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Owen Michael

@owenwmichael.bsky.social
2.7K followers 2.8K following 12K posts

Welsh and European. Biromantic Asexual. @UKLabour, @unisontheunion, and @thefabians. Data person and all round geek. He/him/o

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Reposted by Owen Michael
But Andrew Hickey Died Ten Years Ago This Very Night @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 2h
What I always find fascinating about this stuff is that the "non-brewed condiment" label isn't, as you'd think, to do with modern food-labelling laws. It's because of the temperance movement more than a century ago.
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Robin Wilde @robinwilde.me · 2h
I can hear the screeching U-turn that happened during the naming of this business
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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 4h
The reason I focus a bit on the Greens and the crank-left is because I think they're now a long term force in politics. They will be part of any coalition and shape the left debate. And we cant, as the left, afford a party with that influence and following to be our version of Restore.
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Kuba @kayes67.bsky.social · 4h
I respect some people who left the Labour Party under Keir Starmer and joined the Greens, but, let me be real here, the foreign policy views on display here vary between mad and unconscionable (and I saw someone refer to the camp-y “emotional support IRGC” in a reply, hats off)
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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 4h
I do think the Labour Party is too willing to block motions but things like this remind me why
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Michael @michaeljsc.bsky.social · 6h
I think there’s a cousin of this that implicitly starts from the principle that winning political consent to rejoin would be nigh impossible, and then backfills procedural difficulties to rejoining rather than say their worry is domestic politics.
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Phil Tinline @philtinline.bsky.social · 10h
One implication of this caricature is that the government that lost power in 1979 somehow didn't champion Western values. Given that it was the last UK government led by a veteran of the war against Nazism, I don't find that very persuasive.
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Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 21h
Jews could be and still are the victims of antisemitism regardless of their levels of oppression in the state and society in which they live(d).
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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 15h
people can be both oppressed and oppressors
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Andrew Reeves @andrewsshi.bsky.social · 23h
The issue with "monsters are marginalized people in fantasy clothes" is that it ends up with things like people making orcs more explicitly like people from IRL sub-Saharan Africa. "There's kind of a racist subtext with orcs, so we've fixed it by making them H. Rider Haggard Zulus." Which, um.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 21h
last night at dinner we were talking about how much tracey sucks and the server overheard and was like are you talking about michael tracey? that guy fucking sucks, and it was very satisfying
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Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Who is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar?" is a question that neither neocons nor the far left can actually answer. The Taliban being an absurdly parochial Kandahari militia also doesn't really register with most people.
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Nathan @nwylabour.bsky.social · 23h
I understand the urge to say 'we should simply not allow this to happen', and I don't disagree with it as an aspiration, but I also think if we continue to rely wholly on state media to transmit progressive messages we're going to come unstuck.
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
it's relieving the GW, just like the Makin Island is relieving the Boxer, just like all of these are rotational swapouts and not additive how are you all still falling for this 8 months in, this is jangling keys toddler levels of attempted misdirection from some of the dumbest admin members and yet
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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 23h
Oof
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The Alternate Histoween 🎃 @althistorian.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
You know an arguement for abolishing the death penalty is that we're better than Pike. We understand that killing is horrible and wrong. If we're just as brutal as her than I fear all we did is breed several more Pikes.
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Daniel @deargodwhaat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
More generally, wasn't Music Hall type singers or the whole genre absolutely enormous, and essentially never recovered from the invention of television?
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Charles EP Murphy @cepmurphy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Everyone loves Dunk Poster, the poster who does epic dunks on things we hate! [five minutes later] We regret to report Dunk Poster has dunked on the thing we like.
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The cope from some Man City fans is that the sham sponsorship income meant the club overstated revenue and so overpaid corporation tax. So they are due a refund! Awesome! Um, no. City paid *zero* corporation tax because they lost buckets of money. The receipts:
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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Oh go on then 12axes.vercel.app/results?est=...
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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I have never seen anyone make this argument, on bluesky or elsewhere. What we have all seen is people claim repeatedly that they did in fact stop saying weird, which is false. The fact that consultants, who were ignored by the candidates but amplified by the press, were opposed to it is uncontested
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Micah @rincewind.run · 01/10/2026
Discworld QOTD, from Unseen Academicals “But, it was a funny thing: every day something happened that was important enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. She’d never bought it and seen a little sign that said ‘Not much happened yesterday, sorry about that’.”
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026
"they really believe it"/"they will try to do it"/"the promises are real" are things that most americans refuse to believe about politicians but if you take them seriously will help you predict political behavior more often than not
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"What do the following people have in common: Anthony Hopkins, Shirely Bassey and Tom Jones? That’s right: all of them have been alive longer than Cardiff’s been their nation’s capital." Of Cardiff, Welsh history and what it means to be a capital
jonn.substack.com
The Audacity of Hope
This week: Andy Burnham’s bringing sunshine back. Also: of Cardiff, Welshness and what it means to be a capital; and a helpful map of accident blackspots.
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Simon Alvey @salvey1.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Also the Welsh Christian Party went into the 2007 Assembly election campaigning to replace it with the flag of St David because the dragon was a symbol of Satan
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The BBC switching its local resources from radio to the website has been disastrous for the business model of local newspapers, but you have to balance that against how good it has been for 'the BBC's opponents' and 'random companies who now get a PR hit on the biggest news website in the UK'.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Was interviewed by a US journalist today who asked if we were all panicking about terrorists at Fairford, which ended with me trying to explain dogging.
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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
There are ethical and religious reasons to be opposed to the death penalty, but one of most obvious alternative ones is the simple bureaucratic incompetence associated with most of it.
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Thorne 🌸 @ens0.me · 30/09/2026
The heartening part of this is because the baseline expectation for governments has shifted so far in the right direction. For most of human history, you couldn't expect things like due process or democracy. Now, authoritarian governments are forced to at least play pretend in most cases.
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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I will also say that even in purely formulaic space opera or MilSciFi there are absolutely differences in quality that are very noticeable.
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Notes from Poland @notesfrompoland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
After eight years of service, Cobra, one of the first dogs to serve in the security force of Poland’s parliament, has retired. To mark the occasion, the speaker of the parliament personally informed Cobra of the decision.
notesfrompoland.com
Speaker of Polish parliament signs off on service dog's retirement after eight years of "exemplary" service
​
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Jo Kibble (Political Animal) @politicanimal.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
We rightly give Home Office ministers a hard time here for many things, but in their defence, not one of them has ever ordered the Identity & Passport Service to mail out passports in envelopes that might as well be printed with the words ‘Important identity document enclosed: please steal’.
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TheLightdancer @thelightdancer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Both the US and the USSR were regularly tripped up by the seemingly obvious discovery that allies, or even satellite states, were made of people with minds of their own and the willingness to act upon having them. It's one of the more tragicomic aspects with historical distance.
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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"it is easier to get high-quality diasporic food in parts of the world where that diaspora lives" is a proposition people people have trouble with but it seems pretty straightforward.
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
yep, it's not an accident that the UK generally does Indian food a lot better than the USA and the USA generally does Mexican food a lot better than the UK
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Sam (ABeardedPanda) @abeardedpanda.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The thing that pisses me off the most about this one is State never actually used the g-word because of the diplomatic implications of R2P and this same crowd of people pointed at that statement back in 2020 to say "Look, even the State Department doesn't think it's a genocide..."
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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I am now wondering if a significant gap I hadn't noticed before is that for the median reasonably informed but not in party politics voter party conferences are primarily covered in terms of the rally aspects
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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Honestly? All of these sounds like good ideas
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Die Capuccinogruft @thomas.escritt.eu · 30/09/2026
I mean I'm an idiot for engaging with this low-effort bad-faith nonsense, but yeah the limited autonomy of Barcelona and Hamburg, lol
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Kate Osborne MP @kateosbornemp.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My full speech at the Labour for Trans Rights rally at Conference. This is an incredibly difficult time for trans & non-binary people, facing a relentless attack on their rights & dignity. I want everyone in our community to know that I’ll never stop standing alongside you & fighting for equality.
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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I also think about Elon saying Biden's DOJ wouldn't prosecute Sam Bankman-Fried because he was a Dem donor... followed by Biden's DOJ nailing SBF, who now posts about how awesome Trump is so he can get a pardon.
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Lewis Baston @lewisbaston.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I’m actually sorry to see this. I hope someone independent and centre-right does cooperate with the commission, perhaps someone from the UUP?
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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Sorry what do you mean the last Vice President of the 3rd Republic's chamber of Deputies 1) Was from Guadeloupe 2) Voted to dissolve the 3rd Republic 3) SAT ON THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE FRENCH STATE
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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Listen so long as Americans are putting marshmallows in green bean "casseroles" and insisting Turkey is somehow nice can we put this all to rest. You've got fantastic food, we have fantastic food, let's just...have a party
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Yuan Yang @yuanfenyang.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I was proud to once again speak at the Labour for Trans Rights rally at Labour Conference today, alongside many other allies in Parliament. (1/2)
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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s mostly the wars, tbh. The Great Depression followed by WWII and the serious food shortages that came with it did a number on British food (and also on the palates of people who didn’t remember anything better)
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Amrk @amrk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It also addresses the farcically low bar for getting a statue in like, 1885. Cardiff is full of statues to like, the deputy mayor and I don’t even know if they were problematic it’s just in 1900 they gave out statues to people who now don’t have Wikipedia pages
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Nathan @nwylabour.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Weird thing about this is that a) Shabana Mahmood is a Brummie, b) she doesn't really use progressive rhetoric
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 30/09/2026
Said this before, but you could write an interesting book on the books/films/music that were huge in their time but rapidly disappeared from any collective knowledge. Only hardly anyone would read it, because they wouldn't recognise them.
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Will Cooling @willcooling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This is undoubtedly true and I think a lot of companies have bet heavily on IP on the mistaken understanding that there are "forever" characters or acts, when they're subject to quite rapid decay.
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