James Meek

Martha’s rule may have saved 400 lives so far in England, figures show Exclusive: System brought in after death of 13-year-old is helping ‘transform culture’ of NHS, says patient safety director

www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

I think this is about the temperature but honestly it works for decades as well

Hassan Ayman Herzallah | Eight Kilos of Gas For months, I had watched our pile of firewood shrink. We didn’t burn it to keep warm but reserved it for cooking....

‘My father and I went to hand in our empty cylinder and returned with eight kilos of cooking gas. Other men were carrying cylinders home with children walking beside them as if they were guarding treasure.’

Hassan Ayman Herzallah in Gaza, new on the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Yes. I was thinking though more of the local party volunteers knocking on people’s doors, or being stopped in the street, and the resulting signal that eventually reaches Cabinet members via local MPs. ‘Your data may say the enemy is the Greens, but what my guys are hearing on the doorstep is…’

This is all so true. And yet it does seem strange that something which is so clear and obvious to everyone on this site is seemingly invisible to the Labour leadership. Is it possible that the diminished, older ranks of Labour’s local canvassers are getting a distorted signal from a smaller group?

It's not to be snobbish or to denigrate American food in general to say that a lot of people in small town America seem to have no idea how badly the big chains are ripping them off.

In a way more to the point than the proximity of Ur was that there wouldn't be a single small town those marines had gone through that wouldn't in peacetime have had a chicken and rice joint serving better food than any Applebees. There are no food deserts in the Iraqi desert.

Thanks for that, which I hadn't seen. I was on a pointless panel after the invasion and an American stood up and attacked the Guardian for its belittling of Sergeant Sprague, not realising I was the one who wrote the story.

With the Marines invading Iraq in 2003 I mentioned to one that we were close to the supposed site of the garden of Eden, to which he responded, very gravely, that none of us would be able to go there, because the Lord had placed an angel with a fiery sword on guard to stop people going in

A man who can only come close to honouring one of the ten commandments and that if you assume his life in itself doesn't constitute dishonour to his father and mother

Mr President? We keep shooting this Palestinian immigrant, and no matter how many times we kill him, he keeps getting up and telling the front desk he's back and has some questions for you.

Is there something in Evangelical bible school about not actually being allowed to read the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? 'Don't worry, you only get tested on Revelations'?

The war of theocracies

“We thought we were living in a politically neutral slave state.”

Thank you

‘A woman screams from a high balcony: “Help me! I’m freezing to death!”’ – novelist James Meek returns to Kyiv Stepping off the night train, full of memories of his life there three decades ago, the writer finds a changed city fighting for survival

On being in Kyiv in 1991, and now

Remember when parties who lost elections used to be like "This is a strong message from the electorate and we will listen and learn and change" rather than "Fuck everyone who didn't vote for us, you're all extremists trying to destroy Britain"

I do feel like our national responsibility to evacuate UK citizens in the Middle East who went there on purpose to avoid paying UK tax is fairly limited.

Opinion | Ukraine Has Passed a Point of No Return

Ukraine Has Passed a Point of No Return www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/o...

Community meme: I CAN EXCUSE FASCISM. BUTI DRAW THE LINE AT MERCANTILISM.

The Supreme Court:

White museumgoers’ dismay at the restoration of ancient sculpture’s true colours

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Very much looking forward to this - do come along

Wow.

'I wouldn't touch a Jewish woman': Meet the Reform team in Gorton and Denton Members of Reform's campaign team shared racist content online and aligned themselves with far-right groups

The caliber of person that Goodwin has campaigning for him in Denton and Gorton, via @manchestermill.bsky.social -

'I wouldn't touch a Jewish woman': Meet the Reform team in Gorton and Denton share.google/SJZ1GeUkW524...

Kyiv combined heating and power plant stops again after new Russian strike, district head proposes alternatives Kyiv’s combined heating and power plant 6 in the Troieshchyna neighbourhood stopped again after another Russian strike on 12 February.

Finally someone in Kyiv talking sense about the mad cycle of rebuilding mega plants the Russians are just going to destroy again

James Meek · Far-Right Wellness Product: Romania’s Far Right Călin Georgescu’s entire political programme, in so far as he has one, is based on the need to heal Romania by...

‘Georgescu’s political programme is based on the need to heal Romania by creating a synthetic medieval country, agrarian, artisanal, patriarchal, self-sufficient in organic food, purged of chemicals, purged of modernity, purged of everything and everyone he dislikes.’

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Issue 48.03 is now online, featuring:

Seamus Perry on pluralism and poetry
James Wolcott on John Updike
@jamesmeek.bsky.social on the Romanian right
Claire Hall on Archimedes
John Gallagher on early modern news
@lalehkhalili.bsky.social on the US Special Forces

Read online at lrb.co.uk

Re-upping this for the Monday crowd... I think my favourite, most revealing detail is that the guy seems to not realise he's in trouble because London Centric's reporting didn't hit anything like his view counts, so therefore it can't really matter.

Sex and snacks, but no seat at the table: the role of women in Epstein’s sordid men’s club Files reveal a world of flattery and fratboy tones, where rich men are cultivated and women provide services

The best Epstein account I’ve read so far: about the place of the women in those men’s world