Ben Cullen, a leading figure of the "Raise the Colours" campaign, will stand trial for three separate charges regarding a total of 78 indecent images of children. I have only seen this covered in local newspapers, so far. Grim as it is, it needs wider coverage www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2624087...

View from where I am mediating today.

My pet hate: lawyers who post articles on LinkedIn about cases without posting *a link to the judgment*.

Leyton by-election 1965. Patrick Gordon Walker. Just saying…

Today’s newsletter: the United Kingdom doesn’t have the antiracism movement that its politicians, or much of the British Jewish community, thinks it does:

Farage (like Trump) gives people permission to blame others for their own failures and dissatisfaction with life. Racism, homophobia, sexism etc become patches to cover their own sadness. Right wing politics are a cancer hiding behind a mask of change.

View from where I am mediating today.

Coincidentally, I received a letter from HMRC last month with a demand for £91 underpaid in January, so hard agree.

Good morning from the south coast of Sri Lanka.

View from where I am mediating today

I wonder if on one of the Indian channels some middle-aged comedian is being sent around Britain, getting the Thameslink to St Albans, sampling pey wet in Wigan, poignantly observing that there are homeless folk on the streets even in Knightsbridge, and so forth bsky.app/profile/jack...

What they’re basically saying is that Starmer and the UK isn’t allowed to operate an even moderately independent foreign policy outside of the United States. That is both ahistoric, wrong and weird for people who constantly tell us how sovereignty is what matters most.

“We cannot say that the United States’ actions are against international law, but we condemn Iran’s retaliatory actions as against international law,” is neither a coherent nor a compelling position.

Best analysis I have read yet.

View from where I am mediating today.

Illegal migrant in small boat stopped from entering sovereign territory without a permit.

This piece by my Berlin colleague Alexandra Prokopenko is essential reading on Russia. The Russian economy is in a slow death spiral, bankrupting itself on fuelling the Ukraine war--and yet the leadership is not changing course, as it believes everyone else is also failing.

I’m on for it. Let’s *have* the debate. Let’s reason it out.

Jim Radcliffe pissed me off, so I wrote this about the inconvenient truth of migration. tl:dr - no, just fucking read it. Some basic mathematics - you know, COUNTING THINGS - might make you reconsider, you stupid twats. (I'm not trying to make friends) open.substack.com/pub/russinch...

It makes you wonder whether the whole ‘war on woke’ over the last few years was waged just so that men like Ratcliffe could be disgustingly racist again without any accountability. PM tells Sir Jim Ratcliffe to apologise for saying UK 'colonised by immigrants' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I visited this cemetery some years ago whilst working in Gaza. It was a place of peace in a troubled area. Sorry to read of this.

View from where I am mediating today.

⬇️

At this point if I was abducted by aliens 👽🛸I would consider it a rescue mission.

Greetings from the hard shoulder of the M40 where I have hit debris in the carriageway, the car is undriveable and the RAC won’t help me because ‘it’s not a mechanical failure’.

View from where I am mediating today.

As I get older and analyse politics in more psychological terms, I see the far right for what it is: the preserve of older men who mourn and resent their loss of useful knowledge and status. They hate the people who've 'replaced' them - the young, women, people of colour - and seek revenge on them.

View from where I am mediating today.

It's not the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, it's the “Gone-Rogue Doctrine.” My column today for @carnegieeurope.bsky.social on Trump's Greenland gambit as performative imperialism, why “sphere of influence” politics doesn’t work any more and Europe's choices. carnegieendowment.org/europe/strat...

Quentin on a Teams call this afternoon.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

View from where I am mediating today.

Smugglers often force people to pilot boats, using threats against them or their families. Prosecuting an Afghan 18 year old seeking asylum for this is twisted and shows how Labour is more interested in playing to Reform than ensuring people are provided with safety. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Reading Johan Norberg’s ‘Peak Human’ and came across this timely quote from Abraham Lincoln about the self destruction of America.

Evening in Tirol.

The story of Europe’s economic decline while US is 'soaring' is everywhere. But it is wrong. It is a myth. Europe delivers more leisure, longer life expectancy, less inequality than the US. Gabriel Zucman dismantles the myths.

@jasonbraier.bsky.social has kindly drawn my attention to this brilliant speech by Lady Rose about the Nuremberg trials. supremecourt.uk/uploads/spee...

When I was a teenager Pope John Paul II came to lunch in my house.

There are about 16,500 in residential care now - 10% higher than 2020. Most do have more intensive needs but many could be fostered by the right family (for vastly less money). They are clustered in cheaper parts of the country meaning children are often sent far away from their original home.

My holiday reading is this excellent book by @samfr.bsky.social. Of all that I learned from reading it the most horrifying was the fact that we have left children in care to the mercy of private equity owned children’s’ homes where children are placed often far wat from family and friends 1/

Post Christmas excitement. I am first in the queue for the tip on Sat an!

Hey, do you want a doctor or someone to look after your elderly mum? Tough, Farage has destroyed even that bit of your life like he destroys everything he touches.

View from where I am mediating today.

"We're committed to encouraging people to learn the lessons of history". .... "No, not that lesson"

How many times do we need to point this out? By appeasing the far right, you do not weaken it. You strengthen it. While weakening your own position. There's a vast amount of academic research showing this. But Labour will not listen. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

View from where I am mediating today.

View from where I am mediating today.