@Keir_Starmer @Ofcom @ScotGovFM An Open Letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Ofcom, and the UK Government: Parental Authority Must Remain Central to Children’s Online Safety Dear Prime Minister Starmer, Ofcom leadership, and fellow parents across the United Kingdom, I am writing as a parent committed to my child’s safety, development, and well-being in an increasingly digital world. The risks children face online are real. Exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, exploitative design features, and mental health pressures demand serious and effective responses. I support strong enforcement against genuinely illegal and abusive material, and I support holding technology companies accountable where they fail to meet clear safety obligations. However, I oppose proposals for a blanket social media ban for under-16s and the expansion of mandatory, intrusive age-verification measures under the Online Safety Act 2023. While the objective of protecting children is shared, these approaches risk shifting authority away from families and toward centralised, state-directed access controls in ways that may be disproportionate and counterproductive. The United Kingdom has long recognised the principle of parental responsibility. The state rightly intervenes where there is clear illegality or demonstrable harm, but decisions about lawful access to content and assessments of a child’s maturity should remain primarily with parents. A universal system that treats every family identically, regardless of context, risks undermining that principle. In our home, we apply strict limits. There is no unlimited or unsupervised internet access, and access is granted gradually and deliberately. We use parental controls, monitoring tools, age-appropriate restrictions, and ongoing, honest conversations about digital risks. This tailored, case-by-case approach reflects our child’s individual maturity and our family’s values. It is proactive and accountable. It is also adaptable. Blanket prohibitions cannot account for these differences. Recent age-verification requirements in gaming ecosystems illustrate the complexity of this issue. Under the Online Safety Act framework, UK users may be required to verify their age through methods such as facial analysis or document submission to retain access to certain social features. While intended to restrict minors, such systems introduce significant privacy implications, including the processing and storage of sensitive personal data at scale. They also create friction for responsible adults and families, while technically literate minors may still find ways around controls. The result may be greater data collection without commensurate improvements in real safety outcomes. This raises a broader question of proportionality. Effective child protection must not rely on normalising widespread biometric or identity verification for lawful online participation. Once established, such systems can expand beyond their original purpose. Safeguards must therefore be carefully calibrated to ensure that measures are targeted, evidence-based, and limited to what is strictly necessary. It is also important to recognise that the state already regulates many aspects of children’s environments, including education, broadcasting standards, and age-restricted goods. The digital sphere, however, is not merely a public space but also a realm of private communication and family decision-making. Policies that require pervasive identity checks in order to access lawful content represent a materially different level of intervention. That distinction warrants careful scrutiny Cont…

UK is a police state

The last sentence is the real meat and potatoes of this. What's being promoted as a 'social media ban for children', is really an ID check for every adult.

Omarchy on Asahi creator lost access to his GitHub account two weeks ago due to some automated process flagging his account. Repo went offline and has been since. Not even me personally reaching out to GitHub twice has been able to restore his account. Terrifying. Embarrassing.

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/2026-06…

Croy station closed after an accident.

Now this is an XBOX!

As a Scottish person, I’m frustrated that Gemini keeps labeling all its new UK accents as “English”. Scotland is not England! We have our own distinct voices, culture, and identity – not some regional English variant. Google treating the UK like it’s just Greater England again. This ignorance needs to stop. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 #Gemini #NotEnglish #ScottishAccent

Keir Starmer, 2020: “When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to. You don’t look at the electorate and ask them: what were you thinking? You look at yourself, and ask what were we doing?” Indeed @Keir_Starmer what are you doing? Just resign.

Dear Microsoft, when I hit the Windows Start menu key and start typing a word to autocomplete a search, I never, ever, EVER want it to return results of something not on my computer. Ever. Like, ever, ever, never.

200 years from now, people will hold this in the same regard as people hold Mozart or Beethoven right now… An absolute classic.

Ricky Gervais on 60 Minutes Makes a Crystal-Clear Case for Free Speech He put it perfectly: the great thing about freedom of speech is that I can say what I want, and you can say you're offended, and I get to decide whether I care or not. Because let's be honest, there's nothing you can say that someone, somewhere won't find offensive. That's why blasphemy laws are so absurd, they're basically trying to protect an all-powerful deity from having its feelings hurt. At the end of the day, we should be free to criticise any idea. Just because you're offended doesn't automatically mean you're right. Spot on, Ricky. Free speech isn't about never upsetting anyone, it's about the right to speak anyway.

If you’re looking for solid full fibre broadband at reasonable prices then see if you can get YouFibre, it’s been an amazing service and rock solid. myyoufibreguide.com/

Notifications for deleted messages shouldn't remain in any OS notification database, and we've asked Apple to address this. In the meantime, you can prevent any preview text from your Signal messages from appearing in your notifications. Signal Settings > Notifications > Show “No Name or Content” 404media.co/fbi-extracts-sus…

Grok groks

I really need a new #Dell to run #omarchy #Omacon this old one is on its last legs.

20 years, 10 months, 27 days since the last episode of Star Trek aired. #startrek #startrek60

This annoys all the right people.