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Ross

@rc1991.bsky.social
111 followers 304 following 6 posts

Firm believer in Hanlon's razor. Likes = interesting; Reposts = very interesting; Interesting ≠ endorsement Views are my own.

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Reposted by Ross
Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”
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YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 29/09/2026
SNAP POLL / By 48% to 28%, Britons support Andy Burnham's proposal to change the triple lock in order to help fund part of a national care service yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...
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paulusthewoodgnome @paulusthewoodgnome.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Britain... It's a class act. 🎩 Privately Educated: Senior Armed Forces 63% Senior Judges: 62% House of Lords: 52% Foreign Office Diplomats: 53% Newspaper Columnists: 50% Political Commentators: 47% Leading Podcasters: 45% BBC Executives: 38% General Population: 7% elitistbritain.suttontrust.com
elitistbritain.suttontrust.com
Elitist Britain 2025
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Richard Corbett CBE @richardcorbett.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Just 4 months after the local elections, Reform UK (RefUK) have lost 158 of their local councillors: -55 resigned -42 went Independent -28 defected -24 were kicked out -5 lost their seats -2 disqualified -2 suspended. Appalling record - and a waste of taxpayers’ money!
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Steven (with a PH) @sjksalisbury.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Christening a baby is nothing like christening a ship. I know that now. Once again I can only apologise.
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Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Or - radical idea - employers should stop expecting new recruits to come to them fully-formed and trained in exactly what that organisation needs at the particular moment, and should actually train them. And yes I know NLW and employer NIC don't help. But neither will this.
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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 11/09/2026
And I would endorse this. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/monit...
Clearly, we need some oversight and regulation. The present situation is a bit like if instead of having a Manhattan Project, we just subcontracted it out to a few private companies and set up a prize of a trillion dollars for who could build a nuke first, without any safety rules and with a general agreement that no one in the government was allowed to see what any of these guys were doing, what safety precautions they were taking, or anything else … because they’re private businesses. It can’t be the way. But at the moment it does seem to be the way. And the trillion dollar prize means that speed to get there is inevitably the overriding priority.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sad to hear Ed Davey peddling this. The *overall* tax take in the UK is historically high, but taxes on low/medium earners are low by historical standards & among the lowest in the G7. The cost of living crisis is not due to high personal taxes. Pretending it is just does the Right's work for it.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
We are Christopher Isherwood, watching the roving uniformed thuggish gangs in the Berlin street below from our apartment window above.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 06/09/2026
So in one week: 1) Reform get stung for dodgy finances, and the regulators play pass the parcel about enforcement 2) Farage announces plans to largely dismantle independent scrutiny of govt, and barely any press discussion of it 3) Masked thugs blockade a port, with narry a word from senior govt
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Ben Goldsborough MP @bengoldsborough.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This is not patriotism. It is intimidation. Hundreds of masked men in black storming Dover Port, blocking nationally critical infrastructure and chanting “I’m England until I die” is a disgrace.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 05/09/2026
Reform, the party of the worst bloke you know:
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Phil Tinline @philtinline.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
When Stafford Cripps made a speech about this sort of scenario in early 1933, people clutched their pearls so hard they were still hanging onto them in 1945 - it was one basis of Churchill's mad 'Gestapo' attack on Labour. So I trust people will react with similar vim today.
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FT @fucktheory.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Imagine being talented and beautiful and rich and famous and still the most noteworthy thing about you is how good a person you are.
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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
>imperial concubine controls national security >court eunuchs are ceaselessly fighting for internal influence >the viziers are scheming over who replaces the leader >the leader fritters away all his time repeatedly replacing the grass on the lawn >the palace debt grows greater by the day
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Tim's piece is pretty funny.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
One reason the right-wing press is freaking out about Restore is they want enough racism to have cheap labour and low taxes but not the blood and soil type which rather messes that up.
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Lottie @sellottie.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Making or changing legislation on the basis of individual cases is disproportionate by nature. Feels like we’re seeing some of the downstream effects of the recent slew of *Name’s* Law here — whatever the morally right take, it creates hyperfocus on the case in question which now backfires on gov
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Garvan Walshe @garvanwalshe.org · 01/08/2026
The question we all wondered about: what would a modern Jeremy Bentham be like, has been answered.
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Mark Watson @watsoncomedian.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I'm on the train from Montréal to Toronto. There's just been a reminder that it is MANDATORY to use headphones when watching video. I can't believe this guys have resorted to legislation, rather than our system of having 75% of the carriage sit in murderous, futile rage.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
It's driving me insane. The govt spends £1.4 trillion a year. Borrowing estimates are often by tens of billions over a year. But we're supposed to imagine money is budgeted to the last penny.
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Lee Savage @leesavage.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Kevin Keegan: he hated fascists
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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
This does make Andy Burnham the first Labour Prime Minister to not have a member of the Benn family in their Cabinet.
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 18/07/2026
Really enjoyed this article in defence of meritocracy as.ft.com/r/5afd25c1-e...
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Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
AB, a 🧵
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
It's a cliche that leaders keep promising change that never happens - but there's a case that the opposite is true. We've had one huge, structural change after another: austerity, Brexit, massive changes to immigration... What we've lacked is honesty about the costs & trade-offs of those changes.
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Stamp duty and council tax are terrible taxes. Land value tax could replace both - and Andy Burnham has backed it for 16 years. Who wins? Who loses? What happens to house prices? LVT could drive growth. But it isn’t easy. Our model shows its promise - and its problems.
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The Economist @economist.com · 13/07/2026
A groundbreaking series of studies in recent years has transformed scientists’ understanding of the condition. Register for free to learn how researchers are continuing to discover new risk factors
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The world is making heady progress in the fight against dementia
Incidence among the elderly is falling fast
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 09/07/2026
One of the most tedious, and dangerous, tropes in the British press is "crimes don't count if you do them in a car".
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
was reading Politics Against Markets, and my running theory is that it proved the original classical social democratic theorists in scandinavia correct in thinking that the hegemony of the market without social citizenship ends up making people view politics from the perspective of consumers
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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 07/07/2026
In 1998 and 1999, four of Britain's regions and nations voted for devolution. Since then, all have overperformed the rest of the country economically. Even Wales. . Also a bit of a rant about how there's more than one big city in Britain. tomforth.co.uk/agglomeratio...
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Paul Brand @paulbrand.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
NEW: The Greens won’t stand in Clacton either. That’s a clean sweep. It’s essentially Nigel Farage versus a bin.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 03/07/2026
Incidentally, this highlights a general problem about people who confuse respect for the right to hold their beliefs with respect for those beliefs. Within the general bounds of politieness, I don't have to respect anyone's beliefs. I can think you are stupid and wrong.
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Garvan Walshe @garvanwalshe.org · 02/07/2026
The easiest thing to do would be to impute a default rate like they do with the flat rate VAT scheme. Then if you do the work you get an accurate and lower rate and if you do nothing a bill is sent and can then be collected.
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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
What might a ‘cost of living populism’ look like & how would it do electorally for Labour/Burnham? Some new research via @persuasionuk.bsky.social TL;DR such a platform boosts Lab’s vote share by 15ppt (!) to 34% in our MRP experiment. This & anti-Reform squeeze is prob their best hope 🧵
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
What if Andy Burnham could raise £15bn – without a tax rise? There's one catch. He'd need to solve the UK’s biggest and least-discussed tax problem. Almost half of all small business corporation tax isn't being paid - and nobody knows why. Thread:
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Snowden St. @snowden.st · 30/06/2026
It’s just a simple fact: the Courts and the Right are making sports less safe for everyone. None of this is necessary (including at the Olympic level), and all it can do is empower abusers and endanger athletes of all types.
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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I'm pro air-conditioning, but I do feel like the intensity of the AC debate has got a bit out of hand. London has had an average of six days a year with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius (86F) in the past decade. Chicago has 30+ days at 90F (32C) a year. There's a reason Brits didn't have AC
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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I especially love this diagram.
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Ross @rc1991.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
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Eunice Goes @eunicegoes.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Great piece by @colmpm.bsky.social explaining why Britain is on the way to appoint its seventh prime minister in 10 years. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...
politicshome.com
The obsessions of the old guard are destabilising British politics
Both Labour and the Conservatives face existential challenges. Their hangups, obsessions and pathologies help explain why.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
This is the perfect Kemi Badenoch line: obviously crazy, coarsens our politics and the kind of thing that collapses if she ever put herself somewhere she might face a gentle follow-up question. What does she think the Gestapo *did*?
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 09/06/2026
I think basically this radicalisation thrives on becoming disconnected from reality and not mixing with a broad group of people, and anything you do that forces that serves as some form of prophylactic for it. Also why being exceptionally rich produces the most high profile cases.
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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
The normalisation of right wing discourse in both major political parties, let alone in much of the media, has been one of the most striking, and disturbing, changes in my lifetime. Things weren’t great in the 1960s (Smethwick) but this is off the scale.
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Jackson O'Lantern-Brien @sprobeforebros.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
GREG DAVIES: seems like a kind of a shit task. Everyone just seems like they're going home normally. ALEX HORNE: well before you say that let's have a look at how Odysseus did. cut to panel of AJAX, MENELAUS, AGAMEMNON, and DIOMEDES who are all staring at ODYSSEUS with his head in his hands
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Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 02/06/2026
Henry Nowak’s father’s words outside court, who is probably the person we most need to hear from today.
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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Too much political commentary these days seems to consist of “we should simply do [thing that doesn’t exist]”
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Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
“To defeat the scourge of populism, the government should do a procession of things that sound suspiciously like the populist’s manifesto, but crucially filtered through the economic priorities of the people paying me to write this”
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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 26/05/2026
inside of me there are two wolves and one of them says "well it is odd that people are feeling so down when sure, prices are rising but wages are keeping pace with them!" and the other one spends every day going "how much does this fucking cost now? why is everything so fucking expensive, fuck off"
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
If you totted up the sums for every financial scandal in British politics (£2k per parliamentary question for cash-for-questions, £200k for Johnson’s No 10 renovation, the cost of that very nice campervan) even with second tier stuff like Rayner and Polanski, would you get close to £5mn *in total*?
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