Wapping, an early, Italianate block of philanthropic housing in pale yellow brick. Access balconies are on the front. I really like this side of the building, with its very high proportion of window to wall. Compare it with new blocks of flats going up, which are all wall and no window.

Sorry but as someone who has been driven to the edge of burnout dealing with clueless officials across a number of departments for a considerable period of time, precisely WTF do senior civil servants think they have to teach anyone about the preservation of institutional memory?

The cruelly racist Labour party must be destroyed

"Coal flows likely to increase as coal replaces LNG in Asia" oh great

David Lammy is having a hell of a week.

Excuse me but how cool can a guy get

Lots to say about the government's insinuation-laden, simultaneously vapid & menacing "social cohesion" strategy but let's start with this: "Gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom from discrimination are fundamental to who we are" How *fucking* dare you. The mendacity is off the charts

"We are not ready for empire!”

And this is happening on the day news circulates that Kemi Badenoch plans to rank her MPs on social media performance, prominently including on said site, as a pretext to promote & retain ethnic cleansing advocate Katie Lam: bsky.app/profile/adam...

no doubt when the plan is published ministers will go on to inform the public of the fact... and how will they choose to do this? Well, on a site owned and algorithmically tweaked by a white separatist, a man who promulgates misogny, racism and disdain for British democracy

Lammy is commenting about a plan that as of now has yet to be published but details of which were leaked to *the Spectator* last week. What "clear-eyed" analysis identified universities as forces driving division & hate in UK society? Was it John Woodcock? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

There’s a lot of good Tiny Desk Concerts. This one has blown my mind a little, even if you just listen to the first song, just do, fucking hell

Fredo Valla, Occitanist. - languagehat.com/fredo-valla-... fascinating stuff #linguistics

It's not far right to stand up for*

Brilliant film, set in Tehran, from 2000. Has taken me way too long to get around to watching some Panahi but there's lots on Mubi 🇬🇧 rn

Treat yourself to good bedding. You are in bed a lot.

Middle East Eye identifies a three stage process: smear, advocacy, disciplinary action. Now underway for a Hackney independent councillor: www.crowdjustice.com/case/support... LFI & Labour won't rest until all Palestinian solidarity is outlawed: if Labour wins in May, state-aided repression goes on.

Knocked off my bike by a car door opening onto the road this evening. I am so angry. I would like Sadiq Khan to cycle with me along Cycleway 1 sometime & tell me how safe & confident he feels doing it.

You have got to be shitting me

Excuse me 🧐

Spring: to be not in the shade of a tree but in its light.

"we are living through unprecedented times". bro these times have so much precedent. these are some of the most precedented times of all time.

On Twitter, I used soft block mainly for situations where I felt like a mutual follow had become less mutual: that someone posted a great deal without ever engaging, but where simply unfollowing felt like leaving someone with an obligation (however notional) I was no longer fulfilling my end of.

Please help Ahmed if you can! 🙏💚 gofund.me/9651728a

It’s very telling that these fucking guys think “the environment” means “the countryside (which is for Tories)” and not for example air quality in cities.

Don't judge me after thirty seconds says someone picking ingredients off a shelf & asking incredulously what she's supposed to do with them

New handle who this

This man wants more pogroms in the UK. The Mail wants more pogroms in the UK. And the US money behind Reform et al wants more stochastic terror in the UK.

"The moment you begin to care is the moment you cease to count" - a piece written for Pamenar on a Palestine march, 14 October 2024: www.pamenarpress.com/post/marchin...

Just utterly disgusting. And I'm left wondering how much Hegseth made on Polymarket this morning. Recreational mass murder from a sociopathic regime.

Wrote this to my MP last year in an email protesting the proscription of Palestine Action.

My fiancée came into the room earlier today & said "I heard you laughing. Was it politics?" It was this.

Slippery slope, isn't it.

Starmer echoing Reform attack lines. There's only one way to get rid of racist politics in the UK.

Imagine devoting your entire career to selling the idea that the British public hates wokery and is clamouring for radical right wing populism, only to then be defeated in an actual election by the most left wing possible coalition of politicians and activists in the country. It's got to hurt

I would have a lot more sympathy with political scientists feeling ignored by Labour over the last 18 months if I didn't remember what the polprof bewailing this was like in the years 2015-2019.

They really are just following the failed Scottish Labour playbook, there's an entire constituent nation of the UK where Labour had nearly 15 years of being made to eat total shit at every election and just moaned BUT THE NATS ARE EVIL AND EXTREME the whole time, and they've learned nothing.

the Greens keep saying the kinds of things that people who vote Labour agree with and Labour keep calling it dangerous extremism, and I’m not sure you could plan a better voter alienation strategy

My memory is fuzzy but wasn't the 2023 review of Parliamentary seats that created G&D criticised for being engineered to give the Tories an advantage? The wiki entry says a seat projection at the time said they would have gained 11 additional seats in 2019 using the reformed boundaries.

Wearing this today in celebration 🎉

What was especially bizarre was that this stuff started circulating concurrently with anonymous briefings to the press with mollifying words about needing to reconnect with progressive voters. Which apparently means launching a war on drugs in 2026?

Minor thing, given how much political discourse uses "authenticity" and "out-of-touch politicians who know nothing about real life" as essentially a metaphor for not being anti-immigrant, it's notable the two nativist parties stood an ex-academic turned race hate pundit and a management consultant

Not just immigration. It's their structuring principle.

Sound quality was a little fuzzy but I could swear I just heard Friedrich Merz say "we must dry hump Moscow's war funding" on the news

I wish I could attend a sound art performance at a Subconscious Restaurant on a rooftop Culture Forest. I did enjoy listening to Yenting Hsu 's 'nowhere' however: yentinghsu.bandcamp.com/track/nowhere

Lenten roses (hellebore). TIL: when the Amphictyons grew impatient besieging Cirrha, Solon decided to fill the canal that supplied the town with hellebore. The Cirrhaeans were then so busy shitting themselves they got overrun - & I use that word advisedly - by the enemy.

How was Ant Breach not on any of my blocklists.

Ok this is physical assault. I am being assaulted

I simply can't imagine why our press would ignore problems with investment & management in favour of attacking the education sector. Equally mystifying why the anti-idpol left hasn't latched onto the class dynamics of a demand-side problem with higher education.

I spent three days looking after my mum & barely leaving the house, which happens to be a mile away from the Gorton & Denton constituency border. Here's my take away on how Thursday is likely to play out: