Politics, music, cities, food, Spain, @ The Guardian, Observer, VICE, LRB, NYT. Co-host @CursedObjectsUK. New book: MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World
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🟡 Reminder that I am now available to discuss football crowds, riot crowds, carnival crowds, protest crowds, crowd policing, crowd behaviour, mobs etc - and if you want to review MULTITUDES, please get in touch! 🟡
It's here! 🥳 'MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World' is published @VersoBooks 22 October 2024. Get in touch for review copies / interview requests / commissions / talks / podcasts etc
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I think if I worked for BBC News in any capacity I would absolutely mortified after the last fortnight. "Public service", "BBC balance" and purported pluralism revealed for what it truly is - an inflexible arm of the state and the elites that control it. Truly an embarrassment
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Grenfell survivors told they will be declared "intentionally homeless" if they refuse relocation outside of London
#grenfelltower survivor says they are being pressured to move as far north as Preston 😱 @smtm_LFC nitter.app/imjustbait/status/8762…
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Bit weird how on last night's Newsnight, when they introduced the clip of Allegra Stratton laughing about how to lie to the public about illegal parties in No.10, they somehow forgot to mention that she was Newsnight's Political Editor 2012-16
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My friend is a doctor and at the induction for the Nightingale Hospital they were shown a video message of thanks and support from the singer from The Kooks
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Britain's children simply must be dragged away from their ruinous, degrading obsession with gardening
You want kids to read?
Make them read. Constantly.
Break it down.
You want kids to add and subtract?
Do maths. Constantly.
Means no phones. No yoga. No gardening. No chatter and lack of attention.
It means HARD GRAFT
It ain’t sexy
But it can be done
It can even be fun👍🏽
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holy crap look what's been hiding literally inside peckham rye station all these years - original waiting room, bricked up after beeching
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Just walked past some strangers wearing Labour stickers in Elephant & Castle tube, clearly post-canvass, and instinctively did this ✊ - not even ironically?? - and one of them smiled and did it back, and I suddenly felt q emo, and oh god it's been a long month, I'm so nervous
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Chuka Umunna also defected from UK garage for "soulful house", when the MCs started to get involved, and that is all you need to know about him imho
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It will be hard for me to look back on the defeat of Corbynism without rancour. Hard to forget that, when faced with a choice between Tory barbarism and the socialism that would literally be saving lives atm, senior liberal columnists invoked - instrumentalised - the Holocaust
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Did I miss @tnewtondunn's acknowledgement of and apology for writing (and eventually removing) a raving anti-semitic conspiracy theory about "hard-left extremists", based on neo-Nazi website Aryan Unity? Tom? Did I miss it? Let me know if I missed it
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well done to the journalists who held a worried public and a critical opposition to account, rather than dominic cummings. really well done
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Just a reminder that two young men got four-year jail sentences for incitement to riot, in 2011 - in the less prominent context of two "let's riot" FB pages, not on terrestrial TV
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My new piece about street food, gentrification and the urban food court phenomenon
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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Bread news! What a headline. "Subway bread’s sugar content – five times the qualifying limit under the act – means that it falls outside of the legal definition of a staple food." theguardian.com/world/2020/o…
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So the FBPE story ends - as all great heroic narratives do - with Will Hutton hosting a candlelit vigil, a Led By Donkeys coffee table book, and Jolyon Maugham in a kimono, bludgeoning a fox to death
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Tonight at the Barbican Stormzy revealed that the much-discussed scholarship he's funding at Cambridge Uni was first proposed to Oxford University, and they told him to get lost?! Incredible.
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Any Chelsea fans worried about Abramovich leaving should be reassured that the fundamentals will not change: whatever happens, you'll still support the worst club in English football
Minutes applause in solidarity with Ukraine at Turf Moor - Chelsea fans chant 'Roman Abramovich' over the top of it.
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It's genuinely looking possible that it might be legal to meet my girlfriend in a hotel from the 4 July, but not in her house. Which kind of gets to the spirit of the Conservative Party really - prim, sleazy, purely transactional
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The pervasive anti-populist panic that we're all suddenly "so polarised" into "social media echo chambers" is weirdly ahistorical. You know who was really "in a bubble"? 16th century peasants, and 16th century aristocrats. They never listened to each others' podcasts
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Wait are people actually stockpiling food? I wanted some rigatoni you utter fucking morons
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the problem with feeding starving children is it's not fiscally responsible. if labour are to be trusted on the economy, it's important that children continue to starve - this is just grown-up politics
Keir Starmer rejects calls from Gordon Brown to axe the two-child benefit limit.
He says ending child poverty is critical but he won’t commit to scrapping the cap because of the state of the economy.
“It’s tough,” he says. “But if we can’t deliver it, I’m not going to say it
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Grimly sympathetic BBC portrait of possibly violent, allegedly Neo-Nazi-linked vigilantes operating illegally to evict people from empty second homes. Landlords are, it seems, the real victims of the Spanish housing crisis, and these thugs are its heroes bbc.co.uk/news/stories-58310…
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On arriving at the airbnb to find it has a Nespresso machine: lol so embarrassing, so business techno - what is this, a Foxtons?
Two days into the holiday: starting a blog ranking each of the different colour capsules, deciding to name my firstborn Volluto
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It is over 6 months since Starmer's Labour applied a three-line whip on the critical ceasefire vote - Labour MPs who voted for a ceasefire on 16 Nov were sacked from shad cab roles. Since then, 25,000 more Palestinian people, including 10,000 children, have been killed
Horrendous images coming from Rafah. As @Keir_Starmer has said, Netanyahu must be told to stop.
We need a ceasefire, the hostages released and aid in at huge scale.
We must move to the lasting peace of a two state solution - an independent Palestine, alongside a secure Israel.
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Anyone joining in the Tories / Lambeth Council's public-blaming is doing the government's scapegoating work for them, it's pathetic. People need exercise for their mental and physical wellbeing: **access to public space is itself a public health issue**
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Hi Claire - your earlier tweet read "Reports that a Labour activist has been arrested after punching Matt Hancock's advisor" - who was your source? Think it would be the right thing to show where these 'reports' came from
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Just heard Evan Davis and Prof Tim Bale on Radio 4's PM agreeing that the label 'far right' should be dropped - because such parties are now popular enough that, in Bale's words, "I think we have to normalise them now"
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The quintessence of British liberalism's sweet, sweet combo of the snide and the intellectually vapid. A refusal to think outside of a news-moment, an inability to read images as texts, an abject contempt for deep thinking, a suffocating 'rationalism' and incuriosity at its heart
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direct echoes of 2010 student protests: the met mobilises horse-mounted riot police - as a weapon, essentially - against young bodies, and chaos ensues. hope everyone is okay
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God knows I've used some hyperbole in my time, but I've just seen that Ian Dunt has described Starmer's speech as - wait for it - "electrifying"
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Hi @elliereeves: as my MP, I'd love to know what you think about your soon-to-be fellow PLP member - who is NOT JEWISH - talking about me like this? Any thoughts? Is this okay?
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Let's be very clear, if you're not pushing for a Labour government, you're letting in a Conservative one, and you're tacitly accepting that horrifying levels of child poverty and hunger are acceptable to you. **this is a result of government policy** newstatesman.com/politics/we…
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I've been piecing together this @gdnlongread for over two years - on the UK govt's secret, forced repatriation of Liverpool's Chinese seamen in 1945-6. Hundreds of husbands and fathers who were never seen again by their British families theguardian.com/news/2021/ma…
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This Corbyn frame on Tottenham vs Mansfield has the twin virtues of being both good and correct
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Would love to know why Haringey MP @CatherineWest1 thinks it's acceptable to stop a Jewish woman telling fellow Labour members about the murder of so many family members in the Holocaust, on Holocaust Memorial Day - could you explain Catherine? jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/…
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If you just mute all the Labour Party words and only check in twice a day I find twitter is actually quite good
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Here's the cover of my next book! Drawing on interviews spanning 12 years, from grime's pirate radio days to riots, gentrification, and Grenfell. 'Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime'. Out 17 May amazon.co.uk/Inner-City-Pres…
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For @gdnlongread I have spent over a year tackling the greatest political, social and cultural question of our age: Who remembers proper binmen? theguardian.com/news/2022/no…
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Weird piece. Labour's vote share in Sedgefield fell from 71% in 1997 to 45% by the time New Lab left office in 2010. When Corbyn took over it started rising again. Up 6% (and 4,000 votes) to 53% in 2017 theguardian.com/politics/201…
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Absolutely losing my mind at a BBC panel show discussing the possibilities for radical global change after coronavirus ft George Osborne, Tony Blair and A MINISTER IN ORBAN'S GOVERNMENT
At 9am on @BBCRadio4, “Rethink: The Edge of Change” launches #RETHINK season on @bbc.
Featuring:
>@zoltanspox, Minister in Orban’s government
>@George_Osborne
>Tony Blair
>@MrKRudd
>@mbachelet
>@xoamani
Produced by Ben Crighton and Kirsteen Knight
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k7h…
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remember in 2017 when macron was first elected, and a few british leftists warned that a technocratic centrist figleaf like macron's en marche would not hold back le pen, but risked allowing her through the door next... remember how everybody shouted at those few british leftists
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glad to see yr boyfriend is still getting to 'challenge people's preconceptions' and 'shake things up a bit' since taking that job in a creative agency marketingweek.com/2019/05/15…
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Good to see this made a front page. If you're going to spend 4 years lecturing the left that they don't know how to work with the media, are too unserious to effectively 'play the game' etc - then you deserve this
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You couldn't ask for a more bizarre, irrelevant list of names. Thanks for your purported solidarity, but this Jew is voting Labour b/c 300k children had to rely on food parcels in the last six months, and we need a Green New Deal before the planet burns. Maybe butt the fuck out?
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An average of 37,000 under-25s have registered to vote every day since the election was called. More even than in the 2017 'youthquake' (29,000 per day). Over 100,000 registered on Friday alone, nearly 1m in total... REGISTER HERE BY TUESDAY: gov.uk/register-to-vote
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"When the optics change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - ancient @Keir_Starmer proverb
Until an hour ago, Labour MPs were being told to abstain on Tuesday's Police Bill.
That's just changed. They now say it's "a Bill that is seeking to divide the country. It is a mess, which could lead to harsher penalties for damaging a statue than for attacking a woman."
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Textbook conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel, really grim
Shocking scenes last night involving Israel’s Ambassador.
Antisemitism has no place in our society.
I wish @TzipiHotovely well and support the police in any investigation.
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Imagining a political party of Mick Lynches, one that unabashedly stood up for the many workers that are low paid, precarious, exhausted and powerless against the few bosses, billionaires and elites. You could call it The Party of Labour
Mick Lynch explains in well under a minute how workers aren’t causing inflation. Workers are getting pay cuts while billionaire wealth soars.
So refreshing to have someone talking sense on the tele.
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Time for my giddy biannual tweet about how snow days are the best because they are effectively situationist happenings, a stick in the wheels of the everyday functioning of capital which transform our built environments and turn them into sites of play! (Parklife)
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Approving noises all round on the NS podcast that Labour conference is welcoming corporate lobbyists in suits once again... Deliveroo, McDonalds, Drax, Uber, Heathrow Airport: you got your party back ☺️
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Absolutely incredible story: Ansu Fati, Barcelona's 16-year-old wunderkind, is only in Spain because his migrant father was given work and a home in the 'communist utopia' of Marinaleda theguardian.com/football/201…
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The hostility, bullying and slurs of the likes of TAO, Baddiel, Riley, Finkelstein - not to mention the Jewish Chronicle - towards any Jewish person to their left has been a horrifying feature of the last few years
If you want a sense of the gut-churning wretchedness of being a Jewish leftist with a platform: here is a man who used to babysit me egging on Tracy-Ann Oberman, a woman I had to block because she kept @ ing my mum.
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I'm still waiting for a single news org other than @novaramedia to cover the fact that Starmer's golden goy Luke Akehurst said non-Zionist Jews were not proper Jews. Will this be the thing that finally makes legacy media apply some scrutiny?
NEW: In deleted blogs, Luke Akehurst said Glenda Jackson made him “want to puke” & suggested the “hysterical” @pollytoynbee should “put a sock in it”.
As evidence of Akehurst's appalling views mounts, I ask: is there anything Labour won't let him do? novaramedia.com/2024/06/07/i…
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big boring dystopia energy here. charging people to use a water fountain in a major railway station concourse - really should be the exemplar of a healthy public realm
Fill up your reusable bottles from Marylebone Station’s new water fountain for 25p
ALT Image: chicken and a reusable water bottle. Wording: No more scratching around for a drink
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Laura Pidcock MP is 29, is renting because she can't afford to buy, saddled with student debt, socialist, feminist
Yesterday, I was proud to make my maiden speech in Parliament. Here's an extract. To watch the full speech, see: facebook.com/LauraPidcockMP/…
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My essay for the new @prospect_uk: on the battle between £5 artisan sourdough and 36p loaves in Lidl - a story about class, supermarket capitalism and gut bacteria prospectmagazine.co.uk/other…
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Remember last year when Chris Morris said most satire had become completely defanged - the preserve of cosy courtiers who only wished to be patted on the head by the elite, rather than changing anything
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True story: in 2016 I got a call from the Labour leader's office asking if I could help them put together an all-star grime version of The Internationale
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Never forget the middle-class establishment centre - here's today's Times - is directly implicated in Brexit's manufactured resentments. You can't pin this all on UKIP/the tabloids/Vote Leave memes etc: the toxic bigotries are coming from inside the house
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The Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre closes its doors for the last time this afternoon. Here's my piece on the death of a south London icon theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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Extremely high-grade George Costanza/Larry David material here
Falsely naming an enemy as a coronavirus contact in order to force them to self-isolate can be fined £1,000 independent.co.uk/news/uk/po…
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When I was a kid, growing up in Wandsworth - a Tory council my entire life until now - it was so Thatcherite it had ZERO council tax for a few years; and the council tried to charge children ££s to play in a local playground
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Great stuff by @DawnHFoster on the tedious handwringing of Tom Watson - in lieu of ideas to help Britain's poorest, or the guile to win an election, what is it but aimless wrecking? theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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I think I can probably guess what Mark Fisher would think about being cited in an election editorial that acknowledges the death of capitalist realism, refuses to back Labour, and then proposes that Dan Jarvis and some random Lib Dems are best placed to build socialism
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A special shout-out to @OwenJones84, who not for the first time saw his personal safety compromised by his unwavering commitment to democratic, egalitarian politics. A few journalists out there would do well to remember that, as they idly snark at him from their sofas ✊
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You couldn't ask for a greater ethical vindication of Corbynism than the fact it was this motley crew of corporate spivs briefing against the party leadership week-in, week-out
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So many hacks *still* don't get why under-40s, facing a near future of catastrophic climate change, and a present of zero hours contracts, housing insecurity, debt and austerity, might have been radicalised by an obscure backbench MP who never wanted to be leader to begin with
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Absolutely gone at lAbOUr heAVyWeiGht Alan Johnson's take on precarious employment in the post-industrial age
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Turned 40 on Monday in the most zeitgeisty way I could think of: being ill with Covid. Still got my finger on the pulse 🔥
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the fixation on food in particular as a focus for Proper Binmenism is fascinating - as is the mingling of the occasional historically accurate comparison with deranged and/or racist nonsense
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PMSL at the signatories to that 'public figures' Labour AS letter. Labour have lost such progressive luminaries as *checks notes* headbanging Brexiteer Tory Frederick Forsyth, professional reactionary Trevor Phillips, twitter loon Oz Katerji and Sun columnist Tony Parsons
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mitt romney is calling for UBI, the spectator is endorsing corbynomics, the melty 90s comedians have discovered universalism, and... this is the first keir starmer tweet in two days
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Earlier this week the editor of joke newspaper The New European snarked at the ideas coming out of the Momentum festival. "You couldn't make it up!" Amusingly, I didn't: it's a successful and inexpensive innovation, which is good for the environment. In Paris. IN EUROPE.
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Once again, well done to all the pundits now noticing water privatisation is bad, now the only party leader who wanted to do something about it has been bumped off. Funny how this keeps happening
83% of Britons support taking water back from the hucksters rinsing us for private profit. And it's no wonder! Our bills and their profits keep soaring, while a horrifying 20% of all water is lost to leaks theguardian.com/environment/…
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I will never tire of telling people that there were three books called Post-Truth published in ONE WEEK in 2017
Post-Truth - James Ball (11 May 17)
Post-Truth - Matthew D'Ancona (11 May 17)
Post-Truth - Evan Davis (18 May 17)
Recall in 2016 when half the press went nuts about Fake News, vowing to crack down on disinfo wherever it might be found. And then they realised that would mean cracking down on the Sun, the Mail, their own bosses and each other, and decided the real problem was Russian Facebook.
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I wrote for @VICEUK about why brands like HSBC, Nike and Adidas want to claim our cities for themselves - and why we shouldn't let them vice.com/en_uk/article/qvyde…
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And relatedly, as I was saying the other day, that's why this message should be on billboards across the country
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Last week, @WileyCEO DM-ed me to tell me The Godfather Part 3 would be his last album. Here's the exclusive story of a wild year of headline-grabbing beefs, industry betrayal, and where he thinks grime has gone wrong theguardian.com/music/2020/j…
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Space is political. Play is political. This is an absolute scandal theguardian.com/cities/2019/…
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Slightly jarring to hear NEF introduced as a "left-leaning thinktank" on @BBCr4today - and just want to check Policy Exchange are now going to be introduced as "right-wing goons" and ASI as "Randian chicken baguette weirdos"? Y'know, for balance
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Many comments on this, I would only add that the phrase "watched in horror" is a particularly (and tellingly) injudicious choice of words - given the very real events we have watched, in horror, recently
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In just 24 hours Labour have announced a 4-day working week and passed a radical, vital Green New Deal motion to decarbonise the economy before we all boil to death. How cynical, stupid and disingenuous do you have to be to say "party conferences are a massive waste of time"?
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I see #grime4corbyn has found its analogue in Starmerism
RIP Dame Vera Lynn, the Forces’ Sweetheart.
Her songs still speak to the nation in 2020 just as they did in 1940.
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A reminder, after the UN report today, that the people leading the protests against these devastating and entirely unnecessary cuts, when they began in 2010, were students and sixth-formers
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I wrote about capitalism's war on sleep, and the dire consequences of 24/7 culture for our brains and bodies, in this week's @NewStatesman newstatesman.com/24-7-jonath…
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wow. remunicipalise all the swimming pools! no profit extraction, just chlorine! no shareholders, just vibes!
Southwark Council to bring leisure services in-house bit.ly/3yTCCsk
ALT Southwark Council to bring leisure services in-house
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This is a more accurate reading of work, benefits and poverty in 21C Britain than you'll get from most of the press
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this tweet reminded me: his older brother qualified as a druid - took his exams and everything. and their dad literally had a small single silver earring. all of them were decent at juggling
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“It’s become a synonym of freedom." Good for the environment both locally and globally, good for the local economy, a huge boost for the poorest in society - and it works so well other French towns are following suit. We need this in the UK! france24.com/en/20190831-fra…
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