#NouvellePhotoDeProfil
Better than a giant floating head.
And thanks for the pic @MarianCramers
Originally posted as a thread of 3 tweets on Twitter on 4 July 2019. View the original thread.
Blog
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Links from the week of 24 June 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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In a list of “awful meaningless lists” the “livable cities” list would be very high up. @FeargusOSull tells it like it is: buff.ly/2FwgnjC
Wed 26 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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Links from the week of 24 June 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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In a list of “awful meaningless lists” the “livable cities” list would be very high up. @FeargusOSull tells it like it is: buff.ly/2FwgnjC
Wed 26 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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100% of British political rhetoric is directed at those who positively want a hard Brexit…
100% of British political rhetoric is directed at those who positively want a hard Brexit or just want Brexit to be over, and both are going to be disappointed. Plus the rest of the population who are already disappointed.
I still genuinely don’t know whether it’s better for the UK to properly experience Brexit, and sweat out the fever, or for Article 50 to be revoked.
On the one hand, going through with it will give the liars, charlatans and wasters who are so prominent in politics today all the excuse they need to blame the foreigners and stoke up nationalist hatred (youtube.com/watch?v=b5HasW…)
But not going through with it leaves a poisoned British politics in the centre of a Union that needs focus and reform, very different from what the “remain and reform” rhetoric means.
Originally posted as a thread of 4 tweets on Twitter on 25 June 2019. View the original thread.
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Links from the week of 3 June 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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The best job I had when I worked in Government (sorry, @hmtreasury) also made a difference. It also taught me a lot about the power of participation in services: theguardian.com/society/2019/j…
Wed 5 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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Polish soccer team honors Holocaust victim who scored its 1st international goal | The Times of Israel (via @notesfrompoland) timesofisrael.com/polish-soccer-…
Sat 8 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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This is wearyingly familiar from the UK post-2016 (both the racism and the reporting trope) rtbf.be/info/societe/d…
Sun 9 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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Links from the week of 3 June 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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The best job I had when I worked in Government (sorry, @hmtreasury) also made a difference. It also taught me a lot about the power of participation in services: theguardian.com/society/2019/j…
Wed 5 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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Polish soccer team honors Holocaust victim who scored its 1st international goal | The Times of Israel (via @notesfrompoland) timesofisrael.com/polish-soccer-…
Sat 8 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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This is wearyingly familiar from the UK post-2016 (both the racism and the reporting trope) rtbf.be/info/societe/d…
Sun 9 Jun 2019 · on Twitter
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Links from the week of 27 May 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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Elections 2019: et si on se calmait? plus.lesoir.be/227625/article…
Wed 29 May 2019 · on Twitter
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Plastic Bertrand giving a mini-Plastic Bertrand costume to the Manneken Pis is high-quality Belgium: facebook.com/delphine.houba…
Wed 29 May 2019 · on Twitter
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Links from the week of 27 May 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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Elections 2019: et si on se calmait? plus.lesoir.be/227625/article…
Wed 29 May 2019 · on Twitter
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Plastic Bertrand giving a mini-Plastic Bertrand costume to the Manneken Pis is high-quality Belgium: facebook.com/delphine.houba…
Wed 29 May 2019 · on Twitter
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Links from the week of 20 May 2019
Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
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“Freedom isn’t something to take for granted” – CDU #EUelections2019 video shows how non-UK nations often see the link between WWII and the EU: facebook.com/CDU/videos/227…
Wed 22 May 2019 · on Twitter
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This is the logical endpoint of positioning, spin and marketing being all, and policy…
This is the logical endpoint of positioning, spin and marketing being all, and policy being nothing. It’s driven by the Internet in part, but as much by complaisant media-political class who indulge lies, and focus on palace intrigue and horserace. twitter.com/pmdfoster/stat…
Why is lying – actual outright lying – now seen as politically acceptable? Because the risks of being called out for it are so low – low likelihood, low impact. You just bluster it out, and next cycle everyone has forgotten it.
Why are self-evidently disastrous policies continually put forward as solutions when they are nothing of the sort? Because having journalists who care about and understand policy is expensive, and policy bores people so it doesn’t get the clicks.
I don’t blame voters for this. The first thing to remember about voters is they don’t have time or motivation to follow politics even 1% as much as those who have a professional interest. They make their choices on the basis of what they are told.
How could it be any other way? Only in politics do you hear the argument “well, I was lying, but they believed me so they can just suck it up”. You can’t sell a packet of crisps on that basis, let alone huge policy decisions. There is a reason “caveat emptor” isn’t
the rule where the seller has vastly more information and power than the buyer. Yet, not just in the UK and US but worse there than others, political accountability through media has broken down completely. There is no effective check and balance – and we’ll all suffer for it.
Like John Major, I think society needs to condemn a little more.
Originally posted as a thread of 7 tweets on Twitter on 22 May 2019. View the original thread.