Robin Wilson
@robinwilson250.bsky.social
Expert adviser to the Council of Europe on intercultural integration; foodie and footballer
Just as in Stalin's time, every new problem Putin's sclerotic dogma creates but cannot solve requires a new scapegoat to blame, until even the most loyal become 'non-persons' too: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Lavrov’s absence sparks speculation he has fallen from favour with Putin
Veteran foreign minister missed key Kremlin meeting, and is not part of Russia’s G20 delegation
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Just as in Stalin's time, every new problem Putin's sclerotic dogma creates but cannot solve requires a new scapegoat to blame, until even the most loyal become 'non-persons' too: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Research finds 17-25 year-olds (products of 'social media' and AI) have 45% lower capacity for critical thinking than >46 year-olds (largely socialised pre-internet): www.newscientist.com/article/2501... That (plus neoliberal-induced insecurity) helps explain the rise of populist snake-oil peddling.
AI may blunt our thinking skills – here’s what you can do about it
There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesn’t have to be that way
www.newscientist.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Research finds 17-25 year-olds (products of 'social media' and AI) have 45% lower capacity for critical thinking than >46 year-olds (largely socialised pre-internet): www.newscientist.com/article/2501... That (plus neoliberal-induced insecurity) helps explain the rise of populist snake-oil peddling.
On top of filleting the due-diligence directive, @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu is even taking her 'simplification' knife to the widely consensual #GDPR regulation, subordinating the interests of citizens to those of surveillance capitalism: euobserver.com/Digital/ar5e...
Surprise EU rollback of 'GDPR' digital-rights rules prompts alarm
People's sexual orientation, ethnicity, or political views could be exposed in proposed EU changes to the 'GDPR' digital-rights laws, civil society experts warn, after a leaked draft.
euobserver.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:01 PM
On top of filleting the due-diligence directive, @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu is even taking her 'simplification' knife to the widely consensual #GDPR regulation, subordinating the interests of citizens to those of surveillance capitalism: euobserver.com/Digital/ar5e...
@vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu's deregulatory, 'simplification' agenda on corporate reporting and due diligence--reversing in a folie de grandeur what was done in her first term--is so superficial and wilful that it may well be annulled at the European Court of Justice: euobserver.com/Green%20Econ...
Deregulation plans break EU law, legal scholars warn
Over one hundred legal experts have warned that the EU’s Omnibus I package, which cuts green and social reporting rules, breached EU law and was "likely to be annulled" if adopted.
euobserver.com
November 11, 2025 at 11:53 AM
@vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu's deregulatory, 'simplification' agenda on corporate reporting and due diligence--reversing in a folie de grandeur what was done in her first term--is so superficial and wilful that it may well be annulled at the European Court of Justice: euobserver.com/Green%20Econ...
Hugely ironic that the crisis at the #BBC over a misleading edit of Trump's remarks on January 6 2021--for which the journalist involved should have been disciplined--has been led all week by newspapers with no commitment whatsoever to fair and accurate reporting: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it has given in | Jane Martinson
The corporation should have stood up to the Telegraph, Trump and the Tories. Now, its enemies know how little it takes for it to fold, says Jane Martinson, professor of financial journalism
www.theguardian.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Hugely ironic that the crisis at the #BBC over a misleading edit of Trump's remarks on January 6 2021--for which the journalist involved should have been disciplined--has been led all week by newspapers with no commitment whatsoever to fair and accurate reporting: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Putin's neo-Stalinist dictatorship similarly preserves the appearances of legality but the intelligence agencies rule. Unlike in the post-Stalin USSR, no Gorbachev-like reformer could emerge from within the ruling party and any dissident, such as Navalny, is murdered www.euractiv.com/opinion/puti...
Putin’s nuclear blackmail betrays fear and insecurity | Euractiv
A simple rule of thumb in Russia-watching is that when the Kremlin starts talking about nuclear weapons and cutting-edge military technology, this usually means that elsewhere things are not going wel...
www.euractiv.com
November 10, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Putin's neo-Stalinist dictatorship similarly preserves the appearances of legality but the intelligence agencies rule. Unlike in the post-Stalin USSR, no Gorbachev-like reformer could emerge from within the ruling party and any dissident, such as Navalny, is murdered www.euractiv.com/opinion/puti...
Big polluters caused the climate crisis - why should we pay for the impacts while they continue to profit?
Join me and add your name to this @friends-earth.bsky.social petition, demand big polluters pay their fair share for a greener future🌍👇
foe.uk/lipp6
Join me and add your name to this @friends-earth.bsky.social petition, demand big polluters pay their fair share for a greener future🌍👇
foe.uk/lipp6
Make polluters worldwide pay for a greener future
While the cost of living and climate crises rage on and oil and gas companies' profits soar, something is shifting… More and more of us want big polluters to pay for the damage they cause to our plane...
foe.uk
November 10, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Big polluters caused the climate crisis - why should we pay for the impacts while they continue to profit?
Join me and add your name to this @friends-earth.bsky.social petition, demand big polluters pay their fair share for a greener future🌍👇
foe.uk/lipp6
Join me and add your name to this @friends-earth.bsky.social petition, demand big polluters pay their fair share for a greener future🌍👇
foe.uk/lipp6
The transition from secular republicanism to Catholic nationalism and retreat from enlightenment among Irish Protestants in the latter 19th century made partition inevitable. Only a post-nationalist politics can thus undo it, de facto as well as de jure, today: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...
Claire Hanna: Presidential election made clear that we cannot just wish ourselves into a united Ireland
Sectarianism displayed towards Heather Humphreys was startling and depressing
www.irishtimes.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:00 AM
The transition from secular republicanism to Catholic nationalism and retreat from enlightenment among Irish Protestants in the latter 19th century made partition inevitable. Only a post-nationalist politics can thus undo it, de facto as well as de jure, today: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...
How when the planet is burning are states unable to transcend the collective-action dilemma of stopping emissions inexorably rising? Because (among other things) the annual COP events have been captured by an army of fossil-fuel lobbyists: www.theguardian.com/environment/... #COP30
How thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists got access to UN climate talks – and then kept drilling
Exclusive: Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action
www.theguardian.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:27 PM
How when the planet is burning are states unable to transcend the collective-action dilemma of stopping emissions inexorably rising? Because (among other things) the annual COP events have been captured by an army of fossil-fuel lobbyists: www.theguardian.com/environment/... #COP30
Just as it was recognised in the high-growth postwar decades in Europe and the US that high incomes needed to be taxed punitively to deter rent-seeking, so now they and fossil-fuel profits must be taxed punitively to internalise the 'externality' of climate change www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Experts call for new taxes on worst polluters to help poorer nations with climate crisis
Report to be discussed at Cop30 says global agreements should target carbon intensive activities and ‘ultra high net worth individuals’
www.theguardian.com
November 6, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Just as it was recognised in the high-growth postwar decades in Europe and the US that high incomes needed to be taxed punitively to deter rent-seeking, so now they and fossil-fuel profits must be taxed punitively to internalise the 'externality' of climate change www.theguardian.com/environment/...
In another sign of the GOP's abandonment of the rule of law under Trump, red-state attorneys general have told Meta to defy as 'anti-American' already-heavily-diluted EU directives from 'Brussels bureaucrats' on corporate reporting and due diligence: euobserver.com/EU%20&%20the... #CSRD #CSDDD
US states demand Meta reject EU sustainability directives
In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, US state attorneys demanded Meta defy EU sustainability and human rights directives — citing "European elites" and "bureaucrats in Brussels."
euobserver.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:56 PM
In another sign of the GOP's abandonment of the rule of law under Trump, red-state attorneys general have told Meta to defy as 'anti-American' already-heavily-diluted EU directives from 'Brussels bureaucrats' on corporate reporting and due diligence: euobserver.com/EU%20&%20the... #CSRD #CSDDD
The 'securitisation' of migration in Europe defies practitioners' recognition that regularisation is usually preferable to deportation and that asylum-seekers' non-refoulement rights are in jeopardy. Free movement for, er, white Europeans, is after all celebrated: theconversation.com/we-have-to-r...
‘We have to regularise them’: Europe’s deportation-first border policy, as told by the judges and police who enforce it
The border agents we interviewed objected to detaining and forcibly returning irregular migrants.
theconversation.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:41 PM
The 'securitisation' of migration in Europe defies practitioners' recognition that regularisation is usually preferable to deportation and that asylum-seekers' non-refoulement rights are in jeopardy. Free movement for, er, white Europeans, is after all celebrated: theconversation.com/we-have-to-r...
@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is not a one-off. In big cities everywhere the neoliberal marketisation of public goods has created a crisis of #affordability for citizens, for which neither the populists nor centrist politicians have any answers: www.socialeurope.eu/zohran-mamda...
Zohran Mamdani’s Win and the Price of Urban Life: Why City Voters Are Seeking Change
The soaring costs of city life appear to be sending urban voters toward progressive leaders who promise relief, both in the U.S. and globally.
www.socialeurope.eu
November 6, 2025 at 11:05 AM
@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is not a one-off. In big cities everywhere the neoliberal marketisation of public goods has created a crisis of #affordability for citizens, for which neither the populists nor centrist politicians have any answers: www.socialeurope.eu/zohran-mamda...
Powerful appeal by leading figures at @eeb.org to stop the stigmatisation of public-spirited #NGOs in the EU--when the real problem is vastly more pervasive corporate lobbying for private ends: euobserver.com/EU%20Politic... #civilsociety
What happens after Europe's NGOs are dismantled?
What does Europe look like when independent civil society is silenced, sidelined or slowly starved out of existence? This is not dystopian fiction. It is the logical end-point of a trend already visib...
euobserver.com
November 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Powerful appeal by leading figures at @eeb.org to stop the stigmatisation of public-spirited #NGOs in the EU--when the real problem is vastly more pervasive corporate lobbying for private ends: euobserver.com/EU%20Politic... #civilsociety
#Inequality widening as 'r>g' (Piketty) worldwide: with the capital share of #income growing at the expense of labour's (including through weaker trade unions), rentiers can salt away more and more #wealth, which their offspring inherit: www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...
More than $70tn of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists warn
Expert panel says report on gap in global wealth between rich and poor highlights need for intervention by G20
www.theguardian.com
November 4, 2025 at 4:12 PM
#Inequality widening as 'r>g' (Piketty) worldwide: with the capital share of #income growing at the expense of labour's (including through weaker trade unions), rentiers can salt away more and more #wealth, which their offspring inherit: www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...
Fascinating that >6,000 female footballers globally have selected, via the players' union, a world XI with nine players from England or Spain (in fact Catalonia) and six from Arsenal or Barcelona. Hard to argue with that: www.theguardian.com/football/202... #womensfootball
Six England players join three from Spain in Fifpro women’s World XI
Six England players have been named in the Fifpro women’s World XI after the Lionesses won Euro 2025 with victory against Spain in the final
www.theguardian.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Fascinating that >6,000 female footballers globally have selected, via the players' union, a world XI with nine players from England or Spain (in fact Catalonia) and six from Arsenal or Barcelona. Hard to argue with that: www.theguardian.com/football/202... #womensfootball
I have just signed this petition. It's an issue I care about. Will you sign it too? action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-11...
For a welcoming Europe!
SIGN NOW! This issue is urgent and really important. We need your support - please take action now!
action.wemove.eu
November 1, 2025 at 9:25 AM
I have just signed this petition. It's an issue I care about. Will you sign it too? action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-11...
It has never been recognised in the post-Maastricht EU, blinded by orthodo economics, that arbitrary public-spending constraints + central-bank 'independence' mean the union is unable to wield the complementary macroeconomic levers of fiscal and monetary policy: www.socialeurope.eu/europes-defe...
Europe's Defence Dilemma: Why Fiscal Union Is No Longer Optional
Without radical institutional reform, Europe cannot mount the defence it desperately needs against an increasingly aggressive Russia.
www.socialeurope.eu
October 31, 2025 at 2:48 PM
It has never been recognised in the post-Maastricht EU, blinded by orthodo economics, that arbitrary public-spending constraints + central-bank 'independence' mean the union is unable to wield the complementary macroeconomic levers of fiscal and monetary policy: www.socialeurope.eu/europes-defe...
Europe's 'polycrisis' is beyond the power of states to resolve within their national containers. Only a federal Europe, with competences distributed among European, national, regional and local levels and to NGOs, can summon up the knowledge and agency to succeed: www.socialeurope.eu/sovereignism...
Sovereignism: Europe's Most Dangerous Political Plague
The transnational crises of our era demand European solutions, yet national leaders cling to sovereignty games that leave citizens vulnerable and searching for scapegoats.
www.socialeurope.eu
October 31, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Europe's 'polycrisis' is beyond the power of states to resolve within their national containers. Only a federal Europe, with competences distributed among European, national, regional and local levels and to NGOs, can summon up the knowledge and agency to succeed: www.socialeurope.eu/sovereignism...
The far-right regime in Jerusalem knows perfectly well that it is abrogating human rights and the rule of law in Gaza (and the west bank) and could be held to account by courts in the EU or the US. But that's okay with Google and Amazon: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders
The tech giants agreed to extraordinary terms to clinch a lucrative contract with the Israeli government, documents show
www.theguardian.com
October 30, 2025 at 3:13 PM
The far-right regime in Jerusalem knows perfectly well that it is abrogating human rights and the rule of law in Gaza (and the west bank) and could be held to account by courts in the EU or the US. But that's okay with Google and Amazon: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
One of the most stupid things about the EU rowing back on the corporate due-diligence and reporting regime it had agreed only last term is that EU firms can't compete globally on price, so they need to be incentivised to compete on quality, rights and sustainability: euobserver.com/EU%20Politic...
How weakening due diligence EU rules became a ‘betrayal’ for workers
The proposed rollback of the EU’s corporate accountability rules will significantly weaken their ability to address labour violations within the EU, experts and labour union representatives told EUobs...
euobserver.com
October 30, 2025 at 1:36 PM
One of the most stupid things about the EU rowing back on the corporate due-diligence and reporting regime it had agreed only last term is that EU firms can't compete globally on price, so they need to be incentivised to compete on quality, rights and sustainability: euobserver.com/EU%20Politic...
Meta privately pressed Irish government to push for 'fundamental overhaul' of users' data-protection and privacy regime at EU level, including the fundamental GDPR, unabashedly citing 'economic interest': www.irishtimes.com/technology/b... #data
Data protection rules ‘completely out of control’, Meta tells Government
Facebook owner asked Government to lead pushback against data protection laws at EU level
www.irishtimes.com
October 30, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Meta privately pressed Irish government to push for 'fundamental overhaul' of users' data-protection and privacy regime at EU level, including the fundamental GDPR, unabashedly citing 'economic interest': www.irishtimes.com/technology/b... #data
Offshore #wind (and #solar) power must expand exponentially if energy is to be decarbonised before global ecosystems collapse: theconversation.com/just-1-of-co...
Just 1% of coastal waters could power a third of the world’s electricity – but can we do it in time?
Offshore wind and solar have tremendous potential but still face many challenges – new study.
theconversation.com
October 30, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Offshore #wind (and #solar) power must expand exponentially if energy is to be decarbonised before global ecosystems collapse: theconversation.com/just-1-of-co...
The web's inventor on how it can be seized back from the private 'social media' corporations that have enclosed it, through embedding digital sovereignty for indvidual users, as recent EU regulation--resisted by those corporations--has been groping towards: www.newscientist.com/article/2500...
'Most of it is good': Tim Berners-Lee on the state of the web now
The man who invented the web is aware of the many issues it faces, from problematic social media use to the rise of unfettered AI. He also has a plan to remedy the situation
www.newscientist.com
October 30, 2025 at 10:39 AM
The web's inventor on how it can be seized back from the private 'social media' corporations that have enclosed it, through embedding digital sovereignty for indvidual users, as recent EU regulation--resisted by those corporations--has been groping towards: www.newscientist.com/article/2500...
Hard to credit that we have a Soviet relic in the Kremlin threatening nuclear armageddon & a 1950s throwback in the White House unable to grasp how corporate America has been destroying the ecosphere but 'constructed certitudes' (Beck) have for some a perverse appeal: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/w...
Putin Announces Test of Tsunami-Making Nuclear Weapon
www.nytimes.com
October 30, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Hard to credit that we have a Soviet relic in the Kremlin threatening nuclear armageddon & a 1950s throwback in the White House unable to grasp how corporate America has been destroying the ecosphere but 'constructed certitudes' (Beck) have for some a perverse appeal: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/w...