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A truly terrible book

I picked this book up because it’s subtitled Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction, and it got a further punch of urgency from the strapline by Eric Idle, ‘Put this at the head of your reading lists immediately’. I thought it might be about one of the emergencies the great and the…
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Complicated?

I still see people around social media saying ‘it’s complicated’. I still see them pointing out creases and chasms in the history of Palestine which they use to suggest firstly, it’s hard to see who Palestine ‘belongs to’ and secondly – and incredibly – that this difficulty means they can’t roundly oppose mass killing, displacement,…
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On burning ambulances

On March 23, 2025, the Israeli military attacked five ambulances, a fire truck, and a United Nations vehicle, killing 15 aid workers. Exactly one year later, someone attacked three Jewish volunteer-run ambulances in Golders Green. No one thought it was a co-incidence, but beyond that, reactions fanned out in a range of ways. It serves…
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Stand up to misogyny

This morning, I asked Shereen Benjamin if I could reproduce a post from her social media for a blog article. Here it is… Edinburgh Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) said this: Yesterday’s demo would not have been possible, or half as much fun, without the amazing Tom and Nathan from @cabaretagainst 🎶 Constantly keeping the…
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Fly a kite, tell a story, read a book…

In February last year, I went to a talk by Dr Zahira Jaser, which focused on what it’s like being a Palestinian woman in the UK lately. One of the issues mentioned was some people’s attitudes to people wearing the keffiyah. These days, people seem to think it means ‘terrorist’. Jaser spoke eloquently about the…
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This article has nothing whatsoever to do with shopping…

…it is a salute to Valerie Coultas and all the other women and men who have hung in there for Your Party, and still hope to build socialism there. Sexism has always been there – where has the socialist understanding of it gone? 1910 When women thrown into prison for marching for women’s rights began…
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The air that we breathe

When Israel bombed Iran last time, I thought – my dentist’s in Iran, visiting her mother. Please don’t kill my dentist! It sounds like a joke when I write it that way, but that’s what normal people do, when a war starts. We think of the people we know, and try to find out if…
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What happened to the ‘Homes for Heroes’?

After the war, the government oversaw a huge building and rebuilding project, to repair and replace war-damaged infrastructure and, under the banner ‘Homes for Heroes’, to provide council housing in particular for the families of returning soldiers, and more widely to address the housing shortage and make homes available for all who needed them. This…
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Democracy – who needs it?

This is a personal view of what’s currently happening in my town. Please note – it’s my opinion – I am all too well aware that there are currently people who seem to remember things panning out quite differently and I have no intention of ‘doing a whatsapp’ and setting my version against theirs. Reality…
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No help here, Labour!
A funny thing is happening. I wrote the blog 10 pledges to end the leadership crisis for Labour in 2020. It is not a serious proposition. I just re-worked the advice the ‘leadership’ had just received from the Board of Deputies – ie, reworked it so it was actually honest and fair. I had to…