Top presidential trolling from the Oxford Times this week.

A manifesto I’d get behind. I mean, FFS, it’s not hard.

Nigel Farage says abortion laws are “utterly ludicrous.” MPs are watching. We have days to show them: the public backs abortion rights. Join me and sign the petition now! you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/de...

If you’d thought what’s happening Gaza couldn’t get any worse. Israel using food and starvation as a tool of oppression, and militarising their performative humanitarian aid, killing people in the process. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...

Leaving France behind.

Nice few days in France.

Free speech ‘as long as it agrees with us’ ain’t free speech. It’s pretty fash, actually.

Oh FFS, dealing with child poverty should not be a political calculation, just the right thing to do. And what we expect of a Labour government. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

WHAT. TOOK. YOU. SO. LONG? I mean, 70% of the 50,000 killed in Gaza so far are women and children. Indiscriminate bombs ok, starvation not? www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Allowing minimum levels of food into Gaza to prevent a ‘starvation situation’, having blockaded all food and supplies for ten weeks, says everything about Israel’s disdain for Palestinian life. Withholding food from a civilian population is a war crime. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A ‘freedom zone’? What, like recognising the State of Palestine? www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Good morning from Hanoi. Vietnam flying the flags to mark 50 years of liberation of the south, and national unification. Work trip, jammy, eh?

Seized the day. Frittata and cider mid-stream in a perfect quiet spot. Saw a kingfisher, heard a nightingale.

Whereas the more heroin you get, you know, the less actual science you need … 🙄

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and yet 1 in 7 people in the UK are facing hunger. This isn't right. Repost if you agree

Having waited so long for a govt strategy for child poverty, please don’t rush it out with half-funded policy ideas as a political tactic to enable wider social welfare cuts Our children deserve better than this www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Fascinating, the key scientific advancements since I was at school. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Who wants to hear a nightingale? Of course you do. Sound on.

Is your MP’s email in your contacts? Because it’s so easy to write when something’s on your mind. I wrote to mine (Lab) about the disability benefit cuts. She forwarded it on and I got a reply from the DWP Minister. Generic empty words, obvs, but at least they hear what you think. #CantDoNothing

Learn from my experience. Today is definitely the day to stick your head in the sand about the state of your pension.

“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post’, but not any longer.” Who knew the US has been the skinny weakling having sand kicked in its eyes and has just invested in a Charles Atlas chest expander.

Alternatively, “Video footage appears to prove IDF lied about their soldiers executing Palestinian medics.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

Good to see my MP, having taken a principled stand to resign over aid cuts, also talking sense about fiscal rules and tax.

For all the schadenfreude about the collapse in Tesla’s share price, it’s disappointingly only back to where it was before November’s US election six months ago. It’s a fickle world.

Forget ‘cavalier, negligent and indiscriminate’. Their hands were tied and they were shot in the head. Fifteen aid workers murdered by the IDF in cold blood. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

OH: “you’ve caught the sun. When are you going to learn about sunscreen. You’re 61.” #NoRegrets ☀️

This is indeed outrageous. Eight Red Crescent medics killed. Just the latest example of IDF’s cavalier, negligent and indiscriminate action. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Le Pen guilty of embezzlement and banned from public office. Authoritarians play fast and loose with the law. France doing what the US should have done after January 6th. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw...

🚨 NEWS: The government’s own survey shows 4.7m people in disabled households are facing hunger, including 1.6m children. Yet just yesterday, the UK government chose to slash disability payments. This is appalling.

You truly could not make it up. You could not.

Another day, more news about poverty. The latest official poverty data is out (for 2023/24). Stand by for some speedy analysis coming through from the brilliant @jrf-uk.bsky.social team, but a few quick headlines: Child poverty UP Children in food insecure families UP Food bank use UP

Already, three requests from charities to email my MP in response to the Chancellor’s Statement, on aid cuts, disability payment cuts and social housing investment. Let’s hope charities stick together and don’t get played against each other.

Woah, Senator Duckworth isn’t holding back. More of this please, the world needs it.

There’s nothing quite like a magnolia to say spring is here.

“The loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result.” 1.2 million children dying. Abhorrent. Evil. Indefensible.

Someone’s just shoved crap through my letterbox.

Pretty shameful how Britain has managed to whitewash its 300-year role in the slave trade. My history at school was limited to the Normans, Tudors and Industrial Revolution. Any better now? www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Duh, of course! VP is this guy, not the other guy. 🤦‍♂️

‘Okay which one of you accidentally added Robert Cecil to the chat?’

And he’s not wrong. Failing to train enough doctors and nurses in the UK, we poach them from countries that desperately need them and undermine their own health services. Unethical and immoral. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Greenpeace loses SLAPP suit case in the US, designed to stifle protest. Fighting talk about an appeal, and independent legal observers call foul on the process, but this is bad news for all campaigning, not just Greenpeace. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

There’s an original CARE package in the office, a reminder of CARE’s history of solidarity, when the USA sent them into post-war Europe. My Mum remembers getting them as a child, “every Christmas for at least five years. It was major excitement. Chicklets, rubber bands ... We loved it all.”

Delighted and honoured to have joined the trustee Board of CARE International UK today. Their work putting women and girls at the centre of their work and approach is so inspiring, and more critical than ever, in the face of looming aid cuts. We can’t let progress roll back. @careintuk.bsky.social

Voice of America is essentially the US’s BBC World Service, international ‘soft power’ in 50 languages, and a quality independent media outlet. A good friend of mine is now on administrative leave. No doubt that’s the end of it, just like USAID. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The world's richest man stole food from the world's poorest children. Now they are beginning to die www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Pro-European, anti-autocrat protests right now in Serbia, Romania, Hungary. www.theguardian.com/global/2025/...

The case of Mahmoud Khalil is one world needs to be watching. It isn't just about how the Trump administration is restricting freedom of speech. It is about the way the US is illegally disappearing people the regime disagrees with. That alone should worry everyone for the stare of play. #r4today.

Classic whine of a corporate that’s fucked up, pleads it’s too big to fail, and wants others to bear the cost. Just like the banks. A reminder Thames Water loaded itself with eye-watering debt, paid massive dividends, but didn’t stop the sewage leaks. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Went to downtown DC to watch them remove the Black Lives Matter mural and wrote about how the removal of such symbols reflects government policy priorities. How the removal of the BLM mural reflects the administration’s desire to remove Black people and history from large segments of American life.