John Lyle

'Manufactured panic': Immigration not near top of most people's concerns, poll suggests Only a quarter of people think immigration is an important issue locally - and concern about it is "a manufactured panic," it has been claimed.

'Manufactured panic': Immigration not near top of most people's concerns, poll suggests

Same. Was the earlier internet experience more relaxed, less serious, and generally better or was I just younger and paying less attention? Probably both.

Did this just set the norm and culture of online discourse to “it’s ok to be a dick” even when the anonymity mostly left?

🚨 PMQ's 🚨

PM: "I think four councillors in Kent have just been suspended for bringing the party into disrepute."

"I mean, that is, bringing the party into disrepute is quite something for a party whose Welsh leader accepts Russian bribes to spread Putin's propaganda."

I hate to pull the immigrant card, but as an immigrant, it feels awful when elected MPs say I ‘need to go home’ and propose stripping me and all other immigrants of all our legal rights to live here. No, anywhere immigrants move is their home. The UK is my home.

“Start ticking off that festive to-do list.”

It’s October you bastards.

But not due to billionaire owners. Some other chicanery, I assume.

State broadcasters like the BBC or the ABC (in Australia) break the trend.

A google search AI overview claiming that there are still 253 working days left in 2025.

Well that's bad news. Are our AI overlords trying to fool us into thinking we've still got most of this year's work to do?

Reform UK's ex-Wales leader Nathan Gill admits pro-Russia bribery Nathan Gill admits eight charges of bribery while being a Member of the European Parliament.

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician.

He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales.

A Brexit Party MEP.

A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him:

"terrific," and "as honest as the day is long."

This is a MASSIVE story

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

Labour totally have “junior coalition partner” energy - no clear direction but generally aligned with another progressive group that have a more well-articulated vision.

One mistake Labour made is that they thought at the end of the election they could stop campaigning. Unfortunately, in this information climate, you have to constantly campaign and strengthen the sentiment of your voters or someone else is going to do it.

Also have better policies, obviously.

A flight to quality post-bubble-burst probably suits OpenAI given brand recognition and relationships with big companies. I suspect it suits Google even more, though.

Unfortunately it was 100k people, apparently. Given those numbers it is more than “margins” - it likely represents the views of an order of magnitude more people than those who were there.

But I agree on the vacuum in our politics and the legitimising of the concerns - they are wildly misplaced.

Isn’t that just NS&I, in essence?

This whole summer only one story has dominated our entire politics & it comes down to literally 30,000 people in hotels. Ridiculous.

The government needs to get a GRIP it’s pathetic.

I love using Bluesky but it is full of people (in the comments of this post) who inexplicably believe that declining activity rates would apparently be a _good thing_ rather than a long-term existential threat to a community.

Is anyone left to defend trust and safety? It’s under assault this year from users, politicians, and their own executives — but the industry has responded with silence

It's hard to write stories about chilling effects, because... how do you write about the absence of something? But the silence is also deafening, and notable.

Good piece by @caseynewton.bsky.social

www.platformer.news/trustcon-tru...

Rent control: Does it work? Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says there are overwhelming arguments for rent control. Is he right?

I want lower rent & I’m not a landlord, but it’s not controversial to state that rent controls can have negative unintentional side effects. E.g.,it can effectively transfer wealth from new renters to old. As such, well-meaning people may legitimately disagree about it.

www.bbc.com/news/busines...

Moonfall. I’m not recommending the movie but it does fit the criteria, I think.

Agreed. You also won’t see reported all the times that LLMs get a diagnosis completely wrong. And for every miraculous “solution” there could be hundreds of wrong or even dangerous answers.

Remove the two-child cap. Raise income taxes slightly. There are a lot of tough trade-offs in politics but this isn’t one of them.

I heard there were going to be lots of shortages of things in America due to the tariffs (and empty container ships) particularly from Chinese imports. Did that ever happen? Or did the subsequent reductions calm everything down?

E.g., follow-ups to articles like this:

www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/u...

Bloody hell, Sinners is a great film.

I wrote a post on Workplace debunking some myths about how collaborative work is rewarded at Meta.

It requires conscious effort to keep a safe culture where working together is rewarded not penalised, good individuals are still recognised, and people don’t jump on bandwagons without adding value.

Farage Slammed Over 1 'Wildly Inaccurate' Claim About Children's Health The Reform UK leader previously insisted: "I’m not being heartless, I’m being frank."

Farage echoes JFK Jrs sick, twisted rhetoric re autism/SEND👇🏼🤬

There’s no depths the toxic, little turd won’t plunge, chasing attention, power and to please his right wing financial backers❗️

He claims learning difficulties are hugely over diagnosed in the UK

Well I diagnose him a parasitic pr*ck 🤷🏼‍♂️

Asked at this press conference about the rising number of children diagnosed with Send, and what could be done to help them, Farage replied: It’s a massive problem. I have to say, for my own money, when you get to 18 and you put somebody on a disability register, unemployed, with a high level of benefits, you’re telling people aged 18 that they’re that they’re victims. And if you are told you’re a victim, and you think you’re a victim, you are likely to stay [a victim]. So many of these diagnoses, for Send before 18, for disability register after 18 – so many of these have been conducted on Zoom, with the family GP.

Being disabled does not make someone “a victim”, Nigel Farage. Having state support to go to school does not make someone “a victim” either.

These kind of remarks are in many ways why I wrote Who Wants Normal? Disabled young people deserve more than this vile narrative.

It takes a true arsehole to decide that the REAL problem is children with special educational needs.

If you know how expensive and hard it is to get a diagnosis for a child, you will also know how WILDLY fucked up this is.

Fighting fund for trans rights | Good Law Project Stand up for trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️ Join me and @GoodLawProject and help us fight the rollbacks on trans rights in the UK.

Stand up for trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️

Join me and @GoodLawProject and help us fight the rollback of trans rights in the UK.

goodlawproject.org/s/851fc4

Im not saying “all the survivors do this, therefore it is good”.

I’m pointing out that there are survivors despite this “default” and so perhaps there are multiple routes to success. Wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the other factors and circumstances to learn more? Is it all just luck?