Tootfinder

Out of curiosity, I just watched the 3'39" video on the front of the Green Party web site, which turned out to be themed primarily on what it means to be "super rich". Really good video overall, I thought.
I especially wanted to highlight one phrase which stood out to me:
"Since the pandemic began".
A lot of people would have said "Since the pandemic" or "during the pandemic" - as if it were over now.
I'm thinking: _Someone_ on his team knows the difference. I'm not saying it's definitely ZP himself, I expect he takes input from colleagues on the speech-writing, but still. _Someone_ there knows the pandemic is still happening.
There's an allusion to air quality as well.
Thank you whoever that was!
#GreenParty #UKPol #CovidIsntOver

If at first your protest doesn't succeed, try, try again. But after that you are legally obligated to give up or risk arrest. 😆
Hard to imaging those who are protesting by getting arrested for bogus terrorism laws giving much of a shit if instead they are arrested for protesting too many times.
What a joke. You can't just legally define a false thing as true. Palestine Action are not a terror group, even if you define them as one in law you authoritarian crazed lunatics.
I wish this government would just fuck the hell off. Imagine being more authoritarian and illiberal than the conservative party. 🙄
Police forces will be granted powers to put conditions on repeat protests, the government has announced, a day after nearly 500 protesters were arrested.
RE: #ukpol #protest #authoritarian

262 prisoners were released in error in the 2024/25 year—on average, five per week. Blame the Tories’ staff cuts or outdated systems all you like, but that degree of permeability looks awfully like corruption. #ukpol #prisons

Twelve further prisoners accidentally released, says Lammy
Justice Secretary David Lammy has said 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past three weeks, two of whom are still at large. It comes on top of the 91 prisoners who were freed by mistake between April and October. Speaking to the BBC, Lammy said there would always be a "human error" …

The cops and the government suggest that tomorrow's protest against the proscription of Palestine Action should be postponed because a crazy person done some murders.
The home secretary says
“If the point of protest is to stand up for something and persuade other people that you are right, then I think this is entirely the wrong way to go about it, but that is on their conscience.”
That is not the point of the protest. The point of the protest is to show that the proscription of a non violent protest organization under terrorism laws is ridiculous and unenforceable as well as being a massive waste of police and court time.
Delaying the protest would harm that demonstration. The police are over stretched and can't enforce this stupid counter-productive proscription without compromising their duty elsewhere.
Demonstrating that is the point of the protest, and police saying "We are too stretched to arrest all these demonstrators" just reinforces that point all the more.
You know what police and government? You could just not persecute non violent protestors as terrorists. That'd solve your over-stretched police resources problem in one stroke!
#palestineAction #ukpol #protest

Apologies no alt text at the link destination.
It's a message from Andrew Feinstein on Twitter (although I've used a "nitter" link) from the end of October, saying that he and 2 other people at MOU have resigned as directors, and explaining some shenanigans over the "Your Party" membership data.
I don't fully understand all the ins and outs of the original connection between MOU and "Your Party", but evidently MOU was something else originally and then got lumbered with looking after YP money and membership data.
Main takeaway, it does seem that the "Your Party" contingent are remarkably bad at admin!
I don't feel personally worried about it, in fact it might be a good thing if "Your Party" properly falls over and everyone joins the Greens.
#YourParty #AndrewFeinstein #UKPol

I’ll just park this right here. #ukpol #brexit https://mastodon.scot/@tompearce49/115610229708051906…

Bravo to the merry prankster who convinced Starmer he was running for the Tories, and kept the jape running this past decade or thereabouts.
Come now, you’ve had your fun—it’s time to own up and pull the wool from the poor lad’s eyes. #ukpol https://

Update, someone pointed me at this video with a rather sensible actual policy on "Covid and Long Covid" from the Greens! Yay :-)
#GreenParty #covid #LongCovid #AirQuality #UKPol

Good piece from Nesrine Malik.
"The supposedly unifying thread of all these new policies is “integration”: this mythical concept that has taken on the quality of a religious ideal. ... It depends upon the children’s centre that links parents to others in the community and pools advice and resources. It depends on the libraries that provide literature and history and local knowledge. It depends on youth clubs and midwife visits and community centres and public-sector workers ...
"Yet all of these services have been hollowed out by years of austerity, pushing people back into their own small networks and atomised lives."
I'm remembering when one of the Nottingham leisure centres was closed, a youth worker explaining that the youth club there had been neutral ground for local kids from different areas to be able to hang out safely. I think it's unlikely the benefits of that had been costed in when the council decided to close the place. Even purely economically, I think it was a false economy, let alone quality of life and community-building.
#austerity #migration #integration #LabourParty #UKLaw #UKPol #libraries #LeisureCentres #ThirdSpaces #citizenship

Green Party up to 140k members apparently!
#GreenParty #England #UKPol

"You won’t remember the flu waves of 2020/21 because there weren’t any. Covid measures effectively controlled the flu virus."
"Vaccinate, isolate, ventilate: will we finally learn the lessons from covid this flu season?"
#AirQuality #flu #covid #SickPay #UKPol

So the temporary placeholder name "Your Party" is made permanent.
None of the options on the shortlist were good. Most of them just as grammatically inconvenient as the dumb placeholder name.
The people who decide on the short-list, who can be a member, whose votes counts and what the options are, have quite a lot of power.
Zara Sultana boycotted day one over who sets the rules and who can be involved. If Your Party have a governing body with power to override conference they end up like the Labour party and just are easily taken over and usurped by a cabal of thatcherite neoliberal capitalists.
They did allow the dual membership system and a wider governance, so Zara won on who gets to be a member and who gets to be in charge. Which is probably good.
Coz as the terrible name shows, if you put the idiots in charge you'll get idiocy not good collective decision making.
For now the membership appear to have won, and I hear are they are all very excited and fierce and canny and not likely to let the old guard just set up another dictatorship from the top.
They currently have half the membership count of the greens, less than a quarter that claimed by Reform. Lets hope they can get some attention towards something other than how billionaires think the country should be run and focus on the people.
Here's hoping they can inflate that number by draining the Labour party and Reform members who just want change really rather than actually liking anything said by Farage.
#yourParty #ukpol

Well done Zarah Sultana -
“A government Budget is not the same as a household budget.”
“The glaring omission in all of this is no one's mentioned wealth taxes. ...
“The magic money tree exists – it's in the City of London, and it's with the billionaires.
“But what you find is the lack of political will, because these parties are bankrolled by the billionaires, so they're definitely not going to tax them.”
Also, tip of the hat to Gary Stevenson and Richard Murphy, who I think have both done a lot to shift the conversation on this stuff.
#TaxWealthNotWork #ZarahSultana #QuestionTime #UKPol #GarysEconomics

Reform benefiting from the billionaire-donations.
"Democracy should never be for sale. Every party should compete on ideas, not on the size of their donor spreadsheet." - Zack Polanski
#Reform #NigelFarage #money #UKPol

"All schools in England to be given AI-generated pupil attendance targets"
Bad situation but I don't feel this article does a lot to help!
Yeah it's gonna be difficult to get back to "pre-pandemic levels" when covid is still making kids long-term sick, can we get a mention of that inconvenient fact.
No critique of the social pressure put on chronically-ill kids when attendance targets filter into the classroom.
How about a namecheck for (especially neurodivergent) kids' bad experiences of teach-to-the-test education, and the immense difficulty of getting funding for special needs support.
Not a lot on what the school staff are already doing to support kids or what govt could usefully put on more cash for, like good free breakfasts.
Includes some disrespect to non-school education along the way. (“We can only deliver opportunity for children in our country if they’re in school”, okay maybe it's true that _you_ can only "deliver" via school, because you don't know the alternatives, but shouldn't it actually be part of your job as Ed Sec to know them)
The delegating to so-called "AI" is the least of it!
#school #education #AttendanceTargets #neurodivergence #UKPol #CovidIsntOver

"Who Is Wes Streeting and Why Is He Like That?"
Podcast from Red Medicine, featuring Ruth Pearce whose blog I follow. 1 hour 38 mins. This was an interesting listen! Lots of angles.
#RedMedicine #WesStreeting #podcast #NHS #NUS #health #unions #UKPol #RuthPearce #JonasMarvin #SamKelly

Interesting thread from @…, on some 1999 Department of Health documents newly unearthed by @reactiveashley.bsky.social, showing the thinking at the time.
#UKPol #UKLaw #trans #law #history #EqualitiesLaw