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

We are all shocked that certain political voices in NI, who have platformed "immigration concerns" for years as blind fact instead of acknowledging it as rhetorical spin for personal gain, have come out to decry the violence facilitated by an atmosphere they actively legitimised 😱 1/

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Really excellent post on the Tortoise Media case by Leah Trueblood - well worth reading on both the limits of freedom of information and the question of public functions and judicial review:

submitted 3 hours ago • 2 comments

Not the main thing about tonight's awfulness in Ballymena, but just to note for London-based commentators, that the use of water cannon, that we're so often told can't happen in the UK, because it offends policing norms, is happening again in the UK: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 13 hours ago • 4 comments

The most important thing to take from the Data Use Bill snafu in the NI Assembly is confirmation that Westminster and Whitehall continue to not have the foggiest clue what they signed up to in agreeing the Windsor Framework: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 14 hours ago • 0 comments

The War on Tailor. www.axios.com/2025/06/09/v...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

The harm of AI is hitting me profoundly tonight, as OUP announces it will be using AI to summarize/check academic articles. It's b/c I've just taught a class where we looked at how ideas, language & culture around an issue changed over time through the gradual & uneven exchange of human ideas. 1/3

submitted 7 days ago • 4 comments

Two things here. (i) This is a discrimination case waiting to happen: potential indirect relig discrim in accessing a service, with no clear-cut justification defence on the table. (ii) There's also a wider constitutional issue. MPs are supposed to represent & be accessible to their constituents. 1/

submitted 2 days ago • 18 comments

Very good thread. Generally, reactionary complaints about “rewriting history” rely on a sleight of hand: that the version of history written by previous generations is somehow “neutral” or “apolitical”, but that versions written by this generation are “political” or even “woke”.

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

Proofs! In the next issue of Public Law, @colinmurray.bsky.social and I discuss things the Supreme Court has to confront as it hears the first successful Windsor Framework challenge later this year. Grateful to @aileenmcharg.bsky.social and @rogermasterman.bsky.social for the rapid turnaround!

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

'The next Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) will not run as planned in 2027, the English higher education regulator has indicated, as it considers how to integrate the exercise into its wider quality assessments.' Finally an iota of common sense in the morass of HE policy nonsense.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

My first time giving a presentation with a maxim gun in the corner. Much as I have a whole lot to say, this is having a salutary effect on my timekeeping...

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

It's 50 years today since Britain's first referendum on Europe, when voters backed membership by a two-to-one majority. I've written for the @newstatesman.com, on the "eery similarities and clanging dissonances" of Britain's first big European debate. www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/0...

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

A definition of White British which, aside from everything else, includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles.

submitted 7 days ago • 36 comments

‘Most of the opprobrium aimed at universities is fantastical. I only wish that academic life was as radical and subversive as its detractors believe.’ Ed Kiely on UK university finances: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

'The most senior judge in England and Wales, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, and the President of the King's Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp, will now join Mr Justice Chamberlain to consider what, if any, action should be taken about MI5's false evidence' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Is the proposed mutual recognition of expulsion orders within the EU compatible with human rights law? Analysis by Prof Elspeth Guild - eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2025/06/euro...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Now here's a line that no one I know could deliver and hold a straight face... m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/norther...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

It suffices to say there was no person who loomed so large over the running of NI for such an extended period amid the upheavals of the late C20 as Kenneth Bloomfield. You go through the archives, he's at every major meeting and has a briefing for every occasion: www.bbc.com/news/article...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Here’s my full interview @mrjamesob.bsky.social’s show @lbc.co.uk on why I think Israel is committing genocide. Once again many thanks for having me! youtu.be/ZHPGh8jZySI?...

submitted 11 days ago • 6 comments

🔴NEW:The dark money behind UK's anti-abortion backlash - Key US anti‑abortion lawyer funding Toby Young’s Free Speech Union - Alliance Defending Freedom’s UK spending soars Warnings of “obvious danger” of “importing America's toxic far right politics” democracyforsale.substack.com/p/us-antiabo...

submitted 11 days ago • 71 comments

It needs to be emphasised that this is absolutely the wrong take on the Adams case, which was about allegations over the Donaldson murder in 2005 - long after 1998. The case wasn't about the Troubles, even if the BBC's defence very much tried to make it so: search.app/52Nim

submitted 11 days ago • 4 comments

So tired of this timeline.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

In 1934, two young women from Cambridge (Nora Burke and Sheila Shugrue) were arrested for protesting at Harvard's Commencement. They were protesting the presence of Ernst Hanfstaengl (class of 1909), a close friend and aide of Adolf Hitler, who was attending his 25th reunion at Harvard.

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

The NI Finance Dept is getting a lot of flak over dropping the ball on the consent motion for the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which will be law before Stormont votes on it. Rightly so - the issues are v important in the NI context and the excuses don't stack up: www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Extract from recent speech by UK Attorney General which is of clear relevance to UK-ECHR relations: www.gov.uk/government/s...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

A day of trying to predict where Trump's Liberation Day tariffs will go after the US Court of International Trade decision in VOS Selections has got me to the conclusion that we are still going to be stuck listening to variations on these tariff plans for months if not years to come:

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

the amount of discrimination that OF artists (and all sex workers tbh) get is ridiculous - they can get locked out of financial services, travel, sometimes other forms of employment, payment processors, now elite sports apparently? It’s WILD, and it can follow you even when you retire!

submitted 12 days ago • 35 comments

Have we hit peak AI grifter yet, or does this story pretty literally keep writing itself?

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Wake me up if the US Supreme Court does something to stop tariffs, which it won't. And even if it did, a complaisant Congress would legislate to enable tariffs. This ruling is not the magic wand that ends Trump tariffs that some traders seem to think: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's death an intellectual giant passes. A Grain of Wheat is such a visceral book, the first thing I recommend when people have no conception of the Mau Mau Emergency and Decolonising the Mind continues to ripple with energy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Registration for our Re-Imagining Counter-Terrorism Law workshop is now open! Registration is free but will close at 12pm on 2nd June and places are limited. Please use the following link to register. forms.office.com/e/NKSYSGMs9X

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

📣 Know your rights when protesting in NI! ✊ We're formally launching our guide to help you understand the law, your rights & PSNI powers. 📅 Wed 4 June, 5:30pm 2 Royal Ave, Belfast. Sign up 👉 eventbrite.co.uk/e/know-your-...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments