Marina

😬😬😬

They're all quite small and close together!

The Azeri ones deserve some sympathy too

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

It's a very good piece; Suzanne O’Sullivan's 'The Age of Diagnosis', though bandwagonny in places, makes a strong case that early diagnosis is on balance to be avoided.

A very good way of putting it. Antisemitism is vibes, but it's also *not*

Reeves's Spring Statement was empty, dull - and an utter triumph It was an absolute snooze-fest. More of this please

Finally, the thing we were promised in 2024: boring stable government

inews.co.uk/opinion/reev...

I didn't say you were a Corbynite, reformed or otherwise, just that the strategy of a broad appeal to a concentrated vote was their 2019 strategy. Weird you didn't get that from my one single post 🤷‍♀️

Real 2019 Corbynism has never been tried

Lord give me the confidence of analysts who believe Labour should and could simply jettison provincial C1/C2s.

He's very thin-skinned.

People who become angry in anticipation at how terrible it will be when newspaper columns are mostly written by AI have not been paying attention to how ****ING awful it can be when humans do it. I'm actually looking forward to spending some civilised time with Claude now...

On a cheery pink background, the line: "this Purim I'm going to get so drunk that I can't tell the right-wing antisemites from the left-wing antisemites".

a (Jewish) friend just sent this to me and it has made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Happy Purim everyone!

Hallelujah 🙌🙌🙌

JLM or TLV?

I think people just wanted the other shoe to drop already.

I didn't get that idea from anywhere because that is not the idea I'm talking about? I'm pretty sure the left is not all Brits!

What in your view is the "something"?

That's a principle I endorse, but applying it consistently doesn't answer the question. Using the narrowest possible lens, the Iranian regime killed more civilians on purpose in three weeks than Israel killed by accident in two years. If that's not a crisis of fundamental rights, what is?

I don't understand the British left. Do you guys want the UK to "do something" about Israel, or are you adamantly opposed to military intervention in the Middle East?

the other thing putting the UK in an impossible position, btw? Opposition parties using a dangerous situation to score political points & actively increase tensions at home, at a time when Uk forces are active in the Gulf. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

'Mixed feelings': Iranians in the West optimistic but jittery over US-Israeli strikes.

Iranians across North America and Europe are mostly optimistic about the campaign of US-Israeli missile strikes that killed supreme leader Ali Khameini, though many urge caution about the long-term picture

So currently Bluesky believes Keir Starmer is going to cause World War III as a puppet of Donald Trump, Twitter believes he’s a beta cuck who should have launched missiles ahead of the Americans, and Facebook believes that video of the puppy playing with the tiger is real and not AI.

Iran crisis: Rock steady Starmer shows diplomatic nous This morning we had the two extremes of British politics calling for the UK to do two extremely stupid things. Zack Polanski wants Keir Starmer to denounce Trump as a war criminal. Priti Patel wants Starmer to join in the air strikes on Iran, despite the fact her party hollowed out the armed forces to the point where it would be pointless, and that it would be deemed unlawful by the Attorney General. So Starmer’s position is not weakness or paralysis. It’s an attempt to find a genuine way of de-escalating this war before it does serious economic and human damage – not just in the Middle East but here. Let’s be clear about the first thing Keir Starmer did: he communicated with Merz and Macron to ensure that the response of E3 major military powers in Europe was going to be united: no practical support for the strikes, calls for de-escalation and solidarity with countries and populations coming under Iranian attack. Right now ministers, diplomats, intelligence and military chiefs will be asking: what’s Trump’s endgame? Are there any factions of the regime we can talk to? What are the security and terror risks at home, or against UK bases and expats abroad? With Tories calling for us to join the action, even if it were lawful, the question is: to achieve what? It is far from clear that Trump can achieve regime change. And having planned for a conventional slugging match against the Iranian state, the US/Israel are now seeing instead a policy of Gotterdammerung – the regime could go down in flames, taking the oil and the region with it. Trump is not Bush: Bush wanted to shape the Middle East in America's interest. Trump doesn't care what happens outside the Americas. He's a chaos engine who cannot follow through on any of the geopolitical gambits he has started - whether Venezuela, Greenland or the China tariff war. No British prime minister could sign up to a war without clear evidence that we, ourselves are un…

Because I get all my news from Bluesky, I found several of the facts reported by Mason here surprising (in a good way). Anyway, this is an interesting counterpoint to the prevailing discourse on this network, & perhaps a hint as to why some people are still on X.

x.com/paulmasonnew...

The 'Board of Peace' looks more like Spectre every day.

Almost everyone I spoke to in those buildings - about 170 flats all told - was foreign born (though on the electoral register so not recent refugees or immigrants on temp visas), almost every flat was a family with kids. I shudder to think what they're telling their relatives back home about the UK.

Things have only got worse since. Out of 3 office conversions I visited on Saturday, one stank of piss & litter because of a broken security door, one had a broken lift with no prospect of repair & in the 3rd ppl said kids throw eggs at their windows in summer from the multistorey carpark opposite.

My first flat here was a subdivided Victorian townhouse; the ground floor were a chiropractic clinic, with a flimsy door up to a kitchen & bathroom with beige carpets & a bedroom under the eaves. Pigeons flying in one side & car stereos blaring from the traffic light on the other. And that was 2003!

(This may be a hot take but renter's rights & leasehold reform, as well as getting mgmt companies under control, are an underdiscussed barrier to inward migration, especially of younger educated workers. If I hadn't been married to a Briton, the state of affordable flats would have sent me home.)

Interesting thread below.

Personally I would worry less about making the internal argument for migration & a bit more about making the UK attractive for inward migration in the first place. It's easier to flex visa approvals than to make workers appear out of thin air.