‘You can be entirely innocent, with obvious vulnerabilities, imprisoned for 38 years on evidence that is completely false, but the Court of Appeal will still not feel it needs to learn anything from what went wrong.’ Matt Foot on the need to reform the Court of Appeal. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Matt Foot · Short Cuts: Rejected Appeals
The judges might argue that the Court of Appeal is a court of review, whose job is simply to assess whether a conviction...
lrb.co.uk
I would trade a dozen brilliant left-wing economists for one brilliant left-wing manager
Richard Lloyd Parry, writing brilliantly in the @lrb.co.uk on the “Kimmification“ of American politics. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Richard Lloyd Parry · Keeping up with the Kims
For the Kims, nuclear weapons have never been an end in themselves; they are an insurance policy against attack by their...
lrb.co.uk
Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.” Bertie Wooster
@ stephenkb.bsky.social hitting the nail on the head of course. "the Labour Party has now produced two governments whose response to acts of thuggery and intimidation is to reiterate that perhaps the thugs have a point" - as.ft.com/r/97d33f08-a...
Labour’s muddled migration policy won’t stop thuggery
A government that can’t distinguish between ‘legitimate concerns’ and open racism is only making things worse
as.ft.com
"It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police and Home Office seem to be incapable of an appropriate response to the threat of far-right activity and violence."
Did Kent Police ignore a 999 call?
Contrary to their public statement, HOPE not hate can exclusively reveal that Kent Police were tipped off about the Patriot Platform mobilisation – and seemingly did not act on the information.
nicklowles.substack.com
Know there’s a typo here but not sure if ‘warns’ should read ‘brags’ or ‘cackles maniacally that’ ? - Ed.
OpenAI chief scientist warns no-one is prepared for consequences of AI
The post comes as the firm releases GPT-6 Astra, which it says is its most powerful product yet.
bbc.co.uk
I know almost nothing about the original Pink Floyd or their music, but this, by @andrewhickey.500songs.com, with help from Kenneth Grahame, is moving and mysterious
Episode 157: “See Emily Play” by The Pink Floyd
Episode one hundred and fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “See Emily Play”, the birth of the UK underground, and the career of Roger Barrett, known as Syd. Click…
pca.st
So in one week: 1) Reform get stung for dodgy finances, and the regulators play pass the parcel about enforcement 2) Farage announces plans to largely dismantle independent scrutiny of govt, and barely any press discussion of it 3) Masked thugs blockade a port, with narry a word from senior govt
The moment Reform admitted on camera the “grim reality” is they can’t bag any British donors was the moment I realised how bad it was
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 4w agoWell, this is a marmalade dropper
It's 15 years old, but Private Island by @jamesmeek.bsky.social still has a lot to tell us about how we ended up here. Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else | Verso Books share.google/oo21S3JaSfyy...
Private Island
“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the b...
share.google
This is truer than ever when lived experience is of rapid polarisation in those realms of municipal prosperity and decay outside the state’s ambit; when entire towns are gentrified and degentrified by population shifts and the end of the proximity-to-work requirement
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 2mo agoThink I said this on here on Sunday although it was more re council housing in that instance. This is a tension that’s going to run and run if No 10 hasn’t thought/doesn’t think through the relationship between devo and priority national policy objectives
Wow this is a bad result for Farage. In the most Reform friendly seat in the country should get more than this - and Binface’s result shows once again that the centre and left will vote for literally anyone to try and stop him.
Election Maps UK@electionmaps.uk · 2mo agoClacton By-Election Full Result: ➡️ RFM: 63.3% (+17.1) 🗑️ CBF: 26.7% (New) ⭐ REU: 1.4% (New) 🙋 Francis (Ind): 1.2% (New) 🙋 Walford (Ind): 1.1% (New) 🦊 REC: 1.0% (New) 🔴 SDP: 0.7% (New) 🙋 Pelas (Ind): 0.6% (New) 🤝 CNS: 0.5% (New) 🙋 Ingram (Ind): 0.5% (New) [1/4]
Related anti-disappointment PSA Actual size of the hole through which the sun enters a home-made pinhole camera: • Actual size of the image of the sun projected: o
Mark Wallace@wallaceme.bsky.social · 2mo agoSomething to ponder this week.
Back in the 70s in Scotland an actual German ex-Nazi was wheeled into our RE class to lecture us about the perils of Naziism and within a few minutes he was shouting angrily at us for not keeping quiet and paying his story the proper respect
To be fair, “Councillors and council elections don’t matter” are a load-bearing part of the “Kemi Badenoch is doing well and the Conservative party’s prospects under her are looking good” thesis.
Chris Terry-Enescu@cjterry.bsky.social · 2mo agoIt's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line.
John Healey as housing secretary would have been good but John Healey as a chancellor who gets housing is arguably even better
Paul Brand@paulbrand.bsky.social · 2mo agoBREAKING: John Healey is Chancellor
For those who prefer their hair to be nasty, brutish and short
interesting to see all the reviews framing Odyssey around its veteran-trauma-PTSD themes. War as something that happens to soldiers’ psyches. This is I dare say a very umbombed mentality. Processing war as individual moral injury when the actual subject is collective destruction
Aw and just when Pete Hegseth was about to make them leaders of his testosterone task force www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Tate brothers arrested in US as further UK charges take total to 59
The Crown Prosecution Service says it has requested their extradition from the US, while their lawyer says they are innocent.
bbc.co.uk
One of the things that surprised me when I went looking into the failure of a battery plant in Northumberland last year was the degree to which government support for tech is an immense structural failure underpinned by a myriad mutually reinforcing boosterish PR departments
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 3mo agoIt’s a mistake to scrap DSIT, which as far as I can tell the Labour case against it is simply “not invented by us, ewww“, but even if it were a good idea, a mistake to do so when have only 18 months left to deliver anything:
I feel conflicted atm because while I can see a number of potential problems already looming for AB’s policy agenda, and also a number of worryingly familiar patterns playing out, the starting point for some commentary has a sneering element to it
The crazy notion that a ‘policy levy’ on a privatised essential service is somehow not a tax serves two constituencies: the private rent-seekers, and governments trying to smuggle regressive taxation onto the bills. Electricity ‘policy levies’ are taxes, and very unfair ones. Make them general!
To me, the big picture problem here is that it sets Labour back on the same failed course as 2024 to 2026, of offering nothing to social liberals but going “don’t worry. Can I interest you in some failed economics instead?”
This is a real inflection point. Huge statement of Zelensky’s shift in priorities from Ukraine’s survival to his own if this happens. Europe’s ‘we provide the money, you provide the sons’ deal with Ukraine would look very weak if it can’t stop this happening.
Zelenskyy expected to remove Ukraine’s popular defence minister
Moderniser behind country’s drone development at risk of being ousted in cabinet reshuffle after just six months in post
giftarticle.ft.com
Hello, I’ve an event for my Muriel Spark biography next Weds (15th) at Waterstones Liverpool. We’ve sold barely any tickets, however, and it might be cancelled as a result. Please get a ticket if you’re nearby - it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll bring badges! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...
