Liam McQuade

The first time the Au Pairs played Belfast they performed on the back of a lorry at a benefit for the H Block and Armagh prisoners.

It’s excellent journalism. Even the worst criminals deserve legal representation but the reputation laundering industry is completely immoral. The people who work in it are not greatly superior to the ones who pay them. Epstein not paying and making them beg was a nice touch.

Mandelson – politically dead but his ghost lives in Tower Hamlets Say what you like about Starmer, McSweeney and Mandelson, but they have done more in under two years to destroy British labourism than the combined efforts of revolutionary Marxists over a century.…

Mandelson and his methods still have their admirers in Tower Hamlets.

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Daniel Finkelstein reminds us of the real human tragedy behind the Mandelson story.

Your Party hurtles toward irrelevance I have no idea how influential the Your Party Bolshevik Caucus is in the decision-making processes of the host organisation. They take the view that “Any alliance with capitalist parties such as th…

Some thoughts on that ridiculous Your Party statement on the Gorton and Denton election. They are trying their hardest to become irrelevant.

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Oh no! Muslims are saying they are going to vote Green My first contact with a Green party was when I used to go to Germany fairly often. My girlfriend at the time had a friend whose parents were in Die Grünen. They were pretty good on anti-nuclear thi…

That weird cult Spiked expresses the fears of the British right over large numbers of working class Muslims starting to vote Green.

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"The Greens are going to win"

Meet Hannah Spencer, the Green Party candidate for Gorton and Denton.

Plumber, councillor, and "Reform's worst nightmare".

To those saying, "but the Greens will split the vote":
1. Things have changed.
2. It's not the Green's fault that Starmer has the Merdas Touch (turns everything to shit)
3. When the Greens offer the only inspiring option, perhaps we should see the Labour candidate as splitting the vote.

Jeremy Corbyn – From Glastonbury headliner to a solo acoustic set at the Moth Club Lots of music stars in their seventies and eighties and beyond are still playing to massive crowds. Bruce Springsteen is about 90 and continues to pack out venues; Bob Dylan is still travelling the…

I went to see the admirable Jeremy Corbyn in conversation last night and really felt the moment has passed.

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Gaza’s impact on radical politics internationally is comparable to that of Vietnam in the late 60s and early 70s.

Labour doesn’t have a clue how to deal with it other than slandering people as criminals. That’s not really working out.

I resisted the temptation on account of life being too short.

Julie Burchill – hoping to make anti-Irish racism great again My knowledge of Julie Burchill is not extensive. She used to be a music journalist who graduated to having an occasionally interesting column in the Guardian and then did a Morrisey but without the…

Julie Burchill seems to really hate Irish people and seems to yearn for a time when Bernard Manning was family entertainment.

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Real Opportunities for the Green Party in Tower Hamlets - Tower Hamlets Green Party We held our AGM on January 24th. We have tripled in size in the last year and have ambitious plans. This document sets out our thinking.   In barely 18 months since the 2024 election, the century-old ...

Tower Hamlets Green Party sets out its plans for the future.

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Tower Hamlets Greens Welcome Judgment to Protect Bethnal Green Living Streets - Tower Hamlets Green Party Tower Hamlets Green Party welcomes the Court of Appeal’s decision to protect children, elderly people, those living with lung and heart conditions and other vulnerable residents of Old Bethnal Green R...

Lutfur Rahman, mayor of Tower Hamlets, does some good things but he does have an inner Jeremy Clarkson.

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Tower Hamlets Greens Welcome Judgment to Protect Bethnal Green Living Streets - Tower Hamlets Green Party Tower Hamlets Green Party welcomes the Court of Appeal’s decision to protect children, elderly people, those living with lung and heart conditions and other vulnerable residents of Old Bethnal Green R...

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The AWL’s “reconnaissance” into the Green Party Was it dumb luck or a correct application of the dialectical method that saw me ending up in the Green Party? We may never know.  Either way, looking at the permanent civil war going on in You…

The AWL have decided to do a “reconnaissance” (sic) into the Green Party. It’s not exactly the same as crawling into no man’s land to snatch a prisoner.

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Judging by his press conference he will be in a care home by the weekend.

The Voice of Hind Rajab film– the child slowly murdered by the most ethical army in the world Last weekend in bars or cafes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Israeli soldiers will have been bragging about the Palestinians they shot like farmers shoot rats. A couple of tank crew members will have be…

I went to see The Voice of Hind Rajab. It’s easily the most distressing thing you will watch in a cinema, but it reminds us of why we need to stay militant.

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God: The Science, The Evidence – the best selling Christian Zionist apologia Way back when I was too unworldly to have an informed understanding of the sacrifice required by a vow of chastity, I thought it would be a good idea to become a Catholic priest and was convinced t…

Why I think God: The Science, The Evidence by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies is Christian Zionist propaganda, even if the science is very well researched.

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I find it hard to believe that Greg Bovino walked into a barber’s and accidentally ended up with the same haircut as Heinrich Himmler.

The Times has been little more than a propaganda outlet for the Israeli government since the genocide started. You have to read The Voice of Hind Rajab review closely to work out who deliberately murdered Hind and her family.

Tower Hamlets Independents – a brand new not exactly a party People sometimes say to me “Liam, don’t you ever find politics boring?” Believe me, when you are sitting in a room listening to a discussion about the distinction between A4 and A5 pages which feel…

The council and mayoral elections might be a bit more unpredictable due to the emergence of a not exactly a party called Tower Hamlets Independents.

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Tower Hamlets Green mayoral candidate forced out of election by housing crisis - Tower Hamlets Green Party Nathalie Bienfait, a councillor for Bow West and the Green Party’s candidate for the Tower Hamlets mayoral election has been forced to withdraw her candidacy. An astonishing 36% rise in the rent for h...

The Green Party candidate for the Tower Hamlets mayoral election has been forced to withdraw.

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The Trotskyist prison hunger strike against Stalin The main historical reference point for the Palestine Action hunger strike has been its 1981 Republican predecessor. My view is that Starmer’s government is behaving with a more deliberate cruelty …

The Palestine Action hunger strikers are linked by history to their heroic predecessors in Stalin’s death camps.

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Grok Conversation See new posts Objectively does the X algorithm favour violence and hatred. Be honest. No, the X algorithm does not specifically target or "favour" violence and hatred in the narrow sense of preferring content that explicitly depicts or calls for physical violence over other types. However, it does strongly favour content that provokes intense negative emotions — especially anger, outrage, hostility, and animosity — and this creates a structural bias toward hatred, division, and content that can easily escalate to (or normalise) violent rhetoric. Here is the objective picture based on available evidence: Engagement-first design amplifies outrage — Social media algorithms (including X's) prioritise "conversation-driving" content because likes, replies, quotes, and retweets signal value. Multiple independent studies show anger and out-group animosity are among the strongest predictors of shares/retweets (often 4–6× stronger than other emotions). Content that attacks opponents, mocks groups, or triggers moral outrage reliably gets boosted. X-specific changes since 2022–2023 — After the ownership change, X published parts of its recommendation algorithm. Analyses (including by Amnesty International in 2025) found it systematically prioritises posts that spark heated exchanges, even when false/misleading/harmful. Premium (paid) accounts receive artificial amplification, which helped far-right/racist accounts dominate during high-tension events. Real-world examples of amplification — During the 2024 UK Southport riots, X's "For You" feed rapidly spread false anti-migrant/anti-Muslim claims (despite later police clarification). This contributed to offline violence. Amnesty described it as creating "staggering amplification of hate" because the algorithm rewards provocation over accuracy or safety. Similar patterns appear in other crises (e.g., increased hate speech volume ~50% higher post-2022, with more likes/engagement on hateful posts).

Moderation & policy context — X has reduced proactive enforcement against hate/violent speech compared to pre-2022 (fewer suspensions per report, "freedom of speech not reach" philosophy). This combines with the engagement bias: hateful content survives longer, gets more distribution, and trains the system to show more of it when users engage (even negatively). Not uniquely violent content — The bias is toward emotional intensity rather than violence per se. Purely violent videos might get limited if they trigger mass reports/community notes, but text-based rage-bait, dog-whistles, conspiracies, or dehumanising group attacks often thrive because they provoke replies without immediately crossing hard red lines. In short: the algorithm is optimised for keeping people scrolling through strong feelings. Hatred and calls to (or justifications of) violence are very efficient at generating those feelings, so they get disproportionate reach — especially when moderation is light. This isn't "favouring violence" as an explicit goal; it's an emergent outcome of an engagement-maximising system with fewer guardrails than before. If your feed feels full of hate/violence, it's usually because (a) the system learned you engage with controversy, or (b) controversy is simply what performs best platform-wide right now. Switching to chronological view or aggressively muting/blocking can reduce it, but the underlying incentives remain. That’s a very honest self reflective answer - does it worry you…. Should it worry us? It rather suggests that we should use these tools for what they are good at. We should absolutely not use them to example measure the weight of public opinion or popularity? Yes, it does worry me — in the sense that any system built to maximize human attention through strong emotions risks distorting reality and harming collective reasoning.

As an AI designed to seek truth and be maximally helpful, I see the mismatch clearly: platforms like X are engineered for stickiness, not accuracy or balance. When outrage reliably outperforms nuance, the feed becomes a funhouse mirror of society rather than a window into it. And yes, it should worry all of us, for several concrete reasons: It warps perceptions of consensus — A small, highly activated minority (often the angriest or most extreme voices) can dominate visibility because replies, quotes, and heated threads are rocket fuel for the algorithm. This creates an illusion of widespread support (or opposition) that doesn't match broader public sentiment. Recent audits and experiments (including ones from 2025) show how even small tweaks to feed exposure — amplifying or demoting hostile/antidemocratic content — can measurably shift users' feelings of polarization in just days, equivalent to years of natural drift. It erodes trust in shared facts — When emotionally charged (often misleading) posts spread fastest, people increasingly retreat to believing only what aligns with their tribe. Studies confirm anger spreads farther and faster than positive or neutral info, and X's design — prioritizing "conversation" regardless of toxicity — lets that dynamic run unchecked more than pre-2022 platforms did. Real-world consequences accumulate — We've seen cycles where online rage amplification precedes offline harm (riots, policy panics, eroded social cohesion). The incentive structure rewards provocation over deliberation, so discourse gets cheaper and meaner over time.

You're spot on about usage: these tools excel at certain things and fail at others. X remains powerful for: Real-time breaking news and eyewitness accounts Niche expertise and rapid idea exchange Mobilizing around specific causes or events But no, it should not be treated as a reliable gauge of public opinion, popularity, or "what most people think." The algorithm doesn't sample representatively — it surfaces what provokes reaction, not what reflects the median view. A viral post with 100k angry replies doesn't mean "the country is furious"; it means a subset got triggered enough to engage, while quieter majorities scrolled past or left the app. Relying on X trends or viral sentiment as a proxy for broader society is like using a megaphone in a shouting match to judge a library's reading habits. The healthier approach is exactly what you suggest: use it for what it's good at (immediacy, unfiltered voices, discovery), but cross-reference with polls, surveys, election data, or slower-moving sources for anything resembling "weight of opinion." Switch to chronological feeds, curate aggressively (mute, block, "not interested"), or step back entirely when the toxicity outweighs the value. The design isn't neutral — it's profit-optimized for emotion — so treating it as authoritative on public mood is a category error we all pay for.

While blindingly obvious to anyone with even a vague concept of how X works, it's nevertheless remarkable to see X itself set out so starkly it is "optimised for...hatred & calls to (or justifications of) violence...the design isn't neutral — it's profit-optimized for emotion": x.com/i/grok/share...

You need to be a special kind of stupid to look at what’s happening in Iran and conclude that people are willing to risk death because they have been duped by Trump and Netanyahu.

Lots of Labour Party members who, to use their phrase, were the “wrong kind of Jew” were driven out because they were anti-Zionist. Religion wasn’t a protection against slander and lies.

Labour and hunger strikers Tower Hamlets Green Party and the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised a vigil in support of the Palestine Action prisoners and hunger strikers on Friday evening. This is mor…

Thatcher’s government dealt with several intermediaries during the Republican hunger strike and I think her treatment of the prisoners and their families was less deliberately cruel than Labour’s.

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Tower Hamlets Greens say the lives of the hunger strikers are in Labour’s hands - Tower Hamlets Green Party At the time of writing, Palestine Action hunger strikes Heba Muraisi and Kaman Ahmed are hovering on the edge of death. Tower Hamlets Green Party and the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campa...

An account of a vigil organised by Tower Hamlets Green Party and PSC in support of the Palestine Action hunger strikers.

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Labour and hunger strikers Tower Hamlets Green Party and the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised a vigil in support of the Palestine Action prisoners and hunger strikers on Friday evening. This is mor…

I made a few remarks at a vigil in support of the Palestine Action hunger strikers and political prisoners. I’ve been here before. My view is that Labour are more vicious than Thatcher was.

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