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tonythecat123.bsky.social

@tonythecat123.bsky.social
19 followers 52 following 2 posts
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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Long tribute from Kemi Badenoch in her conference speech to Jeffrey Archer, complete with round of applause. The world is a "less colourful" place without him, she says, which is one way to describe a serial fraudster, fantasist and liar who wrecked several lives in the process.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
A note from Richard Barfield sets out why Matt Goodwin's projections of population & ethnic change are entirely unreliable, using simplistic + false premises that are not valid but have the impact & intent of exaggerating the rate of change rbas.co.uk/wp-content/u...
rbas.co.uk
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
There is a reassuring fantasy among those who have critiques of unfettered left-wing governance that right agrees with these critiques and will temper the left when in power. But the contemporary right isnt that, it's an apocalyptic doomsday cult that lives in an alternate reality.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The ability to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into a loss-making TV channel, bent on wrenching British politics sharply to the right, is yet another of the ways in which extreme wealth is trying to remake UK democracy. It needs to be part of any serious conversation about political funding.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Reform have launched an app & game for real-time tracking of boats crossing the channel. But some supporters have said it is boring because so little happens. There were 3 boats in last 7 days www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
independent.co.uk
Fury as Reform UK launch small boats mobile ‘game’
Reform launches mobile game amid questions over party’s £72 million donations
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Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Politico: "The latest Private Eye pulls various data together to suggest the Rachel Reeves agricultural inheritance tax changes might be having the intended impact: pushing tax-avoiders out of farmland and making it more affordable for real farmers." (Cont.)
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Paige, TheMaverickGirl @themaverickgirl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Karn meets Echoverse Karn #MTGFracture
A screenshot of Futurama depicting the alternate New New York from "The Farnsworth Parabox" depicting a normal gray colored Bender standing beside a golden Bender on the city streets.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The Chief Rabbi speaks for Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and their apologists in this country. Ed Miliband speaks for me and many other British Jews.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
What Sam said. Meanwhile, in Denmark, migrants' kids lag 20/30/40 points behind on average -and there are still people here who think *we* should copy *them* on immigration/integration.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Will the AfD winning in Saxony-Anhalt I've taken the paywall off the post I wrote last year about how memories of WW2 are being distorted by them and other radical right parties. "Never again?" samf.substack.com/p/never-agai...
samf.substack.com
Never again?
Memory entrepreneurship and the radical right’s assault on the postwar order
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia by a car bomb tested and shook the institutions of Malta: an acknowledged participant in the murder plot is acquitted of orchestrating it
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Phil Tinline @philtinline.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Free Speech news
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
You can split everyone who fell for the idiotic horseshit about defending free speech from leftist totalitarianism into two broad categories: far right cranks who always knew it was a dumb scam, and easily led idiots who didn’t stop to ask and didn’t really care.
Stephen Miller • @StephenM • 7h
A district court judge says America must admit and keep foreigners who hate America and hate Americans. Court-ordered civilizational suicide. It will not stand.
Came POLITICO 3 @politico.15h
Judge declares Rubio's speech-based student deportations violate the ConstitutionNorthern District of California Judge Noël Wise, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, sided with the Stanford Daily, which sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arguing that his use of the Immigration and Nationality Act to deport noncitizen students had foreign students refraining from writing opinion pieces critical of the administration."In the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people," Wise wrote in her opinion. "It is not the government's to take."
Another plaintiff was an unnamed woman who is a lawful noncitizen in the U.S. who was previously in the country on a student visa at a school that was not Stanford and "has refrained from publishing
and voicing her true opinions regarding Palestine and Israel and has deleted a social media account to guard against retaliation for past expression," according to court documents.A State Department spokesperson, given anonymity to discuss internal thought processes within the agency, told POLITICO that the U.S. "is under no obligation to admit or suffer the presence of individuals who subvert our laws and deny our citizens their Constitutional rights."
"More broadly, the Department of State is committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process," the spokesperson said. "A visa is a privilege, not a right."
The ruling comes after the administration's campaign last year to revoke visas and seek the deportations of foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian movement. Among those subjected to deportation proceedings were Columbia University activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts University doctoral grad Rümeysa Oztürk and Georgetown University scholar Badar
Khan Suri.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 26/08/2026
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Very depressing that this highly misleading statistic is now being promoted by Conservative Shadow Home Secretary. Philp contrasts “foreign born” with “British citizens” but a lot of the people in the “foreign born” group ARE British citizens.
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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Ok, some thoughts, as an olde tyme academic, on the Arday tragedy. First, allegations about causes. We don't know what was in his mind, but many people are keen to blame him, or woke lefties/academia, or the media. Some people are absolutely certain that the media are faultless. 1/
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
(PS. I am once again begging journalists just to do some basic homework before recycling party press releases. I am not even the expert here - @stevepeers.bsky.social or @cbarnard.bsky.social are. Why not ask them first?)
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Impressive chutzpah from JWS here: 4000 words on the spread of the "Great Replacement" theory in the UK without a single mention of his columnist/friend Douglas Murray, who wrote a whole book endorsing it...
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Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
A little thread on Trump's CRYPTO ventures because I don't think ppl are seeing how totally corruptive it is to the system. Let's start w this. When investors dump millions into Trump’s crypto ventures, what are they actually paying for? It has no intrinsic value.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I think the ultimate test of this is actually Boris Johnson. Boris *was fired from his first job* for making up stories, only to go on to be hired into a prestigious role at the Telegraph and spend years lying about the EU at Brussels. And I mean literally lying here; not bad punditry.
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16/08/2026
A former director of BBC News speaks:
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
They would do this by abolishing disability benefit and PIP and having a new benefit only for the most "severe" cases. Jenrick uses the "suicidal empathy" phrase in his quote.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is an inappropriate, credulous & politically biased BBC headline. The claims about savings will be sharply contested. News reports should not imclude what reads as an ediorial endorsememt in the headline www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16/08/2026
The BBC has a very tough job as the national broadcaster and lots of what it does involves difficult balancing acts. But this isn't one of those situations. This is just amateur hour.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Past by-elections major parties did not contest Southend West (after murder of David Amess) Cons re-elected on 86% (+27) turnout of 24% Batley 2016 (after murder of Jo Cox) Labour re-elected on 86% (+43); turnout of 24% Haltemprice 2008 (resignation) Davis re-elected on 72% (+24); turnout 34.5%
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The boats they are using are bigger but the overall number arriving is smaller. This is what a successful enforcement policy would look like - more boats are getting stopped forcing change of strategy by smugglers - but you would not know this from the alarmist bbc “LARGEST BOAT EVER” push alert
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Rachel Sylvester @rachelsylvester.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
New Scandinavian wings at Wandsworth and Pentonville jails have seen a 45% fall in assaults, 57% drop in self harm and halving of staff absence rates - fascinating results from trial into a more rehabilitative approach to prisons observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
observer.co.uk
‘Scandi wings’ offering pianos, pool and tea parties coul...
A unit in London’s Wandsworth prison has been transformed using methods from Sweden and Norway that prioritise rehabilitation over retribution
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Braverman is Home Sec from Sept 2022 to Nov 2023. She inherited highest flows, does get returns to Albania. By replacing temp protection with a ban on processing, she is the major architect of asylum hotels fiasco. (Pursues Rwanda & fails: law + operations. It may have taken 1% 300-500 of 30k-50k!)
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Honestly I think this is the bigger issue, not so much Polanski accepting the collab which I am prepared to accept was probably an oversight, albeit a really bad one.
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Nigel Farage's approval ratings have now sunk even lower than Keir Starmer's before he resigned, yet we're still being encouraged to believe he has some kind of magic connection with the British public
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
FFS - The Times used to be a vaguely serious paper. (Chart shows 5 days of movement on ten year gilts).
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
This is a really good explainer about the mortality estimates around USAID. One big point is that dismantling USAID also dismantled one of the main sources of mortality data in some of these regions. Early indicators of mortality are very worrying.
I met with, first of all, a woman named Angelina David, who is the clinical manager in Panyijiar for the International Rescue Committee clinics. She was overseeing the clinics that were shut down and could tell me exactly what happened. It was a complete shutdown, and a scramble, because there were medicines and other things on the shelves they didn’t want looted, so they had to get out to these places—and they’re very far away. You have to travel, in some cases, seven or eight hours in order to get to the extent of what’s there.

I then went and visited some of those facilities, and I connected, with her help, to the subcounty chiefs—they’re called the payam administrators—who keep their own records of deaths. So one of the things I found was that their own records showed that they are measuring an over-all tenfold increase in child and adult deaths.

Wait. A tenfold increase?

Yes.
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Ben Bradshaw @benbradshaw.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Much more interesting than Farage’s diversionary stunt was Tim Mongomerie telling #wato earlier that Reform is a dictatorship & Farage has been incapable of transitioning from running a fiefdom to prospective PM leading a party of Government.
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Ian Martin @ianmartin.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
unreposted this just so I can repost again - outrageous whether it was sloppy or disingenuous, it has now been amplified by the shittiest bastards on the internet
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Click bait racist bullshit from the Times/Chris Philp. 12 Cameroonians did not sponsor 15 dependants each. 12 new work visas were issued to Cameroonians. 180 visas were issued to dependants of the (many thousands of) Cameroonians *already here*. Etc. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
thetimes.com
Migrant care workers bring dozens of family members despite curbs
Twelve workers from Cameroon sponsored 180 dependants to join them in the year to March, as the new rules do not apply to those who were already in the UK
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Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I am confused. I thought when Josh Simons quit as an MP to call an unnecessary by-election it was a huge waste of taxpayer funds and an insult to voters?
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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Farage resigning and re-standing as an MP will not save him from parliamentary sanctions resulting from investigations. The Procedural Protocol on parliamentary conduct specifically states that any investigation by the Standards Commissioner would restart upon his re-election as an MP.
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Ruth Fox @ruthfox.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
🧵 Amid all the speculation about Nigel Farage's 2pm statement, it's worth noting paragraph 40 of the Procedural Protocol to the MPs' Code of Conduct. If he announces he's resigning and seeking a by-election, that would not automatically end the investigation into whether he breached the Code in...
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I know the list is endless but I genuinely think trashing the legitimate congressionally chartered org for celebrating the 250th to instead hijack our national assets and taxpayer funds for his personality cult grifter crap should, in and of itself, be fully sufficient to merit removal from office.
linuscatt · 1d ago
I worked at Smithsonian, specifically raising money for 250th. What I want people to know is we secured millions of private philanthropy to host a month long Folklife Festival on the mall, "The Festival of Festivals". Was going to feature well known festivals, think Burning Man, Farm Aid, Grand Ole Oprey etc. as well as smaller local and regional festivals from across the U.S. and territories. Goal was to feature truly the best and most beautiful creative expression in music, dance, arts and craft traditions, food, community etc. Can't name names but plan was to have headliners every night for free concerts.... Think the types of names who might be affiliated with the aforementioned large festivals. Stars were willing to perform because was under banner of Smithsonian. It had to all be scrapped bc the administration would not release permits to host on the mall. The money went elsewhere, but our nation was robbed of what would have been a once in a generation cultural moment.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Every single Prime Minister since 1974 has either taken office or left office mid-term, between general elections. Sometimes even both. Starmer being replaced mid-term is not constitutionally unusual. What would be unusual is if he fought and then lost a general election having been elected at one.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Apart from anything else domestic violence also rises when England win. The issue is drunk, coked up men not results.
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Danielle Blake @abradacabla.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
If you were wondering just how much Dan Hannan’s brain and soul have rotted, he’s casually sharing naked racism from his Front National supporting pals without a care in the world now.
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George Peretz KC @georgeperetzkc.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
This excellent @justicehq.bsky.social paper www.justice.org.uk/reports/from... sets out many of the reasons why Labour (unlike the Conservatives and Reform) are committed to remain in the ECHR.
justice.org.uk
From Hillsborough to Rochdale: How ECHR has helped victims
This paper tells the stories of how victims have used the Human Rights Act, which brough the ECHR into UK law, to get justice.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Meanwhile, on Kuennsberg, they are wibbling on about cutting welfare to fund defence. On this, see this excellent thread from @ruthcurtice.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/ruth...
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
the FT column in which @edwardluce.bsky.social explains why Elon Musk is a “monstrous human being”
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
I feel like we’re in for many years of “haha, they were spending taxpayer money on bug condoms—DOGE to the rescue!” turning out to be something important Elon’s Tween Team didn’t understand.
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