iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As the famous original Twitter post might have put it: “I just don’t think you should bring a drink to a job interview, it looks casual” | | [200 comments later] | | “No, I’m not making a white supremacist point…..”

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The prose was leaden, he repeated characters’ first names across many of his books, he was obsessed with particular words (“strolling”) and the dialogue was in general terrible - but, non ironically, he could really sketch a plot and deliver a story, especially his short stories

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

(The other thing I often think about PF is “100 or so very policy engaged and politically aware people, but huh, very VERY few of them want to become MPs, is that an issue, maybe, perhaps….”)

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

She’s like one of those BES pen pics that the bot spits out. You’d bet a SW London mortgage / year’s private school fees she voted Tory; under any plausible future governing party, she would be. And yet.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I often think of a former colleague of mine at PF: late 30s, recently married, left us for a high earning job in the private sector, mortgage, lives in leafy SW Lon. Privately educated, my guess is her kids would be too ideally. Husband and she met at Cam. Used to be rock solid Tory. Now votes Lab.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Merz in his converted attic home office, skylight slightly open to catch the late autumn sun, like every senior partner I’ve ever been on a call with on a Friday

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Jacqui Smith: I’m really worried; universities need a proper income stream Alex Norris: I have absolutely nowhere to put these prisoners Andy Burnham and John Healey

static.klipy.com

Andy Burnham Pint

ALT: Andy Burnham Pint

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Vice Chancellors: what shall I do about the coming demographic dip and all this spare real estate on my campus? Prosperity Institute: hold my illicitly made hooch

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think from memory the full British social attitudes question makes clear it’s about financial precarity, and whether you’d “have to”

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oh good shout - that could explain it I guess. Plus legacy credit card debt etc. or supporting wider family. I mean look obviously there *are* ways (!) - it’s just unusual on the face of it!

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Possibly. You’d still think that a salary with no mortgage allows for £300 bill tho….

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Something in outsourcing at vast scale - call centres or IT or business process outsourcing. Because for a left wing man he thinks private sector should be more in public services. (Also how can you have a management job, no mortgage or rent, and not be able to pay a £300 bill?)

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Their statement drives me crazy it’s so arrogant, so tin eared to the weight and breadth of the judgement against them. And apart from anything else, it literally can’t be irrefutable evidence that has been provided by the club because an investigation has refuted it!

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We’ve had billion pound bottle jobs, now we’ve got billion pound fraudsters

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Andy with your smile, your mascara’d eyes…..

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

*stretches out* *wiggles toes* *luxuriates in a Sunday that does not involve multiple trains to Liverpool in a suit for Lab party conference*

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

New link posted by DfS here: bsky.app/profile/pete...

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is such a bullshit story. As proven by the knock down quote from TBI pointing out that this is what every other org does, and DfS’ smoking gun being “an unnamed former TBI staff member said it looked bad”

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

An organisation? Charging corporates to sponsor and speak at party conference panels alongside politicians? I’ve never *heard* of such a thing……

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Accidentally? Did you fall and land on his own needle?

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sigh indeed. jonathansimons.substack.com/p/making-the...

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This man is not economically left wing.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Matt Goodwin has entered the chat….

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Look, we say we want HE and academia to be more productive, but god forbid the man comes up wirh a solution…..

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Reposted by Jonathan Simons

Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The complete and total collapse of state function in the face of far right extremists. It is frankly ludicrous that Daniel Thomas continues to be at large given the series of crimes committed which he has literally filmed.

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Reposted by Jonathan Simons

Wonkhe @wonkhe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

NEW on Wonkhe: Annie Bell and Damayanti Chatterjee present new modelling that explores not just the potential for growth in international student numbers, but also whether that growth would be stable buff.ly/vhm0Vdl

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

That fourth one is what emerges when AI rips a hole into another dimension

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

30 week or so scan with child no1. The midwife asks us “what are you going to feed them”. I (wittily) say “McDonalds, probably?” Then my wife hits me and I say “we’re going to do formula from day 1”. Honestly, I think the midwife preferred the McDonalds answer.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“I can’t believe that he’s here. He’s making me look ridiculous and this whole event a joke” And then his owner turns to the dog and says “I know sweetie but he may be about to become California Governor”

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Well then bsky.app/profile/tesm...

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Brilliant. Thank goodness HE admissions teams have been alerted to This One Cool Trick

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I mean….what? Telling them to duck and cover? What on earth is the point of this. Wildly unproductive, nanny state tastic, very expensive, will be mostly binned unread, and far cheaper distribution mechanisms exist for genuine public information??

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

All that is to say, there’s a golden opportunity for Lab to not do stupid things; to build on the good stuff we have in England (which the Francis review confirmed); to make the changes that definitely do need to be made, and to ignore people who have been wrong on this since 2010 or even earlier.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I can’t work out if it’s worse to be ED Hirsch - lifelong Democrat, condemned to be forever the handmaiden of “right wing reforms”, or Gibb and Gove, genuine givers of educational opportunity from the right destined to be forever undermined by partisan attacks.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

But we have an honest to goodness UK comparison here from Scotland and Wales which shows if you go the way that mimetic alternatives suggest, that it ends up bad for pupils. Again, this isn’t a right or left thing. It’s a genuine “what works” vs “what sounds good”

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I meet governments and school leaders all over the world who are learning from the English reforms. Of course they’re not perfect, and I’ve certainly learned loads which tells me if I were ever to be in power, there’s some stuff I’d do differently (and would change in England now too)

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

There is nothing right wing about a model of schooling which focusses on knowledge rich curriculum, evidence based teacher training, school (or trust) autonomy, and good assessment (not coursework). Some of the best schl leaders and thinkers I know are lifelong Lab voters, and execute this stuff.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The whataboutery around these results is quite something. I am sceptical that a lot of the people picking holes in the data methodology, to undermine England’s success, would be doing so had they shown us plummeting. This is a real public policy triumph, built by school reformers of *all* parties

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The original thread posits that it’s possible they did know, but let it play out to see the extent of their actions; I mean who knows tho. Regardless, am surprised and disappointed they haven’t since had the book thrown at them, mass arrests for organisers etc

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Interesting and disturbing thread. Makes the point that, with this level of coordination and planning, supposedly all in secret, if this group had been armed they would have completely overwhelmed police (inc special branch) and security services; only army and special forces could have engaged.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I’m pretty sure they only publish the most illogical ones - but the account is a great one to follow

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I love these. A man with no mortgage at all, that has to borrow money for the basics, who voted Starmer and thinks the economy has improved massively, but would now vote Tory. Wild.

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I don’t think he did do that well, and I think had Starmer done just as badly, he wouldn’t have had a free pass from much of Bluesky…..

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is also true though. Why on earth Kemi Badenoch accepted the opportunity to relitigate the Truss budget and how senior various junior ministers were at the time, who knows bsky.app/profile/adri...

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Jonathan Simons @jonathansimons.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

PM was unbelievably nervous there and it showed. He needs a far less staccato delivery and to know his attack lines off the top of his head, rather than looking down to read them every few words. Turns out PMQs is hard and you can’t vibe it.

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