neilfergusson.bsky.social

The view from the International Space Station as an aurora meets the sunrise in space.

Five reasons why the allies won WW2.

With James Holland (shown on the occasion when we were mobbed by pigs)

Listen to the podcast right here:

🎧: podfollow.com/dan-snows-hi...

Former soldier + TV personality Ant Middleton (who wants to run for Mayor of London - was hoping to go for the Reform nomination) wants to ban Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, as well as Sadiq Khan, and Boris, Churchill and King Charles III from government roles

Farage’s firestarter politics A year after riots swept Britain, Reform’s leader and his supporters are warning of future unrest unless their policies are followed. The message is a threat wrapped in respectability

Four right-wing voices – Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Allison Pearson and Matt Goodwin – suggest the only way to prevent rioting is to give those taking to the streets what they want.

All four called on the government to ban or crack down on the dramatically less violent Gaza protests or XR.

Five survivors of Rotherham grooming gangs say they were also raped by police officers Three former South Yorkshire police officers arrested in investigation into claims by the women, as young as 12 at the time

God, the number of people who were willing to believe that the South Yorkshire police were too woke to prosecute sexual abuse cases, when in fact the police force was itself an instrument of patriarchal sexual violence. It’s like a case study in the worst excesses of the British press.

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know…” William Wilberforce, English politician, philanthropist, led movement to abolish slave trade, died #OTD 1833. Portrait by John Rising, 1790. Wilberforce House Museum

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know…”
William Wilberforce, English Member of Parliament, philanthropist, powerful advocate for the abolishment of the slave trade, died #OTD 1833.
Portrait by John Rising, 1790.
Wilberforce House Museum, Hull

UK will recognise Palestinian state in September unless Israel agrees to Gaza ceasefire and other conditions - live updates Starmer says the UK will take the step at a UN meeting unless Israel makes

Making it contingent a ceasefire is bizarre: why would Palestinian statehood be less valid just because Israel wasn’t in the process of killing Palestinians?

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

Today on #BetwixtTheSheets I am talking to the utterly spectacular @estelleprnq.bsky.social about the Hapsburg dynasty, a family who were definitely swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Take Big Money Out of Our Politics British politics is awash with money from super rich donors. In 2023, two-thirds of all private donations came from just 19 people. These so-called ‘mega donors’ enjoy privileged access to political p...

There’s a HUGE Elon Musk shaped hole in the Government’s new plans to improve our elections: shady billionaires like Musk can still donate massive amounts of money with no cap: effectively buying our democracy. Add your name to call for a cap on donations today: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ta...

Not for the first time I am begging angry people to put the phone down, walk through actual streets, go to actual pubs, stand on the touch line at local sports clubs, browse Saturday markets, chat with ramblers on footpaths and rediscover beauty & contentedness.

EU ‘too little, too late’ on Gaza, NGOs tell von der Leyen Humanitarian groups are urging the EU to impose sanctions on Israel.

"Tweets don’t feed people."

EU pleas for aid to enter Gaza as Palestinians starve under Israel’s blockade count for little without sanctions, humanitarian organizations say.

ppl rightly dunking on this but 'downwardly mobile elite' feels almost clarifying as a term to describe a particular feeling of being sold a false bill of goods—of being highly ambitious, capable, productive, engaged, and wanting a better society & the frustration of having all of that undermined

In Gaza, almost every IDF platoon keeps a human shield, a sub-army of Palestinian slaves | Opinion ***

To start with the second question, "Is Israel committing war crimes?" the answer is an unequivocal "yes."

And the only sources you need are the Israeli press:

An unbearably sad statement from the Editorial Committee (SDJ) of the AFP news agency, please read:

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.
AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip… /1

for the price of the second series of andor, you could fund all of bbc radio 4 for three years

I think @robertshrimsley.bsky.social is much too kind to Jeremy Hunt here. In time, Hunt will come to be reviled as second worst chancellor in modern times after Kwarteng. In 1997, faced with similar circumstances, Ken Clarke put the national interest first. Hunt salted the earth. Shame on him

🆕 YouTube Podcast:

The Real King Arthur.

What do we know about the mythical saviour of the British?

Please watch here:

youtu.be/Wd7r_OMCcr8?...

Creative work in general pays far less than people think it does, especially relative to the notability one can have. The correlation between "fame" and "income" is rather shaky, especially the further down you go on the fame power curve. Lots of "world famous" creators are broke as hell.

This is incredible. Meanwhile some American commentators, largely based on a crude translation of ubermensch, thought Superman was a fascist

I come back to this quote because i think it sums up more than anything else how life has become so joyless for people and why they're willing to roll the dice "“I now meal prep at home so I know I have enough food each week- I can’t ever just say I fancy fish and chips one night as a treat”

The boss comes to our History Hit TV channel

‘The Romantics and Us’ with Simon Schama

📺: access.historyhit.com/the-romantic...

Many contributory factors to why Elon Musk's AI tool is so racist + antisemitic.
- His platform is awash with antisemitism & racism.
- He changed the rules of the platform to allow more racism & the rules of the AI to enable racism
- He radicalised himself into believing it woke to impede racism

‘People can change their minds’: the evolutionary biologi... Ella Al-Shamahi is the erudite presenter of a breathtaking new series about our 300,000-year history. But her own evolution story isn’t short of drama ei...

‘People can change their minds’ A headline that sounds like hope… but a great story too.

observer.co.uk/news/science...

‘People can change their minds’: the evolutionary biologi... Ella Al-Shamahi is the erudite presenter of a breathtaking new series about our 300,000-year history. But her own evolution story isn’t short of drama ei...

Brave and fascinating article about my friend and colleague @ellaalshamahi.bsky.social

Creationist to evolutionary biologist.

observer.co.uk/news/science...

This feels like the other half of the probate issue I posted about yesterday. If you're just a little person and you make a mistake the system sees you as an easy target and comes after you hard. But tackling big fraudsters is too difficult so no-one bothers, across multiple arms of the state

YouTube video by UnHerd Is civil war coming to Britain? David Betz & Mary Harrington

FYI: The Right is talking about civil war.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=okLu...

Marc le Dork

France, Morbihan, Parish and Civil Registration, 1536-1894

Tell me your company has no Brits without telling me

Da Vinci’s notebook. The Codex Atlanticus

Stolen by Napoleon.

He justified it by claiming that “all men of genius ... are French, whatever the country which has given them birth."

Good haul for the month:

2x Broadcast Awards
1x Emmy

Happy 10th Birthday, historyhit.com