FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 15/10/2026Eh, the snobbish left exists also. But by embracing the "the NHS is going to be privatised" and Skexit conspiracy theory RS Archer was definitely not right-wing. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 15/10/2026"Have an untreated mental illness? There's an app for that." 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 13/10/2026Couldn’t find the specific post and thought I had imagined it… but then I looked at Pagel’s Substack from December 2023: 100
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 12/10/2026Burnham understands something important about politics that too many politicians in the UK don't get for some incomprehensible reason: have a constituency and give them things. In this case, giving us vindication. 030
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 12/10/2026Oh noes, the people who literally want to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and tear up all Labour's agreements with the EU are saying Burnham is being "divisive"! 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 12/10/2026Yup. The speech was so well-received that it feels churlish to point out that no-one was talking about getting rid of the NHS, but that the idea that someone might was the whole drive of the speech. It was like a Tory conference speech being about the Battle of Britain. speakola.com/ideas/harry-... 020
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Via Reddit - movie critic ratings grade-inflation. Is there anything that hasn't been hit by this kind of inflation in recent years? It's like we've become afraid to say that anything is bad. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 06/10/2026"If these theatrics are supposed to scare me you have the wrong man, Bond. If M really thought I was bent, she'd have sent some 2-ply" 0100
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Same was true in West Yorkshire in 1983, though Labour narrowly edged it in 1987. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026TFW you discover that the Conservatives won the majority of seats in Lancashire, and a plurality of votes, throughout the 1980’s. Like I knew the idea that the North West was somehow unified against Thatcher was rubbish but I was surprised to see the extent to which it wasn’t true. 101
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Nah, because he already said his great-grandparents came to the UK before this story came out. He was just doing what he regularly does and saying whatever he thought people wanted to hear/was advantageous at that moment. Fair enough if he doesn’t know (I mean I don’t) but why talk about it? 200
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Polanski said they came to the UK. Seems most likely since his grandparents came here. Very sympathetic to simply saying he doesn’t actually know if they were or weren’t. In which case he’s doing what he regularly does and just saying whatever feels advantageous at that particular moment. 020
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 29/09/2026- most people think crime increases practically every year. The long term trend is down by a long way. - most people think NHS funding has been progressively cut when it has risen ~35% in real terms since 2010. And the main response when confronted with any of this is to dismiss the truth as lies. 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 28/09/2026(regarding the very clear lag in the Mediazona/BBC count, see the below graph - it's obvious that the count for the second half of 2025 is not yet complete, and the count for H1 2026 hasn't started) 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026This is also clearly worded to get around the fact that sources universally acknowledge that the US did not arm the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and that this warning did not actually come to pass. US weapons provided to the Mujahideen flowed to the people who mostly ended up in the Northern Alliance. 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Let's be clear - this from Owen Jones is bollocks, fake history. "Shock therapy" wasn't something imposed on Russia from outside. It also didn't have to be unsuccessful (see, e.g., Poland). It failed because of corruption already endemic in Soviet society. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... 221
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 23/09/2026It's absolutely ridiculous to say that Ireland would veto the UK rejoining. It is completely the opposite of what Irish leadership has said. 100
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Here's what Jim Callaghan said in the debate on the European Communities Act 1972. Apparently this should have been the last word on us joining until the Labour party changed its mind? 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026This was something worth re-reading, in light of recent discussions about what thinking even is. 020
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 18/09/2026"Good news! We've replaced a map that screws up the area of your country the further it is from the equator with one that screws up the *SHAPE* of your country the further it is from the Greenwich meridian. This most severely impacts east Asia. We are very decolonialist." 110
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 14/09/2026The ECB has been very clear that Montenegro's adoption of the Euro was under special circumstances (the adoption of the Deutschmark after the crash of the Yugoslav Dinar, followed by the phase out of the Deutschmark leaving only one stable option). It's not a model any sane person would follow. 120
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 10/09/2026That's based on 20+ years old PISA scores though? Finnish education is no longer what it once was. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 09/09/2026It should of course be noted that the majority of Tory MPs did not actually want Liz Truss as PM, they voted for Sunak, who was, given the limited options available, a better choice than Truss. We should never again have a PM chosen by party members. 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/09/2026And actually Kampfner appears to be wrong - Germany is only set to get to 3.5% by 2035, which is the same commitment the UK has. www.defensenews.com/opinion/2026... 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 03/09/2026This is pretty delusional given e.g., the failure of Scholz's "Zeitenwende" increases to materialise (e.g., the 100bn Euro fund that turned out to mostly be money already budgeted and stuff only tangentially-related to defence). Present German defence budget is 2.69% of GDP. UK's is 2.6% 100
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 30/08/2026You know you’re in Scotland when you see a hob with a built-in deep fat fryer… 060
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 25/08/2026There is no political or voting system that is a guaranteed insulation against the far right. Thinking that there is some other “grown up country” that has already solved these problems, and all we need do is copy them, is deluded. 030
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Inshallah, Braverman loses her seat at the next election. But she does understand one thing about politics that way too many politicians don’t seem to understand: have a constituency and offer them something. 020
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 18/08/2026It was near enough as I recall, and contemporary photos show it near housing. My uncle worked there, used to drive past it fairly often when going to the supermarket down the hill from there. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 14/08/2026They’ve stopped recycling oil where I live - put it in a bottle and put the bottle in the bin. 210
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 11/08/2026Polling on the referendum on Icelandic EU membership is on a knife edge with "yes" just a bit ahead. This result, after decades of strong Euroscepticism in Iceland, was not obtained by lecturing Icelanders on the true nature of the EU, or the folly of their previous votes not to join. 130
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 09/08/2026But I was at university 25 years ago and “bring back grammar schools” was definitely not popular then. It was the kind of thing William Hague was (with mixed results) trying to get away from. (1999 interview with Hague below) 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 04/08/2026Not clear that returned troops did much fighting, many returned post-Armistice also and therefore did infighting but either sided with Vichy or were demobilised (the figure I’ve seen for this is roughly half). Only circa 3k out of the 100k French troops decided to side with De Gaulle’s men. 210
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 01/08/2026And it seems my impression was bourne out by evidence also: attendance of kids of Turkish descent in Gymnasium was roughly 1/3rd of the level for the rest of the population in 2000. 010
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 31/07/2026It would probably also be good to see an end to the use of “英国” for the UK as well, for similar reasons. 000
FOARP @foarp.bsky.social · 31/07/2026You know, this was a pretty bonkers act of paranoia. (Iodine tablets distributed to every household in the Republic of Ireland after 9/11, for use in case of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility in the UK) 100
