Sue Lukes
@suelukes.bsky.social
Expert on local services esp housing, migration, migrant communities, community safety, human rights. First UK councillor migrant champion. she/her pronouns. Post in Spanish and English 💜💙🤍💜💙🤍
I think that one of the reasons this motion has sparked fury is because it hits too close to home, not just for Jews but for Europeans in general, forcing us to acknowledge that a lot of the privileges we enjoy are founded on colonialism and by extension on racism
Talking to someone in a company where whole divisions are being axed because of AI. Not because AI can do their jobs, but because the company needs to drastically cut the salary bill to pay for AI.
Rishi Sunak did not believe in the Rwanda plan as Chancellor - its legality, its efficacy or its cost - though he made a deal with Braverman to pretend he did as PM. His argument for it now fails to put his 3rd option under the scrutiny of the other two www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Rishi Sunak: Admit it, Rwanda is the only way to stop the boats
Critics said it was fantasy that we could leave the ECHR and secure our border. The real fantasy is thinking there’s an alternative
thetimes.com
Among the most evil things he's said
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 13h agoTrump: “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president”
You know it’s bad when even the bloviating sack of lies that was our Prime Minister becomes a sensible voice in a conversation.
Safe routes are actually pretty complex. There isn't a single "silver bullet". It requires a range of different policies and measures. What a safe route isn't though is what Labour keeps claiming them to be, highly restrictive, exclusionary, soundbites. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
UK accused of giving people of Gaza false hope over new refugee safe route
Only ‘very small number’ of people already in Lebanon or Jordan will be referred, says organisation running scheme
theguardian.com
I mean, yeah, but maybe the party funded by Cryptobillionaires, led by millionaires, and pushing policies, by their own acknowledgement , specifically aimed at making the poorest poorer, should sit this particular argument out?
So, happy 89th anniversary of the day Oswald Mosley tried to sell fascism to Liverpudlians—and someone concussed him with a brick
just when you thought it couldn’t get worse
Christopher Miller@christopherjm.ft.com · 19h agoUS officials stepped up pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries and threatened to cut off vital intelligence sharing as Donald Trump announced a deal with Moscow to release diesel on to the world market. www.ft.com/content/7fd4... via @financialtimes.com
Dear tv and radio producers. Thankyou for the invitation. But, no, I do not want to appear on your show to defend the idea that I am English, after 50 years of living and working here, because the increasingly feral right want to turn this into a "debate" and you cannot see how you're being played
One other thing I find fascinating and disturbing in conversations I’ve had with AI bros is that they’re eager to ascribe consciousness to software but they don’t think women are even people.
Rebecca Solnit@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 2d agoAI workers seem to fall into insular cultishness and this piece below says it's gotten to an extreme at Anthropic. I suspect their notions of consciousness are mechanistic, whether it's about us or their machines.
The Trump family is turning the presidency into a corrupt family business, and the names, the deals, and the money trail are all worth knowing. So is the roadmap for dismantling it.
Unprecedented Corruption—and How We End It
thinkbigpicture.substack.com
"Tax our wealth and provide basic income and we'll all leave and everyone will stop working," says the person with way too much wealth who never stops wanting more more more more more.
Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 2d agoNew working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Today Is World Day Against The Death Penalty. How’s That For Appropriate. Wonkette https://www.wonkette.com/p/today-is-world-day-against-the-death
Today Is World Day Against The Death Penalty. How’s That For Appropriate.
Wonkette
wonkette.com
Who would have thought there were some right bastards in the recruitment industry? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Recruitment boss accused of being behind ‘doxxing’ campaign against RNLI and anti-racism activists
Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase
theguardian.com
This is a regime that glorifies violence and brutality, because their vision of society is one of dominance rather than belonging. And that's the vision of cowards.
The U.S. last held a public execution in the 1930s. The Pentagon wants to change that
The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, the site of his 2009 mass shooting. That would be the first public execution in the U.S. since the 1930s.
npr.org
Clearly the UK Home Office has not read the UK Govt's 'International Education Strategy' published earlier this year. www.gov.uk/government/p...
The fall in Nigerian students disproportionately hits universities outside of the biggest cities. Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hull, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Lincoln, Dundee etc. So could have a greater economic impact to the areas students go to despite being a lower percentage fall than Pakistanis.
Sadly you've summed up the position very clearly As I understand it
Would be interested to hear what @jdportes.bsky.social @migobs.bsky.social and others working on migration policy/politics make of this development.
TL;DR - thanks to interaction of decisions it controls and rules it sets which use outcomes of those decisions as a performance metric, HO has acquired a power to unilaterally shape policy in areas well beyond its remit. Doesn’t seem like a good situation to me.
Also relevant to PM, who would want to maintain good relations with large strategic partners like Pakistan and Nigeria, and who has made “growth in every postcode” one of his taglines. Harder to get that growth if the largest employer/innovator in many towns is cutting staff due to funding crisis.
One would think this dynamic might be of interest to the Education Secretary, because HO is changing HE funding situation unilaterally; the Treasury, for similar reasons; and the Foreign Office because “we won’t take students from your country” has significant foreign policy implications
4. Uni pre-emptively pulls back from *all* recruitment of students from that country, because financial risk of losing licence is too much 5. If sufficient unis all do that, a “shadow ban” in recruitment from a country is in place. 3/
It works like this: 1. Home Office, without warning or explanation, begins refusing more visas from a particular country 2. This raises visa refusal rate for unis recruiting from that country 3. If overall refusal rate goes over 10%, uni loses visa licence = bankruptcy. Therefore…2/?
It would seem the Home Office has now acquired the ability to impose, without visibility or accountability, shadow bans on students coming to British universities from particular countries. How? Because of the interaction between indiv visa decisions (made by HO alone) and visa rules for unis 1/?
Edward@fornbirkibeinn.bsky.social · 21h agoAnecdotally what seems to be happening is that the Home Office is refusing all student visa applications from certain countries. The Treasury should have told them to knock if off years ago but at this point the FCO needs to tell them to stop trying to cause an international incident.
Those who were old enough to vote in 2016 but didn’t also now break heavily Remain. So three forces all steadily pulling electorate in same direction. The politics which makes sense in a 52/48 nation may not make sense in a 40/60 nation. And we are 40/60 nation now.
This is both due to Leave voters changing their minds as Brexit has disappointed (Leave to Remain switching much more common than opposite), and due to demographic drift - Leave voters were old, more of them have died. Young ppl joining electorate skew heavily Remain.
