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

Well this is depressing.

submitted 2 hours ago • 2 comments

Fraser Nelson has noticed that a large part of the British Right is going mad. www.thetimes.com/article/27c9...

submitted 1 day ago • 48 comments

Interesting.

submitted 2 hours ago • 0 comments

We met two cheetah cubs today @YorkshireWP with very different personalities. Meet Kendi and Tafari…

submitted 19 hours ago • 2 comments

Amazing morning feeding the cheetahs at Yorkshire Wildlife Park!

submitted 21 hours ago • 2 comments

New vlog👇1/4 children aged 0-4 face hunger & hardship - that has to change. Slashing benefits for short term savings will just drive ⬆️hunger, poverty & debt. Here’s what @trusselluk.bsky.social says the Child Poverty Strategy should do instead: www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-res...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

New vlog👇1/4 children aged 0-4 face hunger & hardship - that has to change. Slashing benefits for short term savings will just drive ⬆️hunger, poverty & debt. Here’s what @trusselluk.bsky.social says the Child Poverty Strategy should do instead: www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-res...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Realised that I no longer have random men telling me to smile. Looking back, thinking how often that used to happen. And how you couldn't challenge it. Because you just never know if they'll move on to attack you. In so many ways, being a young woman is just awful.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Tackling hunger & hardship must be at the heart of the government's coming child poverty strategy. 😲c 2/3 (63%) @TrussellUK emergency food parcels go to families with children. 😲1/4 children aged 0-4 face hunger & hardship – higher than for any other age group.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

2025 is a BIG year for tackling hunger & hardship! With Spending Review + Child Poverty Strategy + UC Review @trusselluk.bsky.social wants to see: ✅ Financial Crisis & Resilience Fund for crisis support ✅ Joined up health, employment & skills ✅ More social homes ✅ Scrap 2 child limit + boost UC 1/2

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Weak and pathetic: "The US is opposing calling Russia the aggressor in a G7 statement on the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, threatening to derail a traditional show of unity, according to five western officials familiar with the matter." www.ft.com/content/7380...

submitted 2 days ago • 20 comments

I think I see a way through this "Ukrainian election" problem that is straightforward. Russia removes itself completely from all Ukrainian land, then Zelensky calls an election. There, problem solved.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

There should be a word for when you simultaneously feel left out for not being invited to something, and deeply grateful not to have to go.

submitted 4 days ago • 7 comments

I genuinely don't understand how people can be outraged by supposed free speech restrictions in the UK or Europe, and seems totally unbothered by countries actually imprisoning & killing anyone who disagrees with the ruling regime.

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

Sometimes I watch adverts & I try to imagine the brainstorming session that led to that being the very best idea they could come up with. And what must the rest have been like?

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

President Donald Trump's administration targeted bank regulators, rocket scientists and tax enforcers as it sought to fire thousands more federal employees in an unprecedented assault on the US civil service reut.rs/3EGeIJr

submitted 4 days ago • 52 comments

If you missed today's newsletter, in which I said 'look, come on, we really do need to be increasing spending back to 1966 to 1990 levels and it's mad to think you can get political consent for that without increasing spending elsewhere', don't worry: I will be saying it for most of the year I think

submitted 5 days ago • 18 comments

Lots of useful analysis here. Standout stat - 2 million economically inactive people want a job. They don’t need harsher benefit conditionality or lower incomes. They need better support & more accessible jobs. That’s what health & disability reforms should focus on.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Positive @davidgauke.bsky.social led review will confront 'penal populism' - longer & longer sentences, doing less & less good. Better sentencing = less crime. That's the goal. Not the political sugar rush of ramping up sentences every time there's a row. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/feb...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

On the heels of multiple airplane disasters, including one less than a month ago that killed 67 people, and after years of warnings about our understaffed air traffic control system, Trump has begun firing hundreds of FAA air traffic control workers. apnews.com/article/doge...

submitted 5 days ago • 103 comments

Council Tax is enraging. Regressive, divorced from reality, driving the poorest into debt, hunger, hardship. Getting worse. But no political party yet had the courage to sort it. Ht @lalithatry.bsky.social @tom-clark.bsky.social @resfoundation.bsky.social www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/risi...

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

Found it! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton...

submitted 17 days ago • 5 comments

Ok, that Lynda & Khalil moment got me. #TheArchers

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Do we know what job the Harrison actor is off to do? We know he’s not coming back to Ambridge! #TheArchers

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Khalil really is such a nice lad. #TheArchers

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Ah, so Lawrence is racist as well as smart, smug & superior. What a surprise. #TheArchers

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments

Probably there is no clearer way to express to Europeans that they are increasingly on their own than to spend 95% of the prime time speech at a Security Conference on cultural war issues while a real war is raging on the continent. #MSC2025

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

Real honour to chair today's @mariecurieuk.bsky.social #MCResearch2025 conference session on poverty at end of life. Sobering new research: - Numbers dying in poverty rose to 110,000 in 2023. - Risk of dying in poverty far higher for working age, but also now rising for pensioners. 1/4

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Always shocked by the number of people dying in poverty in the UK - 111,000 in 2023, up from 90,000 in 2019 - higher risk for working age people, women, black minorities, North East, Wales @drjulietstone.bsky.social @helenbarnard.bsky.social @mariecurieeolc.bsky.social #MCResearch2025 bit.ly/42UPfpK

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Pretty extraordinary result - yes, local by-elections are low turnout but I can't recall UKIP ever performing this strongly in Wales. Suggests Reform's decision to launch their manifesto in South Wales last year was astute - Senedd elections next year will be interesting.

submitted 9 days ago • 23 comments

Ok folks, deep breaths. There is very real reason to worry about the dynamic emerging between Washington and Moscow when it comes to Ukraine. But there is also very real reason to believe that Ukraine and Europe can create a better outcome. (A rather long 🧵, obviously) /1

submitted 9 days ago • 72 comments

I find it odd that some people who vehemently defend academy freedoms on curriculum & staff also want to pass a law forcing schools to ban phones. So government shouldn't interfere with big strategic frame for education, but should write a specific element of behaviour policy?

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

Oh no. It's going to turn out the sewage flood would never have happened if there'd been beavers at Brookfield. There'll be a rush of support & Kirsty and Rex's smugometer will go stratospheric. #TheArchers

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

This hotel really is a mess. Only about 5 customers but restaurant seems chaotic & staff in panic mode the whole time. 2 members of staff on, neither of whom seems to be able to do anything without each other's help.

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

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submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Spent today with the amazing team at Southwark foodbank. Loved hearing more about all they’re doing to help people in poverty & crisis today, and change things for the future. Phrase of the day - ‘People leave the foodbank with hope.’ @trusselluk.bsky.social

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

when writing about the rise of British populism it’s worth bearing in mind that voters still prefer Starmer to Farage… ….and even prefer Ed Davey to Farage

submitted 12 days ago • 64 comments