GB News and Man City in the last 10 years have a lot in common.
Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 2d agoNew GB News accounts are out. Here are their losses to date. Or "spent political donations" if you prefer
Stephen H. Jones
@stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social
Social scientist. Writes about religion and prejudice, society and politics. Teaches sociology and criminology. Rides bikes.
Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 2d agoThis is so frustrating. Aside from the incoherence of the position, it will mark the end of a serious left challenge to Labour (which our politics needs, *especially* on the issue of Israel/Palestine).
Ian Dunt@iandunt.bsky.social · 2d agoFrom Politico. That motion is absolute fucking poison and by failing to stand up to it, the Greens have allowed that poison to seep into the party.
I'm so very sad to hear of the death of Esther Ranzen who played an important role in reuniting me with Nicky Winton - the man who saved my life. It's so desperately sad that she couldn't choose assisted dying as was her wish.
Israel's government does appear completely rogue and I really worry that will end very badly, for Israelis and everyone else.
I Nied braaaaiiiiins 🧟@nied.bsky.social · 4d agoBiden literally did the mythical One Phone Call that would stop Israel in it's tracks, &... it didn't stop Israel in it's tracks.
Commentators reading the Premier League ruling on Manchester City.
Kat is right about all of this. One of the reasons that college sexual violence is uniquely devastating is because it changes the victim’s entire future.
Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social · 5d agoWhat about her future? What about how hard she worked to be there? What is to become of her life now? What process of justice could possibly right these wrongs? And how much more will she lose in the process of trying to get it? How much more of this are we all supposed to tolerate?
Basically every social scientist who sneeringly attacks "positivism" has zero understanding of it as a philosophical or methodological or even cultural movement. Please give me a gajillion pounds now thank you.
@tagerai.bsky.social · last wk.lol how did I miss this I just got an email advertising a prize for 1 MILLION dollars to 5 ‘social scientists who tell controversial truths at great professional cost“. The head of the committee is Roland fryer, it’s got Vanderbilt report alums, and it’s bankrolled by Bill Ackman And NerI Oxman.
Most academics I know were fundamentally anti-Wikipedia for a very long time. Salutary reminder that we get it quite wrong quite often.
Tyron@tyron.bsky.social · 6d agoJust seen it's Wikipedia's 25th birthday. The greatest website online, and possibly the internet's greatest fruit
Thomas Edison in 1910. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this net zero business, lads
It’s much much harder now to be an anti racist than it is to be a racist. That’s one of the things I learned from talking to Rachel Marsh, who has been doxxed and abused for standing up to the far right. www.thenerve.news/p/rachel-mar...
‘I see what’s happening to Rachel; it scares me’: the woman who dared to face down Piddington’s anti-migrant storm
Natasha Walter talks to Rachel Marsh, the resident of the newly ‘independent’ Oxfordshire village whose anti-racist BBC interview led to abuse, doxxing and death threats
thenerve.news
Something very strange and disturbing is happening in this country, of which Braverman is just the most pitiful example. iandunt.substack.com/p/the-return...
The return of race politics
Ethnic minority politicians on the right are engaged in depraved acts of self-hatred, in order to capture a movement which will never accept them
iandunt.substack.com
This is a low key tragedy. A broad consensus torched by a handful of ideologues and opportunists who do not even understand what net zero target is and why it was adopted. The reality is temperatures will continue to spiral until we reach net zero or civilisation collapses, whichever comes first.
Steve Fisher@stevefisher.bsky.social · 2w agoNew post from me at @deltapoll.bsky.social on declining support for the net zero by 2050 law: deltapoll.co.uk/net-zero-los...
Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*
John Stott@jpsastro.bsky.social · last wk.Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I was today years old when I learned that Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap used to sit in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer. This means I have finally found, 27 years after the fact, a good reason to oppose Tony Blair's reforms to the upper house.
after consideration, I have produced this necessary reference guide, perhaps @sundersays.bsky.social may be interested. If someone wants to provide funding after the fact, I can promise it won't constitute a donation in kind to Reform.
One of the basic things some on the left don't understand about the far right is that the only way to return it to the political margins is a cordon sanitaire that (among other things) has consensus buy in from conservative elites. The Left Wins Forever is not on offer
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last wk.Please learn to read, or alternatively forget how to write. It is not “handing it to fascists” to say that the only thing that kills this on the right is if the right kicks it out.
The difference between the performance of immigrants in England and Western Europe is staggering. (20 pts equals a year of learning.) I looked at this in detail in the post - it can't be explained away by language or relative advantage of different immigrant communities. There is a policy factor.
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 2w agoNew post out: England's schools are now the second highest performing in the world outside the far east, according to the OECD's PISA study. Is this because of policy? Attitude to technology? Cultural factors like immigration? And where can we still improve? samf.substack.com/p/why-englan...
The replies to this. Good god, what Bluesky weirdos. If someone has made the wrong choice and repents, welcome them, you idiots! Do you want to win or not? Go read St Paul or something FFS.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoRenee Good's mom: "I am a registered Republican. I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect citizens -- innocents like our family and the others here. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being terrorists and take precious lives. This is madness."
I think Isaac Chotiner's dismantling of Benjamin Moser's book depicting Zionism as the ultimate evil is all the more scathing because Chotiner is very obviously not a Zionist himself. (And you're not dreaming. Moser, a Pulitzer prize winning author, cites TONY GREENSTEIN as an authoritative source)
We have plenty of laws that criminalise this behaviour beyond criminal damage. We need to see them applied in their full force.
Emma Yeomans@yeomans.bsky.social · 2w agoWorrying scenes in the Channel today, for all interested in asylum policy and maritime tactics. A small boat from Normandy spent more than 30 hours at sea. Those on board now on their 2nd rescue vessel as Border Force forced to play cat and mouse with far-right activists who have their own boat.
If he’s not arrested after this then honestly what even is our justice system anymore
Otto English@ottoenglish.bsky.social · 2w agoFootage appears to show Danny Tommo slashing an RNLI boat
one thing worth saying about the disorder Mandani discourse is that it matters what you're using "disorder" as evidence of. here's some public health research using "broken windows" as an indication of "need for public investment" i.e. fixing the windows penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Penn-Co...
Abandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violence | Penn Today
Installing working windows and doors, cleaning trash, and weeding at abandoned houses led to safety improvements and should be considered in efforts to create healthy communities, according to researc...
penntoday.upenn.edu
We now know that on 48 hours ago counter terror police arrested two men who were allegedly planning an imminent terror attack on Manchester's Jewish community, set to take place on Yom Kippur. Just like the one last year. www.jewishnews.co.uk/police-foil-...
Police foil Manchester Yom Kippur terror plot - Jewish News
Two men arrested over suspected plan to target Manchester’s Jewish community during holiest day of the year
jewishnews.co.uk
Colley Hill, Surrey: coffee break from birding the steep scrub. Love the plaque on the bench I’m sitting on
Fifteen journalists led the Arday coverage. Between them they wrote 93 articles about a Black Cambridge professor accused of copying other people's work. Not one of them wrote a sentence about a Cambridge academic under police investigation for how a political party was funded.
The first rule I learned when walking and cycling in the UK is that Audis and BMWs always have the right of way.
Brent Toderian@brenttoderian.bsky.social · 2w ago“Why do BMW and Audi owners often seem to drive like idiots? Is it the car that makes them behave aggressively behind the wheel, or are specific types of people drawn to such cars as well being more likely to break traffic regulations? Research at the University of Helsinki provides some answers.”
Why do white men become white nationalists? Interesting new empirical results in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We're so lucky that British politicians foresaw this risk in 2010 so didn't take that path. Oh wait....
Scott L Greer@scottlgreer.bsky.social · 2w agoausterity increases "both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream parties...new, small and radical parties benefit most from austerity policies...effects of austerity on polarization are particularly pronounced when the mainstream right and left parties both stand for fiscal restraint"