Was the US behind the strike on Iran’s girls’ school?
www.channel4.com/news/was-the...
06.03.2026 19:02
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Was the US behind the strike on Iran’s girls’ school?
www.channel4.com/news/was-the...
🇫🇷 Incredible acapella Marseillaise after Macron's nuclear speech at Île Longue. Almost makes you want to join the French Foreign Legion.
Guardian headline: Middle East crisis pushes up oil prices - and could drive inflation rises too
Tweet by @Met4CastUK: Significant warmth developing across Europe in the coming days with temperatures >10°C above average for the time of year. With the prospect of a strong El Niño developing by summer, it's plausible summer could be a scorcher.
BBC headline: UK unemployment rate hits near five-year high as wage growth slows
Tweet by @OpiniumResearch: Latest Opinium @ObserverUK poll Keir Starmer's approval rating has fallen to -49, his lowest since becoming Prime Minister. Down 5 points this week. Lower than any rating recorded by May, Johnson or Sunak.
If you were trying to create the ideal conditions for summer riots, I'm not sure you could do much better than this
Not too far off in the end
bsky.app/profile/rory...
A straight fight between Labour and Reform (for second place)
Ed Miliband shaking hands with Gavin Newsom
The year is 2029: Prime Minister Ed Miliband and President Gavin Newsom re-establish UK-US diplomatic relations, ending a two year freeze sparked by former President Trump's unilateral recognition of the Falkland Islands as Argentinian.
Cuts to overseas aid by the UK are set to go further and faster than those made by the Trump administration in the US, as Sir Keir Starmer’s government wrestles with funding pressures
www.ft.com/content/ad52...
Wow!
Palestine Action win judicial review - Guardian report.
This is a *big* legal win.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
GOAT status
Very Trump of them
Classic moves
Diagram showing massive Labour majority in House of Commons after 2024 UK general election
Imagine winning this majority and then being brought down by a Peter Mandelson scandal in the year of our lord 2026
Agreed - I guess I'm predicting the same order of parties as Caerphilly but closer numbers!
2025 Caerphilly by-election results: 1st, Plaid Cymru (47.4%) (+19) 2nd, Reform (36%) (+34.2) 3rd, Labour (11%) (-34.9)
My prediction for Gorton and Denton is basically that it's a repeat of Caerphilly, but with the Greens instead of Plaid
Normally I wouldn't think Davos was worth paying much attention to, but this year has it all: Macron and his aviator shades. Bart de Wever quoting Gramsci. Mark Carney declaring a new world order. Great stuff.
I mean, it's had quite the start hasn't it?
(I accidentally quote retweeted this on Twitter thinking I was on the Bluesky app before making a hasty retreat, so apologies for the janky screenshot)
Tweet by @APHClarkson: Meanwhile you're seeing a growing number of Right-wing French pundits with links to the French military openly, almost enthusiastically, discussing what France and Europe would need to do in a military confrontation with America There is an underlying strain of anti-Americanism within Europe's Left as well as Right that it won't take much to bring to the surface, even among those close to RN or other Far Right parties.
Anti-Americanism becoming a major theme of next year's French presidential election (for both left and right) would make things very interesting
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Alexander Lukashenko
Ilham Aliyev
That being said...
Saddam Hussein
Muammar Gaddafi
Bashar al Assad
Nicolas Maduro
Terrible few decades to be an authoritarian with a moustache
Feels like it's now only a matter of time before the US tries this with Cuba. And then Greenland?
Feel free to add me on Goodreads because I'm always open to recommendations (and I currently only have a tragic total of 2 friends there)
www.goodreads.com/user/show/12...
Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday was also an unexpected favourite. A fascinating look into the long lost world of pre-WW1 Europe, and a harrowing memoir covering the final days of Austria-Hungary, the continent's descent into nationalism, fascism and two apocalyptic wars
Bookended 2025 nicely with Adam Shatz' The Rebel's Clinic & @hofrench.bsky.social The Second Emancipation, on Fanon & Nkrumah, great but tragic & complex men. Really enjoyed French's use of Nkrumah as central character in wider intertwined stories of decolonisation, Black liberation & world conflict
Goodreads collage of book covers: - The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Adam Shatz) - A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (Nathan Thrall) - The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism and Global Blackness at High Tide (Howard W French) - White Nights (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) - Pereira Mantains: A Testimony (Antonio Tabucchi) - Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett) - Clear (Carys Davies) - The Question of Palestine (Edward Said) - The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European (Stefan Zweig) - Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges) - I Saw Ramallah (Mourid Barghouti) - Wind, Sand and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea (Yukio Mishima)
My Goodreads 'Year in Books' for 2025. Thirteen in total but my favourite was Nathan Thrall's A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. An incredible, but heartbreaking and infuriating, account of real life in the occupied West Bank. Highly highly recommend, it's a Pulitzer Prize winner for a reason.
Looking forward to a Starmer mañanera in which he reacts to an AI-generated version of himself singing Frank Sinatra and monologues for three hours
Is this the beginning of Starmer's AMLO arc
Danish local elections tomorrow. I wonder if the UK media/political class will continue waxing lyrical about the 'Danish model' as a silver bullet for Labour after the Danish SocDems inevitably do poorly...
What we know, final edition of the night:
[Now in 3 parts]
—Prop 50 wins
—VA Dems flip Gov, LG, AG
—Dems gain leg seats in VA, NJ, & MS
—Dems defend NJ-Gov
—Dems win NJ+VA trifectas
—Mamdani wins
—PA Dems win state supreme court
—ME anti-mail voting measure loses
—GA Dems flip 2 statewide offices
Side note it's crazy that the VVD are Renew Europe and not EPP
