I have read Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s blogpost from April entitled “Inside the Mind of an Antisemite -and How I Escaped It”. It’s a fascinating account of being consumed by hateful, extremist ideology. You know what’s not in there? An apology. To Luciana Berger or the wider Jewish community

I keep meaning to mention BBC Radio 4 Extra have a short season of repeats related to Studio Ghibli. Programmes about the studio and their films, alongside dramatisations of the original stories they turned into films www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC - The Stories of Studio Ghibli

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Studio Ghibli's first release

bbc.co.uk

Had one of those beggars on the tube which is alway so akward- had a spare bottle of water so gave it to him - he wasn’t that grateful

Marvellous work, she’s allowed Zack Polanski to sound magnanimous and given him cover for the next time one of his guys is revealed to be a Holocaust denier or whatevs

Andy Burnham Accepter@jorisbinned.bsky.social · 8h ago

Hello I'm an idiot

Wonderful, this is all going so well

Quite excited am on my first trip on the Elizabethline!

Don't look now, but the world has now installed 3TW of solar. Took 10 years to get from 100GW to 1TW. Less than 3 years to get to 2TW. Less than 2 years to get to 3TW. Analysts expect *9TW* by 2036.

The World Crossed a Major Solar Milestone. No One Noticed

The next phase of the boom may reveal a shift in who is gaining access to the technology.

bloomberg.com

I had some online run-ins with Joshua Bonehill-Paine in 2015 when I was the Conservative candidate in Hackney North, which includes the large Orthodox Jewish population in Stamford Hill. I have debated this at length with friends both in & outside the party, and agree with Mark and Ollie below.

Mark Wallace@wallaceme.bsky.social · 12h ago

FWIW I agree with Ollie Dean: we should want extremists to be deradicalised. We should want former criminals to be rehabilitated and live productive lives. None of that means either group (or someone who is both) should be a candidate for election. conservativehome.com/2026/08/05/i...

Solidarity everlasting with my friend Luciana Berger. HOW can she still have to explaining and fighting this bullshit?! What is wrong with the Tory party?!

Ex-MP urges Tories to drop candidate jailed for campaign of antisemitic abuse against her

Luciana Berger says Joshua Bonehill-Paine should have no role in public life because of ‘his racism and his view of women’

theguardian.com

My friend’s kid told me about something that happened to an adult she knows and it’s too funny not to share, so here goes. The story begins when this lady (let’s call her Liz) agrees to dog-sit for a friend who’s going on holiday. The dog is very elderly. You can guess the next part. 🧵

Beautiful everyday Ladybird things The bookshop Artist: Harry Wingfield (1964)

There is nothing the British public would not ban, given the chance.

YouGov@yougov.co.uk · yesterday

56% of Britons would support a ban on the sale of disposable barbecues, amid wildfires across the UK triggering renewed calls for supermarkets to stop selling them during summer months Support: 56% Oppose: 25% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

Folks: these days the England system has BTECs, T-Levels, degree apprenticeships, a whole load of other apprenticeship assessments, and very flexible HE entry across a broad range of providers, including foundation years for those without L3. We already *have* a lot of pathways!

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 😡😡

This remains the very best thing about the English common law. #cats #freespirits

Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · yesterday

But not if it’s a cat! In common law, cats are technically free spirits.

Was lovely seeing people enjoying the Cambridge Folk Festival this weekend - here's a couple of photographs from the first one back in 1965.

I have still not recovered from my dad being turned down for this 2 WEEKS before he died from dementia @simonwheeler.bsky.social

Ben Zaranko@benzaranko.bsky.social · yesterday

Adult social care is mostly a local responsibility. The exception is NHS continuing healthcare, a national programme providing free care to those who qualify. It's the mother of all postcode lotteries. Application success rates in Manchester were 12x higher than in Gloucestershire in Q1 2026.

Adult social care is mostly a local responsibility. The exception is NHS continuing healthcare, a national programme providing free care to those who qualify. It's the mother of all postcode lotteries. Application success rates in Manchester were 12x higher than in Gloucestershire in Q1 2026.

July marks the first consecutive twelve month period where wind generated more electricity than gas in the UK...in every single month. In the last decade, wind generation in the UK has more than doubled, pushing first coal and now gas out of the mix.

Research Grants Manager role at Alzheimer’s Society leading dementia funding calls, grant review processes and a major active grants portfolio. Closing date: 10th August www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/job/research...

Research Grants Manager - DEMENTIA RESEARCHER

Alzheimer’s Society seeks a Research Grants Manager to lead dementia funding calls, grant review processes and a major active grants portfolio.

dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

Going to be horribly both-sidesy and say that neither of these things was worthy of a push alert.

FWIW, given all the knowledge we have now: fatality and hospitalisation rates by age, long-term effects, impact on kids of isolation/school closures, all vaccine efficacies & roll-out timetable ... *still* not confident of the best COVID strategy for the UK. At the time? No clue. Glad it wasn't me.

The bottom line is that when politicians start spouting the kinds of stuff LP is saying, it is usually associated with poor policies and a decline in standards. Middle class kids will always, one way or another, get a good academic education. So it matters for disadvantaged kids.

Finally, this is why I'm very much in favour of a one size fits all approach to education! When we do different tracks for different kids, we create secondary moderns one way or another. And everything we know about our society suggests the sorting will be done based on prejudice.

I mean everyone is more focused on amphetamines - not convinced this is the winning argument

Dr Dean Burnett@drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 3d ago

Only just found out about this For the record, you don't get multiple genetic markers and one of the most effective medications known to science with 'social constructs' Channel 4, this is, in scientific parlance, an absolute fu*king disgrace that will genuinely endanger lives #c4 #ADHD

Germany and the Netherlands are also often cited - but the English system is better than both in terms of academic outcomes, and streaming often in practice follows social class: open.substack.com/pub/danielmu...

VET, Germany and the Netherlands - the shining beacons on the hill?

Germany and the Netherlands – the old and the new examples

open.substack.com

The Sweden case isn’t interesting because they ‘decided’ not to close schools at the start of the pandemic. In reality, a set of political protections - including a very punchy freedom of movement for citizens in their written constitution - meant the PM couldn’t just ‘decide’ it.

This is not how I remember it all - vast majority of people stuck to the rules and key workers worked so hard, and vaccine process was astonishing In yes hindsight some judgments could have been different eg balance in school/masks but it really is a hindsight thing

Mark O’Neill 🐻@radiobeartime.com · 4d ago

My take on COVID is it was a test which UK civil society failed. And there is little sign that things will be handled any better next time around. Humans are essentially solipsistic

Completely agree with this. I've always thought we should have a core academic curriculum to 16 that goes beyond maths/english/science. And yes maths to 18 is in principle a good idea (if the quals are designed right and it's funded properly!)

John Springford@johnspringford.bsky.social · 4d ago

Learned a lot from this. Also Sam's point about keeping options open reinforces the view that we specialise too early in *academic* subjects. Numeracy and literacy are very useful, but you can stop doing any maths/stats/humanities at 16.

In January, I stopped using X as a communication channel because the platform facilitated the creation of illegal and deeply harmful images by its AI tool, Grok. I am renewing my call for all governmental and parliamentary communications to stop using X. The platform continues to facilitate