iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 21h

Oh, it's National Poetry Day. Please enjoy this moving meditation on life and death by Norman Nicholson, whose anthology is here: www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Poe...

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 23h

Polling from June. Wonder if it shifts now the debate is more open. Also do respondents know what Schengen is or is it a proxy for freedom of movement? On the latter.... 1/2

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Emily✨ @emilyoram.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Liquid Bluesky

National Trust• @nationaltrust.org.uk
Nobody has ever regretted a scone after a long walk.

Except someone with ceoliac disease

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Apparently Manchester City have cheated by buying trophies in a slightly different way to the way other clubs buy trophies in a league awash in cash from dodgy sources and this is bad. I mean I guess so, whatever. Good result for the Seals on Saturday, 4-1 at home to Worksop.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

New variant on the Kinsley definition of gaffe: a public figure complains when his remarks are used entirely in context by people inconvenient to him.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Trump: the US must reduce our deficit with China. Also Trump: the US should lease two more piebald buffoons and pay China $1m/year (seriously) for the privilege, plus China gets any cubs if the sexless numpties manage to reproduce, plus they go back to China at the end of the extortive deal. 1/2

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Andy Burnham has plunged the plan for a third runway at Heathrow into doubt by privately telling MPs he has always opposed the project, and the new prime minister is said to be “open minded” about whether it should go ahead. www.ft.com/content/0206...

ft.com

Burnham’s opposition to Heathrow expansion puts third runway in doubt

New prime minister has been a longstanding critic of the project

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Philip Coggan @philipcoggan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Trump really is the Basil Fawlty of international diplomacy. He only has two modes: unctuous flattery and petulant aggression. www.ft.com/content/cdff...

ft.com

Pomp prevails over substance as Donald Trump hosts Xi Jinping

Fanfare masks some of the US president’s own troubles, including his war in Iran and plummeting domestic popularity

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 24/09/2026

"The early days of Andy Burnham’s government have made Starmer’s look positively energetic: a PM who usually loves nothing more than being on camera has studiously avoided saying a word as he loses control of law and order in Britain, and his home secretary seems determined to appease the thugs."

thenewworld.co.uk

If Shabana Mahmood is tough, why is she so slow to crack down on Danny Tommo and the far right?

Weeks of what looks like blatant lawbreaking have finally resulted in an arrest. But the home secretary seems happy to look elsewhere

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Trade Secrets today. Meet Hank. Hank was doing well until Trump abolished "de minimis", the $800 tariff-free import allowance. Now Hank's one-man operation is swamped with paperwork and has to pay duties whose level isn't even clear. Hank will vote Democrat in November. as.ft.com/r/6c4f1d86-a...

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Tony Blair: the UK should rejoin the EU only if the EU first agrees to do whatever my tech paymasters say. Please pay attention to me, I am very important and relevant. institute.global/insights/geo...

institute.global

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Re last RT, some somewhat facile observations: the national symbol of England is African (a lion). Its monarchs have been French, Dutch and German. Its ruling elite spoke a variety of French for around 300 years. Its national football team has been managed by a Swede, /mf

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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

England is a made up thing. It has no basis in the ineluctable laws of nature. Its extent is defined by Edward II getting his arse handed to him. Athelstan conquering York. The Welsh of Cumbria were incorporated, the Welsh of Gwynedd were not. It is a political idea, an aspiration - not taxonomy.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader, visited us in his role as road-safety superhero the Green Cross Code Man, as he did many schools. The weird bit was him showing his size and strength by lifting a child one-handed full stretch above his head. I don't think you'd be allowed to do that now.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Scott Bessent has invented the telephone, everybody.

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

fascinating piece on how 90 schools in London have closed since 2019 as a result of shrinking birth rates www.ft.com/content/5b01...

ft.com

London’s schools are running out of children

Councils want more powers to repurpose buildings and fend off academies

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

If they really wanted to stir things up they'd call it an illegal immigration surcharge and say it's being used to pay for hotels for asylum seekers.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Will keep boringly saying this (no disrespect to OP): it's not a health surcharge. It's not hypothecated to the NHS; you can't choose not to pay it and thereby eschew healthcare. You could equally call it an education or roads surcharge. It's using the NHS's sanctified status to rip off immigrants.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 21/09/2026

I don't think it likely that ground beef is a Giffen good.

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Peterson Institute for International Economics @piie.com · 21/09/2026

NEW: At the Trump-Xi summit, the US government should seek increased imports of key strategic goods & more foreign direct investment from China, @adamposen.bsky.social writes in @foreignaffairs.com. This would buy Washington more time to diversify US sources of supply.

foreignaffairs.com

China Still Has What America Needs

The Trump-Xi summit gives Washington a chance to buy time.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Today's Trade Secrets newsletter. - Trump's attempts to undo the tariff cheating his own policies have encouraged is tangling up US trade with red tape. I don't know why she swallowed a fly, etc. - EU-Canada EU-Schmanada: never mind the abstract geopolitical verbiage, watch for the work permits.

as.ft.com

Donald Trump’s crusade against tariff cheats may tangle up trade in red tape

Yet another US customs initiative will strain an overburdened bureaucracy

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

⬇️⬇️⬇️💯💯💯 🎵 I fought the law* And the law* won 🎵 *of gravity

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It looks like one of those brass rubbing things you do in churches when you're a kid, except the sculptor left the relief in the furnace too long and it melted.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And as many people have correctly pointed out, this is clearly modelled on Christopher Walken because reasons.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

“I sleep all night and I work all day.”

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Liz Anderson @lizanderson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

‘Tenko and Coronation Street actress Stephanie Cole dies aged 84.’ I grew up watching her in the excellent Tenko and she was bluddy brilliant as the bossy Carolyn in Radio 4s Cabin Pressure www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Stephanie Cole: Coronation Street and Doc Martin actress dies aged 84

She was best known for playing Dr Beatrice Mason in the 1980s BBC wartime TV drama Tenko.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The idea that the function of being in Eurovision is to win it, as if it were the World Cup, is a gigantic category mistake.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

CANADIANS! Idiomatically do you use the excellent word "ornery" like the US does?

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Prof Melanie O'Brien @drmelob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Whoever made this 👏👏

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Re Canada-EU, I can't vouch for the authenticity but apparently it's a Belgian boy saluting Canadian soldiers during a memorial ceremony, the Canadians being regarded with immense affection in Belgium for their role in the liberation in 1944. Great class from the CO. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qmb...

youtube.com

Young Belgian Boy Salutes Canadian Troops

YouTube video by Spicy Mayonnaise

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Not my specialism, but can't you do quite a bit of this through CETA and they haven't?

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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Will it feature any of the people he sent to GTMO or subjected to extraordinary rendition?

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

A reminder that the original Stanford prison experiment, as well as being wildly unethical, was ridiculously bogus, guards actually being coached to be abusive to prisoners and the supposed experimenter (Zimbardo) acting as prison superintendent. theconversation.com/the-infamous...

theconversation.com

The infamous Stanford prison experiment was flawed – so why is it still so influential today?

A French science historian dug deep into the true story of the Stanford prison experiment – revealing ‘guards’ were actually coached to be brutal. His findings are now available in English.

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My Trade Secrets today. As the forthcoming summit will show, the Xi-Trump relationship isn’t “transactional”. Transactions require trust and compliance. It’s a balance of terror between two presidents battling hard behind the scenes for supply chain and technology dominance.

as.ft.com

The main Trump-Xi summit achievement will be it happening at all

The US and China are in a stand-off rather than a state of agreement

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