The left calls the BBC biased because its news facilities are constantly demonising marginalised groups and promoting far right figures. The right calls the BBC biased because occasionally Black people and women appear on it. The centre thinks it's doing a good job because they're arrogant dunces.

Liberals like Hinsliff are big fans of ~tough decisions~ for the peasantry, at best apathetic about policies that kill refugees, disabled people, trans people and many more. Proud to say how nice hatemongers were to *them* but then shocked the peasants don't like the people harming and killing them.

You only sue Amnesty International if you are anti-rights.

Mainstream Respectable opinion is that people joking about a bad person's death represents a culture of cruelty, but really it represents a culture of impunity. It's a coping mechanism for watching someone do evil their whole life and never seeing consequences

This lad makes me laugh every time I see him. I've never seen a man look 48 years old more than this man. I can't wait for him to get pancaked by a drunk dump truck driver

Thinking about war and pastoral in July – a while ago I wrote a response to ‘As the Team’s Head-Brass’ by Edward Thomas. It is based on an encounter I had as I walked the Ridgeway one summer: www.bathmagg.com/sashadugdale/

#poem #poetry #writingcommunity This from Anna Swir (1909-1984)

That's my hand at the start of this video. And more importantly, my poem in the book

We need to adopt as a nation a politics of kindness and empathy and peace. And to do that we do as a nation unfortunately have to put a bunch of specific people in the ground

Here's an extremely topical poem, 'Antifa', from Rachel Davies. Please submit your political poems to the Morning Star at: [email protected] We look forward to reading them. 🌿 @mstaronline.bsky.social @ruthaylett.bsky.social morningstaronline.co.uk/article/antifa

Being right about Gaza is likely to be even worse for the left than being right about the Iraq War or austerity was, because it binds together the Sensible Moderates, the right and the far right in a kind of death-pact of denial. They’ll have to stick together screaming abuse at us forever, now.

Our next Masterclass Webinar is led by Ian Humphreys, author of #poetry collections Zebra and Tormentil. Monday 29th June, 7-8pm BST Recording link also sent to ticket-holders £17 Wings of Desire: poems of love, loss and receovery. Sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/masterclas...

For those of us who see Palestinians as human beings, this was Starmer's defining moment. It is not sustainable to behave in this way while leading the nominally progressive party in a two party system. Starmer's unpopularity is not one of life's great mysteries. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8_s...

From 'Ring Cairns', in 'Truth, Justice, and the Companionship of Owls' (Longbarrow Press, 2019), Peter Riley

I mean, it’s obviously one of the most idiotic and disastrous bungles in British political history: an absolutely clownshoes piece of unnecessary slapstick, entirely because this one tiny group of clueless dorks nobody likes wanted it and thought they were much better and smarter than everybody else

Rich fresh wine of June, we stagger into you smeared with pollen 🖤

If there was ever any doubt remaining that this was 100% correct, you might think that - say - the actual President of the United States recruiting actual Tony Blair to help flog his big Disneyland Gaza selloff board would’ve banged a nail through those.

One more note. The media's near-silence on this astonishing legal shift is almost as disturbing as the issue itself. This vast change is covered in most outlets way down the bulletins, with almost no explanation or context. This is how democracy dies: not with a bang but a whimper. Thank you.

Compare their awkward stammering over constant summer far riot riots vs your gran on the anti-genocide protests. Look at for whom they summon boiling fury and vows of unrelenting vigilance and crackdowns. They are telling you what their priorities are.

There is no democracy without a healthy media ecosystem and therefore it is clear there is no democracy in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter) As such, any party serious about the threat of the far right and authoritarianism must place radical media reform at the top of their agenda

Andy Burnham says he "can't judge" if the Israeli military's crimes in Gaza are a genocide. The experts already have. A UN commission, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and leading human rights organisations all agree: it's genocide. Andy, why won't you call it what it is?

Again, “Marxist Bolshevik intellectuals are conspiring with the lesser races to undermine the Reich and abuse Our White Women” has been the narrative *for fifteen years* on TV, radio and news stands. The difference now is it’s a) undisguised, and b) targeted at Sensible Moderates, not the pig people

This is nicely put. The machine that subordinates all life to its own algorithm of self-expansion is already operating: It’s called capital. www.newyorker.com/science/anna...

Submit to petrichor! They publish cool and fun things like my poem about being fired from my bird job petrichormag.com/30-frances-k...

As always: you tax the rich because they have too much money. You tax the rich, especially the super rich, because their outsized influence on politics means the state is bent to their whims, and they are dumb sadists who hate life, so this is axiomatically bad for everyone else.

The Spectator isn't just a harmless retirement home for 1930s-style Tories, or a campaigning club for the return of Gentleman's Relish. It plays with extremism. Any of those who still write for it - including actual "poets" - need to look in the mirror. Enoch is staring back at you licking his lips.

CENTRIST: I'm a liberal LEFTIST: I'm a leftist CENTRIST: I take offense to that, as it implies I'm NOT a leftist LEFTIST: well you're not CENTRIST: so just bc I support the free market and means testing and privatization and blood and soil-- LEFTIST: what RIGHT WINGER: surprise ha ha

Fourteen She is still mine – for another year or so – but she’s already looking past me through the funeral-home door to where the boys have gathered in their dark suits. Marie Howe

Attention, extremist , race-hate scum: assuming we can pull you away from feeding heroin to toddlers for five minutes, would you mind awfully not standing a candidate in this seat, so that we can rescue ourselves from electoral oblivion? Thank you, and fuck you

The journos are absolutely fuming that Zack Polanski treats them with the derision they rightly deserve

Never met Tony Peters, don’t know who he is, but a million years ago on Facebook he posted this and I don’t think anyone’s ever put it better.

I love this intricate villanelle by Heaney written for his wife Marie This form is challenging, but what's especially brilliant is how the refrain lines are reworked in different pieces of conversation The final line is great 'but love – is longing to' #Poetry #Poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday

Important to remember: "maybe MPs shouldn't be so drunk at work they stink of booze all day" and "maybe the met shouldn't literally kick people repeatedly on the head while they're on the ground" getting the full bore outrage cannons isn't about the specifics, it's about the left being illegitimate.

If you go on these protests, you get screamed at and accused by our horrible political/media class. If you believe Israel has a more or less unlimited right to massacre its subject population, destroy their homes and take their land, you can go on TV and radio no bother. You might get a Times column

Ten Poets Do Their Bit for the Secret Service will be available, ahead of publication date, at this Saturday's Free Verse Poetry Book Fair at St Columba's Church in Knightsbridge!

I feel this one.

The centrist who sneers "populist" is inviting you to believe that there is no difference between "you are worse off because of the swarming hordes of islamic transgenders" and "you are worse off because the rich have used their wealth and power to amass more wealth and power."

Diptych: "Populism" (2026)

Interesting one here, asking about the extent to which politics is meaningfully about debate, the free exchange of ideas and compromise on the best, most beneficial public policies. It is IMO difficult to look at the world and conclude these things are a major factor, let alone a core aspect.

You're an adult. Here's what to read instead of watching that transphobic trash. First up, NK Jemisin's triple-Hugo award winning Broken Earth trilogy. Gorgeous world-building. Brand-new magic. Actual themes of oppression and liberation.

My Giants? They might be

Philip Schaefer @uofupress.bsky.social

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Death's great black wing scrapes the air, Misery gnaws to the bone. Why then do we not despair? Anna #Akhmatova might have the answers… transl by Stanley Kunitz

There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends. It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.

The referee has just sent two players off from each team and then dropped his shorts and shat in the centre circle, but both sets of fans are booing him so that can only mean he's doing a great job

True and for real, I don’t blame anyone for this: it has just been one horror atop another for the whole of the 21st century so far and every effort the public has made to mitigate it has been ruthlessly beaten into the dirt. It’s amazing anyone has energy and idealism left to e.g. oppose ICE.

firstly, I'd like to congratulate the Greens on a hopeful, positive campaign, and a hopeful positive result, free of smears and division and personal insults. secondly I'd like to say fuck Matt Goodwin, fuck Reform, fuck the Labour Party, fuck all the toads in UK politics and media, have a shite day