An update on who was running the tax-evading gift shops during the the Princes Street fire. Thanks to @jim.londoncentric.media and @pollysmythe.bsky.social of @londoncentric.media for persisting with investigating this shady Edinburgh saga: www.edinburghminute.com/investigatio...

Investigation: Finding the Princes Street fire shop owner

An update on who was running the tax-evading gift shops during the the Princes Street fire

edinburghminute.com

If you're in Glasgow this weekend, my band are playing at the Old Hairdresser's on Saturday. Music kicks off from 8pm and there will be tickets on the door. If you have any interest in moderately punky klezmer, come check it out.

Good to see my book, 'Take Over the City: Spatial Composition in Italian Autonomy', is now published in the US with @CommonNotions (UK release August). Link below👇 Would love to hear from potential reviewers or anyone who can facilitate a talk or book launch. Neil.Gray@glasgow.ac.uk

I'm looking for sites and collections in and around Edinburgh related to the history of cardboard and paper. Suggestions welcome!

And at the same time Sharon Graham is campaigning to drill the North Sea for gas and oil. With climate change every summer is going to get hotter...

MyLondon@itsmylondon.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said drivers have been working in 'totally unacceptable' conditions as temperatures soar to 36C in London

A brilliant community space in Wester Hailes needs your help - chip in a quid or as much as you can? Fundraiser closes in two days.

love this from Martin Wolf

this should frighten you

If you're in Edinburgh on the 16th June, here's a chance to see radical Jewish music taken in three different directions on the same night: www.skiddle.com/e/42436986

Some recent book reviews on #FirstView now 👇 📚 @tomhulme.bsky.social on @tricksterprince.bsky.social's Songs of Seven Dials 🔗 doi.org/10.1017/S096... 📚 @hamishkallin.bsky.social on @lauracforster.bsky.social's The Paris Commune in Britain 🔗 doi.org/10.1017/S096...

“Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.”

Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away

Exclusive: Alvi Choudhury claiming damages against Thames Valley police after biased technology confused him with man looking ‘10 years younger’

theguardian.com

Everything in this report reflects on what we value, for communities, for peripheral places, for young people, for education, for the future - and it looks like we’ve got it all wrong.

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university?

When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

theguardian.com

Top tip: to avoid having the British Union of Fascists logo on the side of your mock-up train, don't use horrible text-to-image AI slop instead of actual designers and artists. www.scotsman.com/news/transpo...

If there's a financial crisis at the University of Edinburgh, it is of senior management's making. Staff and students deserve answers. Why should we trust a senior management team responsible for such mismanagement to 'fix' this? www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/depreci...

Depreciating the University of Edinburgh into the Ground — UCU Edinburgh

There are four key takeaways from the University of Edinburgh’s 2024-25 annual report, which this post explores: The University continues to make a sizeable surplus. What financial pressures exi...

ucuedinburgh.org.uk

My klezmer band Och Vey are playing alongside Edinburgh-based Italian folk band The Badwills on 21st Feb, followed by a cumbia set from Peruvian DJ él-pi-b0y. It's gonna be fun, and you're invited. Tickets via www.skiddle.com/e/41960406

If the Palestine Action hunger strikers die - which they could do at any moment, as they are now very close to the end - it will be the government that killed them. Today’s column explains why. Please share, and write urgently to your MP. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Let’s be clear: if the Palestine Action hunger strikers die, the government will bear moral responsibility | George Monbiot

The three remaining hunger strikers have been convicted of nothing. Yet with astonishing cruelty, ministers refuse to listen to their reasonable demands, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

theguardian.com

utterly depressing to read of the plans to demolish Argyle House, another modernist jewel potentially disappearing from Edinburgh’s urban fabric after the loss of the RBS building on Dundas Street.

Some of our most precarious members, tutors and demonstrators on 'guaranteed hours' contracts, have had their work hours cut or disappeared entirely in management's cost cutting spree. All the money paid to Nous could have gone to them. #StopStaffCutsatUoE www.theferret.scot/consultancy-...

‘Nousferatu’: the notorious consultancy advising Edinburgh uni amid 'huge' cuts

Scotland’s largest university has turned to Nous Group at the same time as it is making savings that could lead to nearly 2,000 job losses. Staff say they were misled about the extent of its work.

theferret.scot

At this rate, I honestly don't know why we aren't seeing mass riots against AI, which drains our most precious resources, replaces our jobs, steals our culture, will likely break our economy (again), infantalises us, and syphons money up to the uber rich who see themselves as rulers of our future.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 10mo ago

OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates on.ft.com/4ij0yh8

This is one of the big accounts boosting Tommy Robinson, Farage and Reform and ‘English Patriots’. It’s Russian.

I do hope that Peter Mathieson can hear this from his office and that he is finding it REALLY annoying. Well done, @hamishkallin.bsky.social

UCU Edinburgh@ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Lively picket with great music outside Old College

RALLY TOMORROW! Join the fightback against job cuts! Wednesday 19th November at 1pm at the Scottish parliament.

Calling all staff and students at UoE, and all those who care about its future: join us on the picket lines! Teach outs, picket locations, bake sale... see our FAQ #UCU #WearetheUniversity #StopStaffCutsatUoE www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/industrial-d...

SAVE GEOGRAPHY at Leicester University (UK) - We call on the University of Leicester to urgently reconsider the proposal to dissolve Geography. This is direct attack on the discipline of Geography at Leicester with likely loss of Geography staff. Please sign + share www.change.org/p/save-geogr...

my band Shinlifter have their EP launch on Saturday and with impeccable timing our Instagram has been hacked so we’ve lost our main channel for promoting it. if anyone wanted to help share this brilliant poster by my pal Grace there, here or elsewhere we’d be very grateful!

Universities across the world seeing this: "its only wrong 45% of the time!! Lets buy free licenses for our students, staff and faculty!! Lets lock into contracts with rapacious predatory AI companies with shitty technofascist politics, sucking up water and jacking up electricity prices!!"

Olga Byrska@obyrska.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Pretends to be shocked www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Chakrabortty on fine form: this is economically, politically, and morally bankrupt nonsense from Steve Reed, the new Labour housing minister.

A leaked memo, a Maga-style hat and a trail of broken pledges – it’s Labour’s great housing betrayal | Aditya Chakrabortty

Ignore the bombast: Steve ‘build, baby, build’ Reed’s boast looks likely to end in targets more pathetic than they are now, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

theguardian.com

New commentary in Transactions: 'Decolonial limits to Henri Lefebvre's spatial revolution' by James D. Sidaway In this commentary, Sidaway responds to @hamishkallin.bsky.social's recent TIBG paper on the reconciliation of anarchist and Marxist approaches in geography. doi.org/10.1111/tran...

I see we're at the "put Jewish people on a special surveillance list" stage of "combating antisemitism"

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · last yr.

UC Berkeley has given the Trump administration the names of 160 students, faculty, and staff as part of an investigation into antisemitism on campus. One of them is Judith Butler. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...