Legislation to protect children in the digital realm is essential. But if it results in the loss of small cycling and cancer-care forums, something’s gone wrong
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed (LFGSS) is an admirable online community of fixed-gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London. Sadly, this columnist does not qualify for membership: he doesn’t reside in (or near) the metropolis, and he requires a number of gears to tackle even the gentlest of inclines – and therefore admires hardier cyclists who disdain the assistance of Sturmey-Archer or Campagnolo hardware.
There is, however, bad news on the horizon. After Sunday 16 March, LFGSS will be no more. Dee Kitchen, the software wizard (and cyclist) who is the core developer of Microcosm, a platform for running non-commercial, non-profit, privacy-sensitive, accessible online forums such as LFGSS, has announced that on that date he will “delete the virtual servers hosting LFGSS and other communities, and effectively immediately end the approximately 300 small communities that I run, and the few large communities such as LFGSS”.
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Continue reading...By jumping on Elon Musk’s passing bandwagon and echoing the far right, the Conservative leader has shown she doesn’t understand her responsibilities
The House of Commons is built for confrontation, with rows of benches facing each other across an aisle. When the original Victorian chamber was blitzed to ashes during the second world war, Winston Churchill was adamant that the antagonistic geometry be preserved in the restoration. He spoke dismissively of the foreign, semi-circular assembly, which “enables every individual or every group to move round the centre, adopting various shades of pink according as the weather changes.”
Churchill was leading a national unity government, but that was a wartime expedient. Normal democratic hostilities resumed as soon as Germany surrendered. MPs might rebel against their whips, or even defect, but it takes a national calamity or international crisis for Labour and Tory leaders to declare themselves on the same side.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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Currently reading through this stuff and the How To Live Your Life parts are like footnotes to page upon page of incorrect physics.
Check out the POLITICO 28: Class of 2025, with Giorgia Meloni as the most powerful person in Europe.
Having refused to learn from Rishi Sunak’s mistakes, the new Conservative leader looks set to repeat a lot of them
Election defeats are to some degree self-inflicted, so the first place that opposition parties should look for someone to blame for their predicament is a mirror. The Conservatives have flinched from that task.
The leadership race over the summer and autumn featured only a performance of reflection on mistakes made by the last government. The looking-glass was positioned askew so no one had to see themselves as part of the problem.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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