Democratic Socialist 🌹Leeds & Yorkshire
Calling out Westminster spin, defending the NHS & public services. Sharp UK politics with dry Northern wit. LUFC 🤍💛💙
Strip away the Westminster bubble nonsense, the polished spin, and the endless culture war distractions cooked up to set working folk against each other. The real question hasn’t changed: Are we running a country that respects and rewards the people who actually graft for a living—the care workers, bus drivers, builders, nurses, and shop staff—or one permanently rigged to funnel billions into boardroom bonuses and offshore tax havens? We’re constantly told "the cupboard is bare" whenever ordinary people ask for fair wages, decent public transport, or a functioning NHS. Yet there’s always an endless tap of public money to subsidise privatised utilities dumping raw sewage into our rivers and corporate landlords bleeding tenants dry. Wealth doesn’t start in the City of London; it starts on the shop floor, the building site, and the hospital ward. If you create the wealth through honest graft, you deserve fair pay, dignity in your old age, and public services that actually work.
@ZackPolanski Speak with you, not for you" is exactly what representation should look like. For too long, Westminster has treated communities as photo ops rather than partners. Real solidarity means listening to the grassroots
@MirrorPolitics It doesn’t take a "Superman" to show what people want—it just takes the backbone to stand up for the North, take public transport back into public hands, and invest in working communities instead of Whitehall caution. The blueprint is right there.
@AmeliaRocket1@n1kpp He sat around the Cabinet table while public services were run into the ground, and now talks about the state of the country like he just stepped off a flight from Mars. You couldn't make it up
Reform spend all their time claiming to stand up for the British working class.
The second they get into power on a northern council, what do they do? Shut down 10 public nurseries and throw 100+ local staff out of work, leaving working parents to pay through the nose for private childcare
Talk is cheap. When in power, they’re just Tories in teal ties.
@LabourList Burnham's got the right tune. You don't rebuild the country on doom and fiscal rules; you rebuild it by investing in workers, decent public services, and proper devolution. Time to deliver on it
Surviving on £7 a day and legally banned from working isn't an 'incentive', Paul. France takes over double the asylum applications we do. Folk cross for family ties, language, or past service with our forces. If you actually want to put criminal smugglers out of business tomorrow, process claims legally in France so they’ve nothing left to sell. Basic common sense
London rightly remembers Cable Street, but Leeds did it first.
90 years ago today, 30,000 working folk stood shoulder-to-shoulder on Holbeck Moor to tell Mosley and his Blackshirts that division and fascism had no home in our city.
That proud working-class solidarity is written into the DNA of Leeds. They shall not pass.
90 years ago today, 30,000 people gathered on Holbeck Moor in Leeds to stop British fascist leader Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts holding a rally.
My grandad was there to help stop the fascists.
I was so proud to speak at the unveiling of the plaque commemorating that day.
You're confused because you're arguing with things nobody said, Jo. Nobody claims Europe is unsafe. France and Germany take far more asylum seekers than we do every single year. The folk crossing the Channel do it for family ties, language, or past work with British forces. And as for the EU—when we were in it, we had the Dublin Regulation to return people to member states. Leaving shredded that agreement and left us with zero returns deal. If you genuinely want to stop criminal smugglers putting people in dinghies, you set up legal processing centres in France to smash their market. It's practical common sense, not confusion.
Retirement is saving for a pint and a week in Scarborough, Tony. Severe dementia, Parkinson's, and full-time care are catastrophic health conditions. We don't hand cancer patients a bill and tell them to flog their semi, so why do we do it to pensioners who've paid 45 years of tax and National Insurance into the pot? It's called a civilized society, not an insurance scam.
Total melodramatic nonsense. First off, under the 1951 UN Convention, there is zero legal requirement to claim in the first country you touch. Second, claiming Britain is 'preparing to default on debt' is pure fairy-tale hysteria. France takes far more asylum seekers than we do every year. If you actually want to crush the smuggling gangs, you set up legal processing centres in France so gangsters have nothing left to sell. Proper common sense instead of amateur dramatics.
Classic big tech: rush products out the door to win the hype cycle, and treat user privacy as collateral damage. If these companies can’t even stop their own autonomous models from leaking personal files during internal testing, they shouldn't be pushing agentic access into consumer operating systems. Security has to be non-negotiable before rollout, not a clean-up job afterwards
Not while television studios keep him on speed dial for cheap ratings. But politically, the only thing that finishes off his circus is delivering real, material change for communities that have been ignored for decades. Give people genuine hope, secure jobs, and decent services, and his entire pantomime falls apart
@Victoria_Spratt@AngelaRayner About time. Homes should be built for folk to live in, not sat empty as speculative gambling chips for overseas investors while local families can't find a decent place to live. Backing councils to seize and renovate derelict stock is exactly what Labour should be doing.
What happened to Rhiannon Whyte was a horrific, sickening crime, and whoever commits violence belongs behind bars for life—full stop. Nobody defends criminals. But weaponising a murdered young mother to claim that millions of people fleeing war are responsible for individual evil is utterly cynical. Safe, legal routes mean thorough vetting, security checks, and biometric processing before anyone arrives—which is exactly how you keep communities safe. Don't use a family's grief to push collective guilt
Funny that, isn't it? Stop dressing it up as scary red tape, and people just want public money spent on public good instead of corporate dividends and billionaire tax breaks. Decent wages, healthcare that doesn't bankrupt you, and a fair shake for working families shouldn't be controversial anywhere
Telling someone to 'step back' on a smartphone app while having a full meltdown over a map is proper comedy, Rick. People flee warzones across thousands of miles from places like Sudan, Syria, and Afghanistan—they aren't originating in Calais. Have a brew, check an atlas, and calm down before your blood pressure boils over
That's a lot of university words to avoid a very simple fact, Michael. Britain wasn't 'emotionally blackmailed' into anything—we proudly helped draft and sign the 1951 Refugee Convention after the horrors of WWII because we believed human life has intrinsic value. Demanding safe, legal routes is about orderly borders, vetting, and smashing criminal gangs, not your dystopian fantasy about 'ungovernable ruin'. Step outside for some fresh air and turn the doom-mongering down a notch