Seriously, if Starmer is not up to this job - which he patently isn't - he should make way for someone who understands how politics works, how to connect with people, and what they actually want from politics. Clue: it's not Continuity Tory.
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Seriously, if Starmer is not up to this job - which he patently isn't - he should make way for someone who understands how politics works, how to connect with people, and what they actually want from politics. Clue: it's not Continuity Tory.
Yet another capitulation to Reform, when all the evidence shows that following the far right agenda is a disaster for centrist parties. Politics 101, which Starmer has once again entirely failed to grasp.
The failure of the government and many Labour MPs to leave X after the 2024 riots suggests they just don't get the challenge they face or the power they have to fight back. Completely weak and callow.
No, Lord Falconer. Labour should stop pandering to this nonsense. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Those who think nature has no inherent value, that it's just there to be exploited, also tend to see other people who are different to them in the same way: women, people of colour, Muslims, Jews, gays, trans, indigenous, Palestinians, even children... the list goes on and on. It's *all* connected.
Yes, I recognise that.
3. They are the kind of people we should contain and shun, in other words. Yet, astonishingly, the Labour Party is competing with Reform and the Conservatives to appease and attract such men, while dissing and burning its own base. We could reasonably ask what in the name of God is going on.
2. We’ve also discovered that there was a very high representation of suspected domestic abusers among those rioting against asylum seekers last year. A small number of truly horrible men are responsible for all kinds of misery. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
1. Out of curiosity, I went through the feeds of some habitual tuna tormentors. I found they’re big on: - fox hunting - Reform UK - antagonism to asylum seekers. In other words, the same few antisocial (psychopathic?) men, turning up in all the bad places. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... 🧵
My daughter was so inspired she's started two petitions. She wants to be a marine biologist. She is 12. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73... chng.it/mq7KjktL7h
After the independent head of the US CDC is fired, Robert Kennedy Jr's loyal deputy, Jim O'Neill, is appointed to take her place.
compare this to how other parts of the press are reporting on the recovery of these amazing fish 🫠
This, by @jasonhickel.bsky.social, is the clearest explanation I have yet read of why the US and UK governments continue to support the Israeli government, regardless of its great crimes against humanity. jasonhickel.substack.com/p/why-does-t...
How could they tell?
I wonder how many cyclists are happy about Shimano sponsoring this horror. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
No it isn't.
Because that's another propaganda point, repeatedly shoved down our throats by the billionaire press.
Are we really going to drown in six inches of water? The central far right claim - that our problems are caused not by those with power and wealth but by utterly powerless people (asylum seekers etc) - is obviously and pathetically wrong. Yet millions, once more, are floundering in that puddle.
I posted this 20 months ago in an unmentionable place. It has become no less true.
No, I have no idea what an authentic self is, and strongly suspect there is no such thing.
Megafauna are uniquely vulnerable to exploitation. But they are also magnificent, and we diminish ourselves by killing them.
And this, for me, sums up the absurdity of the situation, and the government's moral turpitude: "a paper for the government tells us 'charter vessel interviewees reported no issues with their own reporting'." So that's all fine then.
No, it's a contraction of the Middle English disport, which meant any kind of entertainment.
If you can bear it, watch this. Two rules clearly being broken: prolonged "fight" time and use of a gaff to pierce the tuna and hold it alongside the boat. www.facebook.com/reel/1261809...
This week's column. The details will make you gasp and rage. This massive desecration of nature is almost unbelievable, but it is happening in the UK right now. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I’ve never argued against the license fee - but I am now. The idea that I’m funding this unremitting political propaganda campaign is appalling.
Something we need to grasp is that Establishment power meant imperialism. Imperialism is a system of thought that sees upper class white men as the pinnacle of humanity, with a sacred duty to control the lives of others. What we now call the far right is an extension and revival of imperialism.
Robbie Gibb is a proximate answer, but Establishment power has been channelled through the BBC since its foundation. Establishment power = imperialism = support for the far right. It eased under Alasdair Milne, but resumed with a vengeance from John Birt onwards. I don't know much about Sky.
Why, you might ask, do the BBC and Sky News, casting their editorial guidelines to the wind, keep giving massive airtime to the far right, while shutting out leftwing voices? Don't their bosses understand the likely consequences? Only one explanation now remains. They do. And it is what they want.
You'll notice that the current "Labour" party hasn't repealed one single Tory anti-protest or anti-strike law enacted since the 1980s, and in fact with the proscribing of P******** A***** has made protest more subject to legal sanction. I have NEVER lived in a more dangerous Britain, and I'm 75.
Anyone remember the #ExtremeCivilisation hashtag @georgemonbiot.bsky.social had going on Twitter a few years ago? "The travel trend involves flying out first thing in the morning and exploring a new place for several hours before flying home in the evening on the same day." Climate crisis anyone?
1. See timeline. 2. Don't make enemies of your friends.
See timeline, and don't make enemies of your friends.
When the history of the rise of fascism in the UK in the 2020s gets written, the complicity of the BBC will require a full volume of its own.
See: medium.com/@mimmymum/10...
As several have pointed out, this also applies to the massive (100,000 or so) Trans Pride event. Almost entirely blanked.
"90% of quotes on social media are misattributed" - Abraham Lincoln.
The thread on one page: skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...
A. Starmer's Labour Party is not the left. B. That was Samuelson, not Keynes.
Mad isn’t it. I can only assume the establishment by in large want Farage in power. Because they are doing absolutely everything to make it happen
6. MPs voting on traditional and moral Labour lines (for example against the Tories' two-child benefit cap) are immediately suspended. MPs supporting traditional - and deeply immoral - Tory policies are promoted to the cabinet.
5. Keir Starmer, who hilariously claims to be leader of the Labour Party, yields to every sally by the far right, seeking to compete with Reform on cruelty and intolerance, while ruthlessly purging from the party anyone to the left of Vlad the Impaler.
3. The police throw the book at leftwing protesters for being seen in a public place, while giving the far right & farmers free rein. 4. A cabinet minister, Jonathan Reynolds, says protesters outside asylum hotels are “upset for legitimate reasons”. No minister says this about Gaza protesters.
Here's how the real two-tier Britain works: 1. Whatever Nigel Farage says, however stupid, is looped and discussed by the media, while left-wing voices are treated as noises off. 2. Tiny far-right protests get massive airtime, while 10s of 000s gathering for Palestine or green causes are ignored.🧵
Well put.
Tell that to translators, to give just one example.
The United States is thought to have been among the first to use double-taps extensively, carrying out double-tap drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...
Blimey. I wasn't aware of that, thanks.
I ask again. There are, rightly, repeated calls for a "just transition" for people who might lose their jobs through technological or economic change in primary (and sometimes secondary) industries. So why not for people in any other sectors, who can just go hang? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
It's not dark money if you know who it is. By definition.
The Israeli government has adopted the double-strike tactic used by Bashar al-Assad in Syria: target a hospital or heavily populated area, then hit it again when rescue workers, reporters and medics turn up, to kill or maim them too. Hideous war crimes piled one upon another.
Aug 26, 1965 - “Climatic Change appears to be underway” – the commencement speech that should have rocked the world Carl Borgmann at University of Tennessee; "CO2... traps heat from the sun, and climatic change results – not overnight, but slowly and surely” allouryesterdays.info/2025/08/25/c...
Fossil fuel extractors fight tooth and nail to prevent market forces from operating. They demand the equivalent of the royal monopolies once granted by the Crown, excluding competitors, enabling old technologies to fend off newer ones. Trump answers the call. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I don’t want to be too shrill about this but I think the BBC, ITV and Sky have disgraced themselves in their coverage of the anti-refugee protests. A massive failure of judgement. But now we know the next time a progressive protest “isn’t news” that it’s nothing to do with numbers
It is clearly the case that asylum protests were smaller this weekend than the small over-hyped protests on August 8th, and smaller than in the second half of July. No broadcast outlet has accurately conveyed that + asked why: they have explicitly stated and inferred growing protests
Also C between 13 and 18.
Monbiot’s Law of Leaving the House: T = 2(A² + 3C²) Where T is time taken to get out the door in minutes, A is adults and C is children. TLDR: if you’re herding more than five children, you'll never get out.
It's not asylum seekers who jack up rents, undermine the NHS, hold down wages and keep people insecure. It's capital. The role of the far right is to shift the blame for decades of economic attacks by the rich and powerful onto powerless people who have only just arrived here.
My apologies for disappearing these past couple of weeks - just needed to be completely offline. I'll be gearing up again from Monday.
Same old shite. If you’re against the Iraq War you hate America. If you oppose the genocide of the Palestinian people you hate Britain.
The good side is that the falsehoods it keeps producing to try to justify the ban are a clear sign of desperation. The government knows it has painted itself into a corner. Now it needs to find a way out.
Lisa Nandy, the UK culture secretary, claims that #PalestineAction "wishes harm on the British people." That is simply false. It is yet another retrospective justification by this government for its unjustifiable ban on the group.
Isn’t it amazing how domestic abusers and sex offenders manage to demonise their fellow travellers as a way of avoiding changing themselves, and then ask only of themselves “why am I single?”
Oh dear, that's what I'm saying. Without political action, fossil fuels keep winning, thanks to the influence they buy. Decommissioning them is an active political choice. As far as the climate is concerned, less fossil fuel use is the only thing that counts. You created the false dichotomy ...
I don't think you've understood the thread.
Probably not, as many of them are sex offenders and domestic abusers ...
Oh please. I'm not attacking renewables. I'm pointing out that "market forces" are not fixing this. Poltical action is *also* required. Like I say in the thread ...
It already outcompetes it almost everywhere, yet fossil fuel exploitation is continuing to grow. Why? Because FFs are non-competitive but highly profitable, while renewables are highly competitive but with very low profit margins. So FFs use political pressure to beat the market.
Let's empty the jails so we can fill them with octogenarians who care about genocide. Because that's the real threat to society. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
I wonder if this 'secret evidence' is stronger than the flawed evidence on which she decided to vote for the Iraq War?
Now do energy sources.
This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen. By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza
Behind every draconian decision, there's secret evidence ("detailed security assessments") we're not allowed to see. We should just suck it up and believe them. Sorry, Yvette Cooper, that's not how democracy should work. When you make a decision of such consequence, we need to see the basis for it.
🇬🇧 LONDON: WORLD THEATRICAL PREMIERE 🇬🇧 🎥 AUG 7: ActOne Cinema SOLD OUT! 🎥 AUG 6: Picturehouse Central (Piccadilly Circus) LIMITED SEATS AVAILABLE The film that spawned the #1 bestselling book. George Monbiot & Peter Hutchison will be on-hand for Q&A's & book signings @georgemonbiot.bsky.social
These people are robed in respectability. They carry themselves as august personages, entitled to a hearing at the highest levels. But they are among the very worst of us.
Another deeply concerning allegation, the latest in a long line of apparent commercial and political lobbying against protest movements, some of which has led to the extremely repressive legislation we now face. Powerful lobbyists are the bane of democracy. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Thanks. Horrendous
Hilariously, this is a classic misunderstanding of capacity factor. Perhaps he should take his own advice. (As he's just blocked me, I'm reposting with screenshot)
Hilariously, this is a classic misunderstanding of capacity factor. Perhaps he should take his own advice.
True, though don't forget it was partly because Thatcher wanted to crush the miners.
It's a problem that has been widely documented. The primary energy fallacy is relevant when it comes to what needs to be replaced. But not when it comes to the environmental impact of continued fossil fuel use.
Almost all residual population growth is caused by demographic momentum, driven in large part by longevity. So you'd have to kill people off. Moreover, most remaining growth is among the extremely poor, who have minimal environmental impacts. The problem is consumption growth, not pop. growth.
It makes no sense in terms of what needs to be replaced. Unfortunately it makes plenty of sense while discussing planetary impact.
There's loads of evidence on these lines. www.penguin.co.uk/books/464145...
It already is. But fossil fuels are vastly more profitable, because they have discrete sources that can be monopolised.
I'm afraid you are completely wrong about this.
Time has told. It hasn't happened.
The thread on one page: skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...
6. Protest is an essential condition of decarbonisation. Without it, the planet is cooked.
5. That's another thing governments believe they can do without. "We don't need to shutter fossil fuels - 'the market' will do the job. Therefore we don't need political intervention either. Therefore we don't need protest movements either." The three forms of magical thinking are closely connected.
4. There is no substitute for a political confrontation with capital. And that in turn means a popular confrontation with government. Because otherwise, government will *always* bend the knee to capital. Nothing good will happen without large and sustained protest movements.
3. This is why the Bill Gates/Ecomodernist approach will never work. I define ecomodernism as using technology as a substitute for political and economic change. We need new technologies and their widespread application. But we *also* need bold policies to shut down the old technologies.
2. Shuttering fossil fuels means confronting capital. Simply layering more energy sources on top of them causes no such conflict. But if you're not displacing fossil fuels, you're not solving the problem. At the global level, it does not happen by itself. It requires active political intervention.
1. This is something I've been saying for 25 years, but it's hard to get many people to listen. What counts is not the new energy sources you add, but the old ones you retire. Unfortunately it's politically easier to build renewables than to shutter fossil fuels.🧵 www.forbes.com/sites/rrapie...
Thanks
See Part 10: Do Palestinians have the right to resist, and what are the limits? share.google/IbvVEbFcWpKD...
You made a specific claim. Unless you can support it, you should withdraw it.
You are citing international law. Please point me to the clause which says it is permissible deliberately to kill civilians in occupied territories.