Ian Hunt

Might be a long wait for a Sunday night version of The Inheritors, the book WG thought much better. I am holding out for it, having happened to have read it recently (overcoming decades of reluctance).

Open University U-Turns on ‘Ancient Palestine’ Ban In December, the Open University told UK Lawyers for Israel it would stop using the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in teaching materials. Following a public outcry, the university now says the term isn't ac...

Important, detailed coverage of commitments made by the OU to UKLFI regarding the use of the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in learning materials. Still lots of ambiguities & no public retraction, defence of the term or internal investigation, but some softening perhaps.🤔

novaramedia.com/2026/03/03/o...

I have a bad conscience about this one. He's an old pal and there are two (or two and a half) novels by him I need to read first. (But then I also have a research tbr pile whose fortunes I guard jealously.)

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi | The dry and the wet burn together ‘The dry and the wet burn together’ is a Persian expression invoked when a fire spreads without discrimination. Once...

“If Trump’s intention was to remove Khamenei from the political landscape, he may instead have fixed him in it, recast in the eyes of his devotees as a figure of sacrifice rather than failure.”

Among the bookshops I'd like to visit again, Five Leaves in Nottingham. The associated publisher issues these books too, as I start moving towards a sustained read-through of #DHLawrence #UKbookshops #Nottingham

We are pleased to join 85 organisations in writing to the Prime Minister calling on him to increase climate finance and to fairly tax the wealthiest and largest polluters in our society to pay for climate action at home and overseas.

Read the letter: can-uk.org/wp-content/u...

#climatefinance

A film still showing a close up of feet standing embedded in the dry earth of crop rows where small seedlings are springing forth into the bright sunlight.

“I was conscious of the ease with which renderings of the landscape can so easily become bucolic or romanticised – the trope of the simple rural ways of living that obscures the continual displacement and expropriation of land in the interests of capital.”

Wekend voting, how interesting! It looks like a great idea. #democracy

5 petalled small whiteflowers growing from small rosettes of divided leaves

Stag's-horn Saxifrage. It's the time when small white flowers are found aplenty in rough urban ground. These are edge of car park / station platform, Chatham. Late or early for #wildflowerhour #kentwildlife #botany

It is a gap. I found myself looking up the Recall of MPs legislation and guidelines, optimistically, but it won't stretch to this particularly ugly situation.

"Let us administer the poison so that Reform doesn't get to" is morally wrong, politically disastrous, and totally ineffective.

In a world of political football where 'political courage' only means beating up the vulnerable - never caring for them - every minority group is fair game.

Cover of The Cry of Winnie Mandela (Ayebia Clarke) by Njabulo Ndeble -- library copy -- the book is still in print from the publisher

February #reading
Emily Gee: Hostel, House and Chambers: accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian working woman, 2025
Dorothy Richardson: Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, 1915-17
Ousmane Sembène: The Money-Order with White Genesis, 1965
Njabulo Ndebele: The Cry of Winnie Mandela, 2003

February #reading
Emily Gee: Hostel, House and Chambers: accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian working woman, 2025
Dorothy Richardson: Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, 1915-17
Ousmane Sembène: The Money-Order with White Genesis, 1965
Njabulo Ndebele: The Cry of Winnie Mandela, 2003

This paragraph appears, slightly altered and with additions, in The Cry of Winnie Mandela (for the librarian: pp 85-6 in the Ayebia Clarke edition, 2003).

Is Conflict in the Horn of Africa Unavoidable? Ideas matter. And it's high time key players in the Horn (politicians, academics, journalists, analysts, and military strategists) chose to escape the pro-war shackles of geography and history.

Governments in the Horn must be careful not to play host to conflicts arising from rivalries on the other side of the Red Sea.

open.substack.com/pub/kenopalo...

It is clear now that the Omani foreign minister's sudden media blitz last night was an attempt to shame the United States by putting into the public record how readily Iran was prepared to reach a deal.

James Butler | Just Voting In her victory speech, Hannah Spencer argued that working people were being ‘bled dry’ in a country that works to...

‘All traditional parties were beaten by two insurgents taking 70 per cent of the vote. A wide field of plausible competitors under first past the post will make the next general election difficult to predict. ’

@piercepenniless.bsky.social on the Greens’ victory.

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

Yes! really grateful to all who contributed in different ways, the conversations, the organising, the face-to-face level of political life and change.

I couldn't be there on Thursday - voting day - but was knocking on doors on Wednesday, and a couple of days the previous week: feeling the passion for change from Hannah, from all the volunteers, and many of the residents, really made "Hope feel normal again"!
Let's turn the country Green!

thanks for making the trip up. This is a real change of scale for GPEW and how we campaign.

Reform on 13% of the registered vote seems about right and this is with all the major media and parties painting them as THE alternative

As always, far-right support is limited and its mainstreaming comes from the mainstream elite who try to use it as a distraction from their failures

Some guy

Some guy losingly looking at Hannah like a loser

Take it all in my friends. White nationalists woke up sad today.

Gorton and Denton shows the need for electoral reform Abolish dodgy bar charts - multi-party politics is here

Dodgy bar charts and dubious claims about polling are an inevitable consequence of using first-past-the-post in a multi-party country: abolishwestminster.substack.com/p/gorton-and... - me on Gorton and Denton controversies.

I also find dunnock song cheerful. Their dancing/pecking courtship and mating behaviour is remarkable too.

From my station at the washing up: a pair of stock doves visited the trees today, a fairly rare sight in the inner suburbs. Tend to see them in the spring when they are prospecting for holes in trees. 320,000 breeding territories says RSPB; more than half the European population. #UKbirds

Net zero will transform Britain’s economy – our map reveals the most vulnerable places The most vulnerable places are, overwhelmingly, the same places that suffered industrial decline in the 1980s.

Fascinating study identifying 32 communities that will need the most support in the transition to net zero.

#NetZero #UKEconomy

theconversation.com/net-zero-wil...

River strategy floats relocation of industry and summer transport What Medway’s new river plan signals about waterfront priorities and future trade-offs

A new River Medway Strategy has been signed off, and beneath the agreeable language, it is doing something more interesting. It starts sorting the river into different futures and quietly sets up some difficult choices about space, access and what belongs where.

It's not the job of the health service to discipline labour but Streeting & his friends at Palantir for whom the disgraced Lord Mandelson was a paid lobbyist want to use our confidential medical data to do precisely that.

Only the Greens have promised to kick Palantir out of our public services.

We’re now at the point where an Indian citizen living in the UK can’t travel to our conference in Paris because of visa restrictions.

Only just started reading the novels. Very good! Politically sharp, funny, and stylistically resourceful. I have a bad conscience about the films which i keep missing when they are on at BFI. (dont generally watch film on small screen. )