Pawel Swidlicki
@pswidlicki.bsky.social
Currently clean on OPSEC
It can mean pretty much anything, but regardless, it is almost always deeply cringe
Could someone explain to me what is meant when a British person refers to "the middle class" ? Like, in the US, as I hear it, it basically just means a person who makes a certain amount of money, not too far below and not wildly above the median. Seems like a complex concept when UK writers use it?
November 10, 2025 at 11:07 PM
It can mean pretty much anything, but regardless, it is almost always deeply cringe
Feel like the line should be 'Are we seriously claiming that Trump did not incite violence on January 6th in an attempt to overturn a democratic election'? The Russia stuff, while somewhat valid, just feels a bit stale.
Journalist, "Farage accused the BBC of election interference"
Ed Davey, "The interference we've seen is from Farage's friend, Putin"
"We've seen Russian interference in the most appalling way"
Ed Davey, "The interference we've seen is from Farage's friend, Putin"
"We've seen Russian interference in the most appalling way"
November 10, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Feel like the line should be 'Are we seriously claiming that Trump did not incite violence on January 6th in an attempt to overturn a democratic election'? The Russia stuff, while somewhat valid, just feels a bit stale.
Other than things involving actual death and suffering, this is probably the worst and most disturbing thing I've read in a long time
Plastic surgeons in DC are being asked by Trump insiders to get plastic surgery that's obvious and in keeping with "Mar-a-Lago face."
Paging @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social, whose episode on Republican Makeup (another term for the same tendency) was an eye-opener for me.
Paging @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social, whose episode on Republican Makeup (another term for the same tendency) was an eye-opener for me.
D.C. plastic surgeons see surge in "Mar‑a‑Lago face" requests from Trump insiders
"[They] want to look like they had something done."
www.axios.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Other than things involving actual death and suffering, this is probably the worst and most disturbing thing I've read in a long time
Joyce Carol Oates' assessment of Musk also reminds me of this brutal Stephen Collins cartoon
November 10, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Joyce Carol Oates' assessment of Musk also reminds me of this brutal Stephen Collins cartoon
Fraser 'Brexit means UK no longer has a populism problem' Nelson
The Anglo consensus of the first half of 2010s was that where continental Europeans were endemically subject to crises and demagoguery, "we" were distinctly were more enlightened. Cameron's Britain. Obama's America. Ponderous essays about Magna Carta and the "golden thread".
How wrong it all was.
How wrong it all was.
I fear we are seeing in the UK what has become abundantly clear in the US: for all their power and privilege, elites and institutions are absolute cowards in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. Weak, weak, weak, as Tony Blair once said
November 10, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Fraser 'Brexit means UK no longer has a populism problem' Nelson
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
Sack the editor of the New York Times every time it writes about boiled mutton.
Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?
November 10, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Sack the editor of the New York Times every time it writes about boiled mutton.
"The problem isn’t that we have a deliberately biased BBC, it’s that we have a BBC that has been consciously reduced in its scope and bullied into dumbing down and retreating."
www.ft.com/content/676c...
www.ft.com/content/676c...
Home - Financial Times
News, analysis and opinion from the Financial Times on the latest in markets, economics and politics
FT.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:47 AM
"The problem isn’t that we have a deliberately biased BBC, it’s that we have a BBC that has been consciously reduced in its scope and bullied into dumbing down and retreating."
www.ft.com/content/676c...
www.ft.com/content/676c...
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
It's not even strictly partisan, Democrats who suck up to him can get in on it too (Blagojevich did, good chance Menendez will). No need for any pretense a prosecution was flawed in some way. It's official policy that Trump just straight-up hates the idea corruption should be illegal and punished.
OH MY GOD
www.wsmv.com/2025/11/06/p...
www.wsmv.com/2025/11/06/p...
President Trump pardons former TN House Speaker Glen Casada, chief of staff, after corruption convictions
President Donald Trump has pardoned the disgraced former Speaker of the Tennessee House Glen Casada and his co-conspirators after their corruption convictions and sentencing.
www.wsmv.com
November 7, 2025 at 12:07 AM
It's not even strictly partisan, Democrats who suck up to him can get in on it too (Blagojevich did, good chance Menendez will). No need for any pretense a prosecution was flawed in some way. It's official policy that Trump just straight-up hates the idea corruption should be illegal and punished.
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
If someone on the left says "Israel is an apartheid state" the press will say that they are expressing views that are seen by many as antisemitic. But literal Holocaust denying, explicitly pro-Hitler Nick Fuentes is simply a cause of "heartburn."
I'm still trying to parse this formulation because "heartburn" seems like a mild thing to cause for a major political party when a significant part of its base is allied with a despicable racist and antisemite, but also because by dining with him isn't Trump the one causing the heartburn?
November 6, 2025 at 1:42 PM
If someone on the left says "Israel is an apartheid state" the press will say that they are expressing views that are seen by many as antisemitic. But literal Holocaust denying, explicitly pro-Hitler Nick Fuentes is simply a cause of "heartburn."
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
"Insensitive remarks"
November 6, 2025 at 1:33 PM
"Insensitive remarks"
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...
November 6, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...
Mamdani does seem to cause many of his political opponents' brains to to self-combust simply by existing, which is a useful asset bsky.app/profile/jben...
November 5, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Mamdani does seem to cause many of his political opponents' brains to to self-combust simply by existing, which is a useful asset bsky.app/profile/jben...
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
Looks like extraordinary cowardice. "...following pressure from the Chinese state and a separate defamation law suit against the university, Sheffield Hallam decided not to publish a final piece of research by Prof Murphy and her team into forced labour." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
November 3, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Looks like extraordinary cowardice. "...following pressure from the Chinese state and a separate defamation law suit against the university, Sheffield Hallam decided not to publish a final piece of research by Prof Murphy and her team into forced labour." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
Remember when Farage talks *about* work he is largely talking *to* people who have retired from it
'Alarm clock Britain' is remarkably hackneyed, cliched and - frankly - dull - phraseology from someone who is meant to be good at this stuff.
November 3, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Remember when Farage talks *about* work he is largely talking *to* people who have retired from it
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO.
This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting.
This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting.
US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules
Negotiators at shipping talks in London were told both they and their countries could be punished unless they voted with the U.S.
www.politico.eu
November 3, 2025 at 8:11 AM
European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO.
This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting.
This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting.
Does this make the released guy British again?
The fact that one of the two men arrested has now been cleared and released is a pretty huge "STOP" sign to everyone who's spent the last 24 hours rushing to interpret the attack. Facts, like trains, are sometimes slower to arrive than we'd like. But you just have to wait for them.
Extract from more recent Goodwin post. He really should never be allowed on the BBC - or any other reputable broadcaster - again.
November 2, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Does this make the released guy British again?
I get the underlying point here, but interesting to apply it, for example to the Cambridge Five. They are considered traitors, but haven't seen anyone argue they weren't really British because they chose loyalty to a foreign nation/ideology over the country of their birth.
November 2, 2025 at 4:19 PM
I get the underlying point here, but interesting to apply it, for example to the Cambridge Five. They are considered traitors, but haven't seen anyone argue they weren't really British because they chose loyalty to a foreign nation/ideology over the country of their birth.
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
The problem with diagnosing "the electorate have unreasonable expectations around tax and spend" is that those expectations did not develop in a vacuum. They are the product of decades of politicians and the media telling them they can have x services with y tax levels, or not contradicting it.
November 1, 2025 at 8:06 PM
The problem with diagnosing "the electorate have unreasonable expectations around tax and spend" is that those expectations did not develop in a vacuum. They are the product of decades of politicians and the media telling them they can have x services with y tax levels, or not contradicting it.
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
Thanks to @nacho-fariza.bsky.social @elpais.com for this interview on the Dutch election result. In short, the three defining features of European politics in 2020s - anti-incumbency, fragmentation, volatility - can work for *and against* the radical right.
elpais.com/internaciona...
elpais.com/internaciona...
La extrema derecha mantiene uno de cada tres gobiernos europeos pese al varapalo de Wilders en los Países Bajos
Los ultras gobiernan de manera estable en Italia, y lideran los sondeos en Alemania, Francia y el Reino Unido
elpais.com
November 2, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Thanks to @nacho-fariza.bsky.social @elpais.com for this interview on the Dutch election result. In short, the three defining features of European politics in 2020s - anti-incumbency, fragmentation, volatility - can work for *and against* the radical right.
elpais.com/internaciona...
elpais.com/internaciona...
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
media elites have talked themselves into a weird bind, where liberalism is so much the default that simultaneously a) it doesn't need defending but also b) any defeat no matter how marginal must refute it completely
Douthat writes that 2024, when Harris lost by 1.5% of the popular vote, was "an ideological referendum and progressivism lost." I wonder why he didn't view the 2020 election, when Trump lost by 4.5% of the popular vote, as a far more significant loss for conservatism.
bsky.app/profile/larr...
bsky.app/profile/larr...
Comparing the relation between the presidential election results in 2020 and 2024 with the post-election commentary is a fascinating exercise.
2020
Biden 81,283,501 popular votes, 51.3%
Trump 74,223,975 popular votes 46.8%
2024
Trump 77,302,580 49.8%
Harris 75,017,613. 48.3%
2020
Biden 81,283,501 popular votes, 51.3%
Trump 74,223,975 popular votes 46.8%
2024
Trump 77,302,580 49.8%
Harris 75,017,613. 48.3%
November 1, 2025 at 11:09 PM
media elites have talked themselves into a weird bind, where liberalism is so much the default that simultaneously a) it doesn't need defending but also b) any defeat no matter how marginal must refute it completely
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
I think about how someone could write "Hilary the Hawk, Donald the Dove," and remain employed a decade later at the most influential opinion page in the anglophone world despite that. Or perhaps because of it.
This march to war is arguably even more illegal and appalling than Trump’s several other marches to war this year, Christ alive zeteo.com/p/team-trump...
Team Trump Is Serious About Launching a ‘Neocon’ War on Venezuela
Trump, the warmonger who once laughably vowed to stop “endless wars,” will not stop waging war on this South American nation. He’s got the target list to prove it.
zeteo.com
November 1, 2025 at 9:18 PM
I think about how someone could write "Hilary the Hawk, Donald the Dove," and remain employed a decade later at the most influential opinion page in the anglophone world despite that. Or perhaps because of it.
This is also very sneak peak into what a Reform government would be like in practice because it would push officials into adopting punitive policies that given the limitations of the UK state will be more machete than scalpel
Somebody at HMRC needs to be canned for this idiotic ‘fraud-detection’ idea. And I fear future use of AI in welfare cases might well produce this kind of story regularly (as they have in Nevada for example).
UK woman who booked Oslo flight but did not fly loses child benefit ‘because she emigrated’
Exclusive: HMRC told Lisa Morris-Almond there was no record of her return to UK, but she did not take the trip
www.theguardian.com
October 30, 2025 at 4:53 PM
This is also very sneak peak into what a Reform government would be like in practice because it would push officials into adopting punitive policies that given the limitations of the UK state will be more machete than scalpel
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
“Meanwhile, the self-styled president of peace is extrajudicially bombing fishing boats in Central America, as his administration contemplates regime change in Venezuela. Trump is even at war on home soil, sending in troops to cities across the nation.” inews.co.uk/opinion/peac...
'Peace President' Donald Trump could start the biggest arms race since the Cold War
The US President is raising the stakes far higher than ever before
inews.co.uk
October 30, 2025 at 3:27 PM
“Meanwhile, the self-styled president of peace is extrajudicially bombing fishing boats in Central America, as his administration contemplates regime change in Venezuela. Trump is even at war on home soil, sending in troops to cities across the nation.” inews.co.uk/opinion/peac...
Reposted by Pawel Swidlicki
This colossal Times of London/de Blasio screwup gets more amazing at every turn.
Scoop via @maxtani.bsky.social
www.semafor.com/article/10/2...
Scoop via @maxtani.bsky.social
www.semafor.com/article/10/2...
October 30, 2025 at 1:26 AM
This colossal Times of London/de Blasio screwup gets more amazing at every turn.
Scoop via @maxtani.bsky.social
www.semafor.com/article/10/2...
Scoop via @maxtani.bsky.social
www.semafor.com/article/10/2...
This reminds me why I haven't watched QT for best part of a decade now, the format really just needs to be put out of its misery. You'd be better off having say half an hour with a senior politician on their own with mix of presenter and audience questions like at election time.
Wikipedia says Shaheen is an academic. BBCQT implies you can’t trust what she says b/c she’s an ‘activist’. Someone who Wikipedia calls ‘a former academic’ who now campaigns for Reform & wants to be its first Home Secretary is an ‘academic & author’ who you can trust. Maybe they use Grokipedia now.
October 30, 2025 at 11:07 AM
This reminds me why I haven't watched QT for best part of a decade now, the format really just needs to be put out of its misery. You'd be better off having say half an hour with a senior politician on their own with mix of presenter and audience questions like at election time.