Bee on honeysuckle.

Both the government and the Court of Appeal now treat protesters as terrorists and terrorists as protesters. It's hard to accept that a "Labour" government is imposing rightwing authoritarianism on the UK, but please read this column to see what's happening.+🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Last year, I planted a little Derry acorn that had rolled across the path. Today, it's a tiny oak tree.

@owenjones.bsky.social Good to see this response from tolerant, inclusive #Derry.

Hatred of migrants will destroy this country - unless it’s stopped. An honour to write my first column for the newly launched @zeteonews.co.uk 👇 zeteonews.co.uk/p/belfast-ri...

7 years ago today, CRIPPLED was published. This morning, a lecturer emailed me to say a student had written their dissertation inspired by it. I’m continually blown away by the impact this book has had and so grateful for how readers have responded - and are still discovering it.

I spoke to BBC Radio 4 about some of the ways UK charities are funnelling money to illegal Israeli settlements - and getting taxpayer subsidies for doing so. This must end now; the Charity Commission have to act.

A war crime and also strategic nonsense. Millions of Iranians are short of water — and the entire region depends on desalinization facilities that Iran could destroy. If we strike water facilities and they respond in kind elsewhere millions of lives are at risk. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/w...

The government must treat this as the emergency it is. Our sovereignty, democracy, and the lives of some of those who live here are threatened by a deadly combination of US billionaires, Russian interests and homegrown fascists. Step 1: Get the money out of politics.🧵 bylinetimes.com/2026/06/10/r...

So glad that Luqman Saeed - an academic at Ulster University - has written this piece about the Belfast riots. I hope I could write this clearly and perceptively were I under similar pressure right now. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...

Just a wee reminder for anyone listening to politicians doing the ‘I condemn the violence but people have legitimate concerns’, shuffle, immigration in NI is 3.5% of the population. Most of them working in NHS, social care and other badly paid jobs.

Interestingly, a widely held view across the political spectrum too.

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

The idea that the UK is not spending enough on defence is seemingly taken as fact, and any suggestion to the contrary treated as heresy. But the UK will next year be spending 20% more in real terms than it was just a few years ago, and outspends Germany, France, Italy and Spain, as a share of GDP

Love you #Derry

The brilliant Feargal Sharkey sums it up "The whole industry’s got to go. Absolutely, without exception" Time to end the privatisation rip off diverting 1/3 OF YOUR WATER BILL into shareholder dividends and debt Are you listening DEFRA? www.mirror.co.uk/news/feargal...

The houses of ethnic minorities in Belfast didn’t ’go on fire’ last night - as my radio has told me - they were set alight

9 June 597: d. St Colmcille or Columba - "the dove of the church" - his feast day #otd Associated with #Donegal, #Derry & #Iona & one of the three patrons of #Ireland Here he is in Bodleian Library Oxford MS. Rawl. B. 514, a late medieval English text.

Béal Feirste ❤️

We are deeply concerned at the vast rise in violent Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians, and at settlement expansion, which forces Palestinians off their land. The Israeli government itself is clear this is designed to prevent a 2 state solution ever being realised. (2/2)

The number is now over 140 Labour MPs.

What an absolute disgrace. A FIFA-certified referee being denied entry to the United States purely because he is Somali. The World Cup is meant to bring people together. This is racism, plain and simple. Shameful. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

For the past two and a half years, the UK government has armed a genocide as it was livestreamed around the world. Now, some politicians are pretending they have always been against the crimes they enabled. Too little, too late. Your complicity will never, ever be forgotten.

Lovely to see Who Wants Normal? still a bestseller on Amazon. It’s also available in bookshops that pay their staff a living wage.

Please come to work in our beleaguered care sector - but you're not allowed a family life ... Immoral, spiteful and counterproductive. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Shout out to Passenger Assistance at Euston Station, and Avanti West Coast, for friendly and helpful staff on the ground and on the train! #puttingpassengersfirst @networkrail.bsky.social

“It’s the British class system with a climate-crisis spin: the more someone requires air conditioning to survive heatwaves, the less likely they are to be able to afford it.” My col. in today’s paper. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

As headlines report 4m U.K. households now have air conditioning, I wanted to write about the part we’re not meant to say: it’s disabled, poor, and older people who are at risk in heatwaves but the wealthy and healthy who get to have the cool homes. Today’s col. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's another day where the UK media excites itself over the latest corporate-sponsored utterings of a war criminal.

I do wonder if the audience for this is Trump and Blair’s US funders rather than the U.K. or labour www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

First yellow roses.

Perfect circle.

Bold red camellia, and apricot geums on this sunny garden day. 🌞

'Bathsheba'.

Israel's Finance Minister has ordered the eviction of a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank. Tough words are not enough. We need real action to stop this. In Parliament’s Middle East debate, I called for widespread sanctions on Israel to help stop these war crimes.

UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper 'incensed' by Itamar Ben Gvir's public abuse of international activists for showing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. That's the same Yvette Cooper who changed UK law to jail British activists who show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. #complicity #gaza

Another crisis in the #Gaza Strip. Rats and parasites are surging. Skin infections are spreading. Risk of disease is increasing. Hundreds of UNRWA medical personnel are treating around 400 cases a day, but they could do more - supplies need to be allowed into Gaza at scale. #UNRWAworks

Read the harrowing testimony of Ahmad Mhanna, former director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern #Gaza, who survived 22 months in Israeli detention. We will continue to document these systemic abuses, including Israel’s widespread use of torture and other ill-treatment against #Palestiniandetainees.

This is what Ben Gvir excitedly posts online for the whole world to see of international activists trying to help Palestinians, imagine the brutally sick things they do to Palestinians that the world ignores. Israel is a terrorist state.

Far right newspapers are trying to run a smear campaign against Misan Harriman. We can't let them. Add your name to the open letter, and stand against hate and division. goodlawproject.org/s/4ca10b

Well done @ledbydonkeys.org

If this isn't "designed to stir up hatred" against Jews, what is? Why are the Met not arresting them?

Along the route of the #Nakba march there were small groups waving Israeli and other flags and trying to provoke a reaction.

I was on the peaceful, well organised #Nakba march in London yesterday. Absurd that the Met are reporting 43 arrests/ & violence as a cumulative figure across BOTH marches. I'm sure that all violence came from the "Unite the Kingdom" march.

Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos was at the Nakba Day demonstration in London. The 88-year-old has attended almost every demonstration in the last two year’s protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. #freepalestine #gaza #genocide

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.   Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us.

‘Despite regular demonstrations of bigotry on the world’s streets, more than 99 per cent of stories that mention “hate marches” have been published since 7 October 2023 and have focused on anti-racist protesters.’ @desfreedman.bsky.social on ‘hate marches’. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Keir Starmer's political failure comes down to one issue above all others: his unwillingness to put the public interest ahead of the demands of the oligarchs, corporations and foreign governments who lobby him. Whoever replaces him had better be prepared to stand up for us, or Labour's finished.

✊ Let's march! Saturday 16 May. Nakba 78 For Palestine Against the far right 1200, Exhibition Rd, London SW7 2DB Music: "Dounana" by @sibasmusic & @monkyman_music

Our government is still supplying arms to Israel as it continues to bomb, starve & dispossess the Palestinian people. That is why thousands of us continue to demonstrate — and that is why we reject disgraceful attempts to malign our movement for peace. metro.co.uk/2026/05/13/c...