UK GDP grew 0.4% in July when economists expected no growth. Good news — and proof that “Britain is broken” is often more slogan than diagnosis. Growth is still fragile, but pretending nothing is improving is as dishonest as pretending everything is fixed. #UKPolitics #Economy

25 years since 9/11. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, and thousands more have since died from related illnesses. Beyond the politics and wars that followed, today should still begin with the victims, their families and the people who ran towards danger. #September11

Fable’s living world feels like Skyrim modders accidentally designed the next generation of RPGs. Imagine what people could build if Playground Games released modding tools! Schedules, relationships, reactions, routines; the possibilities would be ridiculous. #Fable #Skyrim #Gaming

Assisted dying has been defeated again, 286–270. Whatever side you’re on, this deserves better than slogans. Dignity, coercion, palliative care and personal choice are all real issues. Parliament should treat it with the seriousness it demands. #AssistedDying #UKPolitics

Zack Polanski standing in Starmer’s old seat makes Holborn & St Pancras far more interesting. A Green leader taking the fight directly to Labour on housing, Gaza and climate? That’s a by-election worth watching. #GreenParty #UKPolitics

Netflix allegedly used BitTorrent data to see what people actually wanted to watch. Bethesda should do the same with Nexus. Look at Skyrim’s most downloaded mods. Those aren’t just mods — they’re 15 years of unpaid market research for Elder Scrolls VI. #Skyrim #ElderScrollsVI #Bethesda

Reform spends its life screaming about corruption, foreign influence and “the establishment”. Then Channel 4 films its own people discussing ways around foreign-donation rules. Funny how quickly the principles disappear when the money’s pointing their way. #ReformUK #Farage #ukpolitics

At Reform’s conference, protesters were manhandled, had their hair pulled and were dragged out. Farage then dismissed the backlash as “utter nonsense”. You can boo a protest. You can argue back. What you don’t get to do is assault people for dissent. Animals. #ReformUK #Farage

One of the strangest ideas in modern politics is that changing your mind is weakness. If the evidence changes and you still hold exactly the same opinion, that isn’t strength. Sometimes it just means you’ve stopped thinking. #Politics #UKPolitics

I’d genuinely like to see more cross-party politics. Climate, social care, housing, infrastructure — these are problems lasting decades, not electoral cycles. Government should be about solving problems, not automatically opposing whoever suggested the solution. #UKPolitics #Climate

Another Conservative reshuffle. At this point they’re not rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. They’re arguing over who gets to be Assistant Shadow Minister for Deckchairs. #Conservatives #Badenoch #UKPolitics

Reform spent years telling us they were an unstoppable political insurgency. Turns out they’re also capable of factional rows, suspensions, bad headlines and falling polls. Welcome to being a normal political party, lads. #ReformUK #Farage #UKPolitics

Burnham’s builder register could become genuinely powerful. Next step: no government, council or publicly funded contracts for firms that aren’t registered. No public money for cowboy builders. Let it prove itself — then move to compulsory licensing. #Burnham #Housing #Builders

Not everything needs nationalising. But if something is a natural monopoly that everyone needs and nobody can realistically choose not to use, perhaps maximising shareholder returns shouldn’t be its primary purpose. Water would be a good place to start. #PublicOwnership #Water #UKPolitics

The interesting question about AI isn’t whether it can write another bloody email. Can it reduce NHS admin? Speed up planning? Cut paperwork? Detect fraud? Give public servants more time to actually help people? That’s where the real prize is. #AI #PublicServices #Technology

Britain now has five-party politics trapped inside a voting system designed for two. FPTP increasingly means millions of votes count for almost nothing. Whatever your politics, that isn’t healthy democracy. #ElectoralReform #ProportionalRepresentation #UKPolitics

Burnham apologising for Labour’s previous handling of Gaza matters. But apologies are about the past. The real test is what Britain does now: arms, sanctions, settlements and international law. www.theguardian.com/politics/202... #Gaza #Labour #UKPolitics

Burnham to face pressure at Labour conference to recognise Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide

Grassroots groups to urge PM to break with Starmer policy and impose full arms embargo on Israel

theguardian.com

Britain has just endured another summer of extreme heat and wildfires, yet politicians are still debating whether tackling climate change is electorally convenient. Physics doesn’t check the opinion polls. #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #UKPolitics

Reform appoints an economic adviser who has argued for NHS privatisation and ending the pension triple lock. At some point we should probably stop treating “Reform will protect ordinary people” as a serious proposition. www.theguardian.com/politics/202... #ReformUK #NHS #UKPolitics

Reform’s new economic adviser has called for end of pensioners’ triple lock

Exclusive: Mitchell Palmer has also argued for privatising the NHS and immigration as way of cutting poverty

theguardian.com

We somehow went from: “Netflix has basically everything for £6 a month” to: “Which of my seven subscriptions has series 3, and why does series 2 require another subscription?” Streaming companies have painstakingly recreated the conditions that made piracy attractive. #Streaming

The useful AI revolution won’t be robots replacing everyone. It’ll be the moment somebody invents one that can phone British Gas, sit on hold for 47 minutes and argue about your direct debit for you. That’s when civilisation truly begins. #AI #Technology

Public transport works best when the public interest comes first. Taking local buses back under public control isn’t radical. The weird experiment was pretending an essential service should be run mainly around shareholder returns. #PublicTransport #UKPolitics

The Greens want a windfall tax on the biggest banks, saying it could raise £19bn and cut hiring costs for small businesses. Tax huge excess profits to help firms create jobs? That sounds rather more pro-business than making disabled people poorer. #GreenParty #UKPolitics

Clacton has 10,442 PIP claimants — equivalent to 47% of Farage’s entire by-election vote. Reform wants to slash PIP eligibility. For a party elected to “put Clacton first”, that could hit thousands of its own constituents. #Clacton #ReformUK #PIP #Disability

22,239 people in Clacton bothered to turn up and vote for Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for them. #Clacton #Farage #ReformUK

Farage’s “landslide” was 62.8% on just 44.37% turnout. That means only about 28% of eligible voters in Clacton actually voted for him. A win? Yes. A sweeping mandate? Not remotely. #Farage #Clacton #ReformUK #UKPolitics

Good luck to Count Binface. In a political landscape increasingly dominated by absurdity, it feels only right that we support the one candidate who’s actually doing it deliberately. youtu.be/ujHphnnDaGg?... #CountBinface #UKPolitics

Clacton Express: Binface 2026

YouTube video by Count Binface

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Electronic music in 2026 is fascinating because nothing really dies anymore. Disco feeds house. House feeds tech house. Trance comes back. 90s sounds mutate again. Forty years of dance music is now one enormous box of records everyone keeps digging through. #HouseMusic #ElectronicMusic #DJ

Bethesda are remastering Oblivion while Skyrim modders have spent 15 years quietly demonstrating what a genuinely modern Skyrim could look like. At some point surely somebody at Bethesda looks at that ecosystem and thinks: “Maybe we should actually do this?” #Skyrim #Bethesda #Gaming

Populism is easy when your entire programme is: Everything is shit. It’s their fault. Trust me. Government is harder. Eventually someone asks what you’re actually going to do about social care, housing, wages, energy and the NHS. That’s where the slogans start running out. #ReformUK #UKPolitics