The most bollocks-free piece you'll read all week on US warmaking. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Couple of snowdrops from the #garden yesterday A virescent #Galanthus from a pot grown from seed from Anne Wright. Second year flowering and the poculiform seems to be a settled feature. G. Rosemary Burnham. Single bulb planted just a couple of years ago. #photography #naturephotography

Not sure about #SilentWitness tonight. These philosophical voice-overs are a bit Call the Midwife. YMMV.

As I understand it, the UK is firing missiles at targets in Iran, and Iran is firing missiles at UK air bases. We're shooting at them and they're shooting back. But we're not at war. We're not even being dragged into a war. Honest. Says Yvette Cooper.

"I consider the survival of National Socialism within democracy to be potentially more menacing than the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy.” - Adorno, 1960. Jacques Elllul said similar. It wasn't, then, an uncommon view. We're watching the fulfilment. Do read this 👇

Faiza Shaheen was repeatedly talked over and shouted down on #Newsnight tonight. She behaved with exemplary patience in the face of poor behaviour by other panellists. Moderation should have been better.

with @gingerox.bsky.social a couple of months ago #nude #fineartnude #photography

For those of us watching from outside the US, this has been the hardest thing to recognise. If you know evangelical culture, not sure if that helps; UK evangelicalism, while it can be awful, isn't MAGA (though there are MAGA-like bits and there's a worrying general drift)

The Grauniad's news feed today: 2 versions of the 'Andrew as red-eyed corpse' photo. 1 photo of Boris Johsnon 3 photos of Laura Kuenssberg (mercifully just back of head) 1 photo of Kenny Badenoch It's too much. @theguardian.com #Guardian

Auden, via my friend @daviddark.bsky.social .. uncannily apt. daviddark.substack.com/p/they-know?...

Leucojum vernum in the garden today (same family as snowdrops). Leucojums and snowdrops, so much rain that some of the petals have become translucent. Never seen such a marked effect before. Not quite like Diphylleia grayi (the 'skeleton flower') but getting there. #garden #photography #macro

A couple from the garden. Crocus tommasinianus albus, and a white Cyclamen coum. Bit of white and magenta. I've never seen the magenta speckling in the crocus so clearly before. #garden #photography #nature

You can't understand modern Britain, including its default on the intergenerational contract, without understanding this graph and coming to terms with the historic impact of the general election of 1979. That woman. Words fail. The graph tells the story.

Lucy Powell describes paedophiles as having 'misbehaved'. As a CSA survivor, these are particularly hard times. But that obscene trivialisation has pretty much finished me. #Starmer & co just don't think #CSA is very serious. It's the only conclusion I can draw.

Tackles won %. Leeds 58.3 .. Chelsea 47.1 #LUFC

Okafor, benefit of fresh legs. Need a couple more changes now. #LUFC

Can't say I'd be disappointed if it all went a bit 1970 tonight #LUFC

Are there other people out there who've had their email trashed since #Plusnet passed email handling over to #Greenby. I've lost all the subfolders for my email inbox, including the emails that were in them. Greenby's support staff claim they've been reinstated. Anything from Plusnet on this?

This feels a bit like Andrew M-W telling Maitlis he was perhaps too honourable in sticking with his pal Epstein. 'I'm sorry I was more loyal to my friend, who'd already been repeatedly shown to be a sleazeball, than to Epstein's victims'

Thank you, Barry Gardner, for your anger at those trying to make this about the left v the right of the Labour party. #Newsnight

Childhood sexual abuse is not rare. There are tens of thousands of victims across the UK. Starmer appointing Mandelson to any political post, knowing the continuing friendship with Epstein, is a complete failure of moral judgment. It legitimates the rape of children. He has to go. #Newsnight.

So many comparisons, ICE and the Gestapo, the Trump admin and classic fascism. How about a change: let's look at members of the German Widerstand, the resistance, the people who kept the best of Germany alive. Occasional posts of heroes, some well known, some less. 1. Helmuth James von Moltke ..

you keep wondering, can this man go any lower, and yes, he keeps saying, I can. #Starmer #flagshagging www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

For a long time I resisted the fourth proposition below on corrupt tables (tables Jesus would overthrow). Reluctantly I now agree. Evanglicalism is now about NOT overthrowing tables. That's a change over my lifetime. On my watch. On ours. (do read the whole of @johnpavlovitz.bsky.social's thread)

#Newsnight Thangam Debonair is having a car crash. dismissive of Gaza as a moral issue refusing to address the student loan issue: divert, divert .. It's something when you come out looking less coherent than Claire Fox.

#LUTV any chance of switching the mic on in the studio? Or the cameras? either. #LUFC

Local provocation to national suspension of democracy. 🧵on Altona Blutsonntag (Bloody Sunday) in July 1932; how it led to loss of democracy nationwide. The model Trump is following in Minnesota.

If truth is important to you than take 17 minutes out of your day to watch the interview below between @carolecadwalla.bsky.social and Robert Kagan. The world has changed and there is no going back

This is a change in generational demographics -- lotta people died over 10 years and a lotta people came of age-- and the more extremist fundamentalism becomes a chokehold and takes over the conversation, the more regular folks of values & conscience assume there's nothing in there for them. Duh?

this piece isn't offered as a prayer, or a religious or theological reflection .. but .. it moves between lament and petition ('we need') with a depth of feeling and clarity of thought that .. if only our prayers were more like this. Do listen (just 6 mins) for the voice. (and read)

Danya Ruttenberg on how to face the horrors now - may all be protected from harm www.lifeisasacredtext.com/p/496b0dbd-a...

Is Starmer next? Have Jenrick's teeth been photoshopped? #Reform #whiteteethsinkships

How is it difficult for anyone to understand this? Thank you, @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Mandelson, in the Kuenssberg interview "suggested that as a gay man he knew nothing of the disgraced financier’s sex life." I've listened to audio of testimony by a *male* victim of abuse at Epstein events. Sexuality and gender are irrelevant here. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Playing a game with a pal: if you imagine the current US administration as a star-field, each star a blaze of corruption, which would shine brightest. And if Noem is on your short list, is there any other sense in which she's bright? Friend and I converging on Vance as the brightest of the worst.

Please read this. The UK political & media establishment is asleep at the wheel. We have made ourselves wholly dependent on a Trump ally for our national security at the exact moment Trump is threatening to invade a NATO ally open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

sound issues on #LUTV as Bryn Law eats a succession of microphones; a brief crunching sound and then the sound disappears. #LUFC pharmaceutical sedatives apparently not available so they're showing him a series of goalless draws from the 2007 season.

Baptism begins w/renouncing Satan & evil: Military incursions and bombings? I renounce them. Big Lie and Insurrection defended by Orwellian propaganda? I renounce them. Masked state agents rounding up human beings and shooting those who protest? I renounce them. open.substack.com/pub/dianabut...

"Well, he would, wouldn't he" - Mandy Rice-Davis www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Looking at the UK Church, and its relative silence over the genocide in Gaza, I'm struck by the way we use that word 'silence'. We use it as if it were singular, when in fact we're talking about a plurality of silences. Silence as action, each silence encouraging another silence.

Labour's "core mission is about creating a fairer and more equal society", says Luke Akehurst. That was believable for folk who grew up with Labour leaders like Wilson, Callaghan, Foot. Now you can only laugh. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

If you think you should have the right to privacy, consider responding the Home Office consultation on the extended use of Live Facial Recognition. A response tool that @bigbrotherwatch.bsky.social have put together: bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/st...

leaving X cost me contact with lots of good people; it meant leaving behind good threads (if you leave, retrieve stuff before you go) .. but, I'm glad I left. Better for my sanity, better for my conscience.. If you're still there, please reconsider

Winter flowering cherry (Prunus autumnalis rosea) in #Montrose, #Scotland #nature #naturephotograpy

keep coming back to this. Once US cooperation stops, all those expensive F35s lose strategic value. It was designed to make operation independent of the US impossible. You might keep a few flying for a year or so, but you lose access to the software / crypto keys that make it a functioning system.

"Fossil fuel is inseparable from violence." A fact that's been inescapable for over a century. How on earth has the fossil fuel industry managed to keep a respectable face for so long?

Trump on the Venezuela / Maduro intervention: it was "done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement". Do we know which specific US forces actually did the bombing / kidnapping? If the action was illegal or unconstitutional (surely it was) then who exactly carried out Trump's orders?

Deafening 'nothing to do with us' from European leaders on the bombing of Caracas and capture of Maduro. Starmer's non-condemnatory comment: 'We must uphold international law' while turning a blind eye to a massive breach of it; cynical as it gets. And still stronger than most EU leaders.

my mother died just a few years ago. her older brother fought at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. My uncle. 110 years, and it's just one generation. It's bizarre that so many people accept the delusion that a generation is just c. 30 years.

this is one hell of a 🧵 picking up where @ruthdeyermond.bsky.social pivots to Europe to dish out a dose of realism. It's not just Trump. The US is not going to start being nice to Europe again once Trump's term is done.