Rod Liddle was a piece of shit in both his private and public life, and it speaks to the state of British media that they're praising the man. He presaged the steep downward decline of British broadsheet print columnists into increasingly open racism, misogyny, and hatred of queer people.

I've said this before, but I find it mind boggling how strict many schools are compared to when I was at school in the 00s/early 2010s. When I read about schools like the 'strictest headmistress' or whatever she's called, it sounds appalling, and completely disconnected from what me and peers had

Andrew Sissons@acjsissons.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is a harrowing - though not surprising - read. It’s probably hard to quantify, but I think we need to know how widespread this approach is, and what impact it has on young people’s mental health

I feel the same way about Musk trying to defend both British culture and the AfD. Britain has many flaws but the defining element of our national myth and history for the last 80 years is shooting Nazis in the head. It’s like being a monarchist Irish nationalist. My culture is not your costume.

My 2yo girl loves Wuthering Heights because she thinks it is a Witch Song and she loves witches.

Prof Frank McDonough@fxmc1957.bsky.social · 7d ago

PERSON OF THE DAY. 30 July 1958. Singer-songwriter Kate Bush was born in Bexleyheath, Kent. She was 1st woman to have a self-composed UK No 1 hit with Wuthering Heights. Bush was born on the 140th anniversary of the birth of the author who inspired her song, Emily Brontë.

A lot of effort goes into persuading kids and young people that the real world is more important and online a distraction but only one of those was ever switched off for them for a year and a half and it wasn't the internet.

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.

One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.

The trauma of it aside it also showed that states can just *do things*. A lot of the radicalism today is a product of people having seen it become illegal to go outside too much for a year and a half.

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last wk.

I believe this as well and it has changed profoundly how I see various periods in history, too.

Yuzi didn't want to do a first dance cos somehow that makes her more nervous than karaoke, which is what we did instead. So here's a clip of our very traditional First Belter, adapted from Disney's Mulan.

If this had been policy in the 70s (as it partly was), towns would have produced lots of mining engineers & metallurgists just before pits & steelworks closed. As the yanks say, you should skate to where the puck's going, not to where it is. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Burnham to tell schools in England to adapt teaching to local business needs

PM wants curriculums for students aged 14 and above to be more responsive to local jobs market

theguardian.com

If "terrorism" is allowed to encompass some annoying thirtysomethings with dodgy opinions on Ukraine whose entire list of crimes is paint-based vandalism in service of a cause that most UK residents agree with and hitting a cop once, then most people will no longer view it as a serious crime.

Palestinian resistance must abide by the laws of war. Shooting occupying soldiers is extremely valid within the laws of war. If Israel doesn't want its soldiers to die, it can end the occupation.

#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 2w ago

Killing an illegally-present, occupying soldier is verbatim the most legal thing a person is allowed to do under every single international law.

Saw a Waymo defeated by horse shit from the Household Cavalry on South Carriage Drive. Every pile it approached it would slam on the brakes thinking it was an emergency, and proceeded to do this a dozen times down the road.

The important thing is that this is disgusting, horrible, and a gateway to fascism. But it's also hilarious because, really, have any of them actually dated a Russian woman?

🌈😈@satansjacuzzi.bsky.social · 2w ago

Holy shit, THAT is a fucking LEDE

We must remember the Utøya massacre, and remember it for what it was: a far-right attack specifically targeted against democratic socialist activists. Today, the ideologies of its perpetrator are openly espoused by a global network of nationalist oligarchs as they wage war on democratic societies.

Roberta Metsola@president.europarl.europa.eu · 2w ago

Fifteen years ago today, 77 lives were taken - most of them young - on an island that should have been a place of summer, friendship, and first ideas about the world they wanted to build. On that day, Norway grieved, and Europe grieved with it. Utøya. Oslo. We remember.

Damn really wish the aging pedophile caudillo would die already www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections

Daniel Ortega, the 80-year-old authoritarian leader, says move will ‘build a wall’ against the opposition

theguardian.com

I winced so hard my back gave out when I saw Feeling Gloomy advertising a club afternoon for people my age and their offspring.

James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Either grow old disgracefully, burning the candle at both ends *or* retire into middle age happily and go to bed at 8pm. Going to a 2pm 'Emo Pop Punk night' is, frankly, the behaviour of people who need to accept their joy disappeared many years ago.

So much of the tense energy pulsating from the radical right is because they blew up traditional and social democratic structures alike to make way for the market, and sincerely thought the market would still punish all the degenerates and inferiors

Bill McKay@mckay4senate.bsky.social · 3w ago

20. While on the subject, Norman Tebbit saying he regretted breaking up the miners' strikes because they were working class men who beat their kids is a good look at the shifting nature of the British right.

This is what happens from being the only country where the major party of the liberal left breaks ranks and becomes institutionally transphobic. People follow elite cues!

Elizabeth Taylor@elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is actually CRAZY work - we are more anti trans than several countries including the US, which are arguably not even liberal democracies

It's all the more remarkable because by the time he actually won the aspirations of much of the British left were so diminished that he really wouldn't have had to do much at all for us to be pathetically grateful.

Jonn Elledge@jonnelledge.bsky.social · 3w ago

One of the ways the Starmer people went wrong I think is going beyond "showing you're not so left wing that it mobilises centre-centre right votes against you" to "repeatedly kicking the left". You want to be inoffensive enough not to scare the horses, not yelling "BOO!" at your own fucking horses

Could have left De Blasio in this cos he certainly has oafish qualities to him.

Tim Carvell@timcarvell.bsky.social · 4w ago

My kingdom for a political class that recognises modern Britain’s biggest strengths and wishes to reinforce them

Arts Professional@artsprofessional.co.uk · 4w ago

Performing and creative arts university courses will no longer receive funding from a government teaching grant as part of “difficult decisions” about spending priorities, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said.

Step 1: Ensure that your left-wing programme flatters the pre-existing prejudices of Britain's media class

Gareth Watkins@garethwatkins.bsky.social · last mo.

People want to hear this even less, but the left/liberals need to study the TERF movement as an example of wildly successful organising and cultural engineering by an extremely niche, mostly online micro-community.

You will never get the commentariat to care about this even a hundredth as much as they cared as that time a college girl wrote an OpEd about rape culture in the campus newspaper in 2018.

Ida B Wells' Winchester Rifle@dytsras.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"Send the Mexicans home, make the blacks work." The "philosopher" of the tech-fascist movement

Happy “liberal arts professor helps save the Union” day to all who celebrate

Matt Goodwin is not just repulsive, he hates Britain. Yassin Mohamud's story is a fantastic example of how great this country is. That you can come here as a refugee, work hard and end up as Lord Mayor. That's inspiring! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

He was once a refugee – now Yassin Mohamud is Bristol's Lord Mayor

Yassin Mohamud wants to help "build a city where everyone has the opportunity to thrive".

bbc.co.uk

James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · last mo.

Matt Godwin is a failure who needs to leave my city the fuck alone. Failed candidate. Failed academic. Failed commentator. Failed intellectual. A massive ego wrapped around a shrivelled and scared intellect, poisoned by bile and subconcious awareness of his own inadequacy.

Also, it's long past time to retire vulgar Marxist arguments about how racism and nativism are just a tool that the capitalist class is using to divide the working class. This stuff is not a distraction. It is a central motivating and binding force in politics, both in the US and elsewhere.

Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social · last mo.

One thing you can see with the reaction to birthright citizenship decision is that Great Replacement Theory is now pretty much the center of the American Right's whole project.

even if it was good policy, this shit is completely ancillary to the goal of actually limiting the power of big tech. Elon Musk has a trillion dollars and is trying to start a global race war, your response to that can’t be “kids should be on their phones less”

alpha @omarsbigsister.bsky.social · last mo.

Dems' "Project 2029" first major policy proposal: an online child safety plan — narrowing Sec. 230, banning social media for kids under 16, promoting phone-free childhoods and more. Already backed by Cory Booker, Mikie Sherrill, Randi Weingarten + Jonathan Haidt. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

If only there was a word for "people granted asylum". Or perhaps the BBC is avoiding using the word "refugee" because it makes this policy look even more like it is - performative cruelty?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Defenders of this sort of stuff often call it a return to common sense but it's actually a radically new thing, education that explicitly does not think that they have to prepare children to become good fellow citizens.

Pupil put in isolation booth for more than half a school year, BBC learns

The pupil's experience in a Yorkshire school highlights concerns about zero-tolerance behaviour policies.

bbc.co.uk

Vital that refugee stories like these get told so that people don’t just disappear behind the demonization and misrepresentation that is now so widespread

‘I hadn’t seen people smiling until I arrived in the UK’: one man’s harrowing journey from Yemen to safety

After being arrested, beaten and targeted for conscription, Amal Sahel realised he needed to leave his country. But his journey to Europe was fraught with danger

theguardian.com

I do find it a bit upsetting how the world became a noticeably kinder place in many ways as we grew up and that seems to have made some people furious