Ed Podesta

It sounded as if someone had asked ChatGPT to prepare her lines.

TL;DR Labour's policies:
🚨Increase use of irregular routes
🚨Increase human trafficking
🚨Increase number of people forced to be undocumented
🚨Force people into deprivation
🚨Leave, particularly women and children, at risk
🚨Cost more than current policies
🚨Violate international law
10/ #r4today

chart showing Quarterly growth in real GDP, chained-volume measure, outturns, Bank of England and OBR forecasts: UK​

The OBR has significantly downgraded its forecast of economic growth in the near-term.

Growth this year is now expected to be just 1.1 per cent, 0.3 percentage points lower than at the Autumn Budget, on the back of just 0.1 per cent growth in the final quarter of last year.

Working at @leedstrinity.bsky.social City Campus this morning, which means a person’s mind and eye are naturally drawn to the subject of bricks. #loveleeds

1. Dyslexia affects many learners in English classrooms. Small adaptations like thoughtful scaffolding and discussion-based learning can dramatically improve engagement and attainment for dyslexic learners. Here are a couple of quick tips for teachers aiming to make English accessible for all. 🧵👇

The University of Reading is hiring:
Lecturer in Field Ecology

#lecturerposition

An old colour picture postcard showing a striking image of a window set into a concrete wall, reflecting a colourful background; below is a sign reading "Houghon Street", an air conditioning unit with two vents that lookm like wide open eyes, and a litter bin

Here's a #HigherEducationPostcard of LSE

This was outside the old Three Tuns - the @lsesu.bsky.social bar - and the aircon unit does look like it has Seen Things

All gone now, because the concrete never sets on LSE

If you like this image, please repost it - remember, BlueSky has #NoAlgorithm

Musk v. Arendt
#empathy #politics #philosophy

Reform's London Mayoral candidate now running on "disenfranchise + deport" policy re Commowealth

Yusuf would strip Commonwealth ILR (but treat European settled status differently)

Farage to strip voting rights from Commonwealth non-citizens (Treat Irish foreign nationals differently to Asians)

My school (St Aidans in Harrogate) recently had its SIAMS inspection. It’s a reflection very much of the excellent work of my colleagues and especially our brilliant headteacher. It is a lovely report which I very much wanted to share with the world.

cms-site-files.reactfiles.co.uk/staidans/upl...

Raha Nik-Andish | Waiting for War Usually the last days of February are filled with anticipation of the Persian New Year holiday, Nowruz. People shop for...

‘Beside the front door, next to my slippers and outside shoes, I keep a bag with my important documents. In the morning before going to work, people check their torch batteries rather than their emails.’

Raha Nik-Andish in Tehran, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions.

It does not.

It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed.

🧵 1/

Photo of Jocelyn Bell Burnell in front of a radio telescope dish in the 1960s. She is a white woman with dark hair.

#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️

1/2

Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.

In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.

2/2

Today we are launching the 2026 SHP Summer Conference, which will be taking place July 10-12 at Leeds Trinity. This year, due to the huge increase in proposals for workshops, we have extended our offer to 46 wonderful workshops for primary and secondary teachers of history (see below for a taster!

The ‘AI expert’ on Rory Stewart’s podcast claimed in the first episode that AI has already made contributions to the global economy to the tune of billions of dollars. It has, but it sounds much less impressive when you realise that it’s is only what’s been *spent* on tech and training to build it.

Yep. LLMs are a solution in search of a problem at the moment. The problem seems to be “I need endless amounts of plausible text which, on closer reading, reveals itself as vapid, vague, overly optimistic, and subtly prejudiced.”. In my experience there’s nothing it can’t confidently fuck up.

Wrote quite extensively a while back about how schools are set up for the most able children and how this makes them institutionally biased against those who find things most difficult.
bennewmark.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/w...

Weird to be left wing but not want people with disabilities to be in the public eye because they may say one of the naughty words.

Especially in the light of *waves hands* all that.

Thackray Museum of Medicine are looking for a new Chair of Trustees! The trust oversees the work of this really special, unique heritage and learning institution with a fantastic team of people: thackraymuseum.co.uk

thackraymuseum.co.uk/about-us/wor... for more details of the role.

anyone happen to know of any published academic work where a researcher tracked themself being surveilled? surveillance studies autoethnography?

or any qualitative research about surveillance systems like Flock or Ring?

It’s fascinating how CLT has become un-falsifiable. Every time something contradictory is found it is interpreted as ‘evidence that CLT is right, it just works in a different way than we first thought…’

I 1000% agree with this but, at the risk of being a pedant, feel the need to note many students might need to be apprenticed into doing this. Many Ss will be coming from high schools where AP and state testing means just sitting around & talking about books is a rather new experience for them.

When Dad died, the thing I missed most was arguing about politics – and everything else Much has been written about the EU referendum’s damage to our political culture; little attention has been paid to the way it destroyed my ability to talk to my father.

My dad Bob would have been 72 today.

Thanks Richard :). It’ll mean keeping my x-T2 in the upstairs loo, but it might be worth it:)

A very important issue. I was among those who signed this letter.

“The fantasy of completely accessible and searchable digital past obviously remains a mirage, even if it’s one that is still tempting.” On the great new piece on historians as data curators in TRHS by @kmcdono.bsky.social and others

🗃️

williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/v...

If I get up in the night, and when there’s a moon, the light makes beautiful moving shadow patterns on the frosted window, as it passes through layers of the monstrous wisteria outside. I’ve often tried to get a shot, but it’s “Useless to think you’ll […] capture it”, so it never comes out.