Katie Fenn

Dear Shabana, I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank. You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to make a perilous crossing on small boats.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division. When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney. As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I filled water tanks and picked up litter. What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country. Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it. It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and croissants to refugees and food parcels. When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas.” She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …

Dear Shabana,

Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.

It talked Eddington into joining the Maquis

That and it’s being included in workers’ performance metrics. The sheer amount of money that’s being thrown around is aligning greed across the org chart.

My comment on GCN’s recent videos promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia. It has been upvoted 194 times. It refers to the killing of Turkish journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi state. “You know what Saudi Arabia’s track record with journalists is like, right?”

All going well at GCN at the moment.

They’re actually replying to women in their comments saying that they’ve been told by the Saudi state that restrictions on women wearing cycling gear have been lifted.

Complete fools running their production and PR.

"Sheffield Saturday March 5th" intro screen from the film Threads (1984).

Happy Threads Day 2026 to all who celebrate 🙌 #Sheffield #AlmostThere #ThreadsDay

Ponytail Tom! I *may* have been at a BarCamp with him at around that time.

Even when I’m typing code, I’m using the code to structure my thinking about the requirements and what it’s supposed to *do*.

Why do they always behave like jerks and insult the experience of everyone else? It’s like their best friend has been slighted.

https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3mgaqaaisfs2e Why @why.bsky.team Oh interesting, people who don't know how to build software are getting mad at my post about building software. Cute. Let me be clear, over the next year, the job of software engineer will shift dramatically to no longer have typing syntax into an editor as its primary time sink.

In my entire 15 year career in software development, “typing syntax into an editor” has never been the primary time sink.

Most of the time was spent on understanding what the software was actually supposed to do and to resolve conflicting requirements.

Joani Reid being a terf, predictably

[average British politics couple, year 2026]
wife: it’s cool how there’s men in all of our female spaces. normal world
husband: do you think the Chinese intelligence officer really likes me or am I just being parasocial

Four carriages between some of England’s biggest cities has been absolutely criminal, to be honest. It really should be at least eight, with minimal short-forming.

I’ll take this W though.

FINALLY

“Wait - how many people are there now?

OH.”

Really glad to know! I’m planning on giving Infuse a go.

Majour labour transphobe in foreign agent scandal

They’re overpowered little things, so I could probably pick one up from CEX and it’d do me just fine.

Waiting to see what gets announced first. Maybe I should just take the plunge.

Thanks, good to know 🙂

I’ve recently got a Synology NAS, I just need a convenient box to run the client on 🙂

Yeah, not interested in that at all.

I’ll mostly be using it for streaming media from a Jellyfin server and occasionally watching live TV. Ideally it would have a channel directory and timeline like a Skybox has.

Fuck

I’m mulling it over, but Apple appeals to me a bit more because they’re less likely to cram their UI full of ads - not that this is a safe bet these days.

I’m pondering getting a Fire stick or a pre-owned Apple TV in the mean-time just to get a feeling for what I want.

(A 2022 model might even be less suited for any AI rubbish they announce, which would be a feature tbh)

Not much, just waiting for the new model because I’d prefer not to buy one that’s not four years old.

(With that in mind, the existing Apple TV 4K still has ample power for the job, and I’d be fine with a pre-owned one. Just waiting to see what gets announced, really)

No new Apple TV 4K yet.

Boooo.

26th Mar '26: Microhacking the modern web w\ Alfie & Neil (4x mini-talks), Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 6:15 PM | Meetup We're back at SHU in Room 12.4.12 at the **Charles Street Building**, Sheffield Hallam University, 120 Charles St, Sheffield, S1 2NE Look for the FES signs up into the lif

Tickets for our March #FrontEndSheff event now available:
Regulars Alife & Neil are cramming in 4x (!) talks about using our #WebDev skills to make real services better for real people #microhacking

www.meetup.com/front-end-sh...

Slides from @kitation.co.uk 's fabulous #FrontEndSheff gaming Vs #a11y talk last week are now available here: fantastic-cat.static.domains/plateauofweb...

🍿

The Ensh*ttificator Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved…

The Enshittificator - a Norwegian documentary about the life of an Enshittificator and how the Internet and AI has enhanced his productivity. vimeo.com/1168468796

Making your entire political strategy “hope the markets come to you by looking like sensible grown-ups” was always a risk.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves thought they were playing it safe - in fact, they were betting on calm seas. They instead spent 18 months doing nothing.

Do they move your furniture and your belongings out of the way for that price?