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David Soward

@latimer57.bsky.social
127 followers 66 following 245 posts

Pianist, psychotherapist, poet, photographer, post-Christian, pro-EU, polymath

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Reposted by David Soward
Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 6h
Someone joked on WhatsApp about Trump appointing Liz Truss as his new Press Sec and, for just a flash, just a millisecond, I actually believed it. Because that is the timeline we are living.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 6h
The ultimate banter outcome: Clacton goes 52:48 in favour of Rejoin.
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 1h
Yes, if they were only 'settling', it would be bad enough: these are thugs
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Steve Herman @newsguy.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member. wapo.st/4yiUDPx
wapo.st
Secret documents reveal donors behind $330 million for Trump’s ballroom
The records offer a panoramic view of a fundraising campaign that is extraordinary for its size and opacity.
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Hard to adjudicate between experts, but others will, and the FT article makes informative reading. The whole thing is frustratingly technical for the average voter, but the failures of privatised monopolies in vital industries is pretty clear.
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Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Trump and Musk going all out to protect Putin
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I'm gobsmacked by ministers' failure to defend Burnham's claim about Russian interference in Brexit (and Tories' claim that he has no proof of it) when there were well-documented troll farms, funded by Russia, spewing out aggressive pro-Brexit attacks on social media at the time
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Stuart Hemingway @stu31.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The PM should release the full facts that were uncovered in the UK report on Russian interference… www.csis.org/blogs/brexit...
csis.org
Did Russia Influence Brexit? | Brexit Bits, Bobs, and Blogs | CSIS
A long-awaited parliamentary report in the United Kingdom asserts Russia may have influenced the Brexit referendum; more importantly, the UK government did little to find out and prevent it.
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Simon Nixon @nixonsimon.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The euro has an 83% approval rates in the countries that use it and former eurozone crises countries are growing faster than Britain with falling debt and lower borrowing costs. So why is the euro question considered so toxic to the UK Rejoin debate? My latest
nixons.substack.com
Should Britain Adopt the Euro?
Politically, it may be a non-starter. But what about the economics? An alternative history and a rerun of Gordon Brown's famous five tests. Part two of two
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BossSaru @bosssaru.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
A feature, not a bug. www.theguardian.com/politics/201...
theguardian.com
The error that could subvert George Osborne's austerity programme
The theories on which the chancellor based his cuts policies have been shown to be based on an embarrassing mistake
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Patrick Osgood @patrickosgood.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Lazy idiots. “It is possible the Conservatives copied the figure without checking it. It appears to have been published in a report by the rightwing thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs and also included in an article in the Spectator.”
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Peter Whitewood @pwhitewood.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
A shadowy network of hedgehogs and owls, operating at the highest levels of the British establishment.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I'm sorry if this is obvious but the Tory proposal to exempt family homes completely from IHT will lead to 1] pensioners buying the biggest houses they possibly can 2] pensioners refusing to downsize which can only be bad news for younger families trying to buy family homes
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Simon Nixon @nixonsimon.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The right-wing papers seem happy to overlook that Badenoch has united her party by losing the right, purging the left and embracing Trussonomics and the myth of self-funding tax cuts, leaving the party at least four points down in the polls on the last election. What a splendid achievement!
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Louise Lopsided of St Hilda @hyarner.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Complain directly to them. Not enough people on the Left bother, so nothing changes. Plenty of RW people do, which is why we are where we are. www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...
bbc.co.uk
Complaints | Contact the BBC
These pages have information about how to complain to the BBC, with links to the BBC’s Complaints Framework, the BBC’s regulator Ofcom and regular reports about complaints. If you would like to unders...
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Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
What with this and funding a genocide in Sudan I’m beginning to think the UAE might be quite bad.
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"The one thing your viewers can know for sure is that we believe in controlling spending and reducing taxes, not increasing taxes," says Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, whose own government raised taxes to their highest level in more than 70 years, just two years ago.
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The conundrum they're trying to solve: Without Trump you won't get past the primaries. With Trump you might not get past voters. Their solution is trying to shift attention away from Trump - the world's most accomplished limelight hog and history's attention-thirstiest slut. Good luck with that. 😬
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Patrick Osgood @patrickosgood.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Every now and then - more now these days than then - you hear something like this by a respectable person in a calm voice on a respectable platform and get a kind of vertigo over how hateful and demented things have gotten in the UK. A very large part of public discourse is utterly insane.
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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
In the last decade, the IDF prosecuted one (1) soldier for unlawfully killing a Palestinian in the occupied territories. Elor Azaria served 9 months in prison. Today Israel's president, Yitzhak Herzog, pardoned him and expunged his criminal record. A clear message of 100% impunity.
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Hardeep Matharu @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The story of Jason Arday is the story of James Orr. Of the ideology which has found a foothold in Cambridge University, fostering the sorts of ideas that formed the undercurrents – sometimes explicit; sometimes unconscious – against Arday. I returned to my alma mater for an in-depth exploration 👇
bylinetimes.com
The Two Professors and a ‘War On Ideas’
The different stories of the Cambridge academics Jason Arday and James Orr reveal the wider cultural and ideological forces around hierarchies and structural power – and who gets to belong in our inst...
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Alex Hall Hall @alexhh.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Brexit 🙄🙄😢
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Caolan Robertson @caolanrob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Anyone thinking Ukraine should ‘concede terrirory for peace’ should look at what happens to Ukrainians in occupied territories One of the worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Oleshky today. Mass starvation and murder by drones. That’s what happens. @ZarinaZabrisky reports
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Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Any movement here?
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And reappointed O'Grady in 2023!
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Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It would be quite 'something' if, after all the talk of leaving the EU to create CANZUK, there ends up being CANZEU without the UK
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BBC Newsnight @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"The Republicans hate him. If you talk to them privately, they all hate him, and they want him out - but they're afraid of him." Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communications Director, on President Trump's popularity in his party. #Newsnight
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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Britain is just looking on as a handful of tax hating billionaires buy our political future.
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Phil Brickell MP @philbrickellmp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Back in July, I mentioned Ben Delo’s support for Reform and the very real concerns I have about his involvement in British politics given his conviction for failing to maintain anti-money laundering controls - a conviction which Trump then pardoned him for
bbc.co.uk
Ben Delo: Reform receives record £36m donation from cryptocurrency billionaire
Ben Delo's donation, the biggest single sum ever given to a political party in the UK, comes amid scrutiny of Reform's finances.
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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The Times has run a story this morning about how ‘polite’ the masked men in Dover were to three white ladies on a train. Propaganda in its clumsiest form.
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Captain Europe (retired) @captaineurope.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Donald Münchausen.
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I hope Mirvis will be removed from the Thought for the Day slot on BBC Today. He's outrageously and unashamedly political.
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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I will take seriously those complaining about "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" chants when they care to mention that a Jewish state "From the River to the Sea" is official policy of the Israeli government, implemented and consolidated for 59 years now with bulldozers and soldiers.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sorry, this is dumb/ahistorical. UK sanctions against South Africa 1985/86 were also largely "symbolic". But Thatcher had to be dragged kicking and screaming, and the apartheid regime devoted huge resources to stopping them - just as the Israeli govt is now. Symbols *really* matter here..
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Great speech, heartfelt and just. And a crying shame that the Opposition benches facing him are empty!
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
BBC R4Today is really the pits now: giving Huckabee the prime 8.10 slot!
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Tom Scott @tom--scott.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
What terrifies me is if turns out that James Orr is a creepy bagman for a deeply corrupt & criminal organisation. Imagine the backlash against honest & law-abiding Professors of Divinity at Cambridge University.
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Ros Taylor @rostaylor.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Curiously, the French translation of the Reform ‘agreement’ doesn’t say that France will take back small boat migrants intercepted in British waters.
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Russ Jones @russincheshire.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Last year my dog had a lump on his side. I had legitimate concerns. The vet confirmed it was benign and harmless. I no longer had legitimate concerns. Immigration is benign and harmless. How hard was that?
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Alex Hall Hall @alexhh.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Two tier policing. Arrest retired folk peacefully protesting genocide in Gaza. Allow right wing thugs to block streets and ports. I know which group presents the real threat to democracy and the so-called “British way of life”, which these vigilante bullies preposterously claim to be defending.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Scenes like this did a lot of damage to Mosley and the BUF in the 1930s. Though that relied on Conservative papers reporting them.
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Sally @sallyapiacere.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
An even more interesting question for @cam.ac.uk following #c4news expose of Reform, and James Orr's special role in it.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"champions of free speech" latest
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Annette Dittert @annettedittert.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This. Is. Not. Journalism. - It's letting Farage shine. I genuinely do not understand why the BBC does not seem to be able to competently challenge Reform and Farage.
bbc.co.uk
Reform up against 'complainants' society', Nigel Farage tells BBC
The Reform UK leader said a "whole ecosystem" didn't want "new kids on the block succeeding".
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George Eaton @georgeeaton.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Burnham right to blame Brexit for low growth but he’ll need to break from Starmer’s red lines. Current EU reset will boost GDP by 0.5% at best, compared to 3% for single market membership and 5% for Rejoin. www.arguably.uk/p/we-cant-af...
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Hope he's on an IPP sentence. But maybe working for today's Times is as bad as imprisonment
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David Soward @latimer57.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Endorsed
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Nigel Manton. @mantonn.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The Times under Gallagher is a cesspit. I have been a daily reader for 45 years. Not now. Not until Gallagher or Murdoch goes.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Ages ago they plagarised a blogpost I wrote for a leader. Refused fo apologise.
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Imagine Labour were in opposition and two very senior shadow cabinet members, seen as leadership rivals to the leader, had resigned within days of each other. Think how that would be reported - the tone, frequency, and prominence. Now tell me the media landscape is not skewed in this country.
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