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Gareth Potter

@garethpotter.com
352 followers 260 following 1.2K posts

I mostly write code. Occasional photographer.

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Reposted by Gareth Potter
Mujtaba Rahman @mijrahman.bsky.social · 10h
Don't believe the Europeans when they say the UK is no longer interesting, a priority etc etc Every senior EU official I've met today in Brussels has spent 20 mins talking about @andyburnham.bsky.social speech. The EU is paying attention and interested - even if it pretends otherwise
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Survation. @survation.bsky.social · 12h
Support outnumbers opposition in every age group, including those most affected: -> 55-64: 61% support, 16% oppose -> 65+: 55% support, 27% oppose 8/9
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Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · 14h
- impossible to escape on the internet - weirdly puritanical - might blow up the planet - drink massive amounts of water - love to have names like Claude, Gemini and Grok
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Finn @thegoblinpoet.bsky.social · 14h
hold up - will confidently interject on any subject, often with significant errors - can't actually read, instead relies on an elaborate method of parsing context through structure & likely words - looks financially impressive, actually built on huge amounts of unsustainable debt
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Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Honestly it’s like a parody by this point isn’t it
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Josh Self @josh.politics.co.uk · 29/09/2026
#Onthisday in 2014: Liz Truss delivers impassioned speech on cheese and apple imports “At the moment we import two-thirds of our apples. We import nine-tenths of all of our pears. We import two-thirds of our cheese. “That is a DISGRACE!” www.politics.co.uk/history/that...
politics.co.uk
‘That is a disgrace!’: Liz Truss pork markets speech (2014)
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Pete Miles @petermiles.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026
"AIs do not have rights, feelings, or consciousness. And we must not train them to act as though they do." I had seen the news clips on Mustafa Suleyman's recent warnings, but only just read the source. Wise words, strongly recommended. mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-ab...
mustafa-suleyman.ai
A warning about ‘model welfare’
AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. Training a model to believe it might be a moral patient, as Anthropic’s constitution does, makes the alignment and containment challenge...
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind
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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 28/09/2026
Labour is a party disappointed by the people who vote for it and by the economy of the country it's running. thecritic.co.uk/the-...
And how will it do that? Healey, it turns out, has the kind of idea of work you’d expect from a man who has been active in politics since 1986. There were a lot of references to the coalmining heritage of his constituency, and even the more modern work he talked about was hard, manly toil like pipe-fitting, the sort of thing that involves bulging forearms and mucky overalls. Aside from his wife, the one woman he mentioned was Reeves, and she’s just lost her job.

It’s far from clear that the Chancellor has a handle on what the more modern bits of the economy look like. There are a million young people out of work, he said, and the solution he pointed to was shipbuilding apprenticeships. Do this year’s unemployed graduates actually want to go into shipbuilding? Are there enough ships for them to build? His first job, he said, was washing glasses at a pub, exactly the kind of work that has disappeared in the face of minimum wage and tax rises. On artificial intelligence, which has destro
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 28/09/2026
There are pretty obvious reasons why, still less than 48 hours after the incident, we might need to be cagey about what and when we actually knew about this plot and it is deeply unserious, social media poisoned stuff to litigate it all in the open right now.
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Matthew Holehouse @matthewholehouse.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Words absent from Chancellor's conference speech: tax, China, European Union, Hormuz, oil, gas, universities, productivity, gilts, America. 13 union(s), 7 miner(s). Curious.
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Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Vindication as someone who saw something, said something leading to something being sorted www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Late-night drive and a 999 call: farmer’s chance encounter that led to terrorism arrests at RAF base
Local people say members of WhatsApp group noticed suspicious activity around vans in Whelford overnight
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Mark Wallace @wallaceme.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Ok don’t let’s get carried away but I found something genuinely good on Threads.
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Will 🇺🇦 Absolute Shower 🇺🇦 @showerabsolute.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is hilariously bad but can I show you my favourite bit? Pay particular attention to the last sentence, then consider how, if at all, it relates to the preceding ones.
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Pete Miles @petermiles.eurosky.social · 25/09/2026
On the failures of privatisation and deregulation... 2/2
In reality, of course, that is not how it has played out. It is not just that the

prioritisation of private over public control of vital services and the obsession with

keeping taxes low led to the degradation of the national infrastructure base in areas

such as water, housing, transport and energy. It is that the failure of privatisation to

deliver resilience has meant that many of these sectors are now reappearing on the

public balance sheet as contingent or even actual liabilities as the state is obliged to

intervene. The costs of deregulation similarly reappeared as liabilities on the balance

sheet when the financial system collapsed in 2008. At the root of Britain's problems

lies not so much bad economics as bad accounting: it did not just spend the peace

dividend, it spent the depreciation dividend.
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
once again the actual "story" behind Tilly Norwood is how the company's PR firm continues to get these stories placed in ostensibly legit outlets over and over despite zero demonstration of the supposed phenomenon being written about ("AI movie star Tilly Norwood") being real
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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
A better way to phrase this Variety headline would be "Publicity Seeker Who Invented A Program Continues Long Con"
Variety headline: Tilly Norwood Would Love to Work With Tom Holland and Olivia Colman, ‘but Only If It Were Their Digital Twins’ on an ‘AI Production’
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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fundamentally, the median voter has had a tax cut since 2010 and the result is that nothing works.
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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Some unintended consequences I suspect the rise of AI agents will create: 1. Restaurants that only take reservations by hand written letter, or more likely, don't take them at all. 2. Gigs where you can only buy tickets in person. 3. Businesses that operate without websites.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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phantasmAgaric 🍄 @lalonde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
european regionalist nationalism is so funny. solidarity with the free peoples of flanders and wallonia against their hated oppressors in wallonia and flanders!!
a graphic showing western european regions with independence/autonomy movements surrounding the word 'INDEPENDÈNCIA'. from the top clockwise: scotland, corsica, the isle of man, a united ireland, cornwall, sardinia, britanny, wallonia, the basque countries, flanders, asturias, catalonia, galicia, wales, and savoy
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Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 25/09/2026
FFS. Really important infrastructure projects shouldn't be subject to the whims of whoever happens to be in Downing Street. HS2 is a clusterfuck because twats just keep changing their minds. We should commit to big, important projects and see them through, not faff about every time we get a new PM.
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cardinal1608.bsky.social @cardinal1608.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It mught be an early indicator that (perhaps unsurprisingly) it isn't possible for the Greens to hold together a coalition of Cotswolds Tories who don't want a solar farm in their county and tankies from Haringey who want to invade Israel.
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Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Aria funding for foreign partners ‘hard to justify’. Former science minister raises concerns as agency announces only one UK-based “activation partner”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
researchprofessionalnews.com
Aria funding for foreign partners ‘hard to justify’ - Research Professional News
Former science minister raises concerns as agency announces only one UK-based “activation partner”
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Willard Foxton @willardfoxton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I think it's absolutely mad that today there's a *national news story* about 400 oil platform workers losing their jobs, and the government being blamed. 25% of the UK TV industry lost their jobs in the last 4 years and we never hear a peep about it! Some jobs are 'real jobs' I guess.
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Legal C @legalclaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The law should not be a political tool. If you commit a crime, you should expect to be arrested and charged. You are also welcome to put your defence (but not make political speeches or commit contempt). But if you want the court system to become politicised… be careful what you wish for.
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Simon Usherwood @simonusherwood.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Gibraltar EES arrangements aren't yet working properly Struck by image of people travelling with copies of treaties www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2...
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Legal C @legalclaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Time to call this out. There is a tendency to talk utter gibberish about recent events. To compare two different events and draw unsubstantiated conclusions. To suggest people are doing “nothing”. A short thread.
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Michael @michaeljsc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
btw you might be thinking “I’ve seen loads of screenshots on the feed, I don’t need to read the whole piece” but take it from me, you do
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Darth Putin @darthputinkgb.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This some advanced tankie "thought". Russia has a UNSC seat & world's largest amounts of land, gas, oil and NUKES. Russia also has no agency over our own actions and so cannot be held accountable and therefore must be excused and appeased.
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Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 24/09/2026
*extremely tired voice*AI agents don't "go rogue". They are not sentient; they don't have agency. They work within guardrails set by humans. If the humans are so shit at building secure sandboxes for the agents to work within, that's on the humans. Stop using this framing.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Labour, and the country, need a Callaghan moment. Bracing column by @robertshrimsley.bsky.social:
ft.com
You want honesty, Andy? Britain is out of easy options
The prime minister must tell voters that Labour’s manifesto has been superseded by world events, both economic and military
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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 24/09/2026
Please excuse me while I scream into a cushion at the thought of ALL the articles I had to write on the "UK productivity puzzle" in the 2010s www.ft.com/content/c819...
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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 24/09/2026
There’s a mad aspect to this. In a case from 1946 called Re Parrott, Mr Justice Vaisey rather surprised everyone by holding that if you had been christened English law did not permit you to change your Christian name.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
after consideration, I have produced this necessary reference guide, perhaps @sundersays.bsky.social may be interested. If someone wants to provide funding after the fact, I can promise it won't constitute a donation in kind to Reform.
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Joe @manicpixel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One of the real problems with "The Left" from the centre to the fringe is the fixation that it is more important that I save the world than the world gets saved
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Gavin Jackson @gavinjackson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Because labour is so cheap in India a lot of things don’t have a standard size. You want a bed you pay a carpenter to make it bespoke. That means you need to pay a seamstress to make bespoke bedding. And so you don’t get economies of scale in manufacturing.
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SpinningHugo @spinninghugo.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Better yet, set it up decades ago so it establishes it's reputation. And don't subject it to moronic cuts as it is one of the most important pieces of soft power we have left.
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SpinningHugo @spinninghugo.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What we need is an internationally respected news outlet broadcasting across the world. Impartial, carrying stories from everywhere. What about the "British Broadcasting Corporation 's World Service"? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
New UK agency to fight ‘information warfare’ from likes of Russia, Burnham tells UN
PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information Defence
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21/09/2026
LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"
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Stephen Graham @stephengraham.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Who took this pic, Brooklyn Beckham?
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Torsten Bell @torstenbell.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
So much of the right these days have a massive patriotism problem. This guy: - is a tax exile (left long before this govt) - hates his own country while complaining he doesn’t get big enough subsidies from it - laments the manufacturing hit from a Brexit he supported www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Billionaire Manchester United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe says he has lost confidence in UK
Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe tells the BBC he thinks the country is "on the slide" and calls for more investment in the North Sea.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Some great charts in this Given our welfare system is not very contributory, big Qs for British policymakers here on how we get more women into paid work if we want immigration to be fiscally positive
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"RNLI crew members had been forced to take their permits off their cars after their tyres have been repeatedly slashed. Most of them have been pilloried at the school gates or turned away from local pubs. One man who worked in search and rescue had been beaten unconscious and hospitalised"
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Max Fawcett @maxfawcett.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This is the part many Americans -- including the Bezosites at the Washington Post -- don't understand. Canadians don't see this just as a Trump thing. It's that America elected him twice, and the second time with an even bigger mandate. The problem we're addressing is America, not Trump.
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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026
Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Because, a judge quashed Ofcom's attempt to regulate this area, deciding that when the symbol on the top of the screen goes from "GB News" to "GBN" - I kid you not - it ceases to be a news channel and becomes a more loosely regulated current affairs channel. 🤡 www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and...
ofcom.org.uk
Ofcom statement in response to High Court Judgment: GB News v Ofcom
Response to today's High Court Judgement
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Shadow Hedgie 🌻 @shadow.hedgie.social · 17/09/2026
in conclusion, England is a land of contrasts #popbitch
>> Doggington <<
An independent village
The uproar over Piddington's Jubilee Park is a surprise to some locals, given that its sole purpose prior to the erection of the big Hollywood-style Piddington sign - in support of the village's risible vote to secede from the UK - appeared to be for dogging.
Rarely frequented by locals, given its relative distance from the village, things had got bad enough that the hedge at the entrance to the park had to be cut down so that Thames Valley Police could see in from the road.
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Alan @apertum.ie · 17/09/2026
Don't think we had quite that many in Dorney Lake for London 2012. Fairly sure the assessment for that didn't consider the crocodiles either, so this is consistent with existing policy. www.bbc.com/sport/olympi...
bbc.com
River that is home to 500 crocodiles chosen to host 2032 Olympic rowing and canoe events
A river that is home to about 500 saltwater crocodiles is given the OK to host Olympic and Paralympic rowing and canoeing events at the 2032 Brisbane Games.
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