There's a large bang of "We are right-on white saviours for you people, how dare you criticise us, know your place" about the whole shameful affair. Not sure you need a 6 or 7 part podcast to ascertain that. The endless handwringing about it is tedious.

Astute summary.

It shows that the criticial Goodreads review had gone largely unnoticed, that many couldn't stomach the book privately, but didn't feel able to speak up (how right they were), until Clanchy poured petrol on the review, set it alight for everyone to see, and then blamed everyone else for the fire.

I listened to the first 3 episodes of BBC's "Anatomy of a Cancellation," and I don't know how the interviewer didn't laugh at Kate Clanchy when she said that "slanty eyes" wasn't in her book, it was "slantED, sparking, black eyes," so that was okay. The podcast completely vindicates the criticisms.

Now it’s called ’cancel culture’ and it’s everybody else’s fault, just never your own.

It’s time to stop claiming people are ‘cancelled’ on.ft.com/4r6sBEy | opinion

Great piece, so true. ‘The true definition of cancellation would be to disappear, left to exist only as an image in people’s minds. But that doesn’t often happen. TV interviews, podcasts, profiles and editorials can follow: “I Was Cancelled” or “Cancel Culture Ruined My Life”’. on.ft.com/3XPPMFD

Macclesfield Central (Cheshire East) Council By-Election Result: 🌍 GRN: 41.8% (+19.7) 🌹 LAB: 28.6% (-25.7) ➡️ RFM: 15.8% (New) 🌳 CON: 9.1% (-4.5) ⚖️ EQU: 2.5% (New) 🔶 LDM: 2.2% (-7.7) Green GAIN from Labour. Changes w/ 2023.

Do we talk about Kuenssberg's horrendous failure of journalism with regards to Johnson and Cummings or is that just okay now? She keeps her show and her salary? Serious BBC questions to answer on how they didn't challenge during Covid. Compare with Pym and Walsh in the same bulletins. Astonishing.

Who’s coming to the LDNDOCS screenings this weekend? www.ldndocs.co.uk/programme

‘On Friday 13 March, 2 senior No 10 officials are sitting in a key meeting of scientific advisers in Whitehall. "WE ARE NOT READY," one writes in capital letters in his notepad, external. The other leans over & crosses out "NOT READY", replacing it with an expletive.’ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

‘“He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right,’ or ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers,” Ettedgui says of his experience of being in a class with Farage at Dulwich college in south London.’ www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...

I just backed Trafficked: Dying to get to Britain on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/794...

Sickening rhetoric by Home Secretary. Denying access to human rights isn't "protecting the public". This is Labour further demonising those seeking asylum in language very reminiscent of the far right. Yes, some break the law, so should be prosecuted within the law. Removing rights is not the answer

‘BBC apologises to Trump over Panorama edit but refuses to pay compensation’ "While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim." www.bbc.com/news/article...

‘Israel’s parliament has backed a controversial bill that seeks to impose a mandatory death sentence on Palestinians who kill Jewish Israelis for nationalist reasons, but not on Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.’ on.ft.com/47xhHA4

Fully agree.

Jeez #r4today really is going all out culture war shit this morning. Woke up to some idiot blathering about BBC capture by trans ideology, and now the usual wank about how horrid those brown people were to Kate Clanchy

Even the companies can't know or say for sure how many of the layoffs are due to AI. We're just in a mode where corporate managers are going after past over-hiring, padding margins, navigating big tech-spending commitments and conveying to investors they are forward-thinking and efficiency-minded.

I’ve four free tickets to this talk on Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeares Globe tomorrow afternoon - Wednesday 22 October - at 5pm. I can’t now use them, and it’s too late to return them to the venue. Would anybody like them? www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/the...

What a brave man in the crowd

‘THE GLAMOROUS TV HOST, THE WEB OF INFLUENCE AND A MYSTERIOUS TRIP TO MOSCOW – INSIDE THE DOWNFALL OF REFORM’S DISGRACED MEP’ www.thenerve.news/p/nathan-gil...

‘Robinson received a warm welcome in Tel Aviv…’ ‘As he began speaking, a lone man stood up to yell that “Tommy Robinson is a racist”, before being booed and jeered out of the room by hundreds of people yelling “shame”, before he was assaulted and spat on.’ observer.co.uk/news/interna...

According to one of our crew involved in preparing it, today's opening statements by Netpol co-founder Newham Monitoring Project is a damning condemnation of police racism and the Inquiry's abject failure to understand it

The Undercover Policing Inquiry returns today, 13th Oct 10am, starting with 3 days of opening statements, online only. This will be 3rd Tranche of hearings, which will look at deployments of Special Demonstration Squad officers from 1993 until that unit was closed in 2007 youtube.com/@undercoverp...

Great job for the right person!

The next Conservative government will take the UK out of the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. Kemi Badenoch announced her decision after taking advice from Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC, who had warned her that withdrawal would not be a “silver bullet”. rozenberg.substack.com/p/how-uk-cou...

It is remarkable bordering on shocking how UK political debate still obsesses over small boats and other issues that will not be all that significant in the broad arc of history even as the basic foundations of the global system unravel

Help get Abdelrahman, who has cerebral palsy, from Gaza to Ireland to Study. I have just donated. chuffed.org/project/1514...

A White House videographer, who was traveling backward up the escalator to film the president’s entrance, may have inadvertently triggered a built-in safety mechanism. For many, the incident was trivial. But for the Trump admin, it was grounds for an investigation. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/w...

Wrote a short piece in this issue. And check out Ben de Pear’s piece, ‘Gaza: Five lessons for the BBC’

Any journalist quoting this absurd, invented £234 billion number cited by Farage/Reform should make absolutely clear that it has been withdrawn by *its own authors* (the Centre for Policy Studies) after they admitted it contained several major errors (1/3)

My analysis here not only explains why the CPS numbers are wrong - but estimates that if they'd got their own arithmetic right, they would have concluded that migrants are a large long-term fiscal *benefit*. (3/3) docs.google.com/document/d/e...

The CPS' own website now admits they got the numbers wrong and should not be used. Farage isn't just making up numbers - he/Reform are deliberately using numbers that they know to be wrong and have been withdrawn (2/3).

- Yvonne Singh on Una Marson, Britain's first Black female broadcaster - @colinamcfarlane.bsky.social & Justice 4 Windrush - @rajeshthind.bsky.social talks British Asian documentary film - research on post production sound & mythbusting higher education's relationship with screen industries

Wrote a short piece in this issue. And check out Ben de Pear’s piece, ‘Gaza: Five lessons for the BBC’

A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for plotting military coup in Brazil www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, is under fire for spreading misinformation about the Charlie Kirk case, undermining confidence in the bureau, forcing out the counterterrorism agent in Utah with expertise in these types of investigations, and cursing out agents for his own failures.

pretty wild that it so quickly became normalized that immigrants don’t have even basic free speech rights www.axios.com/2025/09/11/c...

You're getting a clear X-ray of America right now. Look at who this country's powerful institutions choose to elevate, venerate, and celebrate. Look at the double standards. Look at the people who adore Charlie Kirk - then spend five minutes reviewing his hateful legacy. This is America.

Must read

So when Mandelson said there was more embarrassing stuff to come out he was somewhat underplaying it....

It's kind of amazing that after having to resign multiple times for sucking up to creepy rich people he then just continued sucking up to even worse creepy rich people.

The Palestinian journalists risking death to report on Israel’s offensive on.ft.com/3JIfLLI

Lucy Connolly was convicted of inciting racial hatred, and her tweet was part of the tinder that lit violence, intimidation, looting, and thuggery across England last year. The fact Reform conference gave her a standing ovation says everything about that movement. bylinetimes.com/2025/08/27/l...

Oh this makes *so* much sense, Starmer coming from a family of gamekeepers. “In the interview, a copy of which has been obtained by The Telegraph, Mr Starmer explains how his father, his seven uncles, and his grandfather were all gamekeepers.”