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Leon Black

@drleonblack.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.6K following 1.9K posts

Professor of Infrastructure Materials at the University of Leeds. Posting about materials, resilience, circular economy, green stuff, and whatever else I stumble on that I find interesting. No DMs, unless they're size 12 cherry reds.

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 5h
Nurse, Douglas has stopped taking his medication again.
Douglas Murray
We seem to be facing a slew of pronouncements of late – often from people who have either arrived in Britain recently or whose parents arrived comparatively recently – who tell us what is or is not British. But if we quibble with this lack of manners we are, of course, called “racist.” This is deeply unfair.
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 8h
Surely no one resists the urge to make stupid jokes at at every opportunity.
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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 11h
We're repeatedly told that asylum seekers pose a threat to the good people of our country... Reading about the threatening and violent treatment of elderly and open minded locals in Crowborough I get the impression that the real threat comes from closer to home. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
On Facebook and other platforms, people
who are known to support the asylum
seekers have been threatened with acid
attacks, petrol bombs and rape. The dossier.
which has been seen by the Guardian, also
claims that several local businesses have
been threatened by far-right agitators, along
with a church where some asylum seekers
worship. One man was punched in the throat
after he held up a "Love Thy Neighbour"
sign, while an elderly couple were falsely
accused of supporting sex offenders. In yet
another case, a 92-year-old church volunteer
was reportedly woken at 3am for two nights
in a row by a man standing outside her
home, shining a torch through her window
and shouting abuse
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Miaganga @miaganga.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🇺🇦💛💙💛💙
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A c*** writes.
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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Faragists rely on the narrative of "men on boats" creating a de facto Fifth Column in the UK to feed their agenda and to stir up hostility and to win votes and ultimately power. Suckers fall for it. Media boosts it. We've been here so many times before and you'd think we'd all wise up but hey ho
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WHAT A FUCKING RECORD @whatafuckingrecord.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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PORTISHEAD
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Gavin Alexander @gavin83bay.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Quite an achievement to get the man's name wrong twice in the same post.
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What? Never mind the random capitalisation of "Up North", is Corrie not watched outside of the M62 corridor?
Julie Hesmondhalgh, will be known to audiences Up North especially as Roy Cropper's wife Hayley in the soap Coronation Street, between 1998 and 2014.
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
First lecture of the year this morning at 9am to a class of 190 first-years. It was their only lecture of the day, yet I had over 170 in the lecture theatre. Anyone saying that kids today don't have the same work ethic can get stuffed.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'Which taxes do you want to raise instead?' should be the default question to anyone who calls for reductions in immigration.
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 28/09/2026
"International students have little impact on GDP" is certainly a take.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
meanwhile, over on X, Andrew Neil's cognitive decline continues apace..
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nick Robinson is so pleased with his phrase "Hope today. Pay for it tomorrow" about Andy Burnham's plans for social care, that hes used it twice in the same article.
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Toby Earle 🇺🇦 @tobyontv.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
not sure about this new Enid Blyton
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Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Farage (et al) literally panting for Fairford to be linked to asylum seekers and, as usual, the ludicrous demand for immediate information with totally irresponsible implication that the absence of such information is suspect.
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Anon Opin @anonopin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
If you've got an opinion you want on here - submit it to the form: forms.gle/1gNMupaNHQf8xeRE6
If you put a wireless speaker in your backpack and play loud music in public, everyone thinks you're a twat. Everyone. Even your Mum.

anon_opin GOLD from 25th August 2023
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Private Eye Magazine @privateeyenews.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Yes, it's that time again when the Fascism scene returns to London and this year black is very much in vogue. From the new Private Eye, in shops now.
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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Shot (BBC) / chaser (Basingstoke Gazette)
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You have to get a very long way through this BBC report before you learn which party runs the council which took the decision to close all these nurseries www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
South Tyneside Council nursery closures decision 'devastating'
Councillors confirm that all 10 Stanley's nurseries in South Tyneside will close by July 2027.
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Emma Monk @monkemma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🧵 As front-page headlines go, this has to be one of the most misleading I've seen in a long time It's an out-and-out lie But notice the trick they use to get away with it...👀 *They're* not lying - they're just quoting someone else who is👍🏻 In this case, the leader of the opposition🙄 1/33
Daily Express headline:

"More Freedoms Handed to New Arrivals than British Citizens"

Above an image of Kemi Badenoch

All with a Monk Debunked stamp on top
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
As someone who's spent my 55 years supporting Man City and Rochdale, I'm quite looking forward to the two of them meeting in the League next season.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
will say it again: the most effective way to curb far right agitators like Lowe, "Tommo" et. al. would be to stop their ability to earn money for it from social media or live streaming. So much of it is grifting for revenue, not attention.
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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I watched this last night. It's terrifying, but hopeful. I feel it's my duty, as a human, to share it. I'd appreciate it if you shared it too. It's specifically made for people in the UK, but it's about everyone, and, the more people see it, the better chance we'll have. www.nebriefing.org/the-film
nebriefing.org
National Emergency Briefing
A 50-min film centred around the National Emergency Briefing. The frank facts, but also the huge opportunity if Government steps up and leads a WW2-scale response. Designed to be watched by communitie...
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The Canary @thecanaryuk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Makers of documentary exposing IOF's Gaza confessions to put film online free The documentary NAZA won five awards at the Venice Film Festival in September 2026, including the Special Jury Prize www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/20...
thecanary.co
Makers of documentary exposing IOF's Gaza confessions to put film online free
The documentary NAZA won five awards at the Venice Film Festival in September 2026, including the Special Jury Prize
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Kenny Stewart @kennystew.art · 24/09/2026
I know it’s a pretty tired and far from original point by now, but consider this versus someone holding up a Palestine Action sign and muse on which this government considers support for terrorism.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So they're now talking about attacking the system of policing and law. Arrest these f*ckers. Stop bowing down to them and dancing around them.
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
There's a lot to say about this, and other folks are saying most of it. I just want to focus on one thing: the claim about the relationship between universities and "the real world."
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Obligatory South Kensington post
Plaque embedded within the floor of the subway connecting south Kensington tube station with the Science Museum. The plaque saus "Wilke's metallic flooring Co".

This was one of the first examples of alkali activated slag cements in the world.
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Ash Oro @ashoro.co.uk · 22/09/2026
1/23 Sorry, this will be long... There is a lot of shouting about what happened in the Channel yesterday. So I want to go back to basic law. Not immigration policies or political rhetoric. At sea, the starting point is simple: Preservation of life comes first under all maritime conventions.
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Rich men used to fear that a mob from the town would show up and seize their factories and mansions. That ceased to be any concern a long time ago so now, they fight like lions to ensure random dorks on Twitter dot com aren’t telling each other not to buy Hank Wank’s new album because he is a dick.
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ten years of relentlessly hateful, comically elitist anti-democratic politics across the white people world, helpfully summarised. The wrong people are talking, the wrong people are deciding and it’s harming the careers of important people who actually matter. Smithers! Release the hounds
The incident fits a broader pattern in the discourse around 'free speech' and 'cancel culture': whatever comes from the top down is freedom; whatever comes from the bottom up is bullying and censorship. When Macklemore is dropped at the behest of the billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft, it's an exercise of the freedom of businesses to 'demonstrate their values' by deciding whom to platform. But when Ed Sheeran's fans decide not to buy tickets to his performances, or even demand refunds, it's bullying, mob behaviour. Since most people are not billionaires and do not own stadiums, they can exercise meaningful power only collectively. The collective exercise of power must therefore be demonised.
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
- Honestly my dear grandchildren, you’ll never believe how low rates were in the 2010s. - at least you built a load of infrastructure when borrowing costs were so low grandad? Right? Right?
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position
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Sylvia @sylvia-suffragette.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#TwoTierPolicing

B BC

Woman sentenced for hurling milkshake at
Farage
16 December 2024
Lewis Adams
BBC News, Essex
Share & Save
Add as preferred on Google
Getty Images
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chiller @chiller.eurosky.social · 23/09/2026
Might have done a bit of a rant at my MP. It's quite a nice feeling actually. Give it a go.
Dear Ms Dollimore,

The recent behaviour of a mob of organised men committing acts of public disorder, crimes, inciting racist violence, and yesterday actually slashing a rubber dinghy in the Channel with two RNLI rescuers still aboard it, needs urgent, visible action from our government, and from the police.

If Palestine Action can be proscribed as a terrorist group for causing property damage, then this gang of thugs has already gone much further. Local news in Gosport (link to the story provided below my signature), reports that a child in just such a mob was singing "let them drown" over a megaphone there, yesterday.

RNLI staff are suffering horrific harassment and assaults, and in some areas no longer feel they can work at all, which endangers everyone at sea. Our ports have been vandalised at Portsmouth and Dover.

Enough is enough. We either take action, or we cede this once inclusive, secular country to the hands of a narrow group of men, the leaders of which claim to be Christian (it is no brand of Christianity I recognise), who want this island to be only for white, violent, straight men in balaclavas to do with as they see fit. This isn't a British ethos: this is the ethos of every Russian mercenary. It has been promoted and pushed and egged and funded and nurtured by social media, where the racism, the hate. the disdain for our country's values is open and constant - and which remains unregulated to the cost of us all; and by the British media, also entirely unregulated (I suppose we could crowd fund some dentures for Ofcom but I remain unconvinced that it would know what to do with them), including those parts of it which are most trusted by the British public (link to BBC article below, where the thugs are referred to as if they are ordinary protesters, and a life-threatening criminal act in the channel aqainst RNLI staff is relegated to a brief mention in paragraph 15).

We used to hear "both sides" from the news. and even then, that was an absurd position, where only one side ever provided facts, and the other only ever provided feelings. We don't hear that any more. Now we only hear one side. it is the racist. hateful side. and it is framed, always, as "legitimate concerns".

They are not legitimate. We saw no village-wide protest from Piddington, when they had 2,600 mostly white young men in those barracks, and endured crimes, including rape, associated with those men. But 1200 brown men? Suddenly that's "legitimate concerns". It isn't. It's racism.We cannot predicate the human rights of a person upon the strong feelings of a group that hates them.

That is not how human rights work ir this country, or it didn't used to be. We have done precisely this to trans people in this country - handed their harmless lives directly to the tiny, well- connected, well-funded group that hates them most. We are now normalising racism in precisely the same way. This is going to destroy our society.

What we need from the government urgently is:-
• Press regulation, sharp-eared enough to identify a dogwhistle and bold enough to call it what it is: with the good of our inclusive society at it's core and meaningful punishments
• Social media regulation: frankly X should be shut down. and the embarrassing fact that we don't want to annoy the chief nazi because he owns Starlink needs to be faced, because X's continued influence or our society must end. Facebook isn't much better: regulate them or end them.• We need clear, unequivocal statements from our PM. and from our MPs, about the fact that this is racism and terrorism. It is not "legitimate concerns".
• We need these Blackshirts and their leaders proscribed as terrorists, and sentenced accordingly
• And we need a concerted public information campaign to offset the colossal, constant untruths the press and social media have propagated: our society has hardly any crime. Refugees aren't disproportionately criminal. And tell people what benefits refugees get because it's shockingly low and people believe utter nonsense they read on Facebook. Educate people! We used to have incredibly effective public information films on prime time TV - I'm old enough to remember when drink driving went from "a bit of a laugh, ho ho ho evervone does it," to "nobody does that now" virtually overniqht, because of such a campaign.

I realise government is hard, and that our current qovernment is tasked with undoing 20 years of utter incompetence. But that must start from the basis of British values. "Respect and dignity" isn't an idea. It's an action, taken every day, it's the courage to stand up against hate, every day, and to call it what it is and to say the uncomfortable thing and sometimes, yes, the unpopular thing.

I hope that our government has this courage. I have not seen it yet,
Yours faithfully,
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sharing this because I'm a leftie. wpr-newsletter.beehiiv.com/p/why-china-...
wpr-newsletter.beehiiv.com
Why China Has Ten Times Fewer Left-Handers Than the Netherlands
China's 10% left-handedness rate trails the Netherlands' 13%: discover why cultural attitudes and education reshape global handedness, defying biology's expectations.
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HOPE not hate @hopenothate.org.uk · 22/09/2026
Well, that didn’t take long. Minutes after our investigation into “Big Time Charlie” went live, the account disappeared from X.
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Esheru @esherukweku.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This is why the media in this country needs regulating. I can guarantee there isn’t an iota of truth to anything that’s being said here. Their only intention is to keep this nonsense on top of the news agenda.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
how much has Trump's war in the Middle East cost British home-owners in higher mortgage payments? "British homeowners are paying an average of £840 a year more when they refinance their mortgages, as the rising borrowing costs triggered by the Iran war start to impact" www.ft.com/content/789c...
ft.com
UK homeowners take £840-a-year mortgage hit from Iran war
Rising borrowing costs triggered by conflict in Middle East start to impact consumers’ spending power
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Morning.
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Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Started watching Sky’s War Game last night where Michael Gove is the PM during the Russian attack and I’m afraid it is just very difficult to watch it without thinking of this, one of the great cartoons ever published
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Big celebration in the Black house. I think we've got to know one another over the years.
Two identical silver wedding anniversary cards.
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A Book That Will Never Be Read forbetterscience.com/2026/09/22/a...
forbetterscience.com
A Book That Will Never Be Read
“I cannot shake the feeling that we find ourselves in a publisher-papermill complex, powered largely by public funding. ” – Michal Wojcik
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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Bluesky / Twitter
Michael Portillo loves trainsMussolini waving from a train.
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Ste Gordon @sgordonthe87.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Bluesky / Twitter
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The Volatile Mermaid @ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
From the people who told you that straight white male privilege doesn’t exist…
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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 21/09/2026
echoes of the time I went clubbing as a teenager and the bouncer asked if I was 18 and I said "yes" (I wasn't) and then he asked "are you sure?" and I said "yes" and he let me in
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Priyamvada Gopal @priyamvadagopal.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The Face Eating Leopard I Fed Should Not Eat My Face
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