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

Famously, asking everyone to spend their time justifying their jobs is a great way of enabling them to do their jobs By the same token, the best way to cut bureaucracy is to generate millions of extra emails about all the other emails. Strong Hitchhiker's vibes all round.

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

"Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go... What does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?" Eighty two years ago today Sophie Scholl was executed, aged 21, for her part in the non-violent, anti-Nazi group the White Rose.

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

I’ve worked in intranets, digital workplaces, and comms long enough to see the same cycles repeat, the same mistakes made, and the same bright ideas crash and burn. So here are the hard truths. Are you ready? Let’s go. 🧵

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Teeheehee

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

We're hiring for an Associate Product Support Manager ✨ The role is a blend of product, delivery and business analysis and an ideal jumping off point for anyone wanting to switch to digital from another civil service profession. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

Speaking as a Christian, I would very much like Mr Farage to say what exactly he means by Judeo-Christian culture, and where, for example, he sees the Syrian church (dating from the first century) fitting into it. He doesn't get to exclude the majority world from this faith community.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Umberto Eco put together a now-famous list of 14 attributes of fascistic states. I'm going to discuss each of them in hopes this helps ppl understand that fascism is not just a buzzword. We're going to go through these by theme, so strap in. 🧵

submitted 6 days ago • 60 comments

It is INSANE that journalists are writing little sketches about Trump’s threats towards Canada. Have you lost your minds? Is this all just a bit of fun? It reveals a complete lack of understanding of how America is now acting towards longstanding allies.

submitted 5 days ago • 19 comments

OneTeamGov Monthly Global Meetups Starting this month. This is a chance to connect with peers around the world who share your passion for the public service and making it better. Interested? You can join register here: lu.ma/svba3ide Please share with others who you think might be interested!

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

You can drive a truck through "learn how to ask the right questions", though.

submitted 5 days ago • 12 comments

Last week, at the peak of an author tour, a friend sent me this article. It’s an honest and perceptive column, and much of it really spoke to me. That said, it also seems to take for granted some aspects of PR I’m not convinced are inherent to the job. kathleenschmidt.substack.com/p/whats-it-r... 🧵

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

The community note 🤌😘

submitted 7 days ago • 2976 comments

"Everything is a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works" is a summary on the same level of elegance as "but this success, where is it?", and one I think I'm going to find myself quoting a lot in the next decade or so.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

[reads post] THEY DIDN'T [clicks link] THEY DID!

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

New from 404 Media: anyone can push updates to the Doge.gov site. Two sources independently found the issue, one made their own decision to deface the site. "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN." www.404media.co/anyone-can-p...

submitted 9 days ago • 39 comments

Remember, people are disabled by bad assumptions, design, code, architecture, content, processes, policies, go governance, attitudes and biases, to name a few. So before you say accessibility is done FOR disabilities, recognise it’s our decisions that disable our users.

submitted 9 days ago • 3 comments

WSJ opeds were always a long way below the news pages but COME ON

submitted 10 days ago • 22 comments

#GoodMorningFromSaskatoon Feels more like #GoodMorningFromHoth amiright? 😂

submitted 11 days ago • 10 comments

3rd of Feb - applied to renew passport online. 4th of Feb - posted off old passport. 12th of Feb - new passport delivered. I know some people like to complain about stuff in the UK that doesn't work - but I think a lot of that is our raised expectations.

submitted 11 days ago • 4 comments

The weekly One Team Gov breakfast is starting back up 🥳 Initially it'll be virtual only, from 0830 to 0930 every Wednesday. We'll use leancoffeetable.com to facilitate the discussion. The videoconference will be on Microsoft Teams. Q: Would you like to run 1 of them, please?

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Personal rule: always repost the Saskatchewan being beautiful. What an extraordinary river.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Yeah yeah yeah "romance" yeah yeah "genuinely impressive performance" yeah "everything we love about the sport" right right right In all seriousness it is all of those things, fair play to Argyle!

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

⚡️ The historic moment of Estonia leaving the Russian-fed power grid. On February 8, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia left Russia and Belarus energy system. By the end of the day today, they will have joined the European grid.

submitted 14 days ago • 463 comments

Allies, friends, please please sign this to complaint ti GB News to OFCOM, a deeply offensive homophobic slur. This stuff is happening in broad daylight again on national television. Don't let it happen, send a message.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

I hope one thing digital government practitioners are taking away from attempting to divine what is happening in the US: it should be a mater of public record how digital public services and infrastructure work, when they change and what data they use. No more excuses.

submitted 15 days ago • 4 comments

"I'm a free speech absolutist who thinks reporters should be fired for discovering unflattering information about public officials"

submitted 16 days ago • 123 comments

I am in Copenhagen for the first time and I am here to tell you that you should come here and enjoy a peaceful, happy city at your earliest convenience.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Payments, identity and access to data are points of power and control. They can be used with bad or good intent. I really hope what appears to be going on in the US doesn't put those things beyond use for the latter elsewhere.

submitted 17 days ago • 3 comments

Love and rage to the US public servants watching their public service get a kicking. I feel extra privileged at the moment to be a public servant in a democracy.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

For the record, the correct response to this in the UK at least is always: "I believe that doing this would potentially represent a significant data breach and break the law. I'll need a letter from the legal department confirming it isn't, first."

submitted 19 days ago • 14 comments

My uncle was a governor of a grammar school when the switch to comprehensive education came, and he supported it. His experience was striking enough that I heard about it decades later: stand-up rows in meetings, personal attacks, "this so-called Christian wishes to degrade education," the works.

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

Lot of good responses from Canadian leaders today. Doug Ford, indeed, amongst them. But you can't half tell some Brits hadn't heard of him before yesterday. No shade meant, you can't stay across all the populists everywhere and even stopped clocks etc etc, but he is...certainly worth a Google.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

I’m not saying we don’t still have a journey to go on, but somehow we got to the point in the UK where I can renew my passport wholly online without having first given some random far right activist uncontrolled access to my social security records.

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

Rewatching Brooklyn 99 and the quality crash whenever eastern Europe is mentioned is incredibly jarring. Not just Nikolaaaahge but the whole cut-price Borat vibe; for a show that took such (brilliantly successful!) effort to avoid ethnic stereotypes in its main cast it's breathtakingly lazy.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Liverpool is great.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Probably the second most important thing about my job is saying "think about outcomes over outputs" a lot. Probably the most important thing is saying "no, seriously" and politely refusing to change my advice.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

This thread is a public services version of Liam Neeson's bit from Taken. "what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career..."

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

submitted 27 days ago • 1093 comments

Genius.

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

Fuck Sake!

submitted 29 days ago • 3 comments

Sat down to write long-form but I don’t have the energy. Back to microblogging! What @ukgovcamp.bsky.social means to me in 2025 🧵 #ukgc25

submitted 30 days ago • 4 comments

A warning to anyone involved with local history (particularly at a community level): The 'British Movement' (who are straightforward Nazis) have developed a website with local history pages for a load of towns especially in the North of England that turn up on page 1 of search.

submitted 31 days ago • 4 comments