Brexiter Arlene Foster who now sits in the House of Lords wants to cut welfare support and spend the money on defence instead
Brexit costs the UK £90 billion in lost tax income every year,if we didn't have Foster's Brexit we could keep supporting those in need while also ramping up defence spending
When you're poor you know your bank balance to the nearest penny & an exact inventory of your kitchen shelves, the precise date each of a half dozen bills are due & how long each can default before they accrue fines or disconnection & which items are cheaper in which store for a 3-mile radius.
The 1980s North Sea oil windfall went on tax cuts and unemployment benefit instead of being invested by a sovereign wealth fund – a fact Reform et al never mention.
For Mahmoud Khalll, this past year has been marked by profound hardship-and by profound courage. A year ago, Mahmoud was walking home through our city after sharing an iftar with his wife Noor when he was detained by federal agents, flown to Louisiana, and then held in an ICE facility for months. In that time, he was forced to miss the birth of his first child. All of this for exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine. And yet, even in the face of that cruelty, there has also been beauty. New Yorkers raising their voices in solidarity. A city refusing to look away. Mahmoud won his freedom, and a father was finally reunited with his child. Last night, as we marked the one year anniversary of his detention, Rama and I were honored to welcome Mahmoud, Noor, and their son Deen to Gracie Mansion to break our fast together. Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City.
In a dining room, five people eat, chat and smile around a table of food.
Iftar, Day 19
On International Womens Day we call on MLAs to support the Good Jobs Bill.
Polling shows major support for new Employment Rights laws from NI Assembly
NIC-ICTU has written to every MLA to urge support for new rights for workers in Northern Ireland
www.ictuni.org/news/interna...
As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.
Feminists across the world are paying tribute to Yanar Mohammed, great defender of women’s rights, who was assassinated today in Iraq.
In the late 90s he was very into liberal Irish scribblers. Big supporter of Fortnight Magazine.
Then he published David Willet’s ‘Liberal Dilemma’ and that seemed to shift his thinking to whatever Somewhere he inhabits.
Shame, really.
(Sighs)
From the land that invented populism…
www.agendani.com/trade-union-...
(Sighs)
From the land that invented populism…
www.agendani.com/trade-union-...
"They died to save her face"
From the Private Eye archive.
Issue 550, January 1983, some months after the Falklands war.
These figures illustrate the urgent need for NI Executive
to agree the proposals for Good Jobs Bill
@economy-ni.gov.uk
Let our MLAs do the jobs we pay them to do and legislate for better job security for every worker
www.ictuni.org/news/good-jo...
This is a historic milestone for working people in the South.
Congratulations to the Volkswagen workers and our @uaw.org family on ratifying their first union contract. Better pay, healthcare cost reductions, job security and more — it’s #BetterInAUnion!
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
Starmer’s real leadership crisis. New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog. Fatuous media coverage aside, Starmer’s challenge is to make good on his claim that Britain isn’t the country of the Brexit years in the face of rising ethno-nationalism: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/02/star...
Last time a Reform politician said the minimum wage should be cut we looked into his businesses & found three of his former employees had won employment tribunal claims against him.
But despite what the tribunal ordered, he didn't pay a single judgment
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...
Spoiling a lot of takes but begging a large number of other questions... "Worsening graduate fortunes, it turns out, are a particularly British problem"
www.ft.com/content/649d...
Strike over labour reforms brings Argentina’s capital to a near-standstill
Strike over labour reforms brings Argentina’s capital to a near-standstill https://aje.news/6yz95q
This should be front-page news. The collapse in UK goods exports is the single biggest reason why UK economic growth hasn’t picked up in recent years.
Brexit is a big part of it, but there’s also a major China shock to UK export competitiveness that’s gone largely unnoticed in UK political debate.
🗣️ “A #JustTransition is not optional – it is urgent. Climate action and digital transformation must create decent work, not deepen exploitation.” @luctriangle.bsky.social ITUC General Secretary
🔗 www.ituc-csi.org/Trade-union-...
As evidenced by his graceless hissy fit when asked a polite question about this today, Farage *really* doesn't want us talking about how expensively privately educated his whole top team were, it would be such a shame if everyone got to hear about this
In 1992, when 1,700 workers went on strike for seven weeks at Oakland's Summit Medical Center, Rev. Jesse Jackson walked the picket line with us. He stood shoulder to shoulder with five unions fighting for justice.
Rest in power, Rev. Jackson, we'll keep fighting from here. ✊❤️
now that's the power of a union
Excellent, incisive analysis
“8 in 10 people believe that everyone should be able to access a trade union in their workplace for help with employment issues
99% of SDLP voters
96% of Sinn Fein voters
92% Alliance voters
along with 6 in 10 DUP & UUP voters”
@LucidTalk polled 2,975
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politic...
Material conditions are what matter
Make sure kids aren’t hungry or cold. Make sure they live in a decent home. Make sure they have clothes and shoes - yes, and books and toys. Make sure their parents have time and headspace to spend time with them
Do all that - then talk to me about aspiration
Flowers lie on a snow-covered concrete stele of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Berlin, Germany, January 27, 2026. 📸 Annegret Hilse
