Reform wanting to set up detention centres in Green-voting areas to teach them a lesson plumb new depths for British politics. But they had plenty of help from Labour and the Tories in setting up this dive.

New blogpost: I Can't Hear You - The steady disillusion of many Jewish liberals with Zionism has not borne political fruit beyond an opportunistic rejection of other progressive causes by unrepentant liberal Zionists in the name of Jewish solidarity. fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2026/05/i-ca...

@jamiedriscoll.bsky.social , former mayor of North of Tyne, governed through crises and delivered jobs, housing and social programmes. Now outside Labour, he reflects on its decline, internal conflicts and why the British left is struggling ‒ and whether the Greens can fill the gap.

@christophcondon.bsky.social's excellent crime series That Texas Blood is about to revisit the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The outbreak of the Iran War, 23 years later, provides perfect timing. I interviewed him about it.

A Short History of the Toothbrush Moustache. Includes the funniest thing I ever said, off the cuff. profadamroberts.substack.com/p/a-short-hi...

Rupert Lowe posted good news. The council had confirmed in writing that 20 Clarence Road would not house illegal migrants. The council never proposed housing illegal migrants there. He invented the threat, made the noise, obtained the guarantee, and called it a victory. Three days before you vote.

The “Star Wars” series shows a rebel movement struggling to be born but has a clear lesson for fighting rising fascism.

The London Minute ⏰ Monday 4 May 2026 londonminute.substack.com/p/london-min...

The Edinburgh Minute ⏰ Monday 4 May 2026 www.edinburghminute.com/the-edinburg...

The Glasgow Wrap 🗞️ Monday 4 May 2026 theglasgowwrap.substack.com/p/the-glasgo...

A party that will not commit to governing for the whole country before it has power will not do so after it. Reform have now put that in writing, with a postcode lookup.

Heidi Alexander called it disgusting. Starmer called it disgraceful. Neither of them mentioned Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, Cynthia Jarrett, or Brixton 1981. The history does not disappear because it is inconvenient. New piece on the Golders Green closure operation.

The Telegraph is very concerned about a generation locked out of the labour market. Less concerned about the forty years of policy that locked them out. New piece:

Farage says Reform will smash the Red Wall. The Red Wall dissolved twenty years ago. Tonight I am watching Great Yarmouth. If Restore Britain wins it, that is not a protest vote. That is something we have not seen in British local government in decades.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

It is actually wild just how nakedly bent Mr Rules and his government of service have been in two years. "They're all the same" has gone from tinfoil hat conspiracy to cast-iron truth for millions of people. Top work, dickheads 🏆.

Name your top 15 TV shows ever, gut instincts only... 70's Doctor Who The Clangers Sandbaggers Noggin the Nog Blakes 7 Terriers (FX) Rubicon (AMC) The Wire Edge of Darkness Star Trek (Original) Maniac (Netflix) GLOW (Netflix) Bosch (Amazon) I, Claudius Budgie (Adam Faith TV series)

A man on Question Time asked where racial hatred comes from. Rachel Millward of the Green Party struggled but was correct. The clip went viral. By morning it had reached “Nazi accomplice.” The honest answer is four hundred years old. Eric Williams had it in 1944. A BBC panel still cannot say it.

A Tate curator could write wall text about Restore Britain’s visual output. The empty dinghy. The faceless family. The clenched fist stolen from the labour movement. New piece on what they want you to see.

#totp wearing your mam's tea cosy on your head is not really cool.

New episode of Literate Machine: Mooks youtu.be/2RbfPHY30-E

My advice to Gaby Hinsliff? Think about how defending boozing on the parliamentary estate looks to people outside of Westminster.

Feat. Hannah Spencer, Trump's "senility", Starmer's bureaucratic wriggling, Trump's war crime threats, Tehran's temporary victory ...

The London Minute ⏰ Friday 1 May 2026 londonminute.substack.com/p/london-min...

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🍽️ The Glasgow Food & Drink Wrap: 30 April - 7 May 2026 theglasgowwrap.substack.com/p/the-glasgo...

The data center rebellion is just the start, or it should be. Rather than impeding AI governance, this is where good, truly democratic AI governance begins. A look at who's fighting data centers, why, and how a working class resistance can lay the groundwork for a better AI politics:

Paris and I had a great discussion about Tim Cook's real legacy, which far too few media outlets have highlighted imo: His role in shaping labor conditions for millions of precarious workers in China, and enshrining the production regime that makes modern electronics possible Wrote about it here:

VIDEO! It's time to to ride the Chessington branch and find the lost piece of track that was built but never used. Lost Railways! youtu.be/QKgJipsqMVg

My latest Paris dispatch on how 300 streets outside of schools became some of the coolest places in the city. But even more importantly, these family-centric improvements provide ubiquitous reminders that this society prioritizes children

"This is increasingly making Dubai a node of the ‘Macau Model’, a globalised network of financial crime cities where criminal enterprises are embedded within globalised commercial systems". A masterful dissection of the Dubai "system" by Martin Purbrick, the towering authority on crime in Asia.

Identity politics was coined by Black socialist feminists who wanted to destroy capitalism. The right now runs the most aggressive identitarian project in European politics. The left dispersed class organisation in exchange for recognition politics that capital absorbed without cost.

The author is currently a candidate in the local elections for the Camden ward of St. Pancras and Somers Town for #camdenPeoplesAlliance

How do we think octopuses think?

Rupert Lowe endorsed police kicking a tasered terror suspect in the head, and promised state encouragement of the conduct. The post belongs to a sequence. New piece on Anti-Capitalist Musings.

The London Minute ⏰ Thursday 30 April 2026 londonminute.substack.com/p/london-min...

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Edinburgh Culture Minute 🪩 29 April - 5 May 2026 www.edinburghminute.com/edinburgh-cu...

What would you have spent $25 billion and counting on instead of killing schoolchildren in the course of ensnaring yourself into a strategic disaster that’s making everything cost more?

Wrote something on an unjustly forgotten science fiction novel by an author who doesn't get talked about too much any more.

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Ep 76: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... Carmen Maria Machado joins @alexhanna.bsky.social and me to get into the why and how of writing and to soundly ridicule the idea that any of that could or should be automated.

Walked through streets I knew as a child yesterday. Local election coming up. Not a poster in sight. Four Conservative boards, total. Reform nowhere. The street that once argued out loud has nothing left to say. New piece:

In celebration of the ROGUE TROOPER PREMIER being announced at the magnificent ANNECY INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FILM FESTIVAL & MARKET this June, (that was a mouthful,) clamp your sensors on these POSTERS from Paolo Rivera and Chris Weston respectively-

The UK's nitazine problem has impacted Southport this week, where a contaminated batch of heroin killed a man and caused several others to overdose southport.thelead.uk/p/two-arrest...

Iran Between the Russian and Chinese Models Iran is trending toward a model similar to that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, based on militarization and rentierism, in stark contrast to the Chinese model favoured by the reformists. gilbert-achcar.net/iran-between...

The Glasgow Wrap 🗞️ Wednesday 29 April 2026 theglasgowwrap.substack.com/p/the-glasgo...

The Edinburgh Minute ⏰ Wednesday 29 April 2026 www.edinburghminute.com/the-edinburg...

The London Minute ⏰ Wednesday 29 April 2026 londonminute.substack.com/p/london-min...