Neil Tennant is the one in glasses

The Pocketeer I had as a kid and still have

1976: Neil Tennant was 22 years old and 10 years away from the release of the first Pet Shop Boys album.
He was working as an editor at the British division of Marvel comics, his first job after getting a degree in History.
Here’s a photo of him in his dungarees at the Pocketeers launch

Meet the restaurant boss who flouted judges’ orders for years Jason Wells’ restaurant chain has cheated workers, lost 21 tribunal claims – and not paid a single one

I’ve spent the last year investigating how the UK's broken employment tribunal system lets rogue bosses evade justice.

But this is the craziest case,by far. A restaurant chain that lost 21 tribunal claims over several years, yet never paid a single one🧵 www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Amplifying this as Liza is a friend and comrade of literally decades and has been in touch with Hammam for a long time. His story is horrendous.

sidenote but I could not be more thrilled about having an oven that does not trip the house electrics - shoutout to our landlord

I just got a phone call about someone delivering a new oven and the gay anxiety about casually saying to someone (for instance) 'I'm not in but my husband is' never goes away does it? In 0.04 seconds my brain considered both 'housemate' and 'friend'. We have been married for ten years.

Palestine Action hunger strikers allege mistreatment - Hyphen Heba Muraisi, Qesser Zuhrah and Kamran Ahmed held a press conference in London after being cleared of aggravated burglary and granted bail

🔴 Palestine Action activists have alleged medical mistreatment and violations of their human and religious rights during their time on remand.

My colleague @weronikas.bsky.social reports from their press conference for @hyphenonline.com:

hyphenonline.com/2026/03/25/f...

How Kemi Badenoch's spokesman responded when I asked if she agrees with her Shadow Lord Chancellor that Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square is an "act of domination"

perhaps @seththevoz.bsky.social might know how many Conservative frontbench MPs are members of all male private members' clubs?

Starmer and Badenoch clash over Nick Timothy’s anti-Muslim comments - Hyphen Nick Timothy MP said Muslims including the mayor of London Sadiq Khan praying in Trafalgar Square was an ‘act of domination’

Keir Starmer has criticised Tory leader Kemi Badenoch for failing to act over ‘appalling’ comments against Muslims made by her shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy.

@sajeraj.bsky.social reports⬇️

hyphenonline.com/2026/03/18/n...

I've never known if it's this or because sexual health services are covered by some kind of advanced confidentiality agreement - but it's a pain when I'm trying to remember what I've had!

tl;dr we need to build far far more homes for social rent – not homes in general, not ‘affordable homes’, but social rent homes specifically, because these figures are abysmal.

50% of councils approved zero social rent homes in six months Data from 119 English councils shows that council houses made up just 6% of planning approvals in Labour’s first half-year in office

And here (again) is Lucas’s brilliant original investigation, in which people whose families were crammed into cramped, unsuitable homes explained what it actually means to wait years for a decent home.
hyphenonline.com/2025/05/19/h...

Local Authority Housing Statistics data returns for 2024 to 2025 Local Authority Housing Statistics data returns for the financial year 2024 to 2025

Anyway the data itself is here:
www.gov.uk/government/s...

Also, under the previous Labour govt, councils didn’t start building enough homes to replace the ones being lost under right to buy until 2007.

2,300 people died waiting for a UK council house last year Investigation finds underhand tactics used by UK councils to cut wait lists as time runs out for thousands

Worth remembering that waiting lists go up and down not necessarily because people are housed or made homeless but because eligibility changes and councils take people off the list because e.g. they have died.
www.opendemocracy.net/en/council-h...

Incidentally, that particular figure of 1.34m households waiting is currently the worst it’s been in 12 years, though it was higher every year in the decade before that.

What we do know is that at least 1,340,435 households – each of them, potentially, containing several people – are on waiting lists across the country for this type of housing.

The caveat is that *some* homes *may* get designated as being for social rent later in the planning process than what the government’s own data captures. But previous years’ figures suggest the effect of this is pretty minimal.

The figure of 7,348 social rent homes granted permission would have been considered low prior to 2017/18 (unimaginably so if you go back decades, but low even by the standards of the coalition years), but since then it’s been about par for the course.

Anyway, of those that responded, well over half (147 out of 249, or 59%) didn’t grant planning permission for a *single* social rent home in that entire year.

This time, asked by the government for the same data, all but 47 local authorities out of 296 responded – which still isn’t that good, but a lot better than what we got.

Planning bill: Minister grilled over Hyphen’s findings - Hyphen Green party housing lead Ellie Chowns took Labour’s Matthew Pennycook to task during debate on planning and infrastructure bill

This was still bad enough that the government was grilled about it in the Commons the next day.
hyphenonline.com/2025/05/21/p...

At the time, only a third of councils responded to Lucas’s FOI requests with usable data, even after appeals, meaning he arrived at the slightly more generous figure of 6%.

50% of councils approved zero social rent homes in six months Data from 119 English councils shows that council houses made up just 6% of planning approvals in Labour’s first half-year in office

It confirms the findings of an investigation that @lucascumiskey.bsky.social carried out for @hyphenonline.com a year ago into the social housing pipeline during Labour’s first six months in office.
hyphenonline.com/2025/05/19/h...

🏠 Buried in housing data published by the government last month is something that should be getting more attention.

In the year to March 2025, English councils granted planning permission for just 7,384 social rent homes – 3% of the total 235,000 homes that they greenlit. 🧵

Reform mayor courted US oil and gas executive about fracking in UK Exclusive: Documents show Andrea Jenkyns asked how she could help firm after major gas find in Lincolnshire

I spent several months trying to get access to FOI documents of Mayor Andrea Jenkyns' correspondence with fracking companies in Lincolnshire.

Read about what I found in my latest piece for The Guardian!

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Hundreds of racism complaints led to no police officers sacked - Hyphen The 360 complaints were against Police Scotland and Avon and Somerset Constabulary, both of which had said they were ‘institutionally racist’

Full story by @lucascumiskey.bsky.social now leading
@hyphenonline.com 👇

hyphenonline.com/2026/03/11/p...

.@carladenyer.bsky.social: 'Properly investigating complaints and holding individual officers to account is a basic requirement to overcoming institutional racism in the police. Yet this data suggests there’s v little commitment... to repairing public trust and confidence or to justice.'

It shows that (when the data was compiled) no officers had been sacked over 194 complaints made to Police Scotland and 166 made to Avon & Somerset. Most had either been dismissed, dealt with using internal processes such as 'assurance' and 'learning from reflection' or withdrawn.

🔴 EXC by @lucascumiskey.bsky.social: 360 race-related complaints made to a pair of police forces after they declared themselves 'institutionally racist' did not result in a single officer being sacked in two years.

The data has only been released to us after an 8-month transparency battle.