Kemi Badenoch wins: Eight thoughts on the new Tory leader tinyurl.com/bde6f3pj
Kemi Badenoch becomes Tory leader: Things are about to get very, very weird
Eight thoughts on the Conservative leadership result
tinyurl.com
Tommy Farrell
@tommyfarrell.bsky.social
A Level Maths Teacher at Cronton Sixth Form College.
EPIC LOLS! HOW I BECAME LEADER OF THE TORY PARTY WITH YOUR HELP!
"One ‘reformer’ suggested that as long as men drank in moderation – no more than four litres a day – ‘wine was no more harmful, and markedly more beneficial, than bread.’ "
Julian Barnes · La Chasse au Pinard: Drinking for France
At the beginning of the 20th century, the French ‘drank substantially more than any other people in the world’. But...
lrb.co.uk
US Election: Humans are very bad at thinking about bimodal probability distributions, especially with lots of correlation amongst the parts. Twelve days out, I think that's exactly what we've got. Complete with squeaky-bum predictions. paulmainwood.substack.com/p/us-electio...
Here’s a Simon Jenkins housing column that makes sense - because it’s about him, rather than by him. (It’s by @jonnelledge.bsky.social) capx.co/nimby-watch-...
Nimby Watch: Why no one should listen to Simon Jenkins
For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re taking a look at the work of Simon Jenkins, perhaps the most high-profile Nimby in Britain… Where are we going this week? The pages of The Guardian. Tha...
capx.co
idea of selling data to American fascists is worrying, but preventing that by making your records illegible to doctors treating you is like resisting gentrification by shitting in your front garden
In the last week, Labour hit a crucial milestone on getting rid of hereditary peers, unlocked £1bn funding for social housing insulation, initiated plans to regulate buy-now-pay-later lenders and started to coalesce around an HS2 replacement. Barely any chat about this at all.
New post | The new Attorney General on the rule of law publiclawforeveryone.com/2024/10/17/t...
The new Attorney General on the rule of law
Earlier this week, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, delivered the 2024 Bingham Lecture, entitled ‘The Rule of Law in an Age of Populism’. Although not a party political speech as such, he was evi…
publiclawforeveryone.com
If you have read or shared The Atlantic article on college reading, I beg you to read this piece by a high school teacher interviewed for the piece.
The Atlantic Did Me Dirty
Early this summer I was interviewed by Rose Horowitch, an editor for The Atlantic. She told me that she had heard from a university professor that incoming students were struggling to keep up with the...
cmsthomas.substack.com
Particularly good 'Ask Shrimsley' by @robertshrimsley.bsky.social this week. I particularly enjoyed "Nothing would induce me to actually read these either but reviewers describe them as “raw”, which usually suggests a degree of self-analysis."
Ask Shrimsley: I’ve borked Britain. Is it time to write my memoirs?
Yes, please do. Everyone is dying to know why it wasn’t your fault
ft.com
🔥🔥🔥 "If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, they could ask for an introduction from Lord Frost - whose spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius." 😱😱😱 ~AA
![Post by Robert Peston cot'd: "Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.” It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it. And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet. As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM. If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews was the lead official negotiator on this."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:agxhun7wf2fm3fdfj6zrm33y/bafkreigofchshuibngflpr5p5jgrn2emlp6r5k7faj7qd5qtbn7ou7vniy)
I'm gathering that Bluesky is less interested in long science threads 🧪, but I need you all to know the majesty that is the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum: It can 'feed' on sunlight; gives birth to live, pregnant clone-babies; needs to be bacterially infected to survive. Photo by Shipher Wu.
The most undiscussed fact in British politics: the average personal tax rate is at its lowest since 1975. ifs.org.uk/articles/how...
"The UK’s clampdown on international students and overseas skilled workers will cost business more than £40bn and provide no overall benefit to society, according to government estimates of the policies’ impact" - on.ft.com/3ZGs8O4 via @financialtimes.com
Overseas student and worker curbs will cost UK business £40bn, say official estimates
Home Office assessments come as new Labour government presses ahead with curbs on immigration
on.ft.com
Tom Hamilton @tomhamilton.bsky.social articulates why this was the bit of Starmer’s speech that landed with me
Someone I wish was here and making a very good point on the other place.
Interviewer: Did you break the donations rules? Minister:No Headline: Minister forced to deny breaking anti-sleaze rules.
It just seemed like news that Trump was raving in Nassau County about driving out people who came from "the Congo....Africa..the Middle East...Asia," and then it seemed even more like news that none of the coverage mentioned it defector.com/where-racism...
The UK's post-2010 nuclear new building programme has failed. Plan was to build 18 GW of new generation capacity, roughly doubling output of the ageing AGR fleet. But now only 3.2 GW of capacity is under construction, late & over budget. www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p...
Revisiting the UK’s nuclear AGR programme: 3. Where next with the UK’s nuclear new build programme? On rebuilding lost capabilities, and learning wider lessons – Soft Machines
softmachines.org
'No, Nigel Farage, you do not speak for the silent majority' Reform UK claims to say what ‘everyone really thinks’ – but a new opinion poll by from British Future & Ipsos shows that nothing could be further from the truth, writes @rentouljohn.bsky.social www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel...
No, Nigel Farage, you do not speak for the silent majority
Reform UK claims to say what ‘everyone really thinks’ – but a new opinion poll shows that nothing could be further from the truth, writes John Rentoul
independent.co.uk
Farage and his mortifying dimwit entourage represent no-one but themselves iandunt.substack.com/p/farage-and...
Farage and his mortifying dimwit entourage represent no-one but themselves
Reform is holding its annual conference today.
iandunt.substack.com
It's as if someone designed a smartphone app in 1999, before smartphones were invented. Just abysmal
Tom Ward@tomafro.net · 2y agoI thought expenses software was the worst software in the world, but actually it’s the software used by schools to communicate to parents*. Two different shitty apps for one school, each with many layers of shittiness.
The top four are likely to be the top four & will get a month to make their case to MPs about their party and public appeal. Need 40-41 to make the last two, so it looks quite open as to who is second now
Thanks @t0nyyates.bsky.social for the shout out. Let me double down: I am certain that in the UK, austerity was vital to bring about an EU referendum and tip it in favor of Leave. But the UK context can not be directly compared with East Germany. In this 🧵 I comment on similarities and differences.