Andy Burnham called for “practical measures, not constitutional changes” when faced with an indyref request. Yet now he says he'll change the constitution...

Once again, I come back to the fact these guys have created a situation where one of the UK's leading, cis female athletes is scared to go to the loo alone, and the fact that they are celebrating this as a step forward for women's rights.

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 14h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

Dishonest! I hate this “the law hasn’t changed, we’ve just clarified what it always meant” thing. Did you think women’s rights didn’t change when the US Supreme Court merely clarified what the Constitution “always meant” on abortion? Of course not.

This is a repeated pattern Burnham has already displayed - portraying environmental protection and economic prosperity as zero sum, sacrificing one for the other. It might be canny short term politics, but it’s a horrible message that validates the culture messaging of the climate deniers

Tristan Grayford@tristangrayford.scot · 12h ago

The Burnham premiership continues its approach to the future which is "wildfires? lets have more of that please, the young can be put to work to put out the flames" www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

A new route between the Highlands and mainland Europe could be on its way, after a working group met for the first time to assess the feasibility of extending the Caledonian Sleeper service to the continent 🚄 🔗 www.thenational.scot/news/2...

No Unionist politician will answer the question: "How does Scotland leave the UK?" So, do you think that Burham will codify that process into a written constitution? No, he will tighten the legal rope round our neck. We need #ScottishIndependence more than ever. www.thenational.scot/news/2643247...

UK constitution 'fundamentally flawed' without exit route from Union, Labour warned

Any UK constitution which does not establish a route out of the Union will be 'fundamentally flawed', Andy Burnham has been warned

thenational.scot

I know I keep saying this but I'm a summer where the country is LITERALLY ON FIRE cutting back environmental criteria on stuff is ABSOLUTE MADNESS.

Lucy Fisher@lucyfisher.ft.com · yesterday

Net zero/environmental criteria, and demands like tackling domestic violence and improving local high streets, will be scrapped from new social value model Haigh & John Healey will also direct Cabinet to “maximise the use of public procurement... to deliver innovation & growth in every postcode”

The narrative of French capitulation in WW2 is weak and stupid. Another part of our British national arrogance that fails to recognise we were equally unprepared for the Nazi onslaught and were pushed into the sea whilst being defended by the French.

Northern & proud 👊@gazlancs.bsky.social · 2d ago

French forces held a fierce defensive perimeter around Dunkirk and lost 18,000 souls. 40,000 became POWs. Without their resolve we wouldn’t have our nation’s story. It’s estimated 20-60k French resistance fighters died during the war. These fuckers really are vile bastards 😡😡

That's what taxes are, man. That's the definition of taxes. "You are subsidizing things you might never use" man shut the fuck up. My taxes currently subsidize like oil company exec private jets, you think I'm upset at low-income people eating inexpensive bananas?

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d ago

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

"But he's not a Nazi any more" would be a more convincing line if he hadn't just been selected as a candidate for Badenoch's Tories.

The same media that attacked trans people are now attacking autism and ADHD. It's a similar playbook of bigoted columnists and the credentialled cranks who give them cover Watch out for generalists with no specialist knowledge and dinosaurs who their field left behind but the journos still call.

Once again for those at the back: ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead’ is about your great aunt Elsie, who liked a long gin with a short tonic at elevenses, and blew your inheritance money betting on the horses. Speaking ill of absolute monsters is a moral obligation, actually.

I think that unless it's essential life-saving treatment, if you reject treatment from a non-white practitioner, then the NHS should be under no obligation to see you and you can go private news.sky.com/story/nhs-st...

Patients refusing to be treated by non-white staff as NHS reports shocking rise in racism

Paul Awah, a Bedfordshire-based diagnostic radiographer originally from Nigeria, said: "It's definitely got worse – people are more expressive."

news.sky.com

A lot of columnists have lost their minds in recent years because social media has allowed people to talk back to them, whereas before they could say any old vile shit with next to no pushback

I've met so much lack of understanding and prejudice as an autistic person and then see airtime given to outdated cranks who're treated as experts when they're wildly out of kilter with current research We cant get a tiny bit forward but the cranks are given a megaphone to set everything backwards.

I’ve pretty much stopped trying to differentiate the modern Tory party from the far right. That’s where they are.

Prem Sikka@premnsikka.bsky.social · 2d ago

Former neo-Nazi activist selected as Tory candidate for Somerset council election. Convictions for assaulting police officer, burglary of a police station, malicious communications, anti-semitism, racially aggravated harassment, harrasing MPs. Tories chasing Reform vote.

Look if you want your social media site to be a town square that’s fine but you have to remember that in real town squares normal people try to avoid the far right placard wavers and the nutters on the soapbox

"It also detected an “unintended consequence” of the ban: the proportion of parents who didn’t know their child had used social media increased by 10%." Spookily enough, this complacency side effect is precisely one of the things we warned about with this and the Online Safety Act in the UK.

Ben Schwarz@benschwarz.bsky.social · 3d ago

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

"We traded our privacy for no reason..." you say. "They obtained permanent access to our private details by deception", I say. It was never about giving protection to kids, but taking protections away from all of us, and those drafting the legislation the way they did knew it.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

More than 80% of kids still using social media despite ban, new eSafety report finds

The report provides more evidence Australia’s world-leading social media ban isn’t going to plan.

theconversation.com

It’s important to understand that when 1.2 million Americans are dying from a disease, any government action is excessive and tyrannical, but if a dozen trans women want to play soccer no government action can go far enough

Median UK voter in 2026, as predicted by Hugh Laurie some decades ago:

There’s “off the charts” and there’s France’s absolutely bonkers June & July 2026 temperatures (see black line below). Bad things are happening. Fast.

Come on SNP and Scottish Greens. You both asked for our votes on manifestos that promised a second independence referendum. Together, you hold the biggest pro-independence majority in Holyrood's history. It's time to turn that mandate into action. It's time to deliver.

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

A thing we DID know at the time if you understood what "exponential" means is lockdowns would have been shorter and resulted in fewer deaths if they were brought in each time it was obvious a wave was starting instead of waiting until it was underway. But, we had Boris Johnson in charge.