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Parkin and Tea

@parkinandtea.bsky.social
315 followers 545 following 726 posts
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I lost friends over antisemitism in Labour. I tried to argue that the fact that people on the right were trying to use antisemitism as a weapon against Labour (and they were, in bad faith) did not mean that antisemitism did not exist in Labour (it did). This argument still echoes.
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Б'єрнберт @bjornbert.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 03/10/2026
Meta has enabled Muse to build extensive and ever-growing profiles on the orbit of people in a user’s life. Based on user input but also “publicly available information.” Whether that means a web search, Facebook’s own extensive data, or buying data broker info…we don’t know? And we can’t opt out.
wired.com
Muse Creates Detailed Profiles of All Your Friends and Family
Millions have downloaded Meta’s AI agent Muse. But getting it to do your bidding comes with privacy costs.
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Eleonor Piteira @eleonorpiteira.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Started as a little study and became another one of the 'Secret Society of Unpractical Headpieces in Space' series (that still does not exist) 🪐
Illustration by Eleonor Piteira showing a black woman with an elaborate golden headpiece. Her hair is curly and long, she's wearing a dress, and gold and blue make up on her eyes. She is framed by a circle and behind her there is a space view with a star and small planets.
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absolute horses @jcoglan.com · 03/10/2026
it's been very noticeable that whatever noises burnham has been making about changing direction, they do not include anything about fixing this horrific situation
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The Bear @bearlypolitics.co.uk · 03/10/2026
The average salary in 1976 was around £3,744 while the average house cost £12,700. That’s currently seven times the average wage vs around 3.5 times in the 70s. In London it’s even worse. We have to get to the point where we acknowledge that young people do have it significantly harder than
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Pam Jarvis @drpam.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Three years gone by since this article was published and you are still losing good staff through stress and burn out. Why on earth are you giving millions of £££s of public money to this horror show? #EduSky @lucympowell.bsky.social
yorkshirebylines.co.uk
‘We felt like criminals’ – teachers talking Ofsted
Over 3,000 teachers have contributed to a spreadsheet laying bare the anguish of Ofsted inspections
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Pam Jarvis @drpam.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
No, get rid of OFSTED and go back to the HMIs @lucympowell.bsky.social They have been a cancer creeping through the fabric of education for decades. For which we must have paid billions by now.
theguardian.com
England school inspections to be overhauled again after barrage of complaints
Exclusive: Education secretary sends Ofsted back to ‘drawing board’ as teachers raise serious concerns about new system
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Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
In addition to being the UK's most Kremlin-sanctioned newspaper, Byline Times has now been banned two years running from both Conservative and Reform UK party conferences. Judge us by our critics, and subscribe to support our work: subscribe.bylinetimes.com @peterjukes.bsky.social
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Reading Museum @readingmuseum.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Haven’t got tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum? Don’t worry you can visit Reading's full-size copy, faithfully embroidered by 35 women in 1885-86 (plus extra pants!) Or latest blog compares the two tapestries www.readingmuseum.org.uk/blog/comparing-bayeux-and-reading-tapestries
readingmuseum.org.uk
Comparing the Bayeux and Reading tapestries
Reading’s Bayeux Tapestry is a full-size copy of the original 11th century tapestry. It was created in 1885-1886 by 35 women of the Leek Embroidery Society 'so that England should have a copy of its o...
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
UK airlines to be banned from charging parents to sit with children. Some people charged up to £104 extra. Neoliberals routinely moan about regulation but are silent on customer rip-off schemes. If businesses were ethical we wouldn't need regulation.
theguardian.com
UK airlines to be banned from charging parents to sit with children
Planned rule change forms part of Burnham’s bid to crack down on the ‘little charges that add up’
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Isabelle Finn-Kelcey @isabellefk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
“Schools become sites of linguistic sanctuary … There would be a moratorium on classroom tools that function as powerful mechanisms of linguistic injustice [eg] AI, standardised testing, punitive discipline policies & commercially produced curricula” Yes please 🙏 #postnormalpossibilities
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Alejandro @ghostland6.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This isn't hope. This is terror. Labour and Burnham look to terrorise disabled people
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
South West Water pleaded guilty to sewage dumping, fined £8m, a decade after the events. Yet govt introduced more deregulation. England's water industry controlled by organisations with criminal convictions. None has licence revoked. No exec prosecuted. Customers fleeced.
bbc.co.uk
South West Water fined almost £8m for sewage spills
South West Water previously entered guilty pleas to pollution offences spanning six years.
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
‘If you’ve got £1 million or £2 million to spend on political advertising, forget it,…. If you’ve got £8 million, you can make people believe anything you want.’ I wrote about Britain’s broken political finance system for the latest @lrb.co.uk
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 02/10/2026
This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The planning contradiction is impressively neat: it accepts that 809Mt of GHG emissions will worsen global warming. It says leaving the coal in the ground would make a difference …then approves the mine anyway. Climate science only matters up until the decision. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The green light for the largest coalmine in NSW history is shocking proof that our governance systems are betraying Australians | Georgina Woods
There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair?
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Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Latest piece out. There was some confusion about why the UK, France and the Baltics were not invited by the US to its NATO meeting. Its actually brutally simple and part of a US strategy of divide and rule towards European security. And it might work. phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/divide-and...
phillipspobrien.substack.com
Divide And Rule: The US Strategy Towards Europe
And Why It Could Work
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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Working theory: 1. Good news needs help to spread in a way bad news rarely does (negativity bias, we're become news extremophiles, etc) . 2. Social media is optimized for HIGH EMOTION. 3. Therefore it is not hard to get people ANGRY. 4. The cost of that is anxiety, cynicism, despair. But...
Fake news chyron saying "BREAKING NEWS: OH WHAT THE FUCK. NOW"
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River @riverlorien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Are Disabled People Invisible? 'Andy Burnham’s speech made absolutely no mention of working-age disabled people, who make up a third of social care users and currently pay increasing care charges from benefit payments'.
disabilityrightsuk.org
Are Disabled People Invisible?
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Peter Crosbie @petercrosbie.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Autism has always been with us.
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John Harris @johnharris1969.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Yesterday evening, the Save SEND Legal Rights petition started by Tee-Jay, a fantastic autistic campaigner who is just 15 years old, galloped past the post of the 100,000 signatures needed to spark a Parliamentary debate. The battle continues! www.specialneedsjungle.com/government-m...
specialneedsjungle.com
Oops, we did it again... The Government must now listen to more than 100,000 people who do not want to lose SEND rights — Special Needs Jungle
The amazing feat you helped achieve that says the Government MUST listen to more than 100,000 people who don't want to lose SEND rights
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glastomichelle.bsky.social @glastomichelle.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The stars at night on Glastonbury Tor. St Michael's tower looking like it might take off.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Richest 1% of Britons owns more wealth than the bottom 70% of the population combined. 50 richest families hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population combined. The concentration of wealth in fewer hands has not provided the necessary economic stimulus. Need redistribution.
leftfootforward.org
This is how the Chancellor can increase the personal allowance and lift millions out of hardship
Sustained economic growth can’t be achieved without a major boost to the purchasing power of the bottom 50% of the population
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Kat Smith @felineforger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
One of the things that's most frustrating about having an "invisible" disability like ME/CFS is the judgment I get from others. I "look" fine, but you can't see I'm masking my pain and fatigue. You can't see the despair of being unable to do the simple things I used to. I "look" fine, but I'm not.
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Alom Shaha @alomshaha.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Have gone for a run in a beautiful public park and it‘s paid for and maintained by public money and it seems like we could so easily have more public money and make life so much nicer for so many more of us but we somehow let a minority of people decide we shouldn’t do that.
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SEND Warrior Mum making a difference! ( same as Twitter!) @sendwarriormum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
3.5k needed now, you’re all amazing. Let’s smash this together today! 💪💪💪💪👇 Petition: Protect legal right to support for children with SEND I believe that the Government’s proposed SEND reforms could limit EHCPs, weaken legal rights and fail children. #SEND petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...
petition.parliament.uk
Petition: Protect legal right to support for children with SEND
I believe that the Government’s proposed SEND reforms could limit EHCPs, weaken legal rights, replace individual plans with packages, reduce appeals, and remove school choice. In my view, children cou...
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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward
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Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
'Water is a symbol of what has gone wrong with Britain. A service where the shareholders never lose and the public never win' PM Andy Burnham announces plans for a law change to allow public ownership of water companies 👏
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob." —FDR, 1936 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
How A.I. Super PACs Are Trying to Influence the Midterms
See how groups aligned with Anthropic and OpenAI have funneled major money into the fight for control of Congress.
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I still don’t think Labour has really come to terms with the fact that they’re in government. Their policies have real impact. It’s no longer just about how they look to the press and social media.
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The Bear @bearlypolitics.co.uk · 29/09/2026
The Fairford incident is dominating the news cycle - and the right-wing. Over the past 48 hours we’ve seen speculation, insinuation and implication attempt turn a serious story about security into one about immigration. This is a long one. Make some tea.
bearlypolitics.co.uk
A Dissection: The Fairford Fannywobble
How the right-wing commentariat turned an ongoing investigation into a migrant story before the facts were known.
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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Govt minister Josh MacAlister claims unemployed young people are paid with PIP to be out of work. Except PIP isn't an out of work benefit, plenty of people who receive PIP are in work & PIP enables them to do that. Josh knows this. What hes doing is whipping up anger towards disabled people.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Schools forced to shut amid burst Thames Water pipe ‘leaking 750 litres a second. TW infrastructure has average age of 79 years. Industry average is 56 years. 40% of TW assets are over 100 years old. Profits siphoned-off, investment neglected, execs rewarded, customers fleeced
theguardian.com
Schools forced to shut amid burst Thames Water pipe ‘leaking 750 litres a second’
Leak causes outages and low pressure in parts of London and Surrey, affecting 6,000 properties and leaving some without water
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Special Needs Jungle @spcialndsjungle.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
There are just 15 days left until Tee-Jay’s petition to protect SEND legal rights closes on 14th October. We need to get 16,000 more signatures. Will you help us get there? petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...
petition.parliament.uk
Petition: Protect legal right to support for children with SEND
A petition created by a British citizen or UK resident. You can share this petition if you agree with its message.
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East Anglia Bylines @eastangliabylines.co.uk · 29/09/2026
Letter to the editor: The reopening of the UK resettlement scheme for vulnerable Afghans and Palestinians is welcome – but Simon Everett argues that limited safe routes sit uneasily alongside tougher treatment of long-term legal residents.
eastangliabylines.co.uk
Letter: Real immigration reform means upholding human rights, not posturing
Letter to the editor
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics. He’s just the worst symptom. The disease is the system that allows corporations to buy and sell politicians so they can rig it against the rest of us. Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for All.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Houses can be built on floodplains despite failing safety test, says UK high court. Profitable for developers, misery for buyers/residents. Problems with insurance, reselling, quality of life. Too many defective homes built. Get a private survey before buying a new home. Must change laws.
theguardian.com
Houses can be built on floodplains despite failing safety test, says high court
Decision to allow 190 controversial new homes in north Somerset sparks campaign for change in the law
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Oni @onidraws.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Welp here goes nothing. These are Crystarium themed earrings and they will be available next month in my shop. #FFXIV #jewelry #resin
A photo of earrings in resin with golden decorations on them. The resin is crystal shaped, blue and transparent with some gold foil in it. There's also a flower ornament on top of the earring.
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Dragons of Wales @dragonsofwales.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Here be Dragons. 👇
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A great illustration of the way social media has essentially shredded society’s informational immune system: The USSR spent a fortune trying to spread conspiracy theories, without success because they couldn’t crack newsrooms. Today, you can reach the globe with a post that costs $20 to make.
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East Anglia Bylines @eastangliabylines.co.uk · 28/09/2026
A year ago, The Bear walked away from Twitter. It cost him readers and income, but gave him something he values rather more. Now he looks back at why he left – and why he has no regrets.
eastangliabylines.co.uk
A year without Twitter: what I lost when I walked away
A year after quitting Twitter, The Bear reflects on readers, income and sanity involved in walking away
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vinnienoir.bsky.social @vinnienoir.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
It's about time we stopped deferring to economic illiterates. Can they be more foolish? www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/06...
taxresearch.org.uk
Richard Murphy’s Views On…Inflation
This post is one of an ongoing series explaining Richard Murphy's views on significant topics in economics, political economy, politics, taxation, and accounting. It should be read as such, as an over...
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Yorkshire Dales National Park @yorkshiredales.org.uk · 28/09/2026
A view so good even Turner painted it. 🎨💦 Hardraw Force has been inspiring visitors for generations. Framed here by autumn colour and dramatic limestone cliffs, it's easy to see why artists, walkers and photographers keep coming back. 📸 Wendy McDonnell | #YorkshireDales #Autumn #Hardraw
Hardraw Force waterfall cascading from a high limestone cliff into a rocky gorge. Autumn trees with golden and orange leaves surround the falls, while a wooden gate and large boulders sit in the foreground beneath the towering rock face.
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Special Needs Jungle @spcialndsjungle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
NEW POST: Contrary to political narratives, new research finds social networks and friendships in special schools thrive just as much as in mainstream. The research authors explain more on SNJ: www.specialneedsjungle.com/research-soc...
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Dan Bongard @danbongard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I think you have it backwards. Spinning the story as "AI bros exploit women" makes it easy to write the whole thing off as a problem confined to a widely-hated group instead of a problem that continually crops up *any place rich men have power over women*.
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🌿Rowynn Ellis @rowynnellis.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Dragons dragons DRAGONS!!! I love drawing dragons 🐉
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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is the definition of a PR stunt. Mahmood's "safe routes" are so restrictive and limited to be effectively worthless. Considering Labour has closed more safe routes than previous government, this is a purely media driven move over providing genuine protection. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
UK to open new refugee resettlement routes for Afghan women and Palestinians
Exclusive: Move by Shabana Mahmood comes after closure of Afghan scheme last year but experts say numbers too small to deter Channel crossings
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Geertje Geertsma 🍄 @geertje-geertsma.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Mooi gaaf nog deze Panteramanieten, ik zei net toch weer Tijgeramanieten 😅
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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
An ancient and magical amber bear 🐻 ✨ Carved some 10,000 years ago, it washed up on a beach at Fanø in Denmark from a submerged Mesolithic settlement under the North Sea. National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen 📷 by me #Archaeology
My photo shows a small and ancient figurine of an amber bear carved some 10,000 years ago during the Danish Mesolithic period. The museum lighting makes the amber glow translucent orange against a dark display case background. The bear is displayed on a small metal stand viewed in profile facing right. The ears, muzzle, and mouth are defined. The neck has a polished groove suggesting it was once suspended on a cord. The characteristic shoulder hump of a brown bear is clearly defined. There are some finely incised horizontal lines along the belly. The legs are incomplete. Length 6.5cm. Amber has many properties which may have been associated with 'magic' for ancient peoples. For example, when rubbed against fur, amber produces static electricity which can give off sparks in the dark, make hair stand on end, and attract small things towards it.
The bear was found in 1991 on a west coast beach of the Danish North Sea island of Fanø. It is one of a small number of amber animal figurines from the Baltic Sea region which have been assigned to the Mesolithic period by means of a typo-chronological approach and /or other contextual information.
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