Tessera

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 2d ago

Incredible shit here: the guy Badenoch is defending was sent to prison for sending racist abuse to the MP Luciana Berger. Who then did a whole series of interviews and columns talking about her criminal harassment by Nazis, in a manner intended to make listeners believe it was done by Labour members

Even I am taken aback at the new and surprising ways these people find to insult the public’s intelligence and make it more clear the only operative professional standard in force is “LOL fuck you”

Badenoch said: "So I want to be very clear, and I think people can look at me and know that I'm not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis to the Conservative Party.
"Joshua Bonehill-Paine is someone who actually has been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on anti-Semitism and on countering extremism.
"Yes, he is somebody who had been previously convicted for this, but he is someone has shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously.
"He's going up and down the country training people and the Conservative Party believes in second chances.
"This is not just someone that we've picked up who's a convicted criminal, this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities and this is what I want to see.
"I want second chances for people, for people who've learned their lessons, for people who are showing that they know what they did was wrong.
"What I don't want to see is early release of people who have no contrition whatsoever, who don't care, and who are going to be out on the streets actually harming people.

This whole incident is helpfully instructive, isn’t it. Here, we have the country’s worst politicians, including a former Prime Minister, queuing up to salute a bold iconoclast who irreverently spoke truth to power and discomfited the great and good. It makes it pretty clear, does it not.

Boris Johnson *
@BorisJohnson • 1h
Heartsick at the death of Rod Liddle - an outrageously funny and gifted writer with a beautiful conversational style. He had a unique talent for finding the thing that was obviously true but supposedly unsayable and then saying it with such panache as to give the maximum possible offence - and to all the right people. Spectator readers absolutely loved him.

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

I see this and I think about all the long years of relentless filthy abuse these swine have thrown at good and well-meaning people, to make the country more comfortable and more compliant for thoroughly unpleasant and actively malicious people like themselves.

'Brilliant, provocative, inimitable'
Rod Liddle, who has died aged 66, comhined a serious intellect with razor-sharp wit writes Alex Farter

Haters focusing on Liddle's violence toward his pregnant partner, his galloping racism, or his repeated defences of paedophilia, should remember to mention he was also one of the worst writers to ever do it. A calorie-free hack of the first water. Just absolute dogshit, back to front.

Sam @samomar.bsky.social · 2d ago

All kinds of interesting learnings, today. The editor tried to get rid of him for being a nasty piece of work and Rupert Murdoch personally intervened to protect him.

Kelvin MacKenzie •
@kelvmac... •6h
X
Rod Liddle, a Sun and Sunday Times columnist (but at his best in the Spectator) has died at 66. He leaves a wife and three children.
Sun editors were often concerned his views would lead to problems with advertisers so effectively barred him from writing about Islam or trans. Quite wrong.
When Emma Tucker was Editor of the Sunday Times she tried to have him sacked as a columnist because he was white and Right.
Really great credit to owner Rupert Murdoch who blocked the sacking with Liddle (he joined in 2005) lasting a lot longer than Tucker who was moved to the Wall Street
Journal.
Loved the statement from his children who said; " He raised us much as you might imagine, to be inquisitive, brave and always humorous."
A free spirit in a controlled world. RIP Rod.

Here's some of his work

THE SPECTATOR

I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I'd be right in there, on day one. We're talking secondary school level here, by the way dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called. I just thought we ought to clear that up early on. At my old comprehensive school a few teachers were known to be schtupping the pupils; one of them, a female teacher who was extremely foxy in a Pot Noodle scuzzy kind of way - she copped off with some fifth-form lad, and another teacher (a man with a guitar and a and even then I don't think I'd have

huck mason @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 3d ago

never thought short form video would be able to capture a type of humor i can only describe as “the far side-esque” but this comes close.

flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 3d ago

Sure, but it was never a question of whether she was right or wrong. All the MPs and the press knew very well she was correct, because they see it all the time. The point was that some insolent upstart tree-hugger had no business running her big yapping mouth, where the public can hear. The end.

!! 'MPs have had their stomachs pumped.'
Turns out Hannah Spencer was right when she said that Westminster's drinking culture is "unprofessional and worrying" and leads to "questionable and dangerous behaviour"
¿ It's time to end Parliament's drinking culture.

@bedfordtwo.bsky.social · 5d ago

One of the things that marks Bluesky out (as in replies here ) is that there are a lot of people who think that Count Binface has some sort of chance in Clacton. It's really odd.

Liam Thorp@liamthorp.bsky.social · 5d ago

Reform just comfortably losing by-elections that they were supposed to have a good chance at winning. Shame.

flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 6d ago

While it’s right to note that this would’ve driven generations of libs and Tories right out of their minds with fury, let’s not overlook that it is also comically idiotic, insulting and utterly emblematic of this low, despicable decade of bullshit, shenanigans, shitehousing and lying.

Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 6d ago

Britain today: An elderly woman in a wheelchair is escorted away by the police and risks up to 14 years in prison for supporting terrorism since the Home Secretary proscribed a protest group in 2025. Her crime? She said: "I support Palestine Action and I encourage you to join".

Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 6d ago

NEW: Sir Jonathon Porritt, arrested under Terrorism law outside Westminster Magistrates Court. As police escorted him away he said "I am a supporter of Palestine Action, trying to save lives is not terrorism, exposing this Governments complicity in genocide is not terrorism." www.wedonotcomply.org

I would not wear an LOL Nigel to the Slicey-Boi Party* t-shirt myself but I would urge people to ask whether “people understand that bad taste t-shirt is dumb joke” or “this PM’s policies can literally be tallied by excess deaths, running well into six figures” is the more pressing concern.

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · last wk.

I’d say the results are now in on that whole ten year-long “what if we allowed the deranged far right to dictate both the boundaries of free speech for themselves, and also for people they hate and work to harm” experiment, and it’s not looking so good for Britain

Zia Yusuf
@ZiaYusufUK•1h
If Zack Polanski is not in police custody by this time tomorrow, the Police will have declared open season on Members of Parliament.

Cannot get over how electable just drifting away from a constituent who asked you a challenging question makes you.

Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · last wk.

I'd like to share a clip of Falconer explaining why the UK is still arming Israel when the defence secretary has said they've committed war crimes & the minister for the cabinet office has said they've committed genocide. But #BBCBreakfast didn't ask him about it so I can't.

The agreed narrative here looks like a bedtime story for imbeciles, even before we start looking at what the Starmer government actually did with power.

Yes & herein lies the problem. When Labour was dragged to the hard left by Corbyn, centre-left Labour MPs fought for their traditions and their principles. When the same thing happens in the Tory party, centre-right Conservative MPs go gently into that good night.
Craig @craig.nikolic.co.uk.3m
The Tory MPs left who are properly centre right at heart are resolutely keeping their mouths shut, having learnt from the Johnson purge in 2019 that they'll just be replaced by people who will do as they're told, regardless of the damage to the Party.

I mean, where to start here. Did evil Old Jezza “drag Labour to the hard left”? How precisely did “centre left Labour MPs” “fight for their traditions and principles”? What does it mean, if the right wing party can be meaningfully changed but the left one will suicide bomb itself to death instead.

Would we currently have to worry about that shit, if we weren’t helping America with the president’s murderous, idiotic and doomed war? No, we would not. So there you go.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 2w ago

Yeah, it was America that made war against Iran though, and it’s America who are refusing to give it up and admit defeat because the president doesn’t want to look like a loser. So, I advise we worry about that first, eh

The Telegraph @ @Telegraph • 5h
Iranian transport links were established across the Middle East decades ago to carry guns and arm various militias.
Today, these have been extended into Europe, and their cargo has expanded to include heroin, migrants and - according to Iranian officials and the smugglers who work them - people Iran believes it can call on inside Britain.
Find out about Unit 700

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 2w ago

How can we hope he has a serious plan for ending "the terrible suffering of people in Gaza" when he can't even bring himself to name Israel as the genocidal aggressor causing the suffering? We need concrete action - a full arms embargo and an end to trade with illegal settlements.

Here's the text from the image:

---

It is a great honour and privilege to have been appointed by the Prime Minister to serve as Foreign Secretary.

My parents came to Britain as Jewish refugees from the Nazis. To them, Britain was both a sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the global fight against fascism. I will carry my parents' faith in that spirit of Britain to my role representing our country.

I will be a Foreign Secretary who fights for Britain's interests and our values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law on the world stage.

Today, as we face a time of greater instability and threat to international law and democracy than at any time since the Second World War, these values are more important than ever.

From Russia's illegal war in Ukraine to conflict in the Middle East, time and again we have seen the consequences of a more dangerous world in the cost of living crisis that families and businesses face.

For Britain, that means we must work with others to defend the principles that we cherish, because it is in our national interest to do so, building on the excellent work of my predecessors and friends, Yvette Cooper and David Lammy.

I will seek to deepen and strengthen our strategic alliance with the European Union which is so important for our prosperity and security and at the same time nurture our strong, enduring and essential alliance with the United States. I will uphold our commitment to multilateral institutions from NATO to the UN as well as working with global partners, particularly in the Global South.

Pursuing our interests and values means continuing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine against Russia's illegal invasion, as Britain has done for the last four years. It means playing our part to seek to end the conflict in Iran and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It must also mean working tirelessly to seek a sustainable peace in Palestine and Israel, including an end to the terrible sufferi
*20 July 2026*

DB Maggi @dbmaggi.bsky.social · 2w ago

Someone was arrested in Scotland yesterday for reading the poem "Don't mention the children" by Michael Rosen, @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social The West really doesn't want us to mention the children of Gaza that Israel has murdered and continues to murder. #poetry #Scotland #Gaza

Now, you might ask: why would the entire media/political class agree to play along with a disastrously idiotic programme of performative cruelty, bungs-for-contracts and screaming abuse at your own supporters? And all I can say is: the likes of Peter there are better placed to explain than I am.