iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Nothing on the BBC Radio news this morning. Nothing I could find on their website. This is an MP from the party whose lead in the opinion polls normally ensures them wall-to-wall coverage. She spouts racist nonsense for which even she feels obliged to apologise. What on earth are they playing at?

lbc.co.uk

Reform’s Sarah Pochin forced to apologise after claiming adverts 'full of black people' drive her 'mad’ | LBC

The Runcorn and Helsby MP was responding to a viewer live on air who complained about the demographics of advertising.

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Institute for Public Policy Research @ippr.org · 07/08/2025

“We must win the war on child poverty” Gordon Brown via Ash Cowburn & @daveburke12.bsky.social @mirror.co.uk. Gambling tax reform could raise enough to scrap the two-child limit and benefit cap, lifting 500,000 children out of poverty: www.ippr.org/media-office... www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

mirror.co.uk

Gordon Brown blasts return of 'poverty of 60 years ago' as he makes demands

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned the Government must act now on the two-child benefit limit and said he's seen a return to the poverty of 60 years ago

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Support this, both for 'why do we have a civil service internship scheme if NOT to broaden the talent pipeline for it' reasons and for 'this is going to produce some truly amazing takes' reasons.

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Nicolai von Ondarza @nvondarza.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

I think European leaders - both national and in the EU - are underestimating what it will do to their publics to be humilated by Trump. Like the NATO summit and Rutte's 'Daddy' strategy, mabye the outcome could have been worse. But losing pride and being humilated is also a price that is paid.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Read this and ask yourself if it really makes sense for the UK to double down on the F-35 - even before we get to the questions about the reliability of UK-US defence cooperation. www.nao.org.uk/reports/the-...

nao.org.uk

The UK’s F-35 capability - NAO report

This report examines the performance of the Ministry of Defence in delivering the F-35 programme compared to its aims.

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Elle @centristmum.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Another bit of the British state that was cut for no reason and now only works if you're a fraudster www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

How fake-will fraudsters steal millions from the dead

A trail of suspicious wills led to an organised gang committing fraud and stealing millions from dead people's estates.

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Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

When someone of Louise Casey’s stature recommends one as the conclusion of a report the government commissioned, then you can’t say just say, no thanks

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Go on, someone do a list…

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Tennis Updates @tennisupdates.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Carlos Alcaraz wins 4-6, 6⁴-7⁷, 6-4, 7⁷-6³, 7¹⁰-6² against Jannik Sinner The best win of his entire career, the first 2 set comeback of his entire career. MORE Grand Slam Finals between them please and thank you 📸 Thibault Camus/AP Photo

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Stupendous win by Alcaraz - especially since it looked like he’d stopped believing in his backhand half an hour in

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

RIP Alasdair Macintyre. Good thoughtful piece. (Though I would contest the comment that by the 90s he wasn’t on undergrad reading lists. He was certainly on mine, though I guess I have @severson.bsky.social to thank for that.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

All those who were citing the need for care workers while laying into Starmer / the White Paper yesterday should read this thread:

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Wading through the reaction on here to Starmer’s speech and the White Paper, I’m reminded again that a large part of the disconnect is not people’s views on immigration - though it is true they are more liberal than the average - but how important they think it is.

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Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

IMO, both Starmer's recognition that migration is part of Britain's national story, and the warning that without more control "we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together" does a pretty good job of capturing where most Brits are on immigration.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

I was a late convert to the art of Nicolas Cage. But I think he has mastered the portrayal of mid-life masculinity in meltdown - in the way Michael Douglas did in the 90s, in Falling Down, The Game, and others. First ‘Dream Scenario’, then ‘The Surfer’, in cinemas now. It’s a great film. Go see it.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Mixed feelings at thirty years of blank reactions to my answer to “Where did you grow up?” being replaced by “Ah, the theme park place”…

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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 07/04/2025

Flashback to three months ago: Wall Street was excited because Trump would let say them say the word 'retard' www.ft.com/content/cf87...

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

@stevewebb1.bsky.social Steve, I saw you quoted in a press report on a 2023 Tax Admin & Maintenance Day announcement that HMRC would look at allowing retrospective claims for NI credits for those entitled to child benefit but not claiming. I can’t see anything more recent. Are you aware of anything?

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Never mind Project 2025, the blueprint for DOGE Republicanism was set out very clearly in an episode of Parks & Recreation 15 years ago

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Would have been more impressed if he had actually *done it* when he was in post

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Enough of these woke generals like Stan McChrystal.

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Paul Adamson @pauladamson.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Case was always more of a self servant than a civil one.

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Ciaran Martin @ciaranm.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

A 🧵on this article (£) and its connection to the University of Oxford Modern History: World History 1941-73 module’s finals exam paper in the year 1996. Bear with me 1/ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01...

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Obviously there’s a lesson for the new right here. But is there one for the ‘new establishment’ too? Why bother with such stuff when only 1-in-20 support it? (There are of course cases where there’s a good answer to that, i.e. because it’s the right thing to do. Hard to believe this is one of them.)

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Madman theory but you’re actually mad.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I think this is on the right track: mass casualties, and then being an end rather than a means, was the reason I believed in shifting the balance of liberty and security in terrorism law when working for Blunkett & Brown in the 2000s.

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Inma @inmooli.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Wicked me parece infumable. Las canciones son aburridas. La trama es totalmente plana, predecible, floja. Momentos q dan pena en pleno siglo XXI: hermana en silla de ruedas diciendo q el mejor día de su vida es cuando el leprechaun (munchkin) le pide q vaya con ella a un baile y lo acaba de conocer.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18/01/2025

(also the photo shoot is buying too much into yarvin’s self image. the guy is a dipshit loser, not some bad boy of philosophy)

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Sangsin Lee @sslee.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

1. Why did Yoon declare martial law? This is likely the question on everyone’s mind. And the answer, encapsulated in Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year, “brain rot”, might surprise you.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

They also have no original ideas. It's below-replacement level rich right-wing white guy stuff about government waste + not doing the reading to know how things works + nonsense about how cutting taxes & spending will unleash the magical unicorns of capitalism. These are boring tales as old as time.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Nice to see some rigorous work on this, but really it should not be surprising and it has been frustrating seeing how slow the penny has been to drop in some places - I was having conversations about exactly this with colleagues in government 15 years ago.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

In the history of coups and near-misses, the role of military officers who know when *not* to follow orders is vital.

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Sam Bright @writesbright.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

A gentle reminder that Kemi Badenoch admitted hacking into a website, which is a criminal offence

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

I think 15 years ago this story would have been seen as resignation territory. Not guaranteed, but in the zone. The reactions today are a reminder of how far that has changed.

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

It's astonishing in how many areas the last government's response to difficult problems was just to abandon governing: to stop processing asylum claims, stop setting realistic budgets, ignore critical warnings from the prison system, and ultimately scuttle the ship by bringing forward the election.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Vote Conservative and see net migration come down to the tens of thousands, they said. Again and again and again. Turns out they were happy to let it rise to a million. Their dishonesty was vast and shameless.

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Absolutely this. To start out by assuming there *must* be a right answer is to impose, whether explicitly or implicitly, some very questionable assumptions, about the nature and meaning of morality or political morality, before you even get going.

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Edward Luce @edwardluce.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Let's be clear: the idea that America's military lost wars because it was restrained by spineless civilians is a classic "stabbed in the back" ultra-nationalist (& fascist) trope and it's dangerous bullshit. Where US civilians were to blame was in starting the wars in the first place.

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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

A point recently made to me by a colleague: if there is one silver lining to the closure of so many preventative services during the 2010s, it is that it has provided some nice semi-random policy variation to allow research now to show the value of what we lost!

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Matt Cavanagh @mattcav.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

What went wrong with UK #immigration policy over the last 25 years? Where to start… I offered my thoughts on this BBC documentary, aired last night: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

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