Category: Politics
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International law
I wrote to my MP this morning. I suggest we all do this. Here’s what I said… Dear Helena Dollimore, In his attack on Venzuela, Donald Trump has further progressed the world’s catastrophic slide into gangster-rule. In what is without question a multiple breach of international law, Trump has kidnapped the president and his wife,…
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A shameful day for the English

One of the ironies of any work in publishing and the book trade is that, because your work involves a lot of reading, you’re always at least a decade behind on what ‘everyone’ has read. That’s why, now the book-work is down to a minimum, I like doing my occasional series of ‘reviews of old…
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Nation states, surveillance and control

I am hearing resolutions this year about a renewed search for peace and justice, and liberation. Resolutions made, in many cases with more determination than hope. One of the things we need if we are to take meaningful steps toward those celestial goals is memory. In some cases, it’s just about remembering a year or…
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The long road to Farringdon

aka state of the Sisterhood 2025 ***NB there is a damning view of the Labour Party here, and a lot about FiLiA 2025 along the way, so I would like to make a distinction: whilst the Labour Party deserves to be despised, FiLiA is a unique and tremendously useful organisation, a charity which is largely…
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An orgy of destruction

Your Party, FiLiA, Zionism, the trans issue… People are asking now, is Your Party over? We never did figure out who ‘you’ is but, after New Year, local groups across the country who reckon we are us will be mustering to do what Your Party founding documents require, which is to organise, to further engage…
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Credit where it’s due

[Header image: a video by The Canary, as the police inform those standing vigil that an ambulance is finally on its way to Bronzefield] To friends who aren’t willing to give Your Party a go, and to those who’ve given up in exasperation – I get it, I really do! But – well, the following…
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Expensive and ineffective?

If you’re beginning to doubt the importance of jury trials, please consider the possibility that you’re being led into error by a government that is pathologically resistant to justice and accountability. Since David Lammy announced the latest step in dismantling our (formerly world-class) justice system, I’ve seen two arguments against jury trials being passed around…
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A cascade of burning books

Three books, a short film and a talk This morning, I read somewhere that Israel has a huge mental health crisis to deal with after all the tormenting and killing of Palestinians the IDF have been doing in Gaza and across the West Bank. It made me think about what kind of trauma must be…
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How do you salve a guilty conscience?

Well, one way is to point attention away from yourself – spread the guilt around as far as you can. This weekend saw protests like these all over the UK – five of our own in Hastings were arrested. Our local activists have been on pretty friendly terms with Hastings police, especially those who have…
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This is what we mean by erasing women

‘Your Party’ have chosen the delegates for their first conference ‘by sortition’. They said this would ensure that a genuinely representative cross section of their supporters would be present. I suppose as we’re aiming for a ‘bottom up’ democracy, the fact that this has ruled out some of the natural leaders who’ve been working for…