Graham

Democracy Volunteers ‘Family Voting’ and how to prevent it in Future Elections Democracy Volunteers has been observing elections in the UK for 10 years. We have seen ‘family voting’ across the UK and we think it is important to explain more about it and how it should be possi…

I've been asking Democracy Volunteers, the organisation who said they saw family voting in the Gorton and Denton by-election, if they would give details about evidence or methodology. They have now released an updated statement - which is still quite vague.

democracyvolunteers.org/family-votin...

This should be used in every academic politics class and every activist training session. Whether we like it or not this is how politics works in the real world, outside the hyper engaged 10%. (I’m unclear if Owen understood the lesson.)

The booke of love ys long & boringe
No folk kan lyft the damned thinge
Crammid ful of charters & lore & rubrics
And ynstructiouns for daunsing -
But Ich? Ich love it whan thou readest to me;
And thee, thou kanst reade me eny thinge.

("The Book of Love" by The Magnetic Fields)

I’m always astonished at Who fans who complain about this stuff, given the show has been visibly winging its canon for so long that that the randomness itself is now essentially canon.

But also a policy created illiberally - it’s been defined and announced by fiat by party HQ, rather than debated and decided at Conference as these things are meant to be.

Yeah this was basically me as well

We had this for hangover breakfast today and my god you saved our lives

The HAIR, omg.

2025 Great Songs

The songs that hit me hardest in 2025, a mix of scuzzy indie, techno, pop, folk and chaotic rock. Best listened to on shuffle.

Same

The Canary Wharf Waitrose requires the same thing

I dunno, now might be quite a good idea tbh

I have eaten
the plume
that was of
ta tante

and which
you were probably
saving
for a French phrase book

Forgive me
it was delicious
also your postillion
has been struck by lightning

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There’s still Hiyacar. They let people borrow each other’s vehicles as well as having some of their own, we’ve been using them for years since we gave up having a car (in zone 2) www.hiyacar.co.uk

Hiyacar still exists

25 years today, and every one has been better than the last

Kept everybody alive in ME2 IIRC (it was a while ago), unity in ME3, romanced the jock all the way through :)

At least it's honest, right? Intrusive questioning of women who don't conform to norms about how they should look, and women then being banned if they tell their inquisitor to mind his own sodding business, has always been the logical end point for the patriarchal project that is TERFdom.

Whereas I just finished playing Mass Effect (LE) for the first time, 4 years after I started playing it. Loved it, I’m just a slow player.

If Mike Dixon emerges and sees his shadow it’s at least another 6 weeks

Used to love his writing but can’t be dealing with his transphobia

Many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.

This is from Autocracy, Inc, about how modern autocratic propaganda works.

I consider this every time I decide what to share and how to frame it.

Some good news.

London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces.

The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.

This is also why the right wing don’t like the arts.

Bless those who think the Home Office can successfully carry out a huge IT procurement exercise for digital ID cards for implementation before the next general election.

I quite like immigration.

“This policy is a fucking disgrace and will do harm to the people it affects, our economy, our services, and it’s morally reprehensible” is the correct response not “haha your numbers are wrong and it may not even be legal”

Farron. Patriots love their country. Nationalists hate their neighbours.

🎯 from Tim Farron

UK and St George’s flags should never be used to ‘intimidate and terrify’, says senior Lib Dem ‘How dare the nationalists steal our flags?’ asks Tim Farron at party conference in Bournemouth

Some more culture war pushback from the Lib Dems - people who use the union jack or St George’s cross as a form of aggressive nationalism do not love their country, Tim Farron tells their conference.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Godammitt, Charles Dickens just made me cry