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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Samantha Asumadu @samanthaasumadu.substack.com · 06/10/2026

Nearly 70% of Police Scotland officers currently suspended while under criminal investigation are accused of offences relating to violence against women, according to figures obtained by STV News. The allegations include domestic abuse, sexual offences and stalking. news.stv.tv/scotland/nea...

news.stv.tv

Nearly 70% of suspended police officers facing criminal probes accused of violence against women

Allegations against suspended Police Scotland officers include domestic abuse, sexual offences and stalking

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A political system that becomes warped around the interests of a single-issue party with little to no electoral representation, couldn't happen here

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The usual nods in the direction of supporting disabled people back into work, which sounds good in the abstract but if you're actually going to meaningfully do that, it does cost money in the short term. In the past we've tended to get the punitive aspects in place and the support found wanting.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Worth taking a look at this in general as it's been taken as a way to attack "SNP freebies" by the usual suspects in the press, and Scottish Labour seem like they're going to keep pandering to the right on benefits, based on what Marra said yesterday.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

reporting tribunal cases like this remains genuine journalistic malpractice

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Ben Wray @benwray1989.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

New York's DoorDash wage theft crack down is seriously impressive. Not only have they used the platform's data against them, they've punished DoorDash with a serious penalty, while creating a new worker-led compliance system for real-time accountability.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Learning even the slightest bit of Gaelic also does provide a bit of pride at just how many prosaic ways there are to name something

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hard to tell if "Green Land" really was the canny bit of marketing it's suggested it was in the Saga but do kind of wonder if similarly positively named places are doing the same thing sometimes

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Is "Chris Mason" an LLM trained purely off of the output of Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

real "bulking out your article that's still under the word count" ten minutes before it's due" energy here

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Euan @euan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

it doesn’t matter if there’s one or two tiers of local government or 32 or 6 or 160 councils if they’re all underfunded and lacking in meaningful revenue-raising powers

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Euan @euan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

this is the key point for me really, if the Scottish Government is going to expend significant time and political capital on local government reform, why would it not start with the part that everyone, including them, agrees isn’t working

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I think it's possible to want it as an overall product of the scientific method while being clear-eyed that it's impossible in practice; the thing there, though, is that is a *collective* aim and not something one guy can do on their tod

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

That and it proved remarkably easy to work this sort of person, if you were a bad-faith bigot looking to launder your head-measuring opinions under the cover of Fearlessly Seeing Where The Science Takes Us

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

sort of think that the worst consequences of the rationalist and skeptic movements in the UK & US were because there ended up being a lot of people (mostly but not exclusively men) who were sure that since they *understood* common cognitive biases that they were therefore inoculated from them

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Men: vicariously misunderstanding the themes and messages of our favourite media since (???)

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

or even, taking into account that the UK relies more on occupational pensions for pensioner income than many other countries, "does this approach provide broadly similar outcomes and security, or are there differences?"

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Here’s a funny new version of th crowding-out argument. In the old days, we were told fiscal tightening was needed to solve the problem of weak private investment. Now, we are told tightening is needed because private investment is so strong. Austerity: always the answer! www.ft.com/content/d96c...

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Interesting stuff in total, though expected: targeting can be useful in a wider universal framework, as long as it's designed well. What is worth pointing out here is what's often claimed about means-testing from some corners - that it leads to *better* outcomes - isn't evident at all

povertyinequality.scot

Universal and Targeted Approaches to Tackling Poverty: Key Messages from the Poverty and Inequality Commission - Poverty & Inequality Commission

September 2026 The Poverty and Inequality Commission (PIC) has today published a review of evidence on universal, targeted and combined approaches, and

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"breaking" the triple lock also refocuses the question back onto "what level of state pension provision should the UK have, relative to earnings", which is another reason that MPs don't want to have that conversation, but that usually gets glossed over

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is always the most disingenuous part of these generational arguments - since any changes will affect future pensioners (i.e. said working-age children and grandchildren), not just current pensioners, and it will affect them for a longer period of time.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

as far as i can tell so far the Scottish Government civil service has tended towards a fairly cautious and sober approach to LLM usage; bad to change that because you have a fundamentally misguided view of their general applicability to government work (and you think it would save money)

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

if if this isn't just fluff and they really believe it, that does bode really badly for the upcoming "public service reform"

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"if I was Scottish Labour leader, I would simply become relevant"

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Allan Faulds @afaulds.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I don't think it's good we've gotten ourselves to a place in the UK where local democracy is seen as needless frippery which is a barrier to economic success which can only be overcome by having a powerful Executive Mayor who, totally against our political norms, faces no in-term scrutiny

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Allan Faulds @afaulds.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Viewers in Scotland may recall the articles ahead of 2015 to the effect of "now for the first time, Jimmy McLabourMP is having to knock doors and talk to voters" because for so long you didn't need to bother, which is a great reminder how FPTP is not in fact a guarantor of an active local champion

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

...and if you don't, Reform can add another grievance to the never-ending mill they use to pander to the worst people in Scotland, you don't even get a majority out of it, and you might still alienate a fair chunk of people who despise the increasingly Reform-tinged Scottish Tories

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If you include them, you've given everyone who's liberal and/or left even more reason to despise you, and *even if* everything works out, you have a Rube Goldberg machine of a majority dependent on keeping a bunch of proudly ignorant, fractious dickheads on side...

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

yet again, beyond all the other problems, the massive elephant in the room that gets ignored with this kind of plan from Senior Labour Sources is the second most popular unionist party in Scotland being Reform (and they weren't far off being first)

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

RDCK98 @comradekenobi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

A lot of oil and gas figures want the job security of public sector workers, without the corresponding ownership model

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

(also, whenever someone does engage critically, this is also framed as part of the academic freedom meta-debate - those engaged in criticism are actually bullying, or harassing, or silencing, irregardless of the actual content of their criticism)

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Anyone taking that at face value without that context and presuming good faith engagement is being, at best, wilfully naive.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It is much safer ground for bigots to argue vaguely in favour of their right to an opinion rather defending their actual work or opinions, and in the case of "race realists" like Cofnas we already know what happens when they get their grubby mitts on the academy.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The reason why stuff like this always turns into the meta-debate about academic freedom or free speech is precisely because the actual work does not stand on the merits.

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I like how we've moved from "don't speak ill of the dead", to "don't speak ill of critics of the dead", thanks to the Worst People In Journalism

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Euan @euan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I bet when the Samaritans released that guide to media reporting on suicide they didn’t think its main use would be justifying the media driving people to suicide, but if they’d thought realistically about the British media for more than 5 seconds I’m sure they would have

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

"it is terrible that someone's mental health could be affected in this way. this is why we need real names on social media."

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

"but seeing what they'll do unbribed, there's no occasion to"

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I have, for my sins, not read any Ostrom yet but I think the biggest "what the fuck do people see in this?" reaction I've had to any academic work is the original tragedy of the commons paper

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

"I have the parental right to ensure my child never sees a trans person, ever" no you fucking don't

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

A lot of the modern right-wing discourse about rights often turns out to be "I should never have to see someone in public whose existence makes me uncomfortable" and you can't really run a society like that without going to some dark places very quickly

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Ewan Gibbs @ewangibbs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

We also need to see a more serious approach to industrial policy than counterpoising funding universities or manufacturing, which has been a trope in recent discussions. The two are in fact highly linked, particularly in modern high value-added technologically advanced sectors.

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Ewan Gibbs @ewangibbs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Any agenda for a new more regionally equal prosperous Britain would have to address the crisis facing universities.

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

sja @sam-ja.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

i'd recommend people read the response from an LGBTQ+ cancer charity to last year's EHRC proposed guidance - been thinking a lot about this particular section ever since i first read it (full response here outpatients.org.uk/2025/06/26/e...)

Screenshot of article reading:
"The suggestion that transgender people should only be accommodated in side rooms is unfeasible. As anyone in healthcare knows, available side rooms are a rare commodity. If their use was mandated for all transgender patients it would largely be unenforceable. It is necessary to consider the broad variety of people who require side rooms and their availability across the NHS. As per NHS Estates documents, increased floor area, capital cost, management, and staffing issues also need to be considered. If a redrafted single-sex accommodation policy aligns with the EHRC’s Code of Practice, we feel that it could leave transgender people without reliable accommodation options, putting their clinical outcomes at risk."

Quote from article
'“Let us take the example of Joelle, a trans woman who died of an eminently treatable cancer after waiting for eight days on a general ward, because clinicians could not agree whether she should be placed on a men’s ward or a women’s ward. The delay in treatment cost her her life.”

-Dr Roz Savage, MP'

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Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer @left-sharkey.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

when it comes framed exactly like this, you kind of get the idea that this is not quite the reckoning with his own bigotry that it is being portrayed as (and, of course, that anyone treating this account as honest is, at best, being naive)

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Reposted by Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The continued political silence over the spread of these anti-migrant, anti-refugee pogroms in the UK is a disgrace. This one has been going on for three nights in a row now and the Home Secretary and Prime Minister haven't said a single word about it www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

theguardian.com

Norfolk police arrest two men after officers injured during unrest over asylum plans

Homes of people believed to be asylum seekers attacked during two nights of violence in Thetford

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