It is one year since my most recent book, Austerity Bites: 10 years on, was published. (Order from your local bookshop or library). Labour could, and should, have done so much good with their massive majority. #poverty #austerity www.maryoharaproductions.com/my-projects/...

“You simply can’t get away with being the housing secretary and avoiding £40,000 in council tax,” Farage told the conference. But the deputy PM had underpaid stamp duty, not council tax. Farage may have struggled to get indignant on stamp duty, having taken legal steps not to pay it himself.

She’s writing about the 80s in France, but so much of this feels prescient in the current context. We live in bewildering times. And to a degree, we always have.

Amazing tree bark

Since at least the time of Greek philosophers, many writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing.

A regular reminder that we writers love it when people read, rent, buy books. All kinds of books. But especially our own. It’s a mean old world. All sales and library rentals appreciated. Ask your library to stock if you can’t find/afford a book. Find the audiobook version if that’s your thing. 📚📚📚

A California afternoon.

"You can say what you like, I don’t care, because that’s what free speech is," Nigel Farage has just told the House Judiciary Committee, about three hours after his party banned me from covering its conference this weekend.

Elon Musk and his company have tweaked Grok, the A.I. powered chatbot, to make its answers more conservative on many issues, according to a New York Times analysis of thousands of its responses. nyti.ms/462hBye

Rising inequality turning US into an autocratic state, billionaire warns. All over the world the rich/corporations buy the political system with donations, get favours in return. Nothing will change until political donations are criminalized, people take rights e.g. workers vote on exec pay.

Graham Greene (1952-2025) #filmsky 🎬 #movies 🎬 #cinema 🎬📽🎥🎞

Pritzker: "When did we become a country where it's ok for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything? Especially something we don't want. Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?"

An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.

🚨BREAKING: The California Supreme Court has DENIED the GOP's emergency petition to block the state’s new redistricting plan, ruling that GOP lawmakers had “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief” under the state Constitution. Follow @democracydocket.com for full details.

More than 8,000 council-owned buildings are lying empty across Britain and it could deliver 25,000 homes if cash-strapped councils can act.

Term I hate: optimized resume. Translate: age wash. Fit with stupid AI hoops.

Every now and then I remember that for O Level history I studied the history of medicine as well as the American West and, in particular, what was inflicted upon native tribes. Blows my mind. And we dug deep. What a privilege my education in a working class secondary school was. 🤯

More than 40 percent of U.S. citizens are in some form of medical debt. These Americans explain why they left for Italy, South Korea and France, after crippling debt or a lack of coverage left them afraid to seek medical help at home.

There are so many books I love that I wish I could read for the first time. Anyone else feel that way? If so, which books?

One of the oddest things in US politics is that there is no single leader of the Opposition party truly designated from the start of a new presidency to be the assumed next president, who speaks on behalf of that Opposition party. It is proving to be a massive problem right now.

"We’re creating something even more dangerous to the country: A masked monster of a law enforcement agency, one uniquely unsuited for its new power, authority, reach, and funding levels."

Health staff are being supported to improve care provided to autistic people in mental health services as part of a three-year, charity-run programme @jopavlopoulou.bsky.social reports @annafreudcharity.bsky.social communitylivingmagazine.com/mental-healt...

Breaking news: A federal judge has ordered construction to be paused at Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz, the first state-run immigrant detention center in the country, over concerns about environmental harm.

Dozens of studies in recent years have linked ultra-processed fare to health problems such as high blood pressure and heart attacks, and also to some problems that one might not expect: cancer, anxiety, dementia, and early death.

At least nine states are considering mid-cycle redistricting efforts in an attempt to gerrymander new congressional seats.

Go read!

“We are never finished with grief. It is part of the fabric of living,” V. S. Naipaul writes, in a Personal History. “Love makes memories and life precious; the grief that comes to us is proportionate to that love and is inescapable.”

One was beaten unconscious. Others were covered in bruises, struggling to walk or vomiting blood. Another said he’d been sexually assaulted. These are the stories of 16 former detainees who were deported to El Salvador’s mega prison.

Norfolk Southern & Union Pacific announced a merger yesterday. If approved, the combined railway giant would control 40% of rail freight in the US. In 75% of US industries, fewer companies control more of the business than 20 years ago. The monopolization of America continues.

Breaking news: The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to rescind the landmark legal opinion that underpins virtually all of its regulations to curb climate change.

One reason so many American hospitals are struggling? Investors buy them up, then suck them dry, charging such high rents that services are gutted. Reveal explores what happened to one Louisiana hospital when Medical Properties Trust came to town. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

We are living in an age of bullies. Those with power are less constrained today than they have ever been in my lifetime. The question is: how do we lead moral lives in this era? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/28/bullies-moral-lives-robert-reich

My latest piece for @bylinetimes.bsky.social bylinetimes.com/2025/07/28/t...

The latest from Community Living cartoonist Robin Meader Become part of our network with a subscription to our independent magazine communitylivingmagazine.com/subscribe/

Nothing quite like a cactus flower.

NEW: Nathan Albers once co-owned a company that schemed to hire and conceal undocumented workers. Now his company could make hundreds of millions from work on the nation's largest detention camp. “The irony is thick,” said a former DHS official.

"If this can happen to Colbert and a storied franchise, this can happen to anyone": www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Why Colbert's cancellation marks a dangerous new stage for the culture at large

Talking to Stu is a gift. Read his work - it’s massively important.

RFK Jr. just fired thousands of federal workers at crucial health agencies, including the FDA, CDC, and NIH. These are the people who inspect our food, track infectious diseases, and research life-saving treatments and cures. How is this "Making America Healthy Again"?

A pub with a games room and cheap drinks. What more could you want? asks @hannahfearn.bsky.social communitylivingmagazine.com/lets-all-dri... @oxfordshirecc.bsky.social

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Exclusive: Kerr County, where nearly 100 people were killed and more than 160 remain missing, had the technology to turn every cellphone in the area into a blaring alarm, but officials did not do so before or during the river level rising to record heights.

What the right-wing US administration is doing to welfare could be expected – but it is galling that the more left-wing government in the UK is also savaging the benefits system. #WelfareReformBill @maryohara1.bsky.social communitylivingmagazine.com/mary-ohara-a...

Labour plans to cut the help that enables people to live in and be a part of their communities. The writing here make the case for more support, not less: communitylivingmagazine.com/welfare-bill... By @maryohara1.bsky.social @hannahfearn.bsky.social @jopavlopoulou.bsky.social + more #WelfareReform

So great to be a contributor to this amazing publication.

NEW issue out Friday 4 July - making the case for more -not less- care and support, rights,advocacy and a focus on festivals, pubs the arts and what helps people thrive. Featuring the words and work of @hannahfearn.bsky.social @georgejulian.bsky.social @maryohara1.bsky.social and more

Priscilla Chan’s decision to stop funding the school she opened to help struggling families shows the risks for communities reliant on wealthy private donors.

Health groups are mobilizing behind the scenes to preserve access for vaccines as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to upend the nation’s decades-old vaccine system, according to public health experts.

Today marks the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. What's happened since? A record number of women have been prosecuted. Pregnancy loss is now considered extremely suspicious, even when it has nothing to do with abortion.