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Joined 22 days ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2025

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  • I love to criticise the government, I do it quite a lot. But one thing the UK gov does really, really incredibly well is its website. The gov.uk pages are one of the most intuitive and informative things to browse on the internet. It really is excellent AS IT IS. It ain’t broke is what I’m saying.
    So on top of all the very valid concerns about AI accessing the information of i.e. desperate citizens looking for legal help in dire, highly private circumstances, I’ll be mourning the loss of a formerly excellent resource.


  • why is a Labour MP regurgitating industry lies?

    Real head-scratcher, that one. Reeeeal brainteaser. An honest-to-goodness Labour MP? Shilling for think-tanks? In this economy? On Christmas Eve, in the rain?
    Surely not. Because that would mean…

    We have no valid voting choice as people on the left who care about progress and compassion and social justice, and haven’t since the 1970’s. Different flavours of Thatcherite neoliberalism are the only thing anyone under 50 has ever known, and the seemingly endless inertia of that failed ideology within the class-captured, self-reinforcing, closed system of government means it’s likely all we’ll ever know

    Probably just a coincidence.













  • The Scouse British dialect has a nice term for this: “Geg out”. As opposed to “Fred is gegging in”, used when someone is trying to implicate themselves or become part of the group/conversation.
    Someone involving themselves when they shouldn’t be? Two syllables: Geg. Out.
    No idea where it comes from but I heard it a lot in my youth. Forsomereason.



  • The nuance here is that they’ve been proscribed as a terrorist group. They are a direct action group but they don’t hurt people, just damage property. That’s a crime, but it’s not terrorism. They can and should be tried for criminal damage, B&E, damage to government property etc, but this is a freedom of protest issue, and now freedom of speech, too, since I can no longer say things like “I think Palestine Action went too far, but they’re fighting for a just cause”, for example, because I’d be expressing support for a terrorist group and therefore committing a crime.
    Compare to e.g. the suffragette movement who bombed buildings and all kinds to get the vote for women: they’re now lauded by the same person who proscribed this group. Or more recent examples like just stop oil or the protesters that threw the Edward Colson statue into the River Avon. They were tried for criminal damages. Then recently, some protesters have been starting to get tried under the far, far harsher anti terrorism laws, usually when it involves protesting Israel’s war crimes. These are the laws that allow things like extended detention in solitary without charge or phone calls, massively longer sentences and all manner of nasty punishments. It’s clearly a power grab to reduce the will to protest.