Indeed, they seemed to be undervalued here & in the US It seems not everyone values knowledge bsky.app/profile/moni...

And the BL isn’t just for researchers; it’s a public institution available to all. I always loved this about it - that my mother who left school at 15 could use it if she wanted.

Guards at the Rankin County jail beat people behind closed doors and encouraged some inmates to join in on the brutality, former inmates and guards said. The violence created a culture of fear, widely accepted by officials to keep order, a New York Times and Mississippi Today investigation found.

The Justice Select Committee has published a new report outlining how dire prison conditions are putting the reduction of rehabilitation and reoffending at risk. Read the report: publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cm...

This is a really good piece by @adey70.bsky.social for The Big Issue. An accurate assessment of what to expect of Channel 5's new Play for Today, which mentions some of the less often trumpeted greats from the original strand, like Destiny (1978), Sorry (1981) &, actually, The Spongers (1978).

i know we won't, but we have got to understand that a keystone of the republican project is to both categorize whole classes of people as criminal to justify locking them up, or to make them so broken and desperate that lawbreaking is all but certain to happen.

Positively the last pre-publication plug for Greeneland, my serial novel about the critical four months Graham Greene spent in Nottingham - each chapter free: 100 years to the day after the events it describes. On Friday, I’ll publish the title page, epigraph and prologue. davidbelbin.substack.com

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the extraordinary influence of former Tory spin doctor Sir Robbie Gibb on the BBC. It's still a helpful backgrounder for what's going on now. New readers start here: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

Almost 300,000 individuals and families are experiencing the worst forms of homelessness in England, according to new research from Crisis.

I mean, what kind of legal action would this be exactly? Defamation? I would truly love to see it. 'They made it look like I instigated a coup during my very well recorded coup attempt.'

Ben Jennings on the prison overcrowding crisis in England and Wales – cartoon

Laurence Fox is never again going to be able to threaten to sue anybody for calling him, an increasingly overt racist, racist

This is a dreadful idea. The UK Government is plumbing new depths. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

PLEASE DO NOT ASK STAFF WHERE DRACULA’S GRAVE IS THERE ISN’T ONE. Iconic sign from St Mary’s Church next to Whitby Abbey. I love that people think Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a real person/vampire who lived and died in Whitby.

#Data shows that #prison deaths have risen by 30% over the past year and staff #assaults have reached a record high.

#IPP #prisoner Scott Berry was twelve years over tariff at the time of his self-inflicted death.

Richard Cosgrove left #HMP Humber #homeless and was found deceased the very next day.

The two-child benefit cap is a controversial policy which was introduced by the Conservatives. Here's what you need to know about the policy

Nice to read about something positive in the prison system - the work of @libertychoiruk.bsky.social!

Five literary dystopias to get lost in and remind yourself that however bad things seem, they could get even worse.

"As for the monarchy, it will end not with a bang but a whimper. Giuffre’s book, with all its harrowing details, is one more wave battering against its cliff face, eroding the public’s faith." My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column. www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...

Twelve o'clock on a fine autumn day, and nothing to worry about. Some money to spend and nothing to worry about.

With homelessness reaching critical levels across Britain, organisations like Emmaus have never been more essential.

All that I ask is that the culture secretary not ask questions which reveal she couldn’t tell you who *this year*’s Bafta shortlistees and winners were.

This was outstanding, as is the novel it's based on.

“I became a writer because it was the only way to escape the walls. The page gave me a kind of parole.” - Eldridge Cleaver

Cillian Murphy and author Max Porter have teamed up again for an adaptation of Porter's 2023 book Shy which offers a new perspective.

🔉 Less than one week to go! My album of concertos by Walton, Britten and Tippett with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and @georgevass.bsky.social will be released on Fri 10 October, for BIS Records and Apple Music 🎉 Pre-order at bisrecords.lnk.to/2604

I'll be at Birmingham Literature Festival on 11th October with some great names, brilliant writing workshops, events for children and much more. Come if you can! Link here www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org

I will again say that my favourite way of telling someone to fuck off in French (often chanted to opposition crowds at football games) is rentre chez toi, ta mère a fait des gaufres. It means "go back home, your mother made you waffles"

We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded this grant. We are very grateful to the members of The Mercers' Company. It feels like a huge endorsement of what we are doing and it will make a real difference here. #themercerscompany #Charter600 www.mercers.co.uk/C600_Awards_2025

This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.

Javier Milei had to beg a bail-out and already needs another. Argentina's economy is in a tailspin. Gov't bonds and peso in freefall. People starving, throwing rocks at him. Farage last year: "He's amazing. It's Thatcherism on steroids. Cutting and slashing expenditure. That's leadership." SHARE!

This is a good thread that sums up what I find most frustrating about journalism and why I so often think about doing something else. People are only “not interested in policy” because there’s a paucity of imagination about how to translate policy for public/reader/audience/channel/whatevs

imagine being a consultant doctor here and having to go out litter picking to be given your citizenship lol www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Zia Yusuf knows less about his own party than I do. Gill is not some rando who once met Nigel. Gill was Reform Leader in Wales and a close ally of Nigel Farage for over a decade before that across two other political parties. This is not something that can just be brushed away.

"There have likely been 10,000 or more university redundancies in the academic year 2024-25..."

The housing market is going into reverse, dominated by downsizers. What does the end of the property ladder say about our changing attitude to our homes - and towards acquisition culture in general? My latest essay for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social is out now www.thenewworld.co.uk/hannah-fearn...

Come along to the Skills for Life - Open Day at the Community Association for #WestHampstead. Meet the tutors - and your neighbours. Pop in and find out what your local community centre has to offer. Sat 4 Oct. ⤵️ cawh.org.uk

The AfD qualified for three mayoral run-offs in cities in North Rhine-Westphalia today, and lost all by big margins. The lesson is not that we have overdone the AfD's rise, but that we do perhaps sometimes underestimate the counter-mobilisation effects - including in east Germany, incidentally.

"So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy your lousy leasehold Poetry." RIP Tony Harrison

In Britain, a former far-right Reform party politician has been convicted of taking bribes to promote Russian viewpoints. Another scandal that should be the end of Reform but will be ignored unless we make a lot of noise about it.

Soldier has won acclaim with his work depicting the pain and suffering of people following the Nigerian Civil War.

A landmark report from the Sutton Trust reveals how privately educated individuals are more likely to get Britain's most powerful jobs.

This letter to The Economist makes a decent point. The case for robo taxis probably feels overwhelming in a country where the urban design means you're utterly screwed without a car. It's like how higher crime rates presumably boost the car for security solutions. Not entirely enviable

This book has already had such a huge impact on readers over the last decade - and sadly is almost more relevant now than it was in 2016. Exceptionally proud that we’ll be republishing it at Canongate, in time for its 10th anniversary.

Chris Mason is a profoundly unserious man who writes about politics as if it were a video game with no real consequences. True to form, this article is purely about optics. Not a single policy is mentioned www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

While Lucy Connolly was being feted at the Reform conference, hundreds were being arrested for their speech opposing the proscription of Palestine Action. Yet those turning Connolly into a free speech martyr seem to have little to say about those arrests. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I’m in Liverpool tonight chairing an in conversation with The Coral about the brilliant new film about the fab band www.fact.co.uk/film/dreamin...

This is exactly the kind of despicable scaremongering that Aseem Malhotra has made his modus operandi. Insinuations, hearsay, anti-vaxx, non-evidence-based, lurid, self-enriching, anti-scientific claptrap. Of course Reform UK lapped it up. 1/4