"As well as an escalation of the strike in Birmingham, Unite has voted to cut its Labour affiliation by £580,000. This move is unprecedented and shows the anger of Unite members." www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/...

30% real-terms pay cut since 2011. Vice-chancellors attempting 15,000+ job cuts since last September. UCU & sister unions are fighting back - submitting our 2026/27 pay claim to UCEA demanding fair pay, protected jobs & an end to casualised contracts. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1443...

I'm stunned that he lied, but at least he is coming clean www.normalisland.co.uk/p/trump-conf...

US watching a movie where a vigilante’s entire family is wiped out: “Oh yeah, time for fucking vengeance, this dude will never stop. Get them!” US watching Iran pick a Supreme Leader who just had his entire family wiped out: “This guy is plainly going to be reasonable and fold.”

I'm delighted to say that Ruth will be reading at our April 29 poetry evening at Mecycle cafe/bar/bike-workshop in Ainsdale Southport. Tickets (free) will be available from 1pm on Thursday 26th March from www.ticketsource.co.uk/poets-corner...

Political poetry, in Glasgow, this Thursday! In a time when poetry of protest is more than ever needed. You can order the collection as well, from culturematters.org.uk/cm-publicati...

Reaching net zero would cost about £4bn a year, @theCCCuk found That's close to £100bn by 2050 Roughly equivalent to the energy-related costs of the fossil fuel shocks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine www.theguardian.com/environment...

“Iran has Tomahawk missiles, a fact we disclosed only after a Tomahawk was caught on camera striking a school, in Iran, during a US bombardment consistently of hundreds of Tomahawk missiles” -if your news org isn’t openly attacking this claim you may as well run Sandy Hook false flag theories too

The President of the USA is now openly threatening Iran with being the target of one of the greatest crimes in world history. Trump is saying he will destroy the basis of life for more than 90 million people. He should be removed from office for this.

“Labour was built on the belief that justice must never belong only to the powerful. Today MPs vote on restricting jury trials. For Labour MPs it’s a test of principle. The poorest & most marginalised depend on juries. Today we’ll see who remembers why they came into politics” Rob Rinder

As the US continues its illegal war of aggression against Iran defence secretary John Healey says he's "proud" of "our US-UK relationship" which allows the two "to do things together that no other nations will do" After thousands of US/Israeli strikes, he urges Iran to "de-escalate" #DCUKparliament

One of the excluded systematic reviews is the York systematic reviews commissioned as part of the Cass Review itself. NHS England excluded from its evidence review a systematic review produced for the very process this evidence review is supposed to implement. It's a joke.

Tomorrow Wes Streeting will remove trans minors ability to access, and doctors to prescribe, cross-sex hormones. Try as it might Labour will never eradicate trans people. They cannot, and should not, change who they are. All Labour will do is make trans lives harder - with more harm and more death.

Well, this aged exactly how I was afraid it would

It's normal to restrict or move away from treatments when evidence of harms starts to outweigh evidence of benefits. It's not normal to restrict or move away from treatments when there is evidence of benefits and none of harms, even if the evidence of benefits is "low quality."

Two brothers from South Texas and their high school mariachi bandmates were recognized by their congresswoman last June for winning a state mariachi competition. Nine months later, the brothers, along with their parents and younger brother, are in ICE detention and facing deportation.

They'll just get them online, their parents medicine cabinet, or friends. They aren't going to stop access, only safe access to hormones. Trans people have been getting access to hormones via nonmedical pathways for over half a century.

When Israel targeted Gaza’s water supply, people rightly called it out as a war crime, denying civilians the most basic supplies.

Finished this morning The Stone Canal by @amendlocke.bsky.social Excellent read, really enjoyed this 2nd in the series, the description of the balkanisation of UK/Europe, love the political mechanics of it throughout, and it's consequences into the future on planetary settlements. #booksky

Hitting desalination plants is so bad. Not just evil but strategically incomprehensible. Without desalination 75% of the entire population of the Middle East will be refugees. Israel and Kuwait depend on desalination for 90% of their water and other Middle East states aren’t far behind.

It is absolutely insane that the US appears to have targeted desalination plants first – putting them onto the board. Iran seems to have already retaliated against one in Bahrain. This is one of the most obvious ways this could spiral.

I regularly go to New Hampshire to hike and ski. If this is enacted, I will not comply and will dare them to enforce this on me. I've been using the women's bathroom without issue for a decade. I'm not letting them push us backwards. www.advocate.com/politics/sta...

This is brilliant from @labourlewis.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... One can only hope that at least some of the Parliamentary Labour Party can derive some advantage, or at least insight, from Clive spelling out here WHY half of them are likely to lose their seats to Greens.

Come and hear some of her work in Edinburgh this Tuesday evening as part of the Scottish PEN celebration of IWD

The government is asked if it will review trade ties with Israel, suspend the 2030 Roadmap on bilateral relations or impose targeted sanctions on Israel. The Foreign Office ignores all of them. #DCUKparliament

👉NEW -- Inside the Cypriot campaign to kick out British bases by Phil Miller Long before a drone struck RAF Akrotiri, opposition to one of Britain’s last colonial outposts was already growing in Cyprus www.declassifieduk.org/inside-the-c...

Want to know how broken our media is? We are in an illegal war, & reporters/anchors are getting on the phone with Trump daily & just…relaying his words to their viewers, like stenographers. No challenging questions or follow-ups, no discomforting of Trump. Try independent media: Zeteo.com/subscribe

Yes, it’s a misnomer - Large Language Models are basically machine learning with a probability engine. That isn’t intelligence

Israel's closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque is an act of war - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-closure-al-aqsa-mosque-act-war

💥 WOW - this is HUGE news! See —> www.ft.com/content/e5cb...

Israel is bombarding, literally bombarding, two Middle East capitals, Beirut and Tehran, killing 100s of civilians, and yet the US and UK media continue to portray Iran as the threat to the region. Israel has nukes, but Iran is the nuclear threat. We live in Orwellian times.

Also important to note that the Home Office's *own figures* imply that care workers/dependents are a fiscal *benefit* in terms of the government's fiscal rules (and on every year for next 30 years). It is Mahmood who has a fiscal "black hole" to fill.

"The Real Religious Fanatics Behind the Iran War" They're not in Tehran, they're in Washington DC. I bring receipts in my lede piece for today's First Draft morning newsletter from Zeteo. Check it out/share/subscribe:

Iran confirms attacks on US bases in Kuwait, vows strikes are ongoing - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/iran-confirms-attacks-us-bases-kuwait-vows-strikes-are-ongoing

BREAKING: New documents show that Trump was accused of raping a child with Epstein, but don't worry, Trump is going to make amends by bombing the women and girls of Iran ♥️

Thanks to The Friday Poem for republishing this. I'd forgotten how open and honest I'd been! #writingcommity

Honoured to join The People's Congress For The Hague Group in Amsterdam this weekend. We must hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza — and help bring about justice for the Palestinian people. Join us: buff.ly/dZV324F

Pete Hegseth: "It was unfortunate that the Brits didn't, from day 1, say go ahead & have access but we got there, we got there, & thats now part of the way that we're operationalising bomber runs, and when we say more to come, its more fighter squadrons, its more capabilities.."

Circle trip! Circle trip! We're making a special trip to see our Ewan Downie's The Bacchae in Glasgow tonight. Dates across Scotland this Spring and Summer at the link below. @ewandownie.com

The AI bubble has to burst at some point, we just don't know exactly when and how badly. This might be the first sign of it? Certainly a major war and accompanying economic disruption will not help.

And none of this took into account the fact that there is currently a massively spiraling conflict in the middle east that threatens to upend global trade and create an energy crisis. If China invades Taiwan, say hello to the great depression part 2.

The biggest private capital firm behind most of the AI hyperscale deals such as Meta's Hyperion and xAI's Colossus, is seemingly in financial distress as it shops its debt holdings at a discount. It's not looking good. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/b...

Shabana Mahmood accused of mimicking Trump as she announces immigration plans

It's absolutely mental that Israel is getting caught red-handed carrying out one false flag after another against its so-called allies and the corporate media is just acting like it isn't happening.

wee poem in LRB this week www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Should note: Most of Reform's cash this quarter - £3m - comes from one donor, Christopher Harborne, who is based in Thailand.

Not great that so much of the commentariat is absolutely dug in on the idea that advocating for a green transition was a sort of "luxury belief" and not the most hard-headed of realism and now that we're once again seeing how wrong this is, none of them want to draw attention to how wrong they were.

Is Francesca Albanese being punished for being principled? - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/francesca-albanese-being-punished-being-principled

While the govt approves Trump’s use of UK bases to strike Iran, it is denying the public basic information about the US military/intel presence here. Incredibly, it says “the overall US force composition across its UK footprint is a matter for the US”. ❗️ www.declassifieduk.org/we-deserve-t...