Sue

@suekbates.bsky.social

I'm a history loving lefty in the UK who will do what it takes to rid our country of the far right. I also love my cat Boudicca and I'm a suicide survivor.

Three thousand years ago, a Greek potter looked at a bowl and thought: ‘You know what this needs? A leg!’ Clay bowl with leg-shaped handle!🦵😆 Early Geometric period 850 BC. Altes Museum, Berlin 📷 by me #Archaeology

My photo shows an ancient Greek pottery bowl with a rounded, deep body, wide open mouth and flared rim. It has a large handle shaped like a human leg, extending from the left side of the bowl in my photo, bending at a right angle and ending in a flat foot. The bowl has a camel-coloured surface decorated with dark brown geometric patterns, which include zigzags and meander motifs arranged in horizontal bands around the body of the bowl and along the leg. From Attica, Early Geometric period, circa 850 BC. It sits on a light stone coloured surface in a display case at the Altes Museum in Berlin.

The ability to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into a loss-making TV channel, bent on wrenching British politics sharply to the right, is yet another of the ways in which extreme wealth is trying to remake UK democracy. It needs to be part of any serious conversation about political funding.

Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · last wk.

New GB News accounts are out. Here are their losses to date. Or "spent political donations" if you prefer

Line chart titled 'GB News has lost £142m to date', showing cumulative losses in pounds rising steadily from around £3m in 2020/1 to £142m by 2025. The red line climbs most steeply between 2021/2 and 2023/4, reaching roughly £110m, then flattens as growth slows towards £142m. A note states the latest figures cover the seven-month period to 31 December 2025. Chart by Press Gazette, source: Companies House

Now it is official. "In relation to Israels military operations in Gaza, we conclude that Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes. Including extermination, murder, using starvation as a method of war, forcible transfer" (UN Human Rights Council)

The response when progressive policies that help millions of people are proposed... "How will you pay for it?" The response when the richest 1% ask for tax cuts, or banks ask for bailouts, or defense contractors ask for more contracts... "How much do you need?" It doesn't have to be this way.