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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Major, or just possibly Hague. Howard did all he could to put Cameron in as his successor, and we all know what happened next. IDS was Truss with less hair.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

I think they should, and ask them 'So, Mr Polanski, why should anyone believe that a boob hypnotist is a man who will not lie to the public, or tell them things that are mad or fraudulent?'

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Someone, some time, is going to tell Will the story of Liz Truss and her 49 days as Prime Minister, and it is going to blow his mind.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

There is no way that anyone who knows anything about the UK will say the electorate threw out the Tories in 2024 because there was a global anti-incumbency movement 'in fact caused by the internet'. Will Stancil does however say that.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Ah, I see this post has crossed the Bad Faith Threshold: that indefinable moment on social media when people stop behaving as if you’re a normal human person who, say, loves your child and is making a mildly humorous observation, and start responding with wild criticisms and imagined slights.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

A case in point. Look at this guy laughing at Reform councillors a) discovering how many problems local government face and b) thinking about doing something rational, ie raise taxes and preserve services. I hope he laughs equally hard when Reform do really well in the 2029 General Election.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

They really should rename this place 'BlueSilo'.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

And so far, all the comments to your post are indeed variations on 'Reform is so stupid, how can anyone not see this?' Every time I read Bluesky, I have incredibly strong 'telling people in May 2016 that I thought the Referendum was going to be close' vibes.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Agreed. My timeline is full of left-liberal friends chuckling 'ha ha, look at the stupid Reform gammons'. Whereas they should be worried: Reform have met reality in local government, and are thinking sensibly- raise taxes and support services- which will make them stronger at the General Election.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

A lot of left-liberal people are laughing at the Reform councillors who say these things. They shouldn't. It means Reform will be able to say to voters 'we understand how tough things are for you' in the next General Election. That's the language Labour should be speaking, but isn't.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Don't worry, an NHS where Doctors inadvertently starve a man with Downs Syndrome to death will have no problems implementing Assisted Dying. Vulnerable people and their families needn't worry.

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BeardedGenius @beardedgenius.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

This is utterly heartbreaking. Too sad for words. A direct result of underfunding the NHS.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Yes, I think your point- that the new breed of international fan may be a damn sight less patient than the fans from 1969-1992- is quite likely to be right.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

'Why on earth are Brits talking about council tax and street crime and NHS waiting times? Haven't you seen what ICE are doing in California? God, you're all just so parochial, unlike me!'

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

So Britons should stop discussing immigration and asylum because a far Right US president- elected in very large part over voter discontent about, erm, immigration- is abusing his powers? This is not even trying to be a coherent argument.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

26 years: 1967 to 1993. (25 years from the 1968 European Cup.)

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Oh sweet Jesus, we are now getting to people seriously saying 'If you're sceptical about the Office for Budget Responsibility, you are probably either a tankie or a fascist'.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

There are still a lot of working people's cafes in Brussels where they speak Galician, after a lot of coal miners immigrated- postwar, and I think also interwar.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

I suspect you're right, however, for a lot of the armed cops who are not in the highest-tier specialist units.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Hmm, but for decades the police were training to take on PIRA, who had and used automatic rifles on the mainland. And I know they've done serious training on 'mass shooter' scenarios: they got very worried after eg the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Writing things down is the best way to stop endlessly replaying them. I wrote a detailed account of a Herrick tour and I am sure it helped me a lot.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Isn't part of the story that the police take their cues on close quarter marksmanship from the acknowledged experts- special forces- who in turn use 9mm pistols and 5.56mm (or sometimes 6.8mm or 7.62mm) carbines and rifles? But SF have huge training budgets and the police don't, so are weaker shots.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

No bad faith involved. I literally couldn't believe- and still find it hard, if I'm honest- that you could look at the OBR's forecasting record and think it anything other than a failure. Possibly you could make an argument about why you think otherwise, though I won't hold my breath waiting.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I admit I initially thought back in April that you couldn't possibly believe that such a consistent record of failure on the OBR's part was actually quite good. But no, it turns out you do. I apologise for crediting you with more common sense than you possess.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I put it to you several times that the OBR's record in forecasting was very poor, that it was 'doing a bad job'. Each time, you insisted otherwise. That's really only explicable if you've never looked at the OBR's record.

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Henry Jeffreys @henrygjeffreys.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I have just heard some really sad news that Peter Hall from Breaky Bottom, one of England's greatest winemakers, has just died. Wrote a little thing on the great man here: henryjeffreys.substack.com/p/a-tribute-...

henryjeffreys.substack.com

A tribute to Peter Hall

A legend of English wine died on Wednesday at 82. I didn't know him well but loved the unique wines he made at Breaky Bottom in Sussex and was fortunate to meet him a few times.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Genuinely baffled by the spectacle of left or centrist economists defending the Osborne-devised OBR regime. I had @jdportes.bsky.social get very cross with me on here when I suggested that the OBR's forecasting record was bad. I mean- have you bothered looking at it?

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Also care homes and cleaners- but the workforce is largely female, so easy to ignore.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Danny Kruger, the Tory-to-Reform switcher, gets on well with a couple of the Gaza Independents and paid them some complements in his 'we need a Christian nation' speech.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

What do you suggest- copying and pasting stuff? I think the commenting was one of the best things about B&T. It was a great place for a conversation, and occasionally for a scrap. But a lot of the posts were great too. There was a reason people showed up in the comments.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

before sweeping up minor rioters, sentencing many to death. A simple-minded young man who was persuaded the riots were acts of self-defence is sentenced to hang, while better-connected demagogues go free... Thank goodness nothing like the events Dickens describes could happen now.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

A mob besieges the lawmakers in Parliament...backing down only when men with pistols appear from inside the chamber. The mob, led by a hangman ,demands protection from wrong-doers, emphasising this by burning down houses and storming prisons. The authorities do nothing for days...

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

I'm reading a Dickens novel a year. Last year's was 'Barnaby Rudge'. A minor politician and bankrupt, Lord George Gordon, and his manipulative aides whip up a growing hysteria against an unpopular religious minority.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Would you like me to spend an hour or two trying to figure it out and/or doing the grunt work? I know some Young Persons with good computer skills- am happy to pick their brains as long as I can take all the credit.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

But surely Labour's position is now 'Any party which calls for retrospectively ending ILS is racist and that's bad. Also don't worry, because we also want to retrospectively end ILS'. You can do one or the other, but not both.

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

And I'd argue that Plaid replacing Labour as the political embodiment of Welsh identity is potentially as consequential for the future of the UK Union as Reform gains

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Is that the same kind of thing as an influenza epistemic?

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

As part of my selfless, if part-time, quest to provide you with something you might need to think about on the subject of this ID card proposal, try reading this: bsky.app/profile/ruth...

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Should be too obvious to need stating; indeed, should have been too obvious to need stating for at least 15 years. And yet...

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

British units on deployment to Afghanistan in the winter would have a Christmas party, which included skits where the troops mocked their officers. I served in a company where the OC was 6 foot 4 inches. He was played in the sketch by two squaddies, one sitting on the other's shoulders.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

British units on deployment to Afghanistan in the winter would have a Christmas party, which included skits where the troops mocked their officers. I served in a company where the OC was 6 foot 4 inches. He was played by two squaddies, one sitting on the other's shoulders.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

I was doing an editing stint on a Labour publication during the last party conference, and I actually spent about 25 minutes putting Starmer's speech into paragraphs with more than one sentence in. The one-sentence-only thing is unbearable to look at- like the worst modernist poem ever.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

I'm all in favour of Labour realising that 'a united front against Reform' will mean collaborating with the Lib Dems- and indeed with the SNP and Plaid, as @stephenkb.bsky.social has pointed out. But a big chunk of Lib Dem support is centre-right voters who dislike the current Tory party.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Based on revealed preference, though, the LDs are not a centre-left party. They have had one stint in peacetime government in the last century, and the result was the Cameron-Osborne austerity drive.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

It's not the main point, but my God do I hate the way Starmer's press people (and other politicians' teams) send out speeches with every single sentence on a new line. It's as if our tiny little brains are going to melt if we have to read a paragraph with two sentences in it.

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670rv @670rv.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

networkcultures.org/blog/2015/01... Thanks for that - I searched and found this! Amazing! I was shot in the head with a Colt .45 at a distance of six feet when I was 14 years old — and have suffered from mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) ever since. MILD - not really!

networkcultures.org

Paulina Borsook: Cyberselfish 15 years after, Part II

"Cyberselfish" 15 years after publicationPart II: Where am I going and where have I beenThe complex truth behind how I got into writing about technology and writing about it the way that I did

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 24/09/2025

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

'Who did you say?' I said, or probably shouted. [X] was a schoolfriend, who had been sentenced to several years inside. I went back and saw him the following week.

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griboyedov.bsky.social @griboyedov.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

When I was at [the same university you were at], my College chaplain took me to talk to the prisoners at HMP Oxford, which in those days still existed and of which he was also chaplain. On the way back, he said 'It's a shame, because a young man called [X] normally goes to those meetings...'

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