Brand is just one of many who use fame and influence to try and avoid responsibility. Plenty of people don't even have the fame and influence and still avoid it. Prosecutions for rape are woefully low. Victims are often treated horrendously. Yeah, great that Brand is going down, but how many aren't?

Remember to take a book with you wherever you’re going! - Michael

Well, that isn't a whole new level of dystopian nightmare in UK immigration enforcement... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

UK to deploy facial recognition in biggest-ever immigration crackdown

Documents show government developing programme to use technology for general immigration enforcement

theguardian.com

This is just dire. Means decades of uncertainty for people, with every election creating a risk they'll be sent to unsafe countries by a far right government.

Jon Featonby@jonfeatonby.bsky.social · 4d ago

Home Secretary confirming refugees who go through the asylum system will start at a 20 year route to settlement - but with 10 more years if they arrived irregularly. So many, many refugees will face a 30 year wait for settlement, all while facing reviews every 2.5 years.

Yes, Reform is more explicit in what they want policies to do, but you are still talking about telling marginalised communities to choose between hangman or the firing squad. End outcome is the same. For those whose lives will be destroyed it makes little difference how the policies are framed. 5/

If you think you have to vote Labour to stop Reform then today you should be questioning exactly what difference in the end it makes for the most vulnerable of individuals. Yes, Labour's anti-immigration policies are framed differently, but the end outcomes are the same. 1/

I can’t afford to stock up on bottled water and tinned food - I can barely afford our usual weekly shop right now! Also I have an autistic son who would prefer to starve rather than eat anything that isn’t on his narrow list of safe foods. So all I can really do is feel overly stressed about it all!

Andreas Malm has been barred from entering the UK because of his advocacy for Palestinian liberation, whilst we’re told that it would violate Cofnas’s free speech to prevent him making unfounded race scientist claims about Black intelligence. Free speech for thee, Home Office silo for me.

Burnham’s government is telling people to stockpile food & water in case of a climate crisis/“technological dependency” while contributing to that climate crisis with Jackdaw & embedding *Palantir* into government systems. Labour is literally saying “protect yourselves from our bad decisions.” 1/2

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone. After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River. Continue reading...

theguardian.com

Nuffield Trust finds that the NHS surcharge (at £1035/year + £776 for students + children) raises 60% more than the cost of the healthcare it covers, putting £2.5 billion into the NHS Rapid drops in immigration therefore hit the NHS finances www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/articles/ana...

Analysis finds that migrants pay more to the NHS than the cost of the care they use | National Health Executive

Migrants paying the Immigration Health Surcharge are contributing substantially more to the NHS than they receive in healthcare,

nationalhealthexecutive.com

Jackdaw is climate vandalism. Labour are putting Shell's profits before people and planet.

The IPCC is pretty clear that if we want a safe climate there can be no new oil and gas. But every country thinks it has some special reason for why it should be the exception

Yeah, this is where I am. Jackdaw *is* pretty small. That means *the benefits* are small, and the signal it sends globally far outweighs them

James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · 2w ago

The problem is not really Jackdaw, which is pretty small. The problem is the UK's plan to transition away from fossil fuels is still not ambitious and detailed enough. The problem is if Rosebank follows. The problem is if every country develops one last fossil fuel project we're all screwed.

I always suspected American evangelicals would spawn some new kind of heresy, but this is a particularly depressing one

Jack Jenkins@jackjenkins.me · 2w ago

"A survey released Tuesday (Oct. 20) found that Republicans and evangelicals increasingly see empathy as a danger that can lead society away from God." religionnews.com/2026/10/20/a...

Really important thread on what it’s really like being the parent of a young person with additional needs let down by the system.

Knight of Books and Bothies@bothyknight.bsky.social · 2w ago

Listening to the @therestpolitics.bsky.social interview with Alan Milburn on NEETs (horrid word!) - that is, young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training, and I have some MAJOR PROBLEMS with *some* aspects of what is being said here

eBay users! Don't ignore today's email, even though it looks like a boring standard update to the User Privacy Notice. They want to use your data to train AI models. If you click the link over the words "the right to object", it takes you to a page with a toggle button letting you opt out.

I have significant issues with the Immigration Health Surcharge, which is effectively part of wider spread double taxation on migrants, who are also less likely to use the NHS, but, as with the wider economy, it was absolutely inevitable that more hostile immigration policies would harm it. 1/

Lee Hurley@hleehurley.com · 2w ago

"The NHS is losing £100m a year because falling immigration has cut the number of foreigners paying a health surcharge, analysis shows." [Times]

Authors, if you've not signed yet, still time!

Patrick Ness@patricknessbooks.bsky.social · 3w ago

Fruits of the letter of support for Sally Rooney and Faber. Currently at 480 signatories and counting. www.thebookseller.com/news/hundred...

This is appalling on a few levels. First of all me being trans isn't something to be 'believed' or not, it's just a fact about me. Which despite the hideous gutting of the Equality Act and GRA, - gender reassignment *is* still a protected characteristic, not simply a matter of 'belief'

Siobhan "Shiv" Craig - DarkEden21@darkeden21.bsky.social · 3w ago

Civil servant transgender guidelines leak just dropped:

One of the common arguments from so called "gender criticals", transphobes, is "what rights are trans people losing". The answer is so many. Just today we have seen in practice that trans people are being excluded from healthcare., to add to public spaces, education etc. It all costs lives.

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 4w ago

The EHRC chair either does not understand the principle of rights, or has decided to gaslight trans individuals while stripping those rights. The EHCR code undermines, and, arguably in several ways, outright violates rights for trans individuals, including Articles 8, 11, and 14 of the ECHR. 1/

Just anecdotally, I’m noticing what feels like a concerted attack on disability in legacy media at the moment, whether it be funding through PIP, just basic diagnosis around autism & ADHD (& how this is supposedly *over*diagnosis) & attacks on the very principle of receiving benefits if ill/disabled

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 3w ago

For those who think @cjayanetti.bsky.social is being hyperbolic. These are the current three "top stories" on the Times app. How this is taken as anything other than a targeted attack on disabled individuals, especially neurodivergent ones, is beyond me.

For those who think @cjayanetti.bsky.social is being hyperbolic. These are the current three "top stories" on the Times app. How this is taken as anything other than a targeted attack on disabled individuals, especially neurodivergent ones, is beyond me.

Chaminda Jayanetti@cjayanetti.bsky.social · 3w ago

Top three articles on the Times website are currently a barrage of hate against funding for disabled people, including an attack on Access to Work *which is money to help disabled people find/stay in paid work*

Given that the back payments are because so many people are wrongly turned down when they first apply for PIP and then have to wait up to two years for a tribunal hearing, surely the solution to this so-called “windfall” problem is to make the process less soul destroying to start with!

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 3w ago

I see the Times is going full on attack disabled individuals as scroungers and layabouts with no consideration for how PIP is not an "out of work benefit" and how for many it is essential support to actually work and live.

Home office: "Syria is safe" Foreign office:

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 4w ago

Yet again, Labour showing itself to be the single most racist and hostile anti-asylum government in living memory. It can take decades, if ever, for refugees to be safe returning to countries they fled, and that's when those countries are stable which Syria is not www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Keep thinking about US streaming a firing squad. I can articulate every argument against the death penalty. I can talk about grotesqueness of live streaming it. I can highlight the similarities with the Taliban/ISIS etc. The most sickening thing I can never overcome is that millions will watch it.

Today, Oct 4, is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi: the day when you can bring your pets to church for a blessing.

It's so tedious having to listen to people say "if you don't Labour then our lives will be worse off" and then listing a handful of policies which make them feel better, while ignoring the far more substantial number of Labour policies which strip rights and make life worse for vulnerable groups. 4/

Disability doesn’t care how old you are. Specialist food is no cheaper if you’re 19. Employers don’t lose their prejudice if you’re 21. This is blatant intergenerational inequality from Labour. Younger disabled people of all severities deserve better. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Key disability benefit for young people may be axed under major welfare changes

Exclusive: Plan under discussion involves intensive support to help young people into employment

theguardian.com

This can't be talked about enough. "President Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal." www.bbc.com/news/article...

Trump's aid cut risks causing 14 million deaths, report finds

The figure from the Lancet, a leading medical journal, includes 700,000 child deaths globally a year.

bbc.com