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Christopher Silver

@silverscribed.bsky.social
395 followers 511 following 202 posts

Recovering freelance journalist/embattled early career academic: researching journalism, culture and place. 🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿✊ www.christopher-silver.com

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Reposted by Christopher Silver
Charlie Lynch @charlielynch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I do believe that the highlight of the journalistic week approaches; that is the appearance of the Scottish public history and heritage column. You’ll of course not only be reading it, but sharing it with your friends…
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 14/09/2026
UCU members at Brighton University face the threat of derecognition. We have called an emergency rally tomorrow at 1:15pm. It would be amazing to see as many #TUC26 delegates as possible in attendance. 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 0JY
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Not the most salient point - but I think you can trace a direct line from the press shifting from (expensive) reportage to (cheap) opinion and the death of Jason Arday. Increasingly, the former just acts as fuel for the latter. News needs metrics that centre the public interest over controversy.
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Q Manivannan MSP @qmanivannan.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
The truth remains a perfect response. I’m aware of an excerpt of an old interview of mine with The Subjective Space and Dr Sindhu Rajasekaran circulating online, and commentary about its selective application. To prevent further misinformation, here’s a statement.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
If you’re at a loose end in Glasgow tomorrow why not come along and consider the politics of statues, memorialisation and empire with us @govanhillbaths.bsky.social govanhillbaths.com/what-we-do/g...
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Ach well, back to shipbuilding.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Excellent, timely, doc on the anti-apartheid movement and its wholly different era. What’s missing is a fourth episode on how the right learned more than the left from the struggle - they will never allow another Mandela bsky.app/profile/silv...
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
www.channel4.com/programmes/f...
Still from Channel 4 documentary Free Nelson Mandela
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Nick Gray @path-dependent.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
I'm surprised nobody has tried this 'welfare reform' before. It sounds like easy money for anything else the government wants to do, presumably with no negative or unintended consequences.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Their entire game plan - and all that the 20 or so able bodied kids in balaclavas were ever capable of achieving yesterday - was getting this photo widely distributed. bsky.app/profile/ncdo...
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
This BBC story on the Buchanan Street demo is like a tutorial on ill-faith framing, btw. Thousands on one side and dozens on the other, but it's the dozens to whom the headline and photo give agency, and who they suggest won a tactical victory here.
BBC headline "Anti-racism rally disrupted by masked group in Glasgow", with a picture of a bawling penis in a balaclava.
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Hannah Graham @drhannahgraham.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
A wee group of angry balaclava and mask-wearing anti-immigration guys tried to stop the good people of Glasgow showing solidarity with migrants and standing up to racism and fascism. Well, the far right are far outnumbered... #RefugeesWelcome #MigrantsWelcome #NeighboursNotStrangers #Glasgow
Photo of a small group of mostly men wearing black, with masks and balaclavas, surrounded by a Police Scotland cordon in the bottom of the photo, in the foreground. In the background, a very large colourful crowd of people with saltires, trade union banners, and hand-made signs in support of migrants and against racism have turned up to gather to show solidarity, and the far right guys were hoping to thwart that. They didn't.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Glasgow doing its thing 💪❤️
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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
"Protestors"
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Don’t see it referenced much these days, but The Country and the City captures big themes still playing out in debates about Englishness imho
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Billy OceanGate 🇵🇸 @stitzch.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Listening to the Belle & Sebastian World Cup song
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Atmospheric CO₂ of 340 ppm
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
High Priest of the Sun God: consign more first-borns to the fiery altar to maintain the cosmos on its correct axis. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump
In highly unusual intervention, ex-PM says his party’s ‘almost infinite capacity for self-delusion’ makes it likely to lose next election
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RRRMMM @strongmisgiving.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Put all the purchases from the SNP fraud case in a museum and call it the Murrell Collection
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Or Bullseye - all the “here’s what you could have one” items stored up from a seventies childhood.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
We don’t yet know how capable Holyrood’s new far right bloc will be, but Scotland’s consensus on supporting hybrid languages and cultures will need robust defence from a new breed of divisive culture warriors bsky.app/profile/pros...
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Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
What does localised public control mean? Don’t know, because you only get 1 q in a press huddle and I took the piss and asked three so was out of time. @andyburnham.bsky.social is welcome to outline what it means here - but he hasn’t said utilities nationalisation, he’s said stronger public control
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Yes, HE labour now involves witnessing the displacement of what is truly generative. I found this essay useful for zooming out from the daily AI grind last year chindusree.github.io/Reimaginingt...
chindusree.github.io
The Age of Generation, the End of Thought
A public essay on the future of the university in the world of AI.
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Tom Usher @tomusher.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
really hungover so can't express this well but something about being at the emirates last night with everyone celebrating just felt like the complete antithesis of everything the right has tried to imagine london is. people want to get along, they just need a reason to be happy and have purpose
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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
You’ll not read a better piece on Andy Burnham than this by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/9dd4... Can Andy Burnham, Labour’s charismatic chameleon, reinvent himself again?
ft.com
Can Andy Burnham, Labour’s charismatic chameleon, reinvent himself again?
Greater Manchester mayor has earned public respect by going from insider to outsider, but economic doubts could undermine his bid for Downing Street
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Delighted to share that @edinburghup.bsky.social will publish The Glasgow Herald: Journalism, Culture, Memory. This book will build on my PhD and continue to foreground the voices of Scottish journalists and the communities they built - from the pub to the print room - on a bigger historical canvas.
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Jo Grady @drjogrady.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?
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Liam J. Liburd @liamliburd.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Help stop another attempt to use the present crisis in higher education to roll back the academic study of black history and culture in the UK.
c.org
Sign the Petition
Save Black Studies at Birmingham City University
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Mike Small @bellacaledonia.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
We're celebrating 20 years of delivering high-quality independent journalism: comment, analysis, and opinion bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/05/12/b...
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Another endless doom loop news cycle in which one guy refuses to resign! = morbid consequence of stripping politics of meaning. All a deeply apolitical leadership can do is talk “management” “delivery” and “change” like KPMG stooges cause that’s the crushing smallness of their imaginative horizons.
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Imagine if Andy Burnham ran in the Arbroath & Broughty Ferry by-election and won, but then lost the subsequent leadership election and had to spend 3 years just being the MP for Arbroath & Broughty Ferry.
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
AOC on possibly running for the Senate or President: They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Blue Labour will say “better to turn Camden into a marginal in order to win Barnsley” and then get absolutely destroyed in Barnsley.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Remarkable that BBC are allowed to switch off televised coverage of a national election while the counting is still underway.
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Roseanne Watt @roseannewatt.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Shetland going SNP. I can’t even begin to tell you how seismic this is.
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Ewan Gibbs @ewangibbs.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Neither the left or right are prepared to face Britain's grave energy crisis. I've written for @theguardian.com on how decades of complacency cannot be magicked away by drilling in the North Sea – or even by hoping that renewables will quickly power everything.
theguardian.com
Both left and right are deluding themselves about the scale of the energy crisis Britain faces | Ewan Gibbs
Decades of complacency cannot be magicked away by drilling in the North Sea – or even by hoping that renewables will quickly power everything, says historian and author Ewan Gibbs
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Ignacio GHOULlup-Diaz @igallupd.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
"Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane."
thatprivacyguy.com
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!
Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user del...
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
I do think it sums up “the weird way the Internet shapes politics unnoticed” that “some chants that people should knock off but are mostly an ignorable part of an in-person march” are given more explanatory power than “the website that is full of antisemitism of every stripe that MPs hang out on”.
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Charlie Lynch @charlielynch.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Today in the public history column: Municipal dreams and street battles, ‘why drown’ and the twenty-five year struggle to reopen a 19th century swimming pool in Glasgow. www.thenational.scot/news/2607715...
thenational.scot
Govanhill determined to get back in swim 25 years after closure
In January 2001, users of Govanhill Baths in Glasgow discovered that the city council planned to shut down their local swimming pool ...
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
A bit dubious about this premium drama on toxic masculinity that features evil lesbian mums and gay bashing
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
I fundamentally believe that higher ed reform needs to begin by protecting the mission and labor of libraries
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Natasha Walter @natashawalter.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
I’ve been hearing so much anger and disappointment from frontline workers about the BBC investigation into fraudulent asylum claims. One of the most damning responses has come from one of the experts they interviewed, solicitor Ana Gonzalez. It’s really worth reading her response in full:
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Paul Langley @paullangley.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
University management spent £80 million on new building that wasn't needed (presently for sale at £14 million) and now decide 600 staff should go to 'save' £50 million. This is the math currently shaping future of UK HE. Staff paying the price for mismanagement. Govt looking the other way
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 13/04/2026
Hey, look at Substack promoting Andrew Tate as the #1 new bestseller. The company's amoral leadership & backers will platform anyone, even ludicrously toxic rapists & human traffickers.
a screenshot of the "New Bestsellers" list from Substack, with Andrew Tate in the #1 position
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
“Just stop oil”‘ doesn’t sound so mental now eh
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
This issue here is that you’d read these headlines and think he’d said something vaguely off colour. The vitriol and hate implicit in what he actually said means he has no place in public life - @scotnational.bsky.social 100% correct to publish.
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Christopher Silver @silverscribed.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Not really a “joke” though is it.
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