Marc

This sounds great! Sorry to have missed it... How was it?

The main issue facing any UK government isn't actually the number of people seeking asylum, in the grand scheme, proportionally, we aren't talking about huge figures, especially when compared per capita to countries such as France, but the constant images we see in the media. 1/

When a week feels like years,

Take a mindful breath.
Feel the earth under your feet.
Be where you are.

As you breathe in, say to yourself, I know that I am breathing in.
As you breathe out, say to yourself, I know that I am breathing out.

Repeat as needed. And it will be needed repeatedly.

Long ago, a stone felt a tingle on its skin. Moss.
A new feeling. A green feeling.
The granite spoke of ages in the heat of deep Earth.
The moss sang the taste of sunlight and the softness of salamander bellies.
They named one another. And told those names to no one at all.

Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

- Mary Oliver

Anas al-Sharif among five Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza Al Jazeera staff killed in targeted Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists near al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City.

Israel's massacre of Palestinian journalists has been unconscionable.

And the silence of western journalists has been an utter abomination to our profession. And to humanity.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...

Which is why right now is a great time to join your local anti-raids group, or copwatch group!

RELEASED

We can now confirm that every arrestee from the Lift The Ban sign-holding action has been released. None have been charged.

Hundreds of the arrestees were taken to police cells. Hundreds were processed in pop-up gazebos after queuing for hours.

www.wedonotcomply.org

As peaceful protestors are arrested for holding placards, starving Palestinians are being shot in the street.

This will go down as one of the most shameful moments in British legal history.

No amount of suppression can hide the truth: our government is complicit in genocide.

The obliteration of Gaza.

Photo by @alessiomamo.bsky.social

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen.

By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

"When I came out as trans at 17, my school counsellor was one of the first people I ever told. Her unquestioning support meant everything to me... That was the first time I truly felt accepted by someone..." @uglastefania.bsky.social not only do we still lack conversion therapy ban we have a new s28

North Gaza: Food, Water & Other Distributions Translating Falasteen (Palestine), in collaboration with The Sameer Project, launched a fundraising campaign to support families in Gaza facing severe hardships. Our mission is to provide essential ai...

This seems to be a good route for sending help to Gaza. I've just donated. Please share widely chuffed.org/project/help...

Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...

An open letter has been launched today (27/7/25) for members of the UK academic community (academics and other university staff) to sign, to press the UK Home Office to facilitate safe passage out of Gaza for 40+ students with offers for UK universities.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

One million starved children and no shortage of food

this is one of the worst crimes in human history and the entire global north and all of us in it share the responsibility

The contrast could not be more stark.

In Vietnam, there are myriad little lakes formed from bomb craters—in which lotus flowers grow. That image sticks with me. The Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh taught, no mud, no lotus. Without the mud, the flower cannot grow. What will we grow from the mud we are collectively in?

Ireland has had "sELf iD" for 10 years now and not one single issue that the media, government and anti-trans movement predicted has come to pass. Not one.

If it works in Ireland why would it not work here? No one who opposes it can give a good answer, because the real answer is transphobia

“I tell my students, when you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

— Toni Morrison, interview 2003

23:33 C 484* • www.tandfonline.com 自 へ 凶 PDF @ EPUB & Share Additionally the new NHS gender service was regarded with apprehension and wariness and is clearly suspected of being staffed by transphobes; We found ourselves being guided by who we now suspect was a covert TERF who recommended 'watchful waiting' which unfortunately at the time we did try as we thought we were working with an expert. This approach was incredibly damaging to our child and we are still recovering from that as a family. it's just like hours of people convincing them that they're not trans. One parent also reported that when they asked for confirmation from the new children's gender 'services' that they would not use their child's deadname and microndorthom thou frilod to

Additionally the new NHS gender service was regarded with apprehension and wariness and is clearly suspected of being staffed by transphobes; We found ourselves being guided by who we now suspect was a covert TERF who recommended 'watchful waiting' which unfortunately at the time we did try as we thought we were working with an expert. This approach was incredibly damaging to our child and we are still recovering from that as a family. it's just like hours of people convincing them that they're not trans.

One parent also reported that when they asked for confirmation from the new children's gender 'services' that they would not use their child's deadname and misgender them, they failed to confirm that they would. They actually said the sentence, We may not be gender affirming but we will try and use the right name and pronouns'. It was evident that some parents are already starting to regard the replacement NHS provision with scepticism. The government offer of the new 'gender identity' services for trans kids seems to be regarded by many largely as offering only conversion therapy? (Ashley 2022.)

These sections from the final version of my puberty blocker ban paper. They clearly show CT in the “new” GIDS…

Conflict, competition, stress... within the narrative conceived as carrier bag... may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process. - Ursula K. Le Guin

I differ with all of this... the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative... is conflict...

...We are constructed out of a field that is itself culturally structured: thus we are not just “in” culture; rather, culture is in us, as us, carried and passed on in the narratives we live and tell, which organise our lives” - Gordon Wheeler

...We are distinct, as individuals, from our social and cultural surround; but it is part of the mythology of individualism to hold that that distinctness makes us separate from culture...

“It is culture that sets the limits on the self-stories we can imagine, construct, and live – and culture that continues to color and inform those stories, even at times and places where we were sure we had violated or transcended those limits...

Israel keeps firing on starving people looking for food. We keep supporting them militarily and diplomatically but Palestine Action are the terrorists. And I could face 14 years in the gaol for posting this message.