Stephen Baker

Mo Salah is asking the right questions

Protest outside Barclays Bank, Belfast, 09.08.25. With guest speaker Dr. Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory. Photo by Stuart Bailie.

Protest outside Barclays Bank, Belfast, 09.08.25. With guest speaker Dr. Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory. Photo by Stuart Bailie.

Protest outside Barclays Bank, Belfast, 09.08.25. With guest speaker Dr. Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory. Photo by Stuart Bailie.

Protest outside Barclays Bank, Belfast, 09.08.25. With guest speaker Dr. Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory. Photo by Stuart Bailie.

Protest outside Barclays Bank, Belfast, 09.08.25. With guest speaker Dr. Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory. Photos by Stuart Bailie.

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Some thoughts on the news that 48% of those arrested over Belfast race riots had been reported to police for domestic violence. With McGr*g*r losing his appeal & definitively found to be a rapist in a court of law it is important we call out the hypocrisy at the heart of the far right movement.

Cover of An Clogán, a new socialist, republican magazine

Pic of Martina Anderson, Robbie McVeigh and me

Contributors to An Clogán. There are many!

Pic with the panel, some of the An Clogán lads and some of the brilliant Féile an Phobail team.

Great launch of An Clogán, a new socialist republican magazine. So important to be able to shape a vision of a new Republic together.

Loved the synergies between Martina’s and my essays. Different backgrounds, but we both want a just, equal & regenerative Republic, bringing power closer to people.

Reform UK are doing the thinking for Labour. In which case, it’s always worth recalling the words of Stuart Hall.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has told the BBC how she stood up in an exam and accused a fellow pupil of cheating, leading to him being expelled from school… she didn’t even get praised for it!

Big Annie Wilkes energy here.

Almost half NI race rioters reported for domestic abuse The figures for Northern Ireland – 48% - were higher than the UK average (41%).

There were 48 people arrested in relation to the disorder, of which 23 had been reported for domestic abuse. The figures for Northern Ireland – 48% - were higher than the UK average (41%). www.thedetail.tv/articles/alm...

I've written a story about Mothers Against Genocide and their new recording, 'A Mother's Heart'. Inspiring people, @mothersagainstg.bsky.social. Read here: www.digwithit.com?p=3679

I want to be fair about this. I think this trailer was so jarring and astonishing because it followed immediately on from a report from France that explicitly linked the fires to climate change.

As French Prime Minister François Bayrou says a huge, deadly wildfire sweeping through the south of France is a "catastrophe on an unprecedented scale" the BBC Newsnight offers this trailer for tonight’s show.

“You’ve let yourself down. You’ve let your family down…

…but, on the other hand, your university is considering your application for promotion very seriously now.”

Wow. I just received an email from an academic asking if I’d interview them in order to help them become famous. Not to bring their work to wider public attention, or to highlight issues of public interest they’ve discovered. But to make them rich and get them noticed. Has all shame now just died?

Story in the Irish News about research into Great Irish Famine

"With the weakest in society succumbing to disease and starvation, this left only the healthiest to survive into adulthood. They grew up to be significantly taller than average."

Six links to other news at the foot of this report.

this is widely thought to be because on the current trajectory no one believes there will be any people, culture, or environments to measure in 2029

Academics are the happiest people on social media. Always delighted, humbled, proud, chuffed etc. Always attending to wonderful seminars or terrific panels. Always publishing new papers etc.

Exeter, Galway, Queen’s, Birmingham, Warwick, Kent, and UKRI’s KTN…

If anyone wondered where the same obsession with ‘modernising’ the crest, speaking in abstract nouns, and questionable colour schemes for these originated:

Great discussion this monring. Exploring what a just, sustainable, rights-based new Ireland could look like. And doing that together, regardless of background.

VIEWS: Catherine Pollock, Claire Mitchell, Aoife Clements, Professor Colin Harvey and Andrée Murphy

‘If challenging stereotypes and giving rise to fresh opinions are key components of Féile debates then we got off to a positive start on Thursday.’
@clairemitchell.bsky.social
@andreemurphy.bsky.social

belfastmedia.com/first-feile-...

Starmer to Israel:

The Daily Mail lead with a photo of triumphant Irish and Ghanaian heritage Lioness players + another anti-immigration story. What hypocritical graceless fuckwits.

From a distance, here in Co Down, the open ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012 felt to me like a moving eulogy.

3 parties are competing for the racist vote.
If we don’t show that we outnumber them, our country is going to be won by them.

& all they want power for is to continue enriching the rich & blaming the poor while the world burns.

Scotland's papers: Trump jets in to Scotland for 'tee party'

“All over people changing their votes
Along with their overcoats
If Adolf Hitler flew in today
They'd send a limousine anyway”

The Clash

I wish Zak Polanski, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana well. They have an uphill struggle ahead of them in England. They face a vicious, cynical political and media class, determined to demoralise and discombobulate the electorate.

‘Why We Need a Coordinated Media Revolution’

Alternative media platforms cannot thrive in a vacuum and policy reforms will not succeed without grassroots pressure, argues Tom Hardy
bylinetimes.com/2025/07/22/w...

As Allison Pearson calls for a military coup- Reggie Perrin & the Forces of Anarchy From Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, Communist union leaders t... From the Rise & Fall of Reginald Perrin. Written by David Nobbs The full list was:  ‘wreckers of law and order. Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union…

far right Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has called for a military coup. Reginald Perrin got their first
wp.me/p15p2Q-bjq

Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a one-and-a-half-year-old child in Gaza City, Gaza, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade. His mother cradles his almost lifeless body which is skeletal. Photograph credit to Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini for Anadolu via Getty Images

Photo of the Day

Widely shared but rarely credited to the photographer, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini.

Gaza is the most dangerous place that has ever existed for journalists. But they work on, documenting a genocide for a world desperately trying to look away.

May their images haunt us forever.

“Warwick is distinctive because it’s real.” Using university funds to pay for an advertorial in Vogue Singapore where an executive is featured in a fashion photoshoot and discusses his legacy is possibly one of the most tone-deaf moves I’ve ever seen in UKHE and the bar was already incredibly high.