'The boots brought the bag up. . . ' Reading Elizabeth Bowen (The House in Paris, 1935) for the first time in years. Ironic acknowledgments of class, ingenious prose (here, monosyllables). Don't completely like her writing but v interesting to read after Green, Compton-Burnett. #booksky

"Meet together as campaigners and take a photo together with the banner in your constituency and send a message to your MP and the Government that you want them to reject the Rosebank oil field." Everything you need to order your FREE banner to take action is here: tinyurl.com/bddp5wc4

If you are a Unite member and want more climate action (not less), look out for the ballot paper which should arrive in the next couple of days. Sharon Graham has argued for more drilling in the North Sea and briefed against Ed Miliband because of his work on net zero. Time to dump Sharon!

Winning at all levels, growth rate, foreign policy, immigration policy, energy policy, list is long

One of the largest gatherings of Muslims targeted by far right terrorists and we have close to radio silence... The media, politicians from across the board, pundits... all seem to be taking a minimalist approach... This is how institutional Islamophobia works.

From www.carbonbrief.org/eight-facts-...

Ivan Pech: 'Spain’s political presence, then, is defined less by unified team statements & more by individual acts; gestures, identities, & moments of resistance that become political in themselves.' elevennamedpeople.substack.com/p/the-spanis...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there can be no mainstreaming of far-right politics without the active complicity of the mainstream elite The rise of the far right is therefore not irresistible, inexplicable or people-driven but carefully orchestrated in a top down manner

“Europe is struggling through climate breakdown. France’s heatwave shut schools and stretched hospitals past their limits, with so many people dying in their apartments that morgues have run out of space. Outdoor workers have faced conditions beyond what the human body can safely withstand.”

Latest post on the blog, we look at a new model for community-led regeneration and placemaking. www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk/large-scale-...

📢 Crypto is purely about destroying the idea of the state and its ability to tax rich people. It is the libertarians' ultimate wet dream; no society, just 'sovereign individuals' with no morals, no conscience, and no obligation to anyone but themselves...🤮🤮🤮 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Reform UK’s Warwickshire library review alarms librarians and readers centralbylines.co.uk/region/west-... #Farageheit451

Small Scabious Scabiosa columbaria, Coney Banks, Chatham, with Kidney Vetch. #WildflowerHour #KentWildlife

Good news from Lancashire 👏 “Parents who have been closing their road to through-traffic every week so their children with special educational needs can play outside have said it has had a life-changing effect.” Much more of this 🙏

@jntod.bsky.social has done a great selection of poems here from recent books. Billy Ramsell, Wisława Szymborska, Anthony Joseph, Andrew McDonnell, Mantra Mukim, Holly Pester, Lila Matsumoto. someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-45-a...

A further thought on this - it would be worth comparing sown with unsown new meadows to see how/if sowing affects subsequent colonisation by unsown species.

Beautiful essay by Isabella Hammad on Gaza, grief, mourning, rubble, monuments. And on Arabic poetry and its recasting of some of the foundational readings/uses of Freud and Klein

Can we just stop calling it a ‘heatwave’ and instead call it a ‘heatspike’ so that instead of all the associations with water and warmth and holidays we think of this weather as what it is - a danger and a climate crisis that is killing people #bbc #guardian #climate

Story here bsky.app/profile/belf...

Sean Jacobs @seanjacobs.bsky.social on Kylian Mbappé #France #Mbappé elevennamedpeople.substack.com/p/take-me-to...

I dusted off the old wordpress blog and wrote about @noreenmasud.bsky.social's astonishing book A Flat Place.

'Sebastia', Jumana Manna's public art work in the New Government Quarter, Oslo, is named after a Palestinian village & archaeological site. It looks stunning; wd love to see it. I used to show 'Wild Relatives' to my students. She is a very inventive and varied artist. #stone #Palestine #art #Oslo

Louis MacNeice, News Reel from Springboard, poems 1941-44. Interesting to compare how earlier generations experienced confusion of fact and value as a result of war (and media). #poetry

Puschkinia scilloides Asparagaceae West Azerbaijan, Iran 25th June 2026 Elevation 2390m

🚀 The GUCU Art Raffle is live! 🚀 Win art! Support striking staff resisting savage redundancies and the ongoing destruction of Goldsmiths. Tickets £5. Art by Jeremy Deller, Eddie Peake, Florece Peake, Taring Padi + many many more. Closes 25 July (draw on 26). www.gucu-raffle.com

Care, written & directed by Alexander Zeldin, at #YoungVic near the end of its run. Linda Bassett is brilliant as is Hayley Carmichael, who plays a disturbed woman who (it is implied, I think) kills herself. Characters who die take empty seats among the audience, a quasi-metaphysical touch /

does anyone have advice on bulk scanning handwritten letters, with envelopes, assorted sizes? I am wondering about any scanning services in print shops (N London) as well as tips if I end up doing it myself. I am pushed for time, trying to move on folders. #archives

Such a pleasure to work on this fascinating article!

Sean Jacobs is doing some of the best commentary.

I've co-organised a symposium with @c20society.bsky.social on 10 September to mark 80 years of the New Towns Act, and the launch of Elain Harwood's final major book, 'New Towns Mark One', which I edited (and the sequel to which I'm now writing). Details here: secure.c20society.org.uk/Default.aspx...

From a few week ago. Yellow-wort, Blackstonia perfoliata, in Gentian family. At Coney Banks, Chatham, a local Wildlife site that has been endlessly rewarding to visit. Dry chalk valley, scrub, secondary woodland, areas of grassland that are mown once a year. #WildflowerHour #Grassland #KentWildlife

It was a nice surprise to find this Dittander, Lepidium latifolium, on a busy road verge on the Croydon/Bromley border. #WildflowerHour plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9...

Tormentil, in Rose family. Fairlight, East Sussex, growing on acid grassland. Common, but I hardly ever see it. A new site for me (trying to notice flowers while out with family). Lots of Wood Sage here, some of it growing among Bell Heather. #WildflowerHour

June #reading. Not much. DH Lawrence, The Trespasser, 1912 Dorothy Richardson, Deadlock, 1921 Dorothy Richardson, Revolving Lights, 1923

reading about someone describing their work as “encompassing a breadth of deliverables“

While we are on the subject of #Cabral

'An FCDO spokesperson said the aid cuts were to fund an increase in defence spending. “National security is the first duty of this government,” they said.' These are not alternatives. The cuts are already shameful -- there is such a lot to turn around here for the incoming Burnham-led government.

I am useless as London art guide these days. There is a small show of Brian Catling's paintings at Swedenborg House, to 17 July. Include a reel of assorted film and video: early silent films, videos of performances from the European circuit he was part of. @swedenborghouse.bsky.social #BrianCatling

We shouldn’t accept mass surveillance as the new normal. These invasive tools allow the police to monitor our daily lives, entirely unregulated and without any safeguards. The rollout of live facial recognition needs to stop and robust protections must be put in place to safeguard our rights.

Yes, he was a political ecologist before the term existed - like many Third World Marxists, the questions of land and national liberation were inseparable. And in his unique case, this understanding was rooted in his training and experience as an agronomist. www.buala.org/en/afroscree...

Details of this exhibition marking the century since the General Strike https://phm.org.uk/exhibitions/on-the-line/

As someone in this picture I find it a little odd that @natureportfolio.nature.com chose this image to illustrate the point. We were very careful when choosing a slogan for our signs that it be scientificly defenceable. "Science says New Oil & Gas = Death" is a plain statement of fact 🧵

‘As day follows night, Turkey has become Israel’s latest existential enemy.’

"The translation demonstrates that African languages are not simply vehicles for local experience; they are capable of engaging the most complex works of world literature while bringing new meanings to them." by Tinashe Mushakavanhu theconversation.com/ulysses-in-i...

university matters to us all. We wanted to try something a little different: a form of branch twinning, where UCU branches or sections not currently facing redundancies partner with branches that are. Alongside practical financial support, it's a way of demonstrating that university managements

Holly Pester's novel The Lodgers is, for me, among the most interesting contemporary writing and though it was noted, still needs to find new readers. I am looking forward to her new poems. #poetry

After almost a year of sometimes baffling exchanges with a social services team, my brother and I are finally moving our mum into a care home today.

Very informative and wry reporting on a #Medway council by-election in a village seat, where there appears to be three way possibility, Green, Conservative or Reform