Stephen Campbell
@stephencampbll.bsky.social
Advice researcher & writer at Citizens Advice Scotland • Former welfare rights adviser, poverty researcher, polsci grad • Interested in policy and information for the public good • Outer Hebridean in Glasgow • Inexplicably sporty gayboy 🏳️🌈
✍️ Fantastic resource for the real welfare rights nerds here: @cpaguk.bsky.social's one-page tracker of all the government's proposed welfare reforms and how they interact, including: • Timms' PIP review • NEET report • new unemployment insurance • fit note reform. 🔗 cpag.org.uk/welfare-righ...
Welfare reform: health-related and disability benefits
Keep up-to-date with the main changes included in the Pathways to Work Green Paper and the Employment Rights Bill, affecting personal independence payment (PIP), universal credit (UC), employment and ...
cpag.org.uk
This would be a very good move. I'm a recent convert to mandatory voting and increasingly messianic about it open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...
Nick Garland@npjgarland.bsky.social · last wk.1/ Great reporting in The Times on the emerging momentum behind support for compulsory voting, which @ippr.org called for a couple of weeks ago: www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
Bristol and Glasgow have some of Britain's strongest knowledge economies outside London. But despite their success, each city faces different challenges. Our latest blog explores the policies needed to sustain growth and raise living standards👇 buff.ly/4nLb7WE
Building on the success of Bristol and Glasgow's knowledge economies - Centre for Cities
Bristol and Glasgow show why KIBS matter for growth.
buff.ly
A far-right mob marched through Glasgow, attacking a delivery driver and waving Nazi salutes. Since 2020 there has been been a large increase in attacks on ethnic and minority workers.
"Instead of collective negotiation, the [Employment Rights Act] relies on individual workers taking their complaints to employment tribunals. There the worker [...] will often feel uncomfortable and outgunned." @ieruk.bsky.social 🔗 www.ier.org.uk/comments/a-s...
A Second Employment Rights Bill - IER
ier.org.uk
Imagine what Iain Banks - humanist, Iraq war-hating, Scottish Socialist Party-supporting, Israel-boycotting Iain Banks - would have thought of Elon Musk.
Brendan Paddy@bjpaddy.bsky.social · 2w agoMusk pointing to Iain M. Banks' post-scarcity Culture universe as a vision of the future and then denying that Banks was a socialist just goes to show that it is perfectly possible to have a genius for bullshitting shareholders & still be dumber than a sack of rocks gizmodo.com/elon-musk-ec...
Finally, someone asks him how he squares his desire for an Iain Banks' Culture-style post-scarcity utopia with his obvious fascism. Answer: he doesn't.
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 2w agoThere's a reason Elon Musk rarely does interviews with real news outlets.
"The project fills a significant gap left by commercial or state-sponsored forestry organisations: these locations are too remote or costly for commercial seed collectors to visit, adding to the significance of the specimens Birch’s teams are saving." 🧷 www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘Literally growing the future’: volunteers help save Scottish rainforest by collecting 11m seeds
Teams painstakingly combed endangered Atlantic habitat over several years, helping to grow 8m native trees
theguardian.com
📝🏴 Inspired by the NEET crisis and because this resource just doesn't seem to exist anywhere else, I've written a new advice page listing all the official free employability services in Scotland. www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland/wor...
Help with employability in Scotland
How to find a job and get help with employability in Scotland, including information on the No One Left Behind scheme delivered by your local council, help available from Skills Development Scotland, ...
citizensadvice.org.uk
A compelling long-read on the important work of Citizens Advice Scotland @citizensadvicescot.bsky.social "Citizens Advice Bureaux in Scotland have been targeted by far-right activists for helping non-white, migrant or foreign residents." Disgraceful racism. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2623410...
Citizens Advice Scotland's fury at far-right 'demonisation' in our country's schemes
As extremists target Scotland’s poorest areas, the Citizens Advice service tells our Writer at Large of its plans to tackle demonisation and…
heraldscotland.com
Excellent article about Citizens Advice Bureau evolving from advice to proactive campaigning to politicians about what they see every day. CAS is an important NGO and their efforts to close the loop back to government, whilst challenging right wing narrative in the process, is to be applauded.
Neil Mackay@neilmackay.bsky.social · last mo.It says much about these divided times that an organisation like the Citizens Advice service, a byword for old-fashioned kindness & decency, has decided it must now fight the far-right in our poorest communities to stop the demonisation tearing society apart My @heraldscotland.bsky.social long read
It says much about these divided times that an organisation like the Citizens Advice service, a byword for old-fashioned kindness & decency, has decided it must now fight the far-right in our poorest communities to stop the demonisation tearing society apart My @heraldscotland.bsky.social long read
Citizens Advice Scotland's fury at far-right 'demonisation' in our country's schemes
As extremists target Scotland’s poorest areas, the Citizens Advice service tells our Writer at Large of its plans to tackle demonisation and…
heraldscotland.com
Also doing that thing that Starmer does where only manly polluting jobs are working class, everything else is middle class and not worth considering
Exquisite timing, as we face our third heat wave of the summer. What brilliant political judgement and moral sense she has.
The best part of Andy Burnham's speech for me. Displays an all-too-rare technical understanding of the rising private rents -> housing benefit spiral, and an even rarer acknowledgement that freezing LHA to keep welfare spending down only hurts renters without fixing the real problem
Always felt Sharon Graham took a rather self-serving oppositional posture towards the Labour government from day one, when real engagement might have meant a strengthened Employment Rights Act, or more appetite for an ERA 2. At best, this proves she's catastrophically short-sighted.
Dave@mediocredave.bsky.social · 2mo agoSharon Graham embodies an inescapable conservative core of the mainstream trade union movement. Obviously Miliband isn't actually going to do anything particularly radical but the merest whiff of a policy that might constrain industry's planet-killing excesses is treated as an existential threat.
Over 40 economists write to leader of Unite the Union, rejecting her claim that Ed Miliband would destroy jobs if he becomes next UK chancellor "The net zero economy generates output worth over £100bn and employs over a million workers....these numbers will grow” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Progressive economists reject Unite leader’s criticism of Ed Miliband
Sharon Graham is urged to withdraw her claim that the energy secretary would cost jobs if he became chancellor
theguardian.com
Reading this article whilst sitting in my house with the blinds closed and the fan on because it is 35 degrees outside, learning that the General Secretary of my trade union still wants *more* oil refineries, and *more* oil & gas drilling in the North Sea. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Progressive economists reject Unite leader’s criticism of Ed Miliband
Sharon Graham is urged to withdraw her claim that the energy secretary would cost jobs if he became chancellor
theguardian.com
Sharon Graham embodies an inescapable conservative core of the mainstream trade union movement. Obviously Miliband isn't actually going to do anything particularly radical but the merest whiff of a policy that might constrain industry's planet-killing excesses is treated as an existential threat.
This is sharp from James Meadway in his interview with Arguably on the “hard truths” that any left project must face. www.arguably.uk/p/what-do-th...
It turns out conservativism can actually win over intellectuals by becoming more intellectual rather than having to tear down the academy
It is now clear that the only solution to the impasse created by the Supreme Court judgement is legislative change. Without bold action to reverse our current course, the Labour Party’s relationship with millions of LGBT+ voters and allies will continue to degrade. (3/3)
There will be lots of understandable scepticism about this, but Burnham really has been a long time advocate of electoral reform. Would be a big step forward if he follows through www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Andy Burnham to back electoral reform if he becomes prime minister
Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate wants to make politics ‘less point-scoring, more problem-solving’
theguardian.com
one of the defining crises of pretty much the entire developed world is no one being willing to tell the electorate to eat their vegetables and pick one of increased immigration of working age pop, increased taxes, or decreased pensions.
"Labour should get serious about electoral reform. In an era of multi-party politics, our electoral system is neither workable nor defensible." ✍️ Fabian Society Gen Sec Joe Dromey in LabourList 🔍 We need a National Commission on Electoral Reform. labourlist.org/2026/05/fabi...
'Learning Lessons' - LabourList
We need a bold offer and clear leadership to regain the support of progressive and socially conservative, economically insecure voters.
labourlist.org
Sam Sachs discusses how social democrats should respond to "reactionary strikes" that aim to defend the social status of upper-middle-class professions renewal.org.uk/blog/the-pro... 3/4
The problem of reactionary strikes
When Resident Doctors went on strike under the last Conservative government in 2023-2024, the politics were straightforward for social democrats. Doctors were striking as part of the biggest wave of i...
renewal.org.uk
Just as with winter fuel, and with two child, and with the welfare cuts, never bet against Keir Starmer doing the maximum damage to himself and to Labour in his inability to accept the inevitable:
Keir Starmer vows to fight on ahead of Burnham by-election
Prime minister repeats desire to contest next general election
ft.com
A surefire sign we are in a vibes era. A good communicator could repackage what has already been done and sound like a major reformer. Perhaps in hindsight there may have been benefits to significant change presented in a palate of grey.