iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Hiya mate @trumpton.bsky.social - sorry! I saw someone repost your image in the cropped form a year back when Jenrick lost the leadership contest and screenshotted it and was reminded of it in my gallery when I heard the news today but never had any idea it where it was from.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Thanks for sharing that: I screenshotted it from someone somewhere back when Jenrick lost the leadership contest like a year ago but had no clue where it was from

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Ultimately, the scorn should directed at the EBU, but all creatives should be avoiding Eurovision like the plague. You can write ‘ceasefire’ in an ancient alphabet on your face or whatever as much as you like; if you participate in that contest you have aided in the whitewashing of a genocide.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

It’s a bit like praising Labour for lifting the two-child benefit cap a year after suspending MPs for supporting the same policy. It’s the right thing to do, but it’s too late be praiseworthy. People can change, but we should still call attention to the material effects of their past decisions.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

There’s lots of praise for stuff like this which I can’t compute. What makes it objectionable for Israel to compete this year that didn’t apply last year, other than that last year was *your* moment in the spotlight and this year isn’t? It’s very easy to do what’s right when nothing’s on the line.

theguardian.com

Eurovision winner Nemo to return trophy in protest at Israel taking part in 2026

‘Clear conflict’ between Eurovision ideals of ‘inclusion and dignity for all’ and decision to let Israel compete, says 2024 winner

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

4/4: “…every person whose in work, whose no longer on benefits, not only has a better life for themselves, but it’s better for the public purse too. Our pledge is to pay for better chances in life rather than just paying people to survive”

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

3/4: “…Conference, fighting for opportunity is an act of rebellion against people’s fate being decided by their circumstances. And I know that some you quite like a bit of rebellion.“

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

2/4: “…[we believe in] A Britain where no child should go without food, no disabled person should live without dignity, and no worker should labour without decency.”

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

14:40 Pat McFadden (Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) at the Labour Party Conference (1/4): Impressively, he manages to give a 10-minute speech and dedicates precisely seven words to disabled people. #TakingThePIP #WelfareNotWarfare

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

i see openai hired the someone from the liberal democrats to run their bar chart division

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

If you look at the text of the Express article from a couple days ago, they do not lay any blame at the feet of Israel. They only use the word "Israel" twice, once referencing the start of the "war", and then referring to the barring of international press. They say Gaza has been blockaded - by who?

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

I think part of the reason more people are speaking up about Gaza now is the long history of famine being depoliticised as a sort of natural/Malthusian disaster rather than a catastrophe resulting from the decisions of political actors. You can ask to feed the starving, but not why they are hungry.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Labour are meant to be the valve party releasing the pressure of capitalism, but Starmer’s government is the electoral equivalent of finding auntie’s biscuit tin hoping for a treat then discovering it’s full of sewing supplies. So now the kid is getting too into nazi memorabilia.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

The Tories are like the evil stepmum the electorate live with who bans them from having friends and feeds them a diet of pure asparagus whilst the Labour Party is like the aunt they visit once a year who gives them fudge and slips them a £20 note which stops the child from going apeshit.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

“heard you’re a trotskyite bruv”

Keir Starmer, with Morgan McSweeney beside him, wields an ice pick in your direction. Behind him is an image of the members of Lenin’s 1917 General Staff who were killed during Stalin’s Purges but their images have been replaced with photographs of MPs who have been suspended from the Labour Party under Starmer’s leadership.

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Reposted by ealdwine

Violet Coal @violetcoalwrites.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

My brother. My mother. My aunt. All disabled. All gone. Not peacefully - but ground down by a system that said they weren’t worth saving. I survived what killed them. Now, Labour are coming for me. Read here: violetcoalwrites.wordpress.com/2025/07/07/o... #Takingthepip #AusterityKills

violetcoalwrites.wordpress.com

Our Leaders Are Letting Us Die

My brother had his disability benefits cut in the early years of austerity. Six months later, he was dead. Just 30 years old. No support, no safety net, no lifeline. And he wasn’t the only one. My …

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Reposted by ealdwine

Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

In Parliament today I spoke about the truth behind rising welfare costs - and why I cannot support the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which does not address these roots causes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap3x...

youtube.com

Labour MP explains why welfare costs are really rising (and why he's voting against cuts)

YouTube video by Clive Lewis

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Reposted by ealdwine

Sian Berry MP @sianberry.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Those who are sick and injured or Disabled today and in the future need our solidarity, and from Greens they will get it. This rushed, shameful, cruel Bill must fall.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

16:18:03, Dr Marie Tidball (Lab, Penistone and Stocksbridge), who has a congenital disability, rises (1/3): #TakingThePIP

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

16:12:17, Jeremy Corbyn (Ind, Islington North) rises (1/2): #TakingThePIP

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

15:55:28, Richard Burgon (Lab, Leeds East) rises (1/3): #TakingThePIP

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

15:43:09, Marsha De Cordova (Lab, Battersea), who is registered blind, rises (1/2): #TakingThePIP

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

15:21:36, Rebecca Long-Bailey (Lab, Salford) rises (1/2): #TakingThePIP

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

The UK justice department has lost all veneer of being anything other than a rogue, lawless entity. They will overrule independent sentencing guidelines because enough far-right crybabies whine about it, but will damn throwing red paint over machines abetting genocide as terrorism. Take care.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

...in the Panama Papers which might be the same. But maybe more interestingly, *the* Lancashire Holdings in question was founded by Richard Brindle who, as you've said, is one of Fred's donors (web.archive.org/web/20241001...) So it's all a bit incestuous with this bloke.

offshoreleaks.icij.org

LANCASHIRE HOLDINGS LTD. | ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database

Panama Papers Entity: LANCASHIRE HOLDINGS LTD.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

aye well, had a quick look as a joke but there is a Martin Nicholas Caleb Thomas and a matching LinkedIn (uk.linkedin.com/in/martin-th...) whose profile picture looks a spitting image of Fred. This Martin fella was a chairman at Lancashire Holdings and the ICIJ lists a Lancashire Holdings...

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

Martin Nicholas Caleb THOMAS personal appointments - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

called himself a Menshevik and Morrissey the "world's greatest living singer-songwriter"; just a bit funny innit.

comment section from a blog by Luke Akehurst, https://www.blogger.com/comment/fullpage/post/28811162/115548586633079369

'Anonymous: I see what you mean Luke. What confuses me is that both you and the Bennites would call themselves Socialists. Could you explain to me hat Socialism means to you? Regards David.
8:03 PM, M08 13, 2006

Luke Akehurst: Good question. I want a more equal society where no one lives in poverty. I think more accurately in terms of semantics I am a Labourist or "social democrat" in that my immediate political priority, rather than changing the economic system to one of social ownership, is to ameliorate the worst excesses of the market system and make sure all people can live decent lives within it by redistributing wealth to the poor and providing good public services. Unfortunately the SDP rather devalued the term "social democrat" in this country. I'm a Menshevik (i.e. democratic not Leninist) Marxist to the extent that I think Marxist is a useful tool for trying to understand history i.e. the dialectical process of struggle between classes, and helps remind us that we need to give people reasons of economic self interest to vote Labour. I've got a lingering hope/expectation that one day the economic system will chance to one based on "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" but that's so far in the future it won't help the people that need a better life right now. And as a member of the Labour Party (constitution of which says it's a democratic socialist party) I'm part of an affiliate to the Socialist International http://www.socialistinternational.org/ founded in 186, which kind of owns the right to determine which parties are officially socialist.
8:50 PM, M08 13, 2006'

From https://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/search?q=Morrissey, a blog by Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham.

'monday, august 21, 2006
I hate Channel 4

No ... not for the same reasons I hate the Independent ... but because of their treatment of Morrissey, the world's greatest living singer-songwriter (I can even forgive his vegetarianism and silly views on US foreign policy so he must be good) in their V Festival coverage this weekend.

We sat through the whole of their live coverage on E4 ... enduring hour after hour of droning dirges from Keane/Starsailor/some other bands that all sounded the same and then when it gets to Morrissey who was headlining the main stage on Saturday at Weston Park and Sunday at Chelmsford, they cut away on both nights to Radiohead and, even worse, Razorlight.

Then last night, having seen the great man interviewed half way through the highlights on Channel 4 and heard the presenter say we would see "a lot of his set" we get, at gone 1am, precisely 2 songs.

Words cannot express my contempt for these philistines. Pearls before swine.'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Tweeted in 2019 that he "preferred" when Labour "focus[ed] on gaining 8 seats in Kent rather than defensive battles to save former coalfield strongholds." The seat he now holds, North Durham, is a former coal mining area which has voted Labour at every election since its creation in 1983.

Tweet from @lukeakehurst available to view on the Wayback Machine here https://web.archive.org/web/20231021101906/https://twitter.com/lukeakehurst

'Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst Dec 11, 2019
Personally, I preferred it when Labour aspired to landslide majorities rather than hung parliaments, and was able to focus on gaining 8 seats in Kent rather than defensive battles to save former coalfield strongholds.
46 replies, 106 retweets, 607 likes'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

made a quiz to determine whether someone is a hard-left extremist (fewer points) or a normal pragmatic moderate (more points) where you gain points for supporting "leftwing" US intervention in Vietnam or British involvement in Iraq, and lose points for supporting Harold Wilson or the CND.

From a blog by Luke Akehurst, available to view on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20210522163311/https://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/08/take-test.html?m=1

'Section 1 - Ideological/Political Orientation

Q1) Are you a supporter of a) replacement of Trident, b) nuclear power, c) the State of Israel? (10 points for each yes)
Q2) Are you or have you ever been a member of CND, Compass, CLPD, the Campaign Group, Liberty/NCCL, PSC/LMEC, the Liberal Party? (minus 5 points for each yes)
Q3) Did you vote for Benn or Healey in the 1981 Deputy Leadership election? (10 points for Healey, 5 points for abstaining, minus 20 for Benn)
Q4) If you had been a Labour MP in the 1963 Leadership election would you have voted for George Brown, Harold Wilson or Jim Callaghan? (10 points for Brown, 8 points for Callaghan, minus 5 for Wilson)
Q5) Did you think the good guys in the Vietnam War were a) the Communist Viet Cong led by Stalinist dictator Ho Chi Minh or b) the US Marine Corps led by leftwing Democrats JFK and LBJ? (20 points for anyone unlikely enough to be saying b)
Q6) In which year did you first publicly call for the expulsion of Militant? (2 points for every year prior to 1985)
Q7) Who made the greater contribution to the history of the Labour Party, Nye Bevan or Ernie Bevin? (20 points for Bevin)
Q8) Did you support British involvement in the following conflicts: Falklands (1 pt), Gulf War (4 pts), Sierra Leone (1 pt), Kosovo (3 pts), Afghanistan (3 pts), Iraq War (10 pts)?

Section 2 - Organisational/Campaigning
Q1) How many members are there in your CLP? (1 point per 50 or part thereof)
Q2) How many electors did you personally canvass/voter ID in the 12 months before the last general election? (1 point per 500 or part thereof)
Q3) What was the difference between the swing in your own constituency and that in the wider region in 2005? (1 point for each 0.1% differential in Labour's favour, minus 1 point for each 0.1% worse than the regional average)'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

said Nye Bevan was a part of a "dismal run of MPs" and a "serial rebel and national hate figure who kept Labour out of power for most of the '50s with his sectarian antics", but graciously conceded that "set[ting] up [the] NHS" is a "mitigating factor" in his distaste.

From https://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/06/, a blog by Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham.

'By-election woe

Blaenau Gwent continued the dismal run of MPs it has elected ever since pre-WW2 days with yesterday's by-election. What did one constituency do to deserve to be afflicted with, in sucession:

Nye Bevan - serial rebel and national hate figure who kept Labour out of power for most of the '50s with his sectarian antics. (Mitigating factors: set up NHS and belatedly pro-nuclear)
Michael Foot - Labour's least effective leader ever, kept Labour out of power for most of '80s with anti-nuclear stance (Mitigating factors: promoted careers of Kinnock and Blair, intellectual giant etc)
Llew Smith - even more leftwing than his predecessors but without the stature
Peter Law - betrayed Labour on unprincipled grounds that seat was his personal sinecure and him being an MP was more important than increasing the number of women candidates
The new bloke elected yesterday - agent of the above'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

said he could "justify arms for Saudi Arabia"

Twitter exchange from 25th July 2017

'Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas: Is there any justification whatsoever for army Saudi Arabia? I don't think so. Let's stop the arms sales, now. https://nitter.net/CarolineLucas/status/889822778593075200#m:~:text=newstatesman.com/politics/st%E2%80%A6

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: I can justify arms for Saudi Arabia. I absolutely do not want Iran to win in Yemen or anywhere else.

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: And the potential to destroy the aerospace manufacturing that drives the economy of North West of England matters too.'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

where to even start with the pro-Israel shilling... (taken from nitter because elon only lets you see tweets if you make an account)

Twitter exchange from 14th October 2023

'Mahri @mahri_mac: What would you like the Palestinians to do, Luke?

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: "Embrace Ghandian non-violence. They would get a Palestinian state tomorrow if Israel thought there was no terrorist or military threat to its citizens.

Mahri @mahri_mac: They did that. Nothing happened. They're still occupied and oppressed. https://nitter.net/lukeakehurst/status/1713258516566175851#m:~:text=en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%A6

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: You mean the Great March of Return? The one where groups of terrorists armed with guns, knives and explosives tried but failed to break through the Gaza border fence to perpetrate exactly the same type of attrocities that happened on 7 October?'

Twitter exchange from 26th November 2022

'Fibularis @Fibularis: And you genuinely don’t see any conflict of interest when you’re debating with Labour members who are or were defending the rights of the victims of Israeli apartheid?

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: There isn't any such thing as "Israeli apartheid". But members have an absolute right to campaign for Palestinian rights as long as they don't do so in an antisemitic way, as per the IHRA definition.

Fibularis @Fibularis: https://nitter.net/lukeakehurst/status/1596496990741094401#m:~:text=news.un.org/en/story/2022/03%E2%80%A6

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: https://nitter.net/lukeakehurst/status/1596496990741094401#m:~:text=bicom.org.uk/analysis/the%2Dap%E2%80%A6'

Twitter interaction from 4th April to 7th April

'Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: For all the anti-arms sales to Israel people, what exactly would you like the IDF to fight back with next time Hamas come across the border in a 7/10 type terrorist attack? Strongly worded resolutions? A petition?

William 🇬🇧🌹♚ @SocDemBill: The IDF should make the [sic] own arms and not involve other countries in their war crimes.

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: Largely they do. They buy very little from the UK as we have a deplorable history of being a politically unreliable supplier.

Julie Warren @dewdrop0310: So stopping all arms trades with Israel will not cause them any issue, as you imply, it will however ensure that we are not complicit in genocide and the murder of civilians. So why would you be against a ban, it makes no sense!

Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst: I'm in favour of us being "complicit" in helping a fellow democracy defeat Hamas. We have a moral duty to stand with Israel.'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

in a now-deleted blog post, argued that it was a "pragmatic view" to support the "US Government's use of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay." (image doubled to fit full transcription in alt text)

From a blog by Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham, available to view on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20080720012827/https://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/

'I just happen to take the pragmatic view that there are some very dangerous people out there who want to cause mass casualty terrorist incidents (using CBRN materials if they can get them) that would dwarf 9/11 and 7/7 in scale. Security agencies have a good idea who and where some of those people are, but lack the necessary evidence to arrest and convict them using conventional law enforcement methods (or they live in territories where there is no conventional law and order, or a state that has a lot of law and order but is sympathetic to what the individuals want to do and hence unsympathetic to arresting and extraditing them). Hence the need to pick some of these people up extra-judicially and remove them to custody in another jurisdiction, known as extraordinary rendition.

Some of these people also turned up in battle or after it in Afghanistan, having been involved with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. They were not part of an army so were not conventional POWs. It would have been irresponsible beyond belief to let them loose to carry on with their terrorist careers. They needed to be kept somewhere where they couldn't escape from and where they could be interrogated about what they knew about al-Qaeda and its plans. Hence the need for Guantanamo Bay.

I believe that it is probable that many thousands of innocent lives may have been saved - perhaps some of them here in London - through the thwarting of potential acts of terrorism by the US Government's use of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay...

'[cont.]...That doesn't mean, as Lib Dem Councillor Dawood Akhoon (known as the Invisible Man of Hackney Council so infrequently does he appear or speak in the council chamber) claims, that I'm "actually in favour of people being .... tortured". I believe that extraordinary rendition of people to countries where torture might be used is wrong. I also believe that the alleged use of extreme forms of interrogation at Guantanamo is wrong, not least because quite aside from moral objections to the methods used, it's a useless way of getting information out of people because they just say anything to get the interrogator to stop.'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

mourned the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as a man who "made all of us a lot safer by destroying the Taliban/al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan and removing Saddam from power so he wasn't around to refresh his WMD arsenal" and who "a lot of Afghans and Iraqis" have "a lot" to thank for.

From https://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/11/known-knowns-known-unknowns-unknown.html, a blog by Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham.
'wednesday, november 08, 2006
Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns etc

This is probably a sure-fire way to make myself political toast with Labour colleagues but I actually feel rather sorry for Donald Rumsfeld and find the gloating at his resignation distasteful.

Why?

1) Well for a start off his strategy in Iraq was our Labour government's too so if he's such a bad/wrong person so are we - or at least everyone of us that supported the government line.

2) If you are going to have Republicans in power (and I'd rather we were now 6 years into an Al Gore Presidency) I would rather they were idealistic ones that believed in spreading democracy to the Middle East than Kissinger/Nixon style cynics practicising real-politik and focussed just on national self-interest rather than some higher ideological ends.

3) He's the fall guy for his boss in the White House who in a European political system would be the one resigning after these elections.

4) He actually did the traditional job of Defense Secretary very well - overseeing two stunning military victories in Afganistan and Iraq in a matter of weeks - what he is being blamed for is the subsequent failiure to rebuild Iraq and of the US armed forces to peacekeep - neither of which traditionally were or should be core US military functions.

My hunch is history will say Rumsfeld made all of us a lot safer by destroying the Taliban/al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan and removing Saddam from power so he wasn't around to refresh his WMD arsenal and marry it with N Korean missile technology.

There are a lot of Afghans and Iraqis (particularly Kurds and Shiites) who have a lot to thank him for.'

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Denyer and Ramsay are stuck in a spiral of civility that is dooming good policy underneath all that poor communication. The schtick seems especially ineffective north of Watford, where rightful anger is particularly deep, but I’m convinced that is where the British left’s future needs to be.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

The British people have a right to be angry about what has been done to them. Fascism works by giving an angry proletariat a chance to express themselves but change nothing - the left needs to harness that anger and channel it into material change of property relations.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I acknowledge that it’s not at all a fair playing ground, considering every other party has billionaires to bankroll their campaigns, but the local election results were a poor showing considering the scale of possibilities opened by the implosion of Labour.

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ealdwine @ealdwine.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I feel like we’re getting to the ‘do something or get out the way’ stage of rising fascism and I have to get off my chest that as much as they individually seem like nice enough people, the current Green Party leadership are not meeting the moment whatsoever.

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