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Michael Birtwhistle

@salfordmh.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1.1K following 9.5K posts

Consultant Community and Rehabilitation Psychiatrist. Rides bicycles. Politically engaged. Likes a good discussion. mas.to/@SalfordMH just in case. And here.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Michael Birtwhistle
Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 9h
How Burnham is going to try and balance proposals for a National Care Service, while supporting Mahmood's immigration policies is going to...interesting, and by "interesting" I mean fundamentally unworkable. It just cannot work with the hostile immigration policies being pushed.
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Michael Birtwhistle @salfordmh.bsky.social · 6h
Bemusementists
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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 6h
Not only is it not as serious a constraint as people think, it's also self-fulfilling when the crude Keynesianism once again constrains growth and the cycle repeats.
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Scott Wortley @scottwortley.bsky.social · 11h
10/10. No notes.
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Rose Ruane @regretteruane.bsky.social · 10h
Made an appointment at le salon du kitchen scissors & once again, I’ve given myself a fringe that’s a cross between the Dave Hill in a Romulan Slade tribute band & something a cruel 17th century priest might inflict on a woman accused of pridefulness, consorting with imps or strumpetry
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onlycans @onlycans.bsky.social · 8h
You would have bumped into several of the top 5000 bluesky transsexuals!
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CEO Johnny Cans @oldmatecans.bsky.social · 10h
Cooked the books to bring in £100 mill of undeclared revenue a year for 9 years. Tried to hide it when investigated. Still claiming innocence. Everton got deducted 6 points for a one year breach of £19.5 mill, and had to pay Burnley £35 mill in compensation. It's really, really bad.
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Brían Hanrahan @hanrahanistan.bsky.social · 10h
hide in the library
B/w photo of the dramatic open plan library interior Biblioteca Vasconceles
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Roland Bates @rolandbates.bsky.social · 10h
My disgraced son-in-law is basically Geoff Norcott without jokes. Imagine that!!
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Michael Birtwhistle @salfordmh.bsky.social · 8h
the Russell Brand defence
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Beth Stratford @bethstratford.bsky.social · 14h
Well, I for one am an economist who supports rent controls! Here’s why 🧵: Markets only work well if: -buyers & sellers have roughly equal power -producers respond to price signals & expand supply in response to scarcity -buyers can walk away if prices get too high
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Beth Stratford @bethstratford.bsky.social · 14h
Opponents of rent controls typically argue that rent controls would lead to landlords selling up. Of course that presents risks. But it also presents a historic opportunity. Because when a landlord sells, the home does not vanish – only the owner changes!
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Beth Stratford @bethstratford.bsky.social · 14h
I started looking seriously at rent controls when I realised that even a huge increase in house-building & housing benefit spend wouldn’t touch the sides of this crisis. (Bear in mind that renters in poorest quintile (5th) spend 63% of income on rent!) This👇 is p.7 of www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...
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Alex Partridge @alexpartridge87.bsky.social · 10h
There's crisis comms and then there's crisis comms. Fair play to the City admin for just posting through it I suppose.
19:07 BST

Manchester City

Manchester City have just posted on X.

"Vote for your September Goal of the Month".
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 11h
We have the chance to cut bills, end the sewage scandal and stop the rampant profiteering. But instead it's more half-measures, and kicking the issue into the long grass.
Prime Minister stops short of nationalising water companies
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Iain Nicol @iainnicol.com · 19h
Red diesel is legal to burn to heat homes, hospitals, and places of worship. As is charcoal! I'm sure their defence will be pointing this out.
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Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 11h
Some people would hate to have a neighbour using what might be the last good weather of the year to stand in her garden and have a shouty phone call, but some people aren't nosy bastards like me who just want to know exactly what it is that Maria did.
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Metal Gear Solidarity @mgearsolidarity.bsky.social · 16h
The labour party is full of people like this. The best possible reason for this happening is that Josh MacAlister is almost criminally ignorant of the systems he is talking about, but it's just so much more likely this is what they want to do. They want to lie. The labour party is full of cunts.
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Jason @greedyrunner.bsky.social · 15h
I fondly remember the days when chart bands played town halls, student unions, and other modest venues, and tickets didn't cost more than a budget package holiday.
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Tristan Grayford @tristangrayford.scot · 15h
If a party which currently holds power promises to deliver on something but only after the next election that is a non-pledge. It is utterly meaningless and can be completely ignored.
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Tristan Grayford @tristangrayford.scot · 18h
Burnham is stacking a whole lot of things under a list of "Todo, IF we win the next General Election" and quite a lot fewer things under "Todo, currently, whilst we hold power with a huge majority"
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Rob Palk @robpalk.bsky.social · 15h
Remembering when for no good reason i pretended to be Nabokov ranking various bears
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 16h
Why is the Government going after pensioners? It's time to tax the rich
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Ed Poole @edpoole1975.bsky.social · 15h
And giving a universal benefit makes sure the needy get it and taxing it back from people with higher incomes makes sure it's fair. Telling a visually impaired 96 year old they need to fill in their financial details on the online portal is not going to ensure the people who need support get it.
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edith @edithcharles.bsky.social · 18/10/2023
Merrida from Brave explaining somethingA pickle jar labelled “pickled makok in brine”
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Beefcake Dad @jeffsreturn.bsky.social · 17h
Googling Tony Blair Arms Deal to find out what the deal is with those arms
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StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻 @strictlychristo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This also sums up the American healthcare experience pretty well. American healthcare is a travesty. This is the bad place.
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Gareth Watkins @garethwatkins.bsky.social · 19h
There's a weird puritan streak to how this article is written where the writer keeps noting that the people who run the business side of porn are normal - they wear gilets and work in 'nondescript offices', as opposed to what? A building shaped like a giant cock? www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
theguardian.com
‘Online sex workers literally have to bare it all’: why Patricia Nilsson is exposing the world’s biggest porn bosses
As a business journalist, Nilsson began rigorously reporting on the power players of the adult industry, who prefer to remain in the shadows. Along the way, she uncovered how porn has shaped the inter...
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Chris Farnell @thebrainofchris.bsky.social · 18h
See?! This is how you do it.
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Chris Farnell @thebrainofchris.bsky.social · 19h
Honestly, yes. All businesses should theme their architecture, furnishing, stationery and outfits around the point of their business like a 1960s Batman villain.
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The uni also has a director of Change and Improvement. He didn’t like it when I asked when he would turn his hand to the latter.
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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 19h
We've been doing "let's scrap [benefit] to fund [promised future public service] for close to two decades now, and while we have succeeded in scrapping benefits we do not seem to have funded any more public services. And somehow we still don't have any money.
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politicaliverpool.bsky.social @politicaliverpool.bsky.social · 18h
We’re back to a failure to understand that the neoliberal cuts in one area to fund another has no fertile ground for cuts, there is no area with fat to trim, everything was reduced to almost nothing during the “austerity years” and was never replaced, every area will have pushback
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Sinan Kose @thesinankose.bsky.social · 18h
So on the one hand Labour has made the mostly correct assessment that pensioners don't really vote for them anyway so they can punish them, but has incorrectly assumed any other age cohort is remotely interested in them and that some of us like our parents who are almost retirement age.
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The Ranty Highwayman @rantyhighwayman.bsky.social · 22h
Seeing Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in October, it is pretty clear from @london.gov.uk's Transport for London project page that anyone cycling is of no interest as they are not mentioned. tfl.gov.uk/travel-infor...
tfl.gov.uk
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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 18h
We are two decades into "let's cut benefits x to pay for service y" and while benefit x continues to be cut, service y never materialises. Why will your way be different this time?
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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 18h
Basically you're trying to punish boomers by implementing a policy that will have barely any impact on property owning boomers but *will* have serious impacts on the people coming up behind them who already are renting into their 40s and haven't got the housing wealth or final salary pensions.
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STC @blobbystc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Getting rid of the triple lock is bad, actually
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Gordo! @posting.fan · 19h
living in Britain is listening to very Sensible People happily talking about how we need to reduce the benefits 'burden' in the cruelest way possible while being cheered to do it, but any suggestion that we abolish the monarchy or reduce our military budget is treated as the ideas of a rambling fool
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Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 19h
Funny thing I recall the debate back when it was linked to inflation not earnings which was seen as unfair and at the time I thought "link to inflation seems a fair basis for a state benefit" and now that earnings rarely keep track with inflation of course the distinction has switched the other way.
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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 20h
The fundamental structural problem with the British economy is that, for decades now, "working for a living" is a mug's game compared to living off asset inflation and rents, and even as the wheels come off that system nobody has any inclination to change it.
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Sam Turner @renrut-mas.bsky.social · 20h
There's some deep doublethink happening. It's a universal benefit (which is provably better than means tested) and it's aimed at a group who are more likely to be on a low income than the working age population. Versus: yeah but some boomers bought houses for 50p
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รℓσαɳε ℓყรɓεƭɦ @sloanelysbeth.bsky.social · 20h
pensions are welfare. this government is announcing yet another welfare cut. jus bcos it hits older ppl doesn’t mean you should be cheering it on. 🙄
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Cluster Block🌈 🍉 @clusterblock.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Quick clarification because i’ve seen discourse containing vocab errors. Dogging: involves cars. Straight people do this type. Cruising: the gay kind. Cruising ground: the location. Often wooded. Cottaging: crusing in toilets. Named because they often looked like little cottages in parks.
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Andy Hearn 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈⚽️🎶🌈 @andyhearn24.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There's nothing worse than an establishment shill, they're already out in force declaring the triple lock on pensions to be unsustainable because they've been told it's unsustainable. It's the worst pension in the developed world, to suggest we can't keep the protections it has is utterly false.
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Michael Birtwhistle @salfordmh.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🎵I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm so, so wealthy🎵
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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In theory you can’t pick brambles/ blackberries after tomorrow, but this year that ship sailed some time ago…
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Tympanic & Frisketty @luckyerica3.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
People are like 'mental health is this nebulous, fluctuating, mysterious public health issue' and no, we absolutely know what people need and it's quantifiable. Give people money.
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Amelia Clark - Lover of Flagons @gingertotty.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
V proud of the pretend firstborn. Who can now herd his sheeps over some bridge in Lancaster, or summat… :) In other news - my nibwork needs practise! #heraldry #lancaster #freeman #calligraphy
Little calligraphic and heraldic folly I created for the Bonus Firstborn, who I didn’t have to Born. But is technically mine by dint of me snogging his dad 

Silly heraldic device with personal kebab and running shoe and pirate ship augmentations - for lols. 

He is a fine young man. I am proud…
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Great moments in Scottish engineering history: James Watt tries to work out how his phone attaches to his selfie stick.
Statue of James Watt. In his right hand he holds a telescopic stick with a frame at the top; in his left he holds a flat object about the size of a large smartphone. He is scowling at the possibly-not-a-smartphone as if he is tempted to yeet it into the sea. On that basis, it probably _is_ a phone.
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