patrickandrews.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Sunday Times Team Boris are hoping "one of the eight MPs who won more than 50% of the vote would stand aside for him" (Sunday Times) One factual issue with the quality of the campaign planning: only ONE Conservative MP won more than 50% of the vote in July 2024 (Bob Blackman, Harrow East)

submitted 3 hours ago • 13 comments

The RW media is all over this scandalous behaviour by Angela Rayner! Oh wait, it's Farage, they don't give a fuck

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

And guess what? The variant of Covid surging in China? Yep! It’s in the US now. But who needs boosters? www.cbsnews.com/news/us-repo...

submitted 4 hours ago • 3 comments

Looks as if we should expect a large summer Covid wave given the new variant, NB.1.8.1, has emerged which has quickly become dominant in China, and is taking over in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia according to @chrischirp.bsky.social christinapagel.substack.com/p/latest-cov...

submitted 3 hours ago • 8 comments

English person: did you hear the one about the irishman who... Irish person: yeah, you were literally tricked by a bus

submitted 4 hours ago • 0 comments

Not main point but very revealing that Laura Kuenssberg keeps on talking about the "child benefit cap" in tax credits (it's Universal Credit, and has been for most claimants for some time). Reflects both very poor briefing and her complete ignorance of the topics she asks questions about..

submitted 3 hours ago • 80 comments

This is funny on how Churchill mixed up Isaiah and Irving Berlin on.ft.com/4kd56pI

submitted 4 hours ago • 4 comments

"X is racist. The only thing up for debate is whether this is a feature or a bug for those in charge," writes Charlie Warzel.

submitted 17 hours ago • 30 comments

Andrew Neil admits that he slept for over three years while Boris Johnson was in government.

submitted 1 day ago • 146 comments

Wonder where Hamer will go now then 🤔 #playoffs

submitted 20 hours ago • 2 comments

You will not be able to afford an iPhone. You will own 2 dolls. You will work in a factory. And you will be happy about it. That is actually the MAGA platform right now. What a wild time to be alive.

submitted 1 day ago • 165 comments

I realize posting this here is preaching to the choir. But after the Grok White Genocide thing & Ye essentially launching an exclusive Neo Nazi single on the platform... I felt motivated to write about X and how bizarre it is that so many people (news outlets, celebrities, politicians) use it

submitted 1 day ago • 250 comments

'Back down or we rebel: Up to 150 MPs join revolt against Keir Starmer's benefit cuts inews.co.uk/news/politic...

submitted 21 hours ago • 19 comments

I think there’s been a more recent bout of quiet quitting of X. It feels emptier and more boring now. I’ve stayed on there because, well, I cover it. But without ever intending to, I’ve started only checking it once or twice a day, and barely posting, for no other reason than it feels pointless.

submitted 1 day ago • 33 comments

Thread worth reading - a govt with removing barriers to opportunity as one of 5 key missions should be thinking more deeply/ smartly about how racism & i suspect other forms of prejudice (similar for misogyny?) express themselves now compared to a generation ago - what's better, what's worse

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Wait, we can kill it? Let’s go!

submitted 1 day ago • 46 comments

I’ve actually not had a single Labour MP say to me, even off the record, that they support keeping the two child cap. Perhaps that’s about the ones I talk to, but that’s very much not just the party’s hard left.

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

I can't even. How about removing the cap not because of how it plays politically but because it will bring tens of thousands of children out of poverty? Fucking hell. Winning power should be about helping people not running scared of losing power.

submitted 1 day ago • 38 comments

I've had enough Labour MPs say to me that they didn't come into politics to see child poverty go up to think that they're going to win this fight.

submitted 1 day ago • 44 comments

An observation I once heard from a Chinese international grad student who became a militant activist in higher ed labor organizing: we [international students] come to the US because these are the best research institutions, but they're only the best because we're here

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Please follow the link to the Adam Bell Foundation - a charity building awareness of the symptoms of diabetes www.adambellfoundation.org.uk www.instagram.com/reel/DJ_tI77...

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Heavy AI use could wreck net zero goals, universities warned #AcademicSky www.timeshighereducation.com/news/heavy-a...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

International students who have already paid large amounts of tuition and dedicated a great deal of time pursuing degrees at Harvard are now being told they cannot finish because the government is mad at Harvard. This is both immoral and anti-democratic. apple.news/AzzDwAHW6SxK...

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Some version of "universities brought it on themselves" is usually deployed in response to this (eg Larry Summers). But the right of young people to express strong (legal) opinions at university and not have the force of the state deployed against them is fundamental.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Netenyahu really is a sickening moral crater of a man. A machine that burns out murderous policy and despicable slander. Pure fucking poison.

submitted 2 days ago • 45 comments

I was thinking about this, and one of the points is that international students skew heavily to research and postgraduate activities: i.e. those of greatest value to the US economy. Such unbelievable idiocy.

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

Yes, as @profjanegreen.bsky.social and @martamiori.bsky.social showed in their excellent analysis of the Reform vote for us this isn't true. Labour voters are not more attracted to Reform in "red wall" seats. samf.substack.com/p/the-reform...

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

Once, the UK’s position in these graphs would have been unthinkable. Obviously we are nowhere near the disaster hitting US universities but our hostility to international students has been heading the same direction. Sooner (most likely) or later it will have catastrophic consequences

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Harvard has 6700 foreign students affected. Let's say they pay $100k each. That would be $670m a year. Endowment is $53bn. They can ride out a period while this is challenged. But meantime students have to return home, a small portion want to and find a place at another US uni.

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

I can't overstate how scary this is. If the state did this to pretty much any UK university, it would go bankrupt

submitted 2 days ago • 15 comments

'Pregnant women and babies evacuated' after fire at Bristol maternity hospital Footage shared on social media showed a huge plume of black smoke billowing from St Michael's Hospital on Southwell Street this afternoon. The blaze broke out at around 4:30pm today. news.sky.com/story/pregna...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

As everyone knows, having the world’s top university in your country is something you want to call to a close.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

The niilampteyshow is the best Cov podcast by far #pusb.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Today, Baron (Michael) Gove of Torry made his first appearance in the House of Lords. Perhaps we ought to consider his long history of saying and writing terrible things... #MichaelGove A 🧵

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

Nigel Farage missed Keir Starmer's Commons statement on the UK-EU Summit earlier this week. He's now missing today's Westminster Hall debate on the summit. Because just a few days before parliamentary recess, he's on holiday. (Which is his 10th trip abroad at least since the general election).

submitted 2 days ago • 65 comments

More should have been made about Farage's absence from Parliament in the week of the summit. After all, the date was well known in advance. And next week is a holiday for the Commons anyway. This is someone who deliberately chose not to be present.

submitted 3 days ago • 52 comments

While English is undeniably vital for accessing opportunities & fostering community cohesion, it's essential to recognize the UK's rich linguistic tapestry. Languages like #Welsh, #Scots #Gaelic, & others are integral to our national identity & cultural heritage. 🔗 tinyurl.com/4mte5vae #langsky

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

That this has been so blindingly obvious is instructive. Going further with reducing net migration will produce very little political gains for this current government.

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

Exactly this. Labour could follow Reform's agenda pretty much to the letter and their voters wouldn't care. It's a pointless endeavour. So how about doing good and constructive and progressive things instead and aiming them at the remaining 70% of the electorate who might be into it??

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Part of this is about definitions. Even now, most of the media refuses to call Reform far right, and for a long time Farage was treated as a kind of eccentric novelty act rather than a right-wing demagogue.

submitted 3 days ago • 6 comments

i think it should be a bigger story that the president held a meeting with a foreign head of state where he ranted about the most gutter white supremacist propaganda you can find on the internet

submitted 3 days ago • 405 comments