Stephen H. Jones
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stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social
Stephen H. Jones
@stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social

Social scientist. Writes about religion and prejudice, society and politics. Teaches sociology and criminology. Rides bikes.

Political science 39%
Sociology 28%
Fun fact: at the end of his career (and life), Malinowski was embarking on the study of the concept of 'Freedom'. He saw nationalism as the chief obstacle to human freedom. This is the tentative argument structure; pay attention to the paragraph at the bottom of the page.

Reposted by Stephen Jones

Delighted to share our paper, where Dr Sam Weston, Dr Clare Griffiths , and I set out a vision for what a society with ‘considerable less need of being policed’ might look like….. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Children and young people’s perceptions of and interactions with the police: A case for ‘defunding the police’, ‘refunding civil society’ and introducing ‘community first’ - Samantha Weston, Clare Gri...
Louise Casey’s review revealed a series of concerns about London Metropolitan Police concluding that institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia pervades acro...
journals.sagepub.com

State of this. Is there any point in complaining to the broadcaster/Ofcom?
A national newspaper journalist went on a British TV channel to claim police stats showed asylum-seekers committed 44% of sex crimes in Dorset.

This shocking claim was treated as fact by the channel which promoted the clip on social media where it was amplified by AI.

Except... it's bollocks.
New post just out:

Why the criminal justice system should be top of No. 10's "shit list".

No part of the public sector is more broken or brings with it greater political risk. As we saw these past two weeks.

It desperately needs a new approach.

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/f...
Flashing Red
Why the criminal justice system should be top of No. 10's "shit list"
open.substack.com
A national newspaper journalist went on a British TV channel to claim police stats showed asylum-seekers committed 44% of sex crimes in Dorset.

This shocking claim was treated as fact by the channel which promoted the clip on social media where it was amplified by AI.

Except... it's bollocks.

You're obviously right in the general point, but in Luxembourg all public transport around the city (trains, trams, buses) are free. It's amazing.

Reposted by Stephen Jones

Guy Fawkes' signature before & after saying on Bluesky that he lets his cat go outside
must-read analysis of how Musk's twitter is drenching new users with right-wing propaganda

news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com
“The Gaza of maps and memories is gone, replaced by a monochrome landscape of rubble stretching flat and still…. there's almost nothing left to orient you here, or identify the neighbourhoods that once held tens of thousands of people”.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Inside Gaza, BBC sees total devastation after two years of war
With endless rubble and destroyed streets as far as the eye can see, any plans for Gaza's future are a far cry from where it is today, writes Lucy Williamson.
www.bbc.co.uk

Little known fact is that this book had a significant influence on the early work of the Wu Tang Clan.
It also introduced me to the marvelously creative curse “the devil sew up your arsehole from the inside”

Reposted by Stephen Jones

It also introduced me to the marvelously creative curse “the devil sew up your arsehole from the inside”

Reposted by Stephen Jones

hell yeah
This is powerful stuff: the reasoning behind Pillay’s commission finding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

“Children who were meant to be born from these reproductive specimens will never exist. Families will be forever changed and bloodlines may end.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
If you want to understand the emotional end intellectual malaise of British politics, this piece by @mjrobbins.com is a pretty good place to start. It effectively describes a country that has gone mad. open.substack.com/pub/martinro...

This is very good. The conclusion points to something I've long thought: that Starmer's leadership first started to go badly awry when he started chucking out all dissenting MPs.

Reposted by Stephen Jones

Yes, watching people slowly lose contact with reality is one of the strangest social media phenomena.

Reposted by Stephen Jones

Too much fatalism in this space. It would be entirely straightforward to achieve this goal before Easter [users abusing public voices + others in UK with go home P-word should expect tweet deleted + lose their accounts within 72 hours of posting it] if the platform decided to, or was made to do that

Wowsers. He lost his intellectual moorings some years ago but that is another level.
Most people in Britain are positive about universities (63%). Just 6% think they have a negative impact. A third of people are neutral. Universities may be struggling more with political elites than with general public, but could broaden their public reach too
www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/res...
Shared Institutions: public opinion on the university sector
At a time when trust in many British institutions is strained, our new research with UCL Policy Lab, Shared Institutions, finds that universities remain a source of national pride. Most Britons say un...
www.moreincommon.org.uk
A world without Keir Starmer: Is it time to change the Labour leader? iandunt.substack.com/p/a-world-wi...
A world without Keir Starmer
Is it time to change the Labour leader?
iandunt.substack.com

I tire of saying this kind of thing, but: if a Muslim religious leader followed Musk's example and actively called for pre-emptive inter-religious violence they'd likely be prosecuted for glorification of terrorism.
Elon Musk is a security risk to this country - partly by his inaction (when others directly incite violence during flashpoint moments) but increasingly through his proactive choices to use his own voice + reach to socialise political + inter-ethnic violence in our country.

But not taken seriously?
Wrote about the dominance of "victims" in our political discourse, which included this fab chart @owenwntr.bsky.social www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Reposted by Stephen Jones

Elon Musk is a security risk to this country - partly by his inaction (when others directly incite violence during flashpoint moments) but increasingly through his proactive choices to use his own voice + reach to socialise political + inter-ethnic violence in our country.

But not taken seriously?
Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.

Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.

You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!

🧵
1/9

This is 1) insane delusion and 2) potentially libellous about YouGov? Its method controls for political affiliation IIRC.

Oh, and my goodness the sour grapes! Labour finding out that he who lives by the FPTP electoral system dies by it too.
"We'd have won if not for those pesky polls"

Claiming Lab > Plaid switching is just about Reform is really unhelpful to Labour. Unhappy Labour voters have switched to Plaid in elections long before Reform (or UKIP) were on the scene.

And the rubbish about YouGov 🤯

labourhub.org.uk/2025/10/28/c...
"We'd have won if not for those pesky polls"

Claiming Lab > Plaid switching is just about Reform is really unhelpful to Labour. Unhappy Labour voters have switched to Plaid in elections long before Reform (or UKIP) were on the scene.

And the rubbish about YouGov 🤯

labourhub.org.uk/2025/10/28/c...
It's increasingly obvious that Labour's strategy - call it Starmerism, Blue Labour, whatever - has got it badly wrong. It has alienated the party's core vote while failing to win over those leaning to Reform. There was no shortage of people warning them they were getting it wrong either.
Three years ago, Labour was polling in the 50s.

There must surely be solid grounds for taking legal action against X for this, refusing to remove a blatantly libellous video that poses a real threat to the Sunder.
X won't be removing the dangerous defamatory fake clip which manipulates a clip about football to pretend I said something crass about grooming in Rotherham