Tom asked me if I want to watch the Sunak/Starmer debate with him. I thought about it, and then I thought about my mental health my tendency towards insomnia, and I decided I am better off sticking to my journaling/reading/meditation late evening routine
A good news story about one of the biggest rural tool-sharing libraries in the US.
"The library is like the best neighbor you ever had. Imagine if the person at the end of your block had 1,500 tools and they’d show you how to use them"
@junesim63 if they only did a search on the climate/gender credentials of her administration… they would find she defied/ignored court orders to stop destroying marshes and wetlands and went ahead and paved over them. She is pro-oil.
She is responsible of the worst public transport’s tragedy in the history of MX because of skimming money from maintenance. She is responsible for authorizing unsafe constructions that caused children’s deaths.
That is my pot stirring done for the morning. Now to get out with the dug for a longish (26k run) before it gets too hot. I always find it remarkable and refreshing that I can say that in Scotland - even in June!
When the election is between a Labour party trying to unseat a Conservative one after what it considers to be its own failed leftwing experiment, that tendency to strip politics of all values ...becomes even more pronounced. The result is that by hewing as close as possible to established economic and cultural norms as set by the Tories in order to win back voters, Labour disfranchises others and makes a calculation that they don’t matter"
Nesrine Malik
"Over the past few months, the people I have spoken to who said they will not vote for Labour all share one thing: not childish anger or silly idealism, but relief. After giving the party several chances and grappling with their choices, the decision not to vote gave them a sense of congruence. Their political choices finally aligned with their values, and gave them a sense of autonomy in a system that felt totally out of their control"
Nesrine Malik
"In a system without proportional representation, politics is indeed often the choice of the lesser of two evils. But as the space between the two shrinks, people might begin to feel that – as Ralph Nader once said – “if you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less”.
Nesrine Malik
"Saying no to Biden means saying yes to more futile, wholesale bloodshed, of Israeli soldiers &, more so, of Gaza's inhabitants; yes to the death of the last of the hostages in Hamas captivity; yes to genocide; yes to war in the north; yes to declaring Israel a pariah state... And someone affirming all of the above should be condemned as a war criminal by his own country, unless we are all war criminals"
Gideon Levy in Haaretz today
Leaflets dispersed on Saturday by the IDF in Beit Hanoun, calling on refugees who had returned to their destroyed homes to again evacuate them, are the true Israeli response to President Biden's plan to end the war. They also illustrate what the war will look like from now on: an endless cycle of death and destruction. After Rafah we go back to the beginning, to the northern Gaza Strip, like in a game of Monopoly, but with cruelty....
Gideon Levy
"I was asked to attend a sham 45-minute online meeting via email just hours before my deselection, with three members of the National Executive Committee–one of whom never put his camera on or said a word–and my fate was decided. More than four years’ work thrown in the bin. My connection to my community brushed aside. My deep and utter commitment dismissed. And the desires of thousands in my constituency disregarded"
Faiza Shaheen
"My fate was leaked to the press before I found out, and I knew I had to get my side of the story out quickly. One of my first thoughts when I realised this could be the end of my political career was: “Please don’t ruin my life. Don’t make it so I can never get another job again.”
They have made people like me and the political icon Diane Abbott beg and grovel. But I’ve been overwhelmed by support after my Newsnight interview"
Faiza Shaheen
I just got a rejection letter and it looks like these guys judged my pitch based on my personality, not my experience, not what I intended to do with their money, but "There was a slight lack of enthusiasm during the pitch, which did not completely convince the jury."
Its my personality, you FFS!
So this confirms what I have thought all along; the machine rewards those who are loud and overconfident and can socialize, and looks down upon quiet introverts people as unable to incapable. F**k!
The UK is banning puberty blockers but only for trans kids. Cis kids can stay on them for years because they know there aren't any serious side-effects. They just hate trans people.
#GE2024 What have Labour done in their first campaign week? Deselected left-wing (not Israel supporting) candidates!! Diane Abbott (not sure but looks like it), now Doctor Faiza Shaheen, in Chingford, and more. This is appalling. Really angry. #UKPolitics
EDIT: it’s become a bit of a 🧵 because i am so angry. But honestly: everyone should be very angry about this, on Faiza’s behalf and for us all.
@pvonhellermannn@Alexlee
Akehurst was appointed Director of We Believe in Israel in 2011. It's a project of the major UK Israel lobby, British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). As such, he was a leading actor in the smearing of Corbyn with antisemitism allegations and a major influence on the right of Labour. I thought initially that the treatment of Abbott was to clear the way for him standing in her seat as its just down the road from his council seat.
"When I shared complaints about my housing on social media, they went viral, and I began hearing from people in similar circumstances. It changed the course of my life"
Housing activist Kwajo Tweneboa in the first of a monthly series of articles.