Noghar

The collapse of the UK was hastened by Brexit, but it's been coming for a long time. Destroy the public sector and hand over water, energy etc to the profiteers. Then, as Starmer is doing, flog off the rest of the UK to billionaires. Started with Thatcher. It's called #Neoliberalism. Read this!

Rockstar Games delays Grand Theft Auto VI – again – to late 2026 The hugely anticipated sequel was due to arrive in May of next year but has been pushed back to November 2026

www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n....
Weird the Guardian of all outlets omits to mention that Rockstar fired loads of their engineers for daring to join a union. I'm sure that has nothing to do with GTA6 being delayed a year

Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?

“Quite what Nandy believes the role of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport actually should be remains mysterious” @roberthutton.co.uk thecritic.co.uk/the-culture-...

Robbie Gibb was appointed to the BBC Board by Boris Johnson, was an editorial advisor for GB News, and worked as Theresa May's Director of Comms.

He is not impartial or neutral. The government should remove him from the Board immediately to protect the BBC's independence.

My one #politics post of the day.

Starmer's refusal to clear out Tory appointments to the BBC Board and other public bodies from day one was at best deeply naive.

Again we come back to the mystery of what Labour were doing pre-2024 election as it definitely wasn't preparing for power.

It’s not at all clear to me how the BBC can do any kind of serious journalism if its top two bosses can be forced to quit over such an obviously confected scandal. There is no substantive error here. How can the BBC report on Trump, or Farage, or anyone else, in these circumstances?

From a few years ago but Prospect have tied so many things together that the bias is plain to see

Note how OpenAI uses the Zuckerberg defence - omg this is awful, we're so sorry, this will never happen again' and then do precisely nothing

Are none of them attracted to the completely available option of being, say, the one guy who spent 90 billion on tackling climate change, and becoming, forever after, the most beloved man on planet earth, all while still retaining more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes?

🎬 The arts aren’t a luxury - they’re an export.

At #Lab25, @aiannucci.bsky.social reminds us that the UK’s Creative Industries make up 6% of our economy and 7% of our workforce - the GDP equivalent of oil + car industries combined.

🎥 Watch more clips from the Creative UK Pavilion hubs.ly/Q03QVhV90

hahahahaha SHOCKEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

And clear the Tory placemen out of Ofcom and the BBC while they're at it

Feck me, for a minute I thought this was national. It should be

And going "We will simply have more growth if people work harder" is magic thinking with no basis in reality. You get growth when money is in the pockets of people who spend it, not being hoarded by a tiny minority. This is why every sector is struggling and businesses everywhere are failing.

Hell yes

Many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.

This is from Autocracy, Inc, about how modern autocratic propaganda works.

I consider this every time I decide what to share and how to frame it.

IMO democracy becomes impossible in the absence of any social or political norms against lying.

I've seen so many people online using the government shutdown as an opportunity to demonize people who receive SNAP benefits, WIC and any kind of government assistance.

Here's the thing:

I agree with those people.

We need to end the WHITE welfare state

BECAUSE welfare works.

A thread:

ahem... let's try that again...

Kind Hearts & Coronets, anyone?

Bloody Ken Follett. Just the other week it was that Colleen Hoover. Haven't these NYT bestselling authors anything better to do with their time than gossip? Some of us are trying to have a snooze

Get the Government off Xitter

wtf..?

While I'm splurging on posting, a quick plug for #HouseOfDynamite, which is bloody brilliant, terrifying, depressing, thrilling, etc. Admittedly I had for a long time thought it was a biopic of Alfred Nobel.

Any spokesperson who refuses to comment on something everybody knows about by claiming they 'haven't seen it' should be pelted off the stage with their own shite.

Also may I celebrate the availablity of pumpkins today, because in the 1960s we had to use turnips, and carving turnips is a total pain in the arse.

Afaik Bonfire Night was a Puritan attempt to rebrand pagan Halloween-type celebrations. And Puritans weren't big on (a) the supernatural or (b) Merchandising.

in the 90s however UK purveyors of Chinese tat realised how much more money they could make from Halloween merch than Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes etc...

If anyone asks me, and no-one has, there was no Halloween in the UK up until the 1980s. I remember being baffled by the Halloween lights for sale in San Francisco in October 1990... I'd seen nothing like that in the UK

As a kid the significance of burning on a bonfire the effigy of a Catholic who had tried to blow up Parliament was utterly lost on me.