I routinely get through every working day without using any AI tools, thank you very much.

Smooth Dunk@smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 2w ago

Provocative thought for the day: the two easiest interventions to improve punctuality on Britain's railways would be 1. Reintroduce luggage vans on long-distance trains and 2. Reintroduce porters at major stations.

1/7 After @georgemonbiot.bsky.social exposed deep flaws in carbon capture &storage—and the extraordinary sums this Govt is committing to it—CCS industry lobbyists and pro-CCS scientists responded. @sioldridge.bsky.social &I answer them here www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🧵

Carbon capture is a fig leaf for fossil fuel expansion | Letters

Letters: The predicted £264bn cost by 2050 could be even higher, plus renewables avoid a far higher total of emissions than can be captured, writes Andrew Boswell, while Simon Oldridge calls out veste...

theguardian.com

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last mo.

Despite all the noise today I'd really like you to read this, as I think it's crucial. The government's in the process of p*ssing up to £264 billion into the ground, at the behest of the fossil fuel industry. Yes, £264 *billion*. It's utterly mad, and has to stop. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The consequence of cancelling HS2 is that, with rocketing demand, there’s now no plan for dealing with overcrowding on Britain’s railway network. We’re facing a disaster in the next ten years. bsky.app/profile/gare...

Gareth Dennis@garethdennis.uk · last mo.

Outside of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield are seeing heavy overcrowding on trains with little ability to resolve this thanks to retreating government ambition on electrification and network expansion. Read the report here: neweconomics.org/2026/07/cutt...

#ICYMI last week Charles Littleton posted for the Georgian Lords on the role of the minority of bishops in the 1770s and 80s who opposed the ministry's line on the American war... #HistParl

The Georgian Lords@georgianlords.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New from the Georgian Lords this morning: Charles Littleton on the minority bishops, who voted against the American war. #HistParl historyofparliament.com/2026/07/03/b...

Point 2 is perhaps the most important in all this. It's symptomatic of a wider failure of successive governments to check runaway executive pay, whilst the gap between rich and poor widens. If Burnham becomes PM, will he do anything about it?

Dr Susan Greaney@suegreaney.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Morning all. Week two of the fight back:

Yep, gotta love climate-change-denying Gen X nostalgia 🙃

Hear me out: what if we replaced rolling news with helicopter footage of trains every day? I don’t think anyone would actually be less well informed.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The Sky News helicopter is currently following Andy Burnham's train all the way down to London. Unclear what exactly they expect to happen en route

A ridiculous illustration of the lengths our media will go to to find something, anything, visual to fill our 24hr rolling news channels. But look on the bright side: that footage will no doubt be an invaluable reference for railway historians in future... 😁

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The Sky News helicopter is currently following Andy Burnham's train all the way down to London. Unclear what exactly they expect to happen en route

Born #OTD in 1738, King George III (not really the tyrannical ogre he has been made out to be - and hey, Canadians remained loyal & I’d say it has worked out better for us). Wedgwood plaquette mounted in brass #c18 #c18th #18thc

We were making flyers with xerox machines and x-acto knives 30 years ago. If you're not that creative why even be in a band?

MisterJayEm@misterjayem.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thomas House of Dublin exhibiting the pro-human solidarity that all of us should demonstrate.

Heavens above. Does anybody seriously think that, just because he won a by-election in one constituency, Burnham now has a mandate to become PM, without even holding a leadership contest among the Parliamentary Labour Party? Can we please restore just a tiny bit of sanity to our politics? 😩

if only we could have predicted this oh wait, the NEF did years ago

Dominic Cottrill@dominiccottrill.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@garethdennis.uk File this under "no shit Sherlock" Subject for your next railnatter?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an anti-fascist German Lutheran pastor who opposed Hitler and the Nazi Party so effectively that they murdered him in 1945. He is only a bad guy if you literally spend all your time on far-right, neo-Nazi websites and have pickled your brain in fascist group chats.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2mo ago

Rep. Brandon Gill: "We particularly need the left to tone down the rhetoric ... somebody is gonna listen and believe they are the next Dietrich Bonhoeffer and act on that and that's what we're seeing here."

Welcome news, but the acid test will be how the Trump regime responds to this. Will they appeal, I wonder? www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

Judge orders Trump officials to re-install signs and exhibits at national parks on topics like slavery and climate change

President Donald Trump last year directed the Interior Department to make changes to parks, monuments and memorials to address any “false revision of history.”

nbcnews.com

You can say that again. It's not just the NHS that's struggling; all our public services are visibly creaking. And there's a feeling that the government still isn't doing anything to rein in corporate greed. It's not just low wages; it's the precarity of the gig economy that robs people of security

Nick Simpson@iamnicksimpson.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Sure, but what people are still experiencing is decay. The FTSE isn’t helping ordinary people, waiting lists are still ridiculously long, pay is stagnant (unlike prices) and the public realm is still going downhill. Starmer had an awful inheritance, however no one feels as if there’s any hope.

You know all about those Art Deco London Underground stations from the 1920s/30s - but what was happening on the mainline railway? Let me tell you all about it... I'm giving a talk to @artdecosocuk.bsky.social on 28 July and it's open to everyone. Tickets at: www.artdecosociety.uk/events-2/

Happy Birthday to George Stephenson, born this day in 1781. Engineer. Inventor. A father of the locomotive (but not necessarily a good father to his son). And, of course, a Unitarian.

Absolutely crucial piece of research on misinformation in local news on Facebook, X and Nextdoor by @smfthinktank.bsky.social Full report is here (www.smf.co.uk/publications...) but these are some key findings:

Monday blues: Bye-bye to Bath Fire Station (1938-39) How did it come to this? A rare pre-war building by a female architect, Molly Taylor; survived the Baedecker Blitz; located within two UNESCO World Heritage Sites; recommended for listing by C20 & Historic England, yet rejected by DCMS in 2025.

If this guy wants free literature, there are any number of public-domain works which he can enjoy to his heart's content. LIVING artists and writers, however, deserve to be paid for their labour just like any other professional. To argue otherwise is to argue that their work is worthless.

‘Southampton Pub, D-Day Plus One’ by Lt Tom Wood, 1944. Canadian Tom Wood painted a scene of celebration in a Southampton pub one day after D-Day - 82 years ago today. There are Canadians and Americans, and the chap with the pom-pom is a Free French sailor.

This is something the Victorians understood: that democracy is dangerously vulnerable to plutocracy, and that it needs to build defences against that. Our defences are in tatters. Rebuilding them is one of the most urgent tasks facing our politics.

Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 2mo ago

61% of all political donations in the last quarter came from just 14 people Reform took in £9.3m from a handful of super rich donors British democracy is being bought. We urgently need action to take the money out of our politics

Speaking as a former National Trust housekeeper, I'm not sure this method of dusting would be compliant with relevant risk assessments or manual handling guidelines. They should use a stepladder or scaffold tower. And I'm not sure their attire would comply with the uniform guidelines, either...! 😉

Museum Bums@museumbums.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Working together to dust the top of the picture frames 👍🏛️🍑 #MuseumBums Pluto abducting Proserpine, c1700, from the Wallace Collection

Reading the proofs for a book chapter today, and laughing at the irony of AI asking me if I'd like to read a summary of my own work... 🙃

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

THIS ⬇️ I'm not anti-business or anti-technology, but I've always believed that the state's role is to regulate business and technology to ensure they serve the interests of the people. Too often, in recent years, they have done the opposite.

Jay Hulme@jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"a just society requires a vigilant State and civil institutions that are capable of overcoming the singular mentality of efficiency, and of ensuring that resources, creative solutions and regulations favor the most vulnerable."

Analysis | Is industrial heritage heading down the wrong track? 🚂 If museums can’t find a way to arrest falling visitor numbers, some important sites could be lost for ever. By Rob Sharp

Is industrial heritage heading down the wrong track? - Museums Association

If museums can’t find a way to arrest falling visitor numbers, some important sites could be lost for ever. By Rob Sharp

museumsassociation.org

🇭🇺🤝🇵🇱🚄Peter Magyar starts his first foreign trip today - to Poland. Many symbolic moves by the new Hungarian PM, including visiting the resting places of Queen Jadwiga and Stefan Batory, both very PL-HU history coded figures, but the real gem is that Magyar will go from Kraków to Warsaw *by train*.