1/ New column from John Naughton in The Observer asks an important question: why do tech moguls talk such confident nonsense about AI? Worth reading in full — here’s what he argues. 🧵
If we're prepared to grab the opportunity this could be a teachable moment about why MPs should be paid properly and why they shouldn't have outside earnings (or outside earnings that they can keep, anyway).
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2d agoReform’s Richard Tice probed over failure ‘to declare an interest’ ft.trib.al/vxuTfWW
1/ Scotland’s had it for years. Wales too. Now England’s mayors are finally getting a share of their own income tax — and it could reshape the whole UK’s fiscal map. Here’s the policy angle. 🧵👇
UEFA not pissing about with regard to FIFA wanting to sell to private investors. "no UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive" www.uefa.com/news-media/n...
Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 national associations
UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions.
uefa.com
It's one of those things which undermines a lot of the far right narratives about grooming gangs, because ultimately until very recently no one was taking *any* child sex offences seriously.
Banjon@beardybanjo.bsky.social · 5d agoYes. Until as late as 2000 the Chief inspector of schools in England was a guy who met his wife when he was her school teacher, and he gave a public speech- as chief inspector of schools joking(?) that teachers dating pupils 16-18 years old "could help their education"
Excellent tactical analysis here. In the big picture, what's too often lost in our fog of (cold) war is the cast iron resilience of the union, despite unionist political incompetence and even malignance. Seems the only solution permitting dual identity and promoting alliance not enmity has legs.
Mick Fealty@mickfealty.bsky.social · 5d ago1/ Outsiders keep misreading Northern Ireland. They hear "border poll" and assume a united Ireland is on the horizon. This week's poll says the opposite: both the unionist and nationalist blocs are bleeding to voter apathy. Neither is going anywhere soon: an existential nettle, best grasped now.
1/ Outsiders keep misreading Northern Ireland. They hear "border poll" and assume a united Ireland is on the horizon. This week's poll says the opposite: both the unionist and nationalist blocs are bleeding to voter apathy. Neither is going anywhere soon: an existential nettle, best grasped now.
6,700 private providers of children’s homes, that’s up 70% since 2022, and supported accommodation is booming. This is a market scaling up around vulnerable children, not a system built to serve them. More providers may not mean better care but more folks making money from kids in care. 👇
@martinbarrow.bsky.social · 6d agoThe scale of the explosion in for-profit children’s homes in England is revealed in the latest Ofsted stats: the number of homes has risen by 20% in the last year and by 70% since 2022.
1/ The UK’s approach to social media misinformation isn’t working. @cjayanetti.bsky.social lays out why, and what would actually help. The catch: misinfo is the hardest online harm to regulate without trampling free speech. 🧵
1/ Rafael Behr in the Guardian, on Burnham’s arrival in No 10, gets at something important. Burnham, Badenoch, even Trump are all working the same issues: the loss of industry that gutted working communities and the anger it generated. The shared diagnosis is ground everyone agrees on.
The big question now for Reform UK: exactly how many convicted criminals are funding your party? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Revealed: George Cottrell transferred $2m to his mother days before her donations to Reform UK
Exclusive: Sources say Fiona Cottrell told bankers the transfers, received 24-72 hours before her donations to Reform, came from her son
theguardian.com
Laser focused on reducing the cost of living, from day one.
7/ For all the confident talk that a united Ireland is inevitable, the entire nationalist bloc has slipped backwards in this poll, not just SF. The side everyone *says* is winning just went into reverse. In NI, you need to watch the bloc, as well as the party. 🔗 sluggerotoole.com/2026/07/27/d...
DUP, SF and Alliance in retreat – New LucidTalk poll…
Grim reading this morning for the leaders of the three largest Executive parties, as the Belfast Telegraph reports the new LucidTalk poll. This won’t have come as much of a surprise. The DUP has been ...
sluggerotoole.com
1/ If you’ve watched voters torch establishment parties everywhere from Washington to Paris, Northern Ireland may be running its own version. New poll out, but you don’t need to follow NI politics to get why it’s interesting. Thread. 🧵
1/ A #citizensassembly is meant to answer an open question. Sinn Féin’s unity bill writes the answer into the terms of reference, then asks citizens to deliberate. That’s not a courtroom with a verdict, it’s a verdict looking for a jury. 🧵 @markhennessy.bsky.social
1/5 A MILLION BRICKS (1998) might be the best £3,000 ever spent on a documentary. I lived briefly on Springfield Park myself, a good few years before the Troubles began. So watching Frank Martin & Seamus Kelters go back to that West Belfast street hit home. A quiet indie masterclass. 🧵
1/5 A note from @cmjohnston.bsky.social for those of us who are middle-aged or older. There’s a common habit among our generation of describing young people as lazy or uncommunicative. It’s worth pausing on how unfair that is once you look at the world we’ve handed them. 🧵
It's funny how no-one ever asks where the money is coming from when you announce a cut in immigration.
The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy. Here is how we can fight back | Gabriel Zucman
The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy. Here is how we can fight back | Gabriel Zucman
There is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy. That’s because extreme wealth is always an extreme power
theguardian.com
Musk in full African dictator mode giving his polite interlocutor the full lash…
Joey Politano🏳️🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · 2w agoNot a great interview overall, but this clip is just devastating Elon says Britain is headed towards civil war, the interviewer asks Elon when he was last in the UK, he says years ago, and then Elon accuses the interviewer, **who lives in London**, of living a cloistered life youtu.be/QTGCSYn0piw
Musk predicting the future should be taken more as a cautionary tale than a prediction. “Anyone can have anything they can think of” because of AI, is not so much prediction as a key animating factor in his relentless drive to accumulate useless (and utterly work-shy) levels of assets and wealth.
Elon Musk on AI: humans will no longer be in control in ten years | The Economist
YouTube video by The Economist
youtube.com
A closed Hormuz is bad. Bab el-Mandeb could be worse, says @johnauthers.bsky.social 🎥
It remains likely that visible arrivals will be reported + that less visible trends will go under-reported on this major theme. There has yet to be a BBC online analysis piece on the key theme "why have small boat crossings fallen - by over a third/nearly half - and will it be sustained"
Jon Featonby@jonfeatonby.bsky.social · 2w agoNo arrivals by small boats for the last 10 days now. As of yesterday, 12,469 people had arrived so far this year across the Channel, down over 11,000 (47%) on the same time last year. More than 10% down on 2023 as well, which was when crossings were, by comparison to other years, lower.
1/ @garyseconomics.bsky.social C4 doc “How to Get Filthy Rich” is getting hammered hardest by people who also want to tax wealth. That may not be a contradiction and more a textbook example of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory of how science develops and moves on…
