Peoples Republic of Leith

Palestine Action protesters not guilty of defence firm burglary The group are cleared of aggravated burglary over the alleged raid at an Elbit Systems warehouse.

Pleased to see the jury make this decision.

We need to have eyes wide open this is exactly why the Government wants to abolish juries.

People protesting against a genocide are not the criminals here - it's the politicians who continue to provide cover.

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

what they, and their families were put through was inhumane. the UK needs to learn from this.

Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.

Don’t be so hard on yourself: native English speakers spend years learning to craft proper prose. It’s a distinct skill from conversational fluency.

Not sure it has a specific name, but it’s sort of the colloquial v. modern standard dichotomy as applied to English…

Can confirm, from having grown up and lived in the US through the '90s, that food transmitted GI illness was routine.

My father had an anecdote from the '40s/'50s about the entire junior doctors staff at St Luke's Hospital (NYC) falling ill because of kitchen hygiene in the staff canteen.

pretty sure "Buy Jello Biafra's Car" was a Camper Van Beethoven b-side

Great turn out at @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social rally at the Scottish Parliament!

Tawny owl

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

He seemed a bit better over the last couple of seasons, and he was (audibly) more circumspect when they did topics he knew nothing about (e.g. phenomenology and the science-y stuff).

My PhD supervisor used to talk about top-down fears of 'mass politics'. After listening to that episode, I _finally_ got it ...

Bragg was much more circumspect when he was obviously out-of-his depth -- e.g. 'Phenomenology' and the more science-y topics -- and also over the last couple of seasons.

Bragg did indeed interrupt and talk over his guests (especially women), probably when IOT was doing topics he thought he knew something about.

I started regular listening to Melvyn Bragg and IOT back episodes after June 2016, when I couldn't bear BBC news anymore.

On the subject of Melvyn Bragg, I think of this Private Eye cartoon more frequently than I care to admit, when I’m struggling to raise the energy for a lecture or graduate supervision

I thought the episode you did on The Chartists was exemplary ..

spanish people and especially basque people do NOT play about Palestine

Post-'67 'two state' solutions have never really been plausible, for the same reason(s) that the '47 partition plan was never going to work.

Neither side can be expected to relinquish land, voluntarily, in the service of a notional political settlement.

And you've mentioned only one of the sorts of diatribe I spotted during a brief scroll ..

.. as others have noted, the Dems/Harris-backers went from saying that Arab-American/Muslim-American votes didn't really matter -- to blaming them for November 2024.

I just put 'Dearborn' into BSky, and noted multiple types of aggro ...

"British politics is stuck in a post-Brexit doom loop, addicted to spectacle politics and unable to engage with its actual problems"

As good an interpretation of the current moment as anything else I've seen.

🤦

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Here's what a no go zone in England *really* looks like.

Image

Firefighters are battling a large blaze on Edinburgh’s Arthur’s Seat, working through thick smoke as the fire spreads downhill.

The public is urged to avoid the area.

The fire has been burning for over two hours.

#Edinburgh #ArthursSeat

Interventions | Caring for Cats in Cairo: Urban Grammars of Compassion

By Amira Mittermaier

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/cari...

Jeffrey C Mays skeet of his recent article "Mayoral Candidates Navigate."

A particularly shoddy attempt at a 'hit piece' against Mamdani.

The NYT continues to astonish and appall ...

But the issues of planning reform and land ownership/control are likely too much for a structurally impoverished HMG to address ...

‘No shops, no schools’: homes in England built without basic amenities Thousands of properties going up without access to playgrounds, community infrastructure and even doctors

"Thousands of properties going up without access to playgrounds, community infrastructure and even doctors."

The underlying problem with both Abundance and the Starmer government's 'get Britain building': what actually gets built?

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Plaque at Jedburgh Abbey in Scotland: "Great Drain: River water was channelled along here to flush away waste from kitchen and toilets. Later in the abbey's history, the water powered the abbey mill and this channel served as a mill-lade up until 1950."

Saw this plaque yesterday at Jedburgh Abbey (in Scotland), and thought of you folks @neorsd.org ..