Carl

“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?”

“Because that’s what they are”

@vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference.

#Newsnight

I just watched The Bleeding Edge documentary from 2018, about medical devices mainly in the US, and how poorly they are (or at least were, not sure if things have changed) regulated.

A few things stood out 🧵

Nice thread. Despite a long history of medical cover ups, mistakes and oversights, it is remarkable how confident and dismissive the medical community are when faced with patients reporting issues following administration of a new product.

And we saw similar in the covid vaccine trials - participants who were injured were (allegedly) booted from the trials, not included in safety data to regulators, not properly coded on why they didnt complete the trial, and not compensated per their consent form agreement

This is a story we hear over and over again. Doctors repeatedly do not believe what they didnt learn...until they experience it. Its a real problem that things arent believed without experience and this undoubtedly causes a lot of medical harm

This study seems riddled with selection and detection biases and I can't see how any knowledgeable expert could just take the results at face value and conclude a doubling of risk of long-covid with reinfection.

A few comments on this study which finds a doubling of long covid risk with reinfections in children.

1/

Bloody hell.

Ed Miliband turns on Elon Musk. “He incites violence on our steeets. He calls for the overthrow of our government. He disseminates disinformation. He thinks he can tell us how to run Britain. We have a message for Elon Musk: ‘Get the hell out of our politics and our country!’”

Because of Kremlin interference?

Calls for New Inquiry Into Russian Interference After Reform’s Former Welsh Leader Pleads Guilty to Bribery As the Kremlin steps up its political interference efforts in the West, is it time for a new Russia Report?

🔴Calls for New Inquiry Into Russian Interference After Reform’s Former Welsh Leader Pleads Guilty to Bribery

As the Kremlin steps up its political interference efforts in the West, is it time for a new Russia Report?

bylinetimes.com/2025/10/01/c...

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...

Agree
Gill was a UKIP MEP under Farage’s leadership for 6 years
Farage has appeared on Russian state tv 17 times, he says Putin is the leader he most admires and blames NATO for Russia invading Ukraine
Brexit party MEPs under Farage’s leadership vote against plans to tackle Russian propaganda

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.

How is this not front page news?

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

this is an extraordinary canary in the coal mine

Reform UK’s ex-leader in Wales Nathan Gill pleads guilty to bribery charges Gill admits to eight counts of bribery relating to pro-Russia statements made in the European parliament and articles

Nathan Gill, Reform's leader in Wales at the last Welsh parliament election, has pled guilty to 8 bribery charges, taking Russian cash while he was one of Nigel Farage’s MEPs to speak in favour of Putin's Russia in that parliament
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Issue is they don’t really care about the rare cases of vaccine/medication harm; it’s just about sowing doubt and division, then utilising that to disassemble public health care. 2nd problem is that nobody else seems to care about rare cases of vaccine harm.

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds

open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

This study ⤵️ + MRI study on brainstem 'broken bridge syndrome' + igg/aabs transmission to mice + decodeME + everything we know from MS
🟰
ME as an (auto)immune reaction affecting specific parts of CNS and nerve-related tissue/cells.

Different symptoms, different nerves, but looks like same model

I wonder for how many years patient groups have pointed out the higher rates of autoimmune issues in endometriosis patients and been met with eye rolls? Similar to POTS, MCAS, ME, Fibro, etc etc. Doctors really need to reassess how they treat patients with conditions that have been under-researched

Microneurography Reveals Unmyelinated Small Nerve Fiber Dysfunction in Long COVID Objective To review the microneurography findings of long coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID) patients who presented to the clinic with multisystem involvement affecting neurological, cardiovascular, g.....

"described for the first time widespread abnormalities in the function of unmyelinated C fibers, both somatosensory and sympathetic, that could represent a common pathophysiological mechanism explaining the multiplicity of symptoms in #longCOVID"

#MECFS

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Bet it’s the same for those of us having a similar reaction to the vaccine.

Our paper found that people with generalized joint #hypermobility have a 23% higher risk of #LongCOVID while people with extreme hypermobility have a 76% higher risk of #LongCOVID. This thread focuses on possible explanations for the higher risk. 1/20

They just tear-gassed us. They tried to run us over in a van holding a peaceful protester. They shot us with pepper balls. They dragged another protester into the facility.

Apologies I wasn’t suggesting you did doubt it. I mean generally there is a reluctance to research these outcomes. The abuse Putrino and team had following their efforts to just record PVS symptoms won’t have encouraged any others.

Improving and deteriorating (and no change). But it shouldn’t be such a shot in the dark. The lack of research fuels distrust. Science should be looking harder at injured groups. We aren’t antivax, we had our doses, it went wrong and then we‘re abandoned. Then people act surprised we lose trust

Dreadful to make the claims without evidence, just fuels further division on a very divisive issue. The issue should be the fact that there isn’t much research into both adverse events from vaccination, and reactions in long covid populations to vaccination. I’ve heard anecdotes of both outcomes

Met someone with MS at a funeral a while back. People spoke about how well he managed his illness, despite it being so debilitating. He had the same issues as me (fatigue/brain fog). The validation he had vs the raised eyebrows I get was pretty stark.

Question from me: "I warmly welcome the Leader of the House to his new role and associate myself with the support across the House for my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). Members have raised many times the unacceptable level of threats that we face. Increasingly, abuse and threats are being driven and whipped up by one platform in particular, X, previously known as Twitter, which has become a sewer of antisemitism, racism, misogyny and dangerous conspiracy theories. Its owner has specifically targeted Members of this House. With a new director of communications in No. 10 and a refreshed Front Bench, may we have a debate in Government time on whether it is appropriate for that platform to continue to be used for official Government communications?"

Answer from Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the House: "What my hon. Friend says about X is truly shocking. We are very much in favour of free speech, but we are also against incitement to violence. We have delivered the Online Safety Act 2025 to seek to strike the balance between user protection and freedom of speech. On the matter of the Government’s use of X, it is right that the public are kept up to date with information and a number of people still use X, although of course many are moving to other platforms. I am sure that the Government will take that into account in our deliberations in future, and we also keep our wider social media practices under review."

It melts my head that X is still used for official Government communications, and, catching up on today's news and the fact we have a foreign billionaire inciting violence on our streets, it's clearer than ever that this should end.

I raised this in Parliament last week 👇