Dr Catherine Preston

As there’s been some chat this morning about using alternatives to Amazon and Waterstones to buy books - here’s a reminder that I’ve done a list of and the UK and Ireland indie bookshops that I’ve found so far on BlueSky. I can make it into a starter pack if easier?

bsky.app/profile/did:...

YouTube video by Randy Rainbow Lyin' and Spinnin' (and Cheatin' and Hidin') - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Something to cheer up your afternoon break. The lovely @randyrainbow.bsky.social youtu.be/xnR7CpH_aaI?... #Resist

The Today programme this morning interviewed Diana Furchgott-Roth, a senior staff member at the Heritage Foundation, about Trump's climate policies, during which she came out with the zinger: “a lot of people like it a bit warmer.”

How is it in the public interest to platform anti-science tripe?

Nigel Farage has been making the incorrect claim that "one million people living in this country don't speak any English at all"

Facts here 👇

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1...

I remember when the problem was teenagers getting pregnant. Reactionaries are never happy

Farage's claims here are straightforward lies (and it's about time the media/press said so)

The correct figures are 160K (0.3%) and 900K (1.5%)

www.gbnews.com/news/video-n...

The will of the rich and powerful: Brexit and the Epstein files The Epstein files reveal the role of Brexit in a global network which stands to gain from undermining democracy itself

The Epstein files show that Brexit was never a “plucky British revolt”. In reality, Brexit was fed, and empowered, by an entire class of oligarchs and autocrats, who thrive on chaos, weak regulation and brittle institutions.

This couldn’t be clearer. Bannon’s texts to Epstein in mid July 2018 - “overthrowing May right now” and in “London with Boris” as well as his appearance on LBC with Nigel Farage are prettying damning evidence of a cross party plot with foreign backing

The law on universities and free speech prevents speakers from being *disinvited after they have been invited*. It does not require universities to provide a platform to whoever demands one.

Let's not mince words: the threat to cut funding to every university who disagrees with them is fascist.

I am sick, absolutely sick, of the retreat of civic society, the media and the other political parties in the face of Reform UK - one of the most existential threats the state structures have faced for decades.

Shots fired from Bangor students. Let’s see their peers across the country rise to the occasion.

Reform UK threatens to cut funding for Welsh university after debating society bans party from campus

want to go to Bangor University' said nobody ever. Especially if Bangor University is stripped of government funding and student loan facilities by @reformparty_uk Is that "in line with your values,' poppets?

This is pretty menacing.

Sarah Pochin wrote to Bangor's university student run debating society requesting that she attend to "answer questions from students."

When they said "no" Reform rolled all it's tanks onto the lawns and said they'll cut funding to the entire university if they win.

Conservatives, Liberals working on behind-the-scenes deals as PM downplays election talk | CBC News Liberals and Conservatives are working out a path that could keep the government in power, sources tell CBC News, while Prime Minister Mark Carney continues to downplay the likelihood of a spring elec...

The Liberals won re-election largely by soft NDP voters going to Carney to stop Pierre Poilievre from becoming Prime Minister. And now Carney is stabbing his voters in the back to do a deal with the Conservatives. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Or doesn’t know how to use apostrophes.

I’m sleepless, angry and anxious over this - and I know I'm not alone Editor-at-large Alastair Campbell on the reaction to the Mandelson affair, the calls for Starmer to go, and what happens to this government - and the United Kingdom - next

I know anything he says and does is infra dig as far as many are concerned, but I thought this was very good, actually.

I have today been informed that, despite personal assurances to the contrary, the Green party have once again used my image and misrepresented my words on a second leaflet circulated in Gorton and Denton ahead of the by-election. I have now lodged an official complaint with the returning officer.

My dad has come to an arrangement with the public pool in Nottinghamshire where he swims: after everyone else has got out of the pool, he is permitted to do a somersault before he gets changed. “THEY OPEN UP THE STORAGE CUPBOARD AND LET ME GO IN THERE SO I CAN GET A GOOD RUN-UP,” he said. Last week my dad, who will be seventy in August, got his friend Malcolm, who is seventy-three, to film the somersault. “It’s shattered all his illusions,” my mum told me. “Until he saw the film he thought he was creating poetry in motion. But it’s really just an old bloke who can’t run fast doing a sideways flop.”

THREAD.

A selection of notes I have made in my notebook about my dad, and the things he does.

1. The Public Swimming Pool

Elon’s emails to Epstein.
Location: Starbase, Texas

McSweeney is gone. Time for Starmer to try to salvage his government by launching long overdue proper action to address all the flaws in our political system - peerages, patronage, cronyism, party finances, MPs revolving door, appointments, ministerial code, business interests, Leveson, etc etc.

A large stuffed folder of files with the title “Epstein” is seen with what looks, at first glance, like a red page marker sticking out of the bottom. On closer inspection it is the bottom of a Trump red neck tie. French newspapers once again showing the kind of basic journalistic integrity lacking from most US national newspapers - whose collective negligence has helped ensure a man implicated in the world’s most notorious sex trafficking ring gets to remain President. That the orange pedo felon remains in office is a plague on all their houses. Cunts, one and all.

The cartoon that appeared this week on the front page of France’s most influential national newspaper, Le Monde

Brilliant work by the cartoonist, Guffo.

If Epstein is Trending, Why Isn’t +1.7°C? The news cycle has become a hall of mirrors: Epstein, Trumpism, war, outrage, retribution. A thousand scandals designed to keep us anxious, tribal, and tired. We have to hold multiple truths at once: ...

"This is the hard truth I want to land: climate does not care what’s trending. It’s not interested in Jeffrey Epstein, Gaza, or Greenland. There is no algorithmic mercy. Physics is physics, and it is getting more abrupt."
#climatecrisis #ElNino #auspol www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/we-are-...

While we all get swept up in Westminster, take a moment to think how fortunate we are

We've reached a new time now....a time where there absolutely need to be consequences for the wrongdoings committed by those in positions of power and influence....this is NOT Trump's USA....

Morgan McSweeney is on the brink of resigning "on his own terms," according to the Sunday Times www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

We are very lucky with our independent press in Wales.

One - but just one - of the objectives of hostile foreign intelligence services is to cause chaos and associated damage by making us chase our tails. /19.

Reform by-election candidate suggested people who don’t have kids should pay more tax Exclusive: The Reform politician’s suggestion would ‘punish millions of women and strip them of their basic dignity to choose’, Labour’s deputy leader has warned

So as I struggled with miscarriage after miscarriage before having my 🌈 baby, Reform would seriously think I should pay more tax during that agony.

This policy isn’t just a slippery slope to a handmaids tale dystopian future - it’s a deliberate step towards it
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

The new leader of Reform UK Wales lives in Bath, not Wales Martin Shipton The newly appointed leader of Reform UK in Wales hasn’t moved back to his home town in the Valleys, but has bought a £1m house near Bath, we can reveal. Dan Thomas, the former Conservat...

The newly appointed leader of Reform UK in Wales hasn’t moved back to his home town in the Valleys, but has bought a £1m house near Bath, we can reveal ✍️Martin Shipton

A good moment to recall that bitcoins are a, if not the, central plank of Farage's economic policy. It's an order of magnitude madder than Trussonomics: www.cityam.com/farages-cryp...

The truth about the Epstein files’ Brexit connection Links to Putin, Bannon and Thiel deserve further investigation

Any investigation from the UK into the Epstein files should be extended to investigating the relationship between the disgraced financier and Steve Bannon.

What role did Bannon play in our politics? And why?