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

Again: Britain (not just this government but all of the recent ones) has a problem with knowledge work. Fishing, steel are manly proper jobs with a Victorian sense of place and history. Creative industries & HE are treated as secondary; derided or ignored.

submitted 1 day ago • 25 comments

Can we dispense with the fiction that Trump is earnestly trying to bring back American manufacturing now? He's just a pudding brain who is doing this for narcissistic and corruption-based reasons. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

submitted 1 hour ago • 8 comments

I don't think Eleanor Parker, A Clerk of Oxford, is here on Bluesky. But she has written a wonderful Patreon piece on the meaning of #PalmSunday. She and @annelouiseavery.bsky.social are the only accounts I subscribe to there, and I love their frequent synchronicity. www.patreon.com/clerkofoxford

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Something something we're going to stand up for our core values something something bsky.app/profile/mcop...

submitted 8 hours ago • 2 comments

Across Europe and further afield, the picture is similar: Counterterrorism agencies are grappling with a new generation of attackers, plotters and acolytes of extremism who are younger than ever and have fed on ultraviolent and potentially radicalizing content largely behind their screens.

submitted 1 hour ago • 0 comments

2014-2024: £38bn UK tax loss due to HMRC remissions & write-offs. No need for the two child benefit cap, winter fuel payment cut, disability benefit cut Losses due to fraud, bad laws - HMRC is not a preferential creditor for businesses own taxes. Govts can enforce and change law. Why won't they?

submitted 1 hour ago • 7 comments

This incenses me. I’m old enough to remember the Thatcher sell offs. Looking back from my age/experience now, I think how could mature, educated adults not have worked out what the inevitable result of such vandalism would be? youtu.be/nedVpG-GjkE?...

submitted 1 hour ago • 6 comments

A missile with cluster munitions — used deliberately to kill as many civilians as possible. The strike on the city of Sumy was a conscious attack on civilians, says Head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak.

submitted 1 hour ago • 6 comments

Just spent day reading about the collapse of the British car industry. The lack of vision, the managerial incompetence, the strategic insularity, the complacent reliance on ‘world-class’ marques, the constant short-termism, bad labour relations. And I thought: yup, there go our universities too.

submitted 32 days ago • 32 comments

Observer science editor Robin McKie is one of several expert, knowledgeable writers lost as the paper is given away :(

submitted 1 hour ago • 2 comments

California farmers brace for consequences as Trump's tariffs bring economic upheaval

submitted 1 hour ago • 0 comments

1/ THREAD - Several articles by the BBC and other news orgs have covered many angles of the killing of 15 PRCS workers by Israeli troops near Rafah, Gaza, on 23 March this year, such as this piece: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... My contribution to what we’ve been able to say explained below.

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

I think I became slightly affectionate toward wasps after, at a barbecue, I and a friend watched in fascination after a wasp landed on their plate, cut off a perfect, disc of fish - bigger than it's own head - flew a couple of feet to a wall and proceeded to have a massive feast, then flew away.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

"The proposal....says it would target 'criminal illegal aliens' and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — AS AN AMERICAN TERRITORY." www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

submitted 7 hours ago • 144 comments

“Part of the reason we’re in such a housing crunch today is that when the MURB program ended, and condominiums were legalized, developers largely abandoned rental construction for condos, leading to a huge gap in rental supply.”

submitted 6 hours ago • 4 comments

During Hurricane Helene there were actual militia groups mobiiizng and agitating because they claimed FEMA wasn't responding. The lies put victims and responders in danger. I'm curious how those groups respond to Trump refusing NC’s request for aid. infoepi.org/posts/2024/1...

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

📌 New Research 🔹 11 April 2025 “Here we show that children and adolescents with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection are at a statistically significant increased risk of various cardiovascular outcomes […] compared to uninfected controls” #SafeAirSchools 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Two Israeli missiles hit a building inside a major Gaza hospital, destroying the emergency and reception departments and damaging other structures reut.rs/4lva5TE

submitted 1 hour ago • 10 comments

I think you can explain quite a lot of this government's priorities if you start from the assumption that the people responsible are genuinely, sincerely, very right-wing.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

“This small stone building from the 13th century is emblematic of something essential to the human experience: solitude bound by togetherness”, writes Kiran Sidhu. www.prospectmagazine...

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

The genesis of this scandal was in the aftermath of last big NHS reconfiguration & Public Health England made a decision to axe quality peer review checks on test centres. Concerns by experts were ignored in 2013...a warning from history as the next big change is on the horizon.

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

Honestly, UK, do it or fuck off. The world’s in flames, and you’re pissing about over the name of the most basic and uncontroversial form of cooperation imaginable. If you can’t even manage this, go away and come back when you’ve grown the fuck up. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

submitted 2 hours ago • 19 comments

Crazy idea for Labour: why not just enact policies you actually believe in, rather than attempt 4D political chess.

submitted 2 hours ago • 11 comments

I’d like to tell you a story about planets, and what it means for a scientific theory to be wrong… 🧵

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

Everyday Objects Made More Interesting 🧵 1/8

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

Why is the government and the news so indifferent to the meltdown happening in UK #HigherEd right now? Our universities are the envy of the world. Yet we are at risk of losing a generation of academics and damaging the sector beyond repair.

submitted 1 day ago • 23 comments

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 You'll all know of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster, but have you heard of the Giant Cats of Dunbar?

submitted 2 hours ago • 5 comments

"She roundly objected to the fascist salutes given by some of Donald Trump’s supporters. How dare they? This was not just dangerous. It was an insult to everything she and her colleagues at Bletchley Park had achieved. For she knew, now, just how much they had." www.economist.com/obituary/202...

submitted 2 hours ago • 2 comments