Matthew Cole

Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

Pretty rough to find out that Sussex will go bankrupt over the next 3-4 years without saving 28 million, meaning mass redundancies. 450 full time staff cuts needed, or roughly 16% of people.

@ucu.org.uk @sussexucu.bsky.social

How can we get you in the green advisory team James. Too much is at stake!

Complete agreement with Jo here.

Forgotten Photos Expose UK Army Abuses In Iraq Photos and evidence document systemic abuse of Iraqi detainees by British soldiers in 2003, revealing a pattern of hooding, stress positions, and violence.

Newly published evidence, alongside archived testimonies, documents a pattern of systemic abuse inflicted on Iraqi civilians by British soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003. Available in EN, ES, PT-BR, DE, FR, IT and AR.

Shamblin’s conversation partner wasn’t a classmate or friend – it was ChatGPT, the world’s most popular AI chatbot. A CNN review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Shamblin and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25 suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night, found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life – right up to his last moments.

1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

This was the basis of the Mathusian idea that wages shouldn’t be raised higher than subsistence because it would result in too many children surviving into adulthood and therefore overpopulation. Grim, yet also stupid, since it fails to consider redistribution and increased production of resources.

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

David Willetts • Resolution Foundation The Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS is the President of the Resolution Foundation and Chair of the UK Space Agency. He is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and Chair of the Foundation for Science...

If you want another shocking revelation, he’s somehow the chair of the resolution foundation now (among other jobs)

www.resolutionfoundation.org/about-us/tea...

Rachel Reeves hits young graduates with a double stealth tax The Chancellor plans to raise as much money from freezing loan repayment thresholds as from the mansion tax

I'm constantly shocked (but not surprised) by how little we discuss the additional financial burden placed on young people by the Clegg-Cameron student loan regime.

@rmcunliffe.bsky.social is one of the few journalists who brings it up continuously - once again in the wake of the budget 👇

Also the government's line that graduates have benefitted financially from their education, and therefore should pay more in tax, is nuts.

It didn't suddenly get three times more financially beneficial to study at a uni in 2012 versus 2011 – in fact the opposite has happened

Lukas Slothuus, Oil Futures — Sidecar Norway’s elections.

My essay “Oil Futures” is out now in @newleftreview.bsky.social's Sidecar!

Following Norway's September elections, ongoing struggles against fossil fuels in Europe’s only petrostate challenge incumbent fossil hegemony and its complicity in the Israeli occupation:
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

To halt the far right, Europe’s progressive parties must fix its housing crisis. Our research shows how | Tarik Abou-Chadi, Björn Bremer and Silja Häusermann The mantra of ‘build, build, build’ misses something crucial: that few can afford these new homes, say Tarik Abou-Chadi, Silja Häusermann and Björn Bremer

For the Guardian, @bjoernbremer.bsky.social, @siljahausermann.bsky.social and I write about how building new homes is not enough to tackle the housing crisis. Housing is a redistributive issue and progressive policy solutions need to acknowledge that.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rachel Reeves hands farmers inheritance tax break Treasury says concession could be worth £30m next year and £70m a year until 2030

Inheriting a million pounds? No tax for you

Capital gains? You need that don’t you.

Work for a living and are middle class? Suck it up, you have to pay more.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Apply now—Antipode’s 10th Institute for the Geographies of Justice, “Organizing and Solidarity in a Polycrisis” - Antipode Online Toronto, Ontario, Canadathe traditional territory of the Huron Wendat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the Credit June 1st – 5th, 2026 The contemporary global landscape is increasingly defined by w...

Apply now — Antipode’s 10th Institute for the Geographies of Justice, “Organizing and Solidarity in a Polycrisis”, deadline 20 December 2025 antipodeonline.org/2025/11/13/a...

Tucker Carlson is such a moron.

Every job I’ve had has been in an industry that’s either low paid and precarious or dying and volatile.

Even getting a full-time, ostensibly permanent academic job feels like it could implode at any moment with all the demands of publishing and the constant financial crises and redundancies.

FFS

The left wants more progressive taxes and a tax on capital gains/wealth. They want this invested in public assets that pay social dividends. They want denationalisation of key social monopolies.

Where is this straw man coming from?

Removal of judge in Palestine Action ban legal challenge ‘deeply concerning’ Unusual last-minute change means panel of three will now hear case rather than Mr Justice Chamberlain

BREAKING: Judiciary refuses to explain last minute removal of judge in Palestine Action legal challenge, leading to accusations of a “stitch-up”

Removal of judge in Palestine Action ban legal challenge ‘deeply concerning’

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Jury trials could be scrapped except in most serious cases Only cases of alleged murder, rape or manslaughter will be decided by a jury under new proposals to cut court backlogs.

Imagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sometimes I wish someone else could just deal with the R&Rs. It’s such a pain in the ass. I much prefer to just develop new ideas, rather than pander to a handful of anonymous people each with their own particular axe to grind or cottage industry to defend.

I like how this government really thinks outside the box.

4pm today UK time

🚨Workshop Announcement🚨

THE GROUNDS OF PLANNING:
RATIONALITY, PSEUDORATIONALITY, AND CRITIQUE

Keynotes by John O'Neill and Aaron Benanav
December 4-5, 2025
Grimm-Zentrum Auditorium, Berlin

organised by the Centre for Social Critique, HU Berlin

criticaltheoryinberlin.de/event/the-gr...

surely there’s a book on this somewhere

Thank you!

The tag line reads like AI, the click-bait title is annoying, and the left is more than Gary Stevenson and @zackpolanski.bsky.social, but a wealth tax on its own won’t fix Britain.

We need to be far more ambitious, particularly around “predistribution” through rebuilding worker bargaining power.

well this is fucked isn’t it

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a key argument of my book coming out May 2026 with @versobooks.bsky.social

'Contrainte Muette' is out now from @editionssanssoleil.bsky.social. Thanks to @prada-meinhof.bsky.social and Camilla Brenni for the excellent translation, and to Léa Gallon for the beautiful design 💙