Iain Palmer

Malin Hay | Laughing Their Heads Off If there’s anything ironic about being so scared of telling the wrong joke that you run straight into the arms of the...

‘Should comedians be held to a higher standard than footballers? It would help if they weren’t so fond of touting their own importance, their skewering of the ruling class, their “speaking truth to power”.’

Malin Hay on the House of Saud’s comedy festival: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

YouTube video by The IT Crowd The Internet Speech The IT Crowd | Series 3 Episode 4

I’m not sure why but Jen’s speech kept popping into my mind when listening to Badenoch earler today. Just me? youtube.com/watch?v=Vywf...

It’s largely academic, because @KemiBadenoch is on a Liz Truss trajectory towards the US Nutter Circuit. But that the Leader of the Opposition would spread such utter lies - adding in her ignorance by suggesting the Sentencing Council has any role in immigration - is pathetic.

‘[Lord Wolfson says:] The [ECHR] and the Human Rights Act “place major restrictions on individual decision-making at every level (civil servants, judges, and ministers) and in policy and legislative design”.’

YES THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT

She was arrested for holding a sign reading:

“I do not support the proscription of Palestine Action”

How that would warrant arrest is very unclear. I wonder if the police here even understand the boundaries of the bizarre law they’ve been forced to enforce.

Football fan now banned from Brighton FC for FIVE YEARS for wearing Palestine shirt Initially Brighton FC gave Roger Wade a five-game ban in August - but he challenged it, and they've now made it five years

Football fan now banned from Brighton FC for FIVE YEARS for wearing Palestine shirt

Initially Brighton FC gave Roger Wade a five-game ban in August - but he challenged it, and they've now made it five years
www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/20...

Bravo.

A hideous, and for traumatised British Jews profoundly unhelpful, expression of allyship & agreement with a violent, racist, serial criminal & former member of an avowedly anti-Semitic organisation from the *Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs* and so, as Sunder says, the Israeli government. 1/3

Conor Gearty · Unwelcome Remnant: Erasing the Human Rights Act The Supreme Court is quietly editing the Human Rights Act out of existence. In cases where human rights cannot be...

‘The importance of being able to challenge a law with a manifestly debilitating rights impact is obvious if you see human rights as a framework that should shape executive and legislative action.’

Conor Gearty on the Supreme Court’s reinterpretation of the HRA: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Keir Starmer: the new Joe Biden? The consensus view was that Keir Starmer's speech was his best yet. I think it was born of deep frailty.

The near consensus view was that Keir Starmer's conference speech was his best yet. I heard something different. I think it was born of a profound weakness- and in its own way set up his own future failure.

My latest

goodallandgoodluck.substack.com/p/keir-starm... open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

The Attendants by Heisenberg. Installed in 2002 on new flats on Malta Terrace and Caledonia Road in the Gorbals in Glasgow, this is one of a series of similar figures, above each of the close entrances in the block.

#glasgow #sculpture #gorbals #architecture #architecturephotography

Screenshot from the BBC News website for the story - link here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy08xg226l1t

A High Court ruling forces a firm linked to Tory peer Michelle Mone to repay £122m for a PPE contract breach.

PPE Medpro put NHS staff and patients in danger with substandard kit whilst lining their own pockets with taxpayers’ money at a time of national crisis.

Justice served ⚖️

💰 NEW 💰

PPE Medpro must repay £122m for supplying defective PPE

But it doesn’t stop with Baroness Mone. When will the ministers who referred their cronies onto the VIP Lane face consequences?

If you don’t like being called a racist, maybe don’t make a career of saying things that appeal to racists, don’t create a political party that keeps attracting racist candidates, don’t fawn over racist world leaders, and don’t make a convicted racist the guest of honour at your party conference.

Have very belatedly left twitter for good.

Naively thought I was still fighting the occasional worthwhile fight but nope.

It's a cesspit and nobody should be on it.

People saying that months ago were absolutely right.

Last "quote tweet" from Harry says it all

“….The force of evil plans
To make you its possession
And it will if we let it
Destroy everybody
We all must take
Precautionary measures
If love and please you treasure
Then you'll hear me when I say
… Oh that
Love's in need of love today…”
@punkandnewwave.bsky.social

Yes, and it’s already illegal to employ those without the right to work.

What’s happened to this? Have I missed something?

Did Britain help murder an African leader and U.N. secretary general? A new book on the CIA in Africa throws further light on the UK’s covert role in the 1961 killing of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba.

64 years ago this month, the UN secretary general died in a plane crash.

Who killed him?

www.declassifieduk.org/did-britain-...

Francesca Albanese: ".. the impunity that has been granted to Israel.. there are layers of complicity.. Europe is the most disappointing of all, because liberal democracies in Europe have proven the fragility of their own systems in order to protect Israel and Israels crimes"

“We don’t need to trouble you” means “your opponent has said nothing that could persuade us”. Rare, most especially to the Government who - unlike desperate individuals - is supposed to be more cautious about running weak arguments.

Early this morning, a deadly Israeli strike on a building in the Hmaid area of Gaza City killed several children.

'Everytime you think it can't get any worse...in he comes with the most extraordinary nonsense.'

As Trump links paracetamol to autism, @mrjamesob.bsky.social feels we ought be 'better at distinguishing between normal occupants of the presidential office - and baboons'.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah…has been reunited with his mother, Laila Soueif, who began a public hunger strike on September 29, 2024 to push for his release. She endured nearly ten months without food before ending her strike in July 2025. Today, mother and son are together again.

The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money review – a devastating picture of the biggest spending scandal ever This rigorous look at the Tories’ ‘VIP lane’ for PPE suppliers during Covid raises questions about the motivations of those involved – ones that are almost too disgusting to contemplate

This is an extraordinary piece of telly. Utterly damming of the corruption of the last Conservative Government - and of our political and legal systems which have failed even to aspire to holding those chancers to account.

Available to watch on ITVX. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Alaa Abdel Fattah: Egypt's president pardons prominent activist The British-Egyptian activist is one of six people whose sentences President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi commuted, according to state media.

Alaa Abdel Fattah: Egypt's president pardons prominent activist

Amazing news!!

Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah granted presidential pardon He was arrested in 2019 in Egypt and sentenced in 2021 to five years in jail for “spreading false news”.

He was arrested in 2019 in Egypt and sentenced in 2021 to five years in jail for “spreading false news”.

I have now been a journalist for 40 years. The forces ranged against my profession have never been so powerful | George Monbiot Once, I believed that humanity’s problem was an information deficit. Now, I know you can’t speak truth to power if power controls your words, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Power is the rock on which truth founders. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, is a single-issue lobby group, whose purpose is to assert the rights of capital.
Here's what I've learnt about the industry in 40 years in journalism.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why the reshuffle alone won’t change the government’s fortunes "For better electoral fortunes, the government needs to junk neoliberal policies, never-ending austerity; directly invest in infrastructure and redistribute income and wealth."

No immigrant caused hikes in the price of energy, water, food, banking, insurance, internet; decline of manufacturing, lack of social housing; PFI; potholed roads; climate change; lack of skilled labour; crisis at universities.

Neoliberalism did that

Why is Labour not countering Reform narratives?

“These waters should be the cleanest in the country, yet they are treated as open sewers by profit-driven water companies and poorly regulated industrial-scale agriculture”

A new report has found that river pollution is twice as bad inside national parks as outside them:
https://bit.ly/3K7l2wo