Paul Hebden

The Iran war should be a lesson for Keir Starmer's Government. If you take a clear line on an issue where the public agree with you then it's your opponents who end up having to back down, not you

Dear journalists: Shut up about the “special relationship”. There is UK reliance on the US but for the time being there is no special relationship in any meaningful sense and talking as if there still is sounds ridiculous

Joey Barton charged after man assaulted near golf club The former footballer is arrested along with a second suspect near Huyton and Prescot Golf Club.

Interesting piece of trivia, Joey Barton used to be taught philosophy by Nina Power.
Make of that what your will.....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Mamdani Chooses His Words Carefully After Alleged Terror Attack

One day the NYT's editors will read these stories again and be ashamed of themselves. Mamdani called the attack "heinous," "criminal," "reprehensible," "terrorism," and "the antithesis of who we are." The insinuation that he's conflicted about this is disgraceful. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...

These aren't people who have the interest of ordinary Brits at heart. And our political class needs to start acting accordingly.

On any terms how is it possible for a UK politician to argue that Trump is a friend of Brits, or a force for good in the world?

More or less every single set back to my meagre pension in the last year has been a direct consequence of actions taken by Donald Trump.

Yeah, I've seen quite a few interviews with Lownie. He doesn't pull his punches and seems to have done ALOT of research.
Looks like a good book. And he's no republican either I think.

Really good yeah

Fossil fuels are by far the most systemically significant price, it's not even close. We just saw the largest single day price jump in oil. It's the responsibility of governments to contain this price jump and not let another round of sellers' inflation take hold.

academic.oup.com/icc/article/...

Re-watched some of Michael Moore's Farenheit 11/9 recently and Trump has really aged in the last 10 years.

He's also become considerably more evil

Latest newsletter by me

"The aristocracy are leeches upon the public purse, drawing the blood of the people and calling it the constitution."
William Cobbett
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tory has opinions on follow through for governance.

Oven ready governance.

Further evidence, if needed, that some of the supposedly tough-minded realists who run big companies are actually fools with a very superficial understanding of the world.

I listened to a lot of profit calls in 2023/24 with companies caught out by the post-lockdown supply chain crisis, the Red Sea crisis etc.
If you're a just-in-time CEO caught with your pants down right now cos of Iran, you should be sacked.

Unreal. What planet is she on these days?

How much more evidence do we need? The ultra-rich and the governments supporting them will destroy everything for the sake of profit, power and pride. Nothing is precious to them - not human life, not the living world - except their own wealth and status. Our survival depends on resisting them.

My extra radical far loony left position is that no one should ever be allowed to make a profit from academic publishing. It is a public good. See also: education, healthcare (on a good day, public transport…)

“Iran has Tomahawk missiles, a fact we disclosed only after a Tomahawk was caught on camera striking a school, in Iran, during a US bombardment consistently of hundreds of Tomahawk missiles”

-if your news org isn’t openly attacking this claim you may as well run Sandy Hook false flag theories too

This is the guy Badenoch and Farage want us in bed with. Putin's biggest ally.

It is quite possible to see the Trump presidency entirely through the prism of market manipulation for private gain.

Anyway, rant over. Maybe I'm wrong, but after 53 years on this planet I'm starting to trust my gut more. And I realise I've started doing individualistic things to keep the people close to me safe, I feel like it's a crisis response. My political beliefs are failing me basically.

I've also noted that leaders have given up trying to proactively solve problems or anticipate crisis. Indeed some leaders actively precipitate crisis.

I see two responses by the powerful crisis:

1 - Profit from it: Epstein, Trump, Kushner; or
2 - Act only when the crisis is upon us: the UK state

Sorry for encouraging fatalism, we're not supposed to do that on the soft left. But I think to refuse to confront the utter calamity we are facing, is it's own form of fatalism.

The COVID deaths, the collapse in good consumption while supermarkets made Uber profit. The fetish made of immigration and racism. The homelessness, the shit in the water. The collapsing harvest, the heatwave deaths. The wars, the genocide.

Tell me this is a world that's getting better.

I'm aware I probably sound mad. But you can't tell me that things have been getting better since 2008. You can't tell me we haven't gone from crisis to crisis - the constant resort to referenda, the broken democracy, the corruption , the never ending prime ministers. That's not normal.

And I worry about my friend's kids, I tell them to "make them study STEM" insure your kids against a future war that the crazy bastards running the world seem hell-bent on pushing us towards. Get your kids to learn math and physics, so they're too valuable for the frontline.

It's ridiculous

I've spent evenings checking the exemptions to the draft used in WW2, to reassure myself he is too valuable to be dumped in some muddy field in Europe.

Because I don't trust our leaders anymore to avoid war. I don't trust these morons with my child's life.

It's mad I know, but it's where I am rn.