polly Toynbee Forget the public vitriol and use the next four years to get things done - first and foremost, whatever it takes to stop Reform Tue 28 Oct 2025 06.00 GMT

There’s no upper limit to the amount of personal humiliation the average politics pundit is willing to inflict upon themselves, if the alternative simply admitting that they have absolutely fucked it *yet again*, and then resigning

Seriously, this is amazing.

The gap between the rich and the poor in the US only keeps growing. The top 10 per cent of society are now responsible for 49.2% of consumer spending. Soon the 50% mark can be “celebrated”. Source: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

So Mandelson’s close and deep relationship with Epstein gets him sacked while Trump’s close and deep relationship with Epstein gets him the rare honour of a second State visit to Britain?

There is nothing that highlights more strikingly how pathetically far the United States has fallen than that its president imposes a dress code on a hero who is fighting against a despotic aggressor for the very existence of his own country.

Trump is not fit to lace Zelensky’s boots.

"About five minutes later, the arresting officer approached him again. “He said: ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.’ I said: ‘What’s the good news?’ He said: ‘I’m de-arresting you.’

“And I said: ‘What’s the bad news?’ He said: ‘It’s going to be really embarrassing for me.’"

The Labour Party is currently:
– Providing intelligence and material support to a right-wing religious ethnostate carrying out a genocide
– Arresting pensioners for holding signs
– Legally classifying a significant portion the public as terrorists
– Attempting to ban trans people from public life

EJ Antoni has never worked in statistics collection. He is 5 years out of his PhD. He's only ever written one economics paper. His explicit, only qualifications are that he works in ultra-conservative think tanks & believes Trump's conspiracies about the BLS. Grim stuff.

Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die July 21, 2025 AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip since its staff journalists left in 2024. Along with a few others, they are now the only ones left to report what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The international press has been banned from entering the territory for nearly two years. We refuse to watch them die. One of them, Bashar, has been working with AFP since 2010, first as a fixer, then freelance photographer, and since 2024, as lead photographer. On July 19th he managed to post a message on Facebook: “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.” Bashar, 30, works & lives in the same conditions as all Gazans, moving from one refugee camp to another under Israeli bombings. For > a year he’s lived in utter destitution, working at extreme risk to his life. Hygiene is a major issue for him, with recurring bouts of severe intestinal illness. Since Feb, Bashar’s been living in the ruins of his home in Gaza City with his mother, 4 brothers & sisters and the family of one of his brothers. Their house is devoid of any furnishings, except a few cushions. On Sunday morning, he reported that one of his brothers had “fallen, due to hunger.” Even though these journalists receive a monthly salary from AFP, it’s no longer enough to buy food, or they have to pay completely exorbitant prices. The banking system has collapsed, and those who exchange money via online bank accounts charge a commission of up to 40%. AFP no longer has the ability to provide them with a vehicle and there is not enough fuel to allow these journalists to travel for their reporting. Driving a car means becoming a target for Israeli airstrikes. AFP reporters therefore travel on foot or by donkey cart. (alt txt continued in next post)

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die"

Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

We're in a parallel universe where P. Morgan is asking the tough questions...

Italy chemical plant execs jailed for pollution An Italian court on Thursday sentenced executives at a chemical plant to jail terms of up to 17 years for polluting water used by hundreds of thousands of people with PFAS, or "forever chemicals".

Italy court sends 11 executives at a chemical plant to jail terms of up to 17 years for polluting water, a total of more than 141 years.

Puts UK to shame.

UK buries corporate crimes - water, Post Office, Grenfell, infected blood, bank frauds.

Govts/Regulators serve corporations, not people.

Zack Polanski's Green-Left Populism Zack Polanski's announcement that he's standing for the leadership of the Green Party has set the hares racing. Over the last couple of day...

"Corbynism has twice demonstrated it has more popular appeal than Starmerism at its height, and so there is a constituency for the taking."

@jefftimmer.bsky.social: "It is actually quite an accomplishment to have lived nearly 80 years without gaining so much as even the slightest kernel of knowledge about anything and everything known to mankind."

• Re your article (Labour targets international students claiming asylum after election losses to Reform, 3 May), the insistence of this Labour government on responding to the perceived threat of Reform by aping it on the issues where it is strong is utterly mind-boggling. I don't think any electable party will be more anti-immigration than Reform. The portion of the electorate for whom immigration is the one issue they care about won't be persuaded to vote Labour by it pledging to reduce asylum applications from international students. It's a ludicrous idea and, at best, only serves to reduce the distinction between the two parties. In reality, Reform is weak on almost every conceivable area: the economy, the NHS, Donald Trump, Brexit... the list of vulnerabilities is almost without limit. Yet the government chooses to engage on the only ground on which Reform is sure-footed. It's utterly bizarre. How is a party with five MPs, fewer than 800 local councillors and no actual policies allowed to dictate the agenda in this way? Richard Repper Frome, Somerset

V good letter in The Guardian on Labour’s flailing hopelessness in the face of Reform.
Come on, Labour. The country is crying out for better. We’re sick of this ugly rightwing agenda. It brings nothing but failure.
It’s disloyal to your voters and to the country. You’ve got power and time. Use them.

Last month I did a little experiment.

I wanted to see how the exact same post would perform on both X (Twitter) and Bluesky.

The results were...interesting...

[Thread]

Reminder for those Americans hating on Ukraine: Ukraine gave up their nuclear warheads in 1994 after signing a deal with America that guaranteed their security. America has fucked Ukraine over twice.

It was an ambush by a gang of overgrown high school bullies, acting like gangsters, in possession of a huge military arsenal.

It reminds me of the people that thought it was fine for Cummings to destroy our political norms because he’d read lots of books about Bismarck.

Graphic with Justin Trudeau and the quote: "IfI have one regret, I do wish we'd have been able to change the way we elect governments in this country. People would have been looking for things they have in common, instead of trying to polarise and divide Canadians against each other." Justin Trudeau

🚨 When Justin Trudeau resigned, he said he regretted keeping First Past the Post in place.

We're writing to Keir Starmer to warn him not to make the same mistake.

Sign our open letter to the PM and tell him: back PR before it's too late. 📝
actionnetwork.org/forms/warn-s...