GWR have just cancelled my train. Why? “Yesterday they cancelled the ones on the hour today it’s today it’s the ones on the half hour” 😡
Anthony Barnett
@anthonybarnett.bsky.social
‘Notes on Now’ every month in Byline Times, Co-founder openDemocracy Led Charter 88 from 1988-2005. Iron Britannia; The Lure of Greatness; Taking Control! Etc Online articles in Authory.
I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’
Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterdayLeaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.
Lots of political media suffers this kind of audience capture, generally for the worse; it takes a significant mental effort to calibrate against it if you spend a lot of time online.
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
It's a sign of British backwardness, provincialism and ignorant belief that we are 'Greece to America's Rome' and together define the limits of the possible, that anyone here thinks a written constitution means being like the USA.
John Cotter@drjohncotter.bsky.social · 4d agoI obviously welcome the idea in principle, but am on holiday so won’t have the time nor the energy to point out continuously that there are models other than the US and those models do work fine if conditions x, y, and z are also in place.
The number of terror-related arrests in Britain has risen 1,200% a year following the ban of Palestine Action The number of people arrested for holding signs - under a law originally designed for IRA uniforms - is higher than total terror arrests over the previous decade inews.co.uk/news/retired...
How retired teachers, nurses and vicars became Britain's newest terror suspects
Majority of suspects arrested for holding signs reading 'I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action' at protests against the ban
inews.co.uk
Yes. bylinetimes.com/2026/01/23/t...
'The Malfunctioning British State Cannot be Utilised to Bring About Its Own Solution': Learning from the Mayors of the North
A fundamental break from the old regime is required – it can only come from the outside but must command credibility and popular assent
bylinetimes.com
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 4d agoAs I kept saying before he took over all the "we have no idea what he wants to do" comment was so weird. Few incoming PMs have had a clearer set of priorities.
Count Binface was a surprise guest at Byline Times' event exploring parallels in US and UK politics with @lincolnproject.us and @quietriotpod.bsky.social in Leicester Square. His message to Clacton and beyond? Vote! And value a (flawed) democracy where he can take on – and laugh at – Nigel Farage.
A good thing you can do with scammers is keep them talking. A low effort way to do that is to go “sorry, can you repeat that?” until they start shouting angrily. Throw in a few “sorry my hearing isn’t so good in my old age” (scammers love to prey on the elderly so this will get their hopes up).
The Death of Fear — Wonderful, revealing article on the historic Cockroach uprising in India, by Aman Sethi of @opendemocracy.net www.opendemocracy.net/india-modi-c...
Cockroaches, Modi and the death of fear
India’s youthful cockroach protests have defanged the ruling regime’s primary tools of governance: fear, alienation and division
opendemocracy.net
This hits the double-headed nail on its heads. The country is more radical and wants more change than the Labour Party 1/
Adam Ramsay@adamramsay.bsky.social · 6d agoBurnham’s basic problem is that he has promised to deliver system change, and to unite the Labour Party. But Labour is part of the system, and most of it doesn’t want fundamental change.
I think a lot of people have missed this. Until the police investigation in February last year, Reform UK’s financial structures were all tied up with Cottrell and his Montenegro base bylinetimes.com/2026/07/23/p...
‘Posh George’, Two Passports, and a Fraudulent Identity: Convicted Fraudster and Nigel Farage Funder's Connections to Reform UK’s Murky Financial Structures
Why did Reform UK change from being a privately-owned company to a non-profit company limited by guarantee in 2025? Nafeez Ahmed investigates a fraudulent identity used by George Cottrell – and how hi...
bylinetimes.com
What can we do when even @jemgilbert.bsky.social talks about tweeting on X and “his”responses to his and Alan F Podcast instead of telling his followers to come here?
Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2w agoWhat can be done? is also a question about who should try to do what + why. bsky.app/profile/sund...
My @bylinetimes.bsky.social investigation reveals a network of criminal complicity at heart of Reform UK rooted in identity fraud by George Cottrell - the criminal fraudster secretly funding Farage and Reform - in cahoots with a Reform treasurer and a casino owner 🧵 bylinetimes.com/2026/07/23/p...
‘Posh George’, Two Passports, and a Fraudulent Identity: Convicted Fraudster and Nigel Farage Funder's Connections to Reform UK’s Murky Financial Structures
Why did Reform UK change from being a privately-owned company to a non-profit company limited by guarantee in 2025? Nafeez Ahmed investigates a fraudulent identity used by George Cottrell – and how hi...
bylinetimes.com
When a major strategic victory in war is achieved by drone attacks on e-commerce hubs then you know the 20th century is well in the rear-view mirror
Igor Sushko@igorsushko.bsky.social · 2w ago💥 Ukraine has destroyed both the Wildberries and Ozon e-commerce fulfillment centers that serve Saint Petersburg in Russia. Damage should exceed $2 billion.
This is a great ‘must read’ by Neal Lawson of @compassoffice.bsky.social He situates the scale of the challenge we all face if Burnham’s government is to become the watershed he proclaims www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...
Andy Burnham still has everything to prove
If Burnham is serious about changing Britain, then this must be the beginning of his project, not the end
newstatesman.com
Thread on Burnham. He has drawn a historic line on 40 years of Thatcherism, New Labour efforts to humanise it and Brexit’s lung at ‘Thatcherism in one country’. Political centralisation and economic privatisation as he put it in a neat phrase. It means that
Winning at all levels, growth rate, foreign policy, immigration policy, energy policy, list is long
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3w agoa truly masterful performance by Spain. actually what peak performance looks like
100% this. "The facts of Palestine are spoken, and increasingly by Palestinians themselves, but they are met by a refusal to listen, by ears that prefer the drone of implausible denial to the unbearable weight of fact." www.equator.org/articles/mor... @equatormag.bsky.social
Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity • EQUATOR
Forty years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continues.
equator.org
🇺🇦 Protests in Odesa over the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov as Ukraine’s defense minister.
Harold Wilson, with a majority of four, had the courage to say that the winner of the Smethwick by-election would be greeted “like a leper” in Parliament. Ted Heath, trailing in the polls, fired Enoch Powell. The comparison with the Labour government and Conservative opposition now..oy.
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 3w agoI know it's only a PCC election with low turnout but 11% for a party that happily accepts neo-Nazis as members is really bad.