Dr. Chris A Williams, FRHS

The German parliament .... dedicated its annual Holocaust commemorations for the first time to people killed for their sexual or gender identity, and acknowledged decades of post-war persecution. Berlin (AFP), 27/01/2023. france24.com/en/live-news/2…

@ejhchess @flying_rodent I strongly suspect that she wants Mad Mel's slot when Mel is no longer writing it, and has consciously bent her career and output to that end for many year now.

@flying_rodent Reminds me of Nick Cohen not just in the sense of her political direction but in having made herself deliberately, belligerently a most unpleasant, one-tone, shouting person. Perhaps not so unusual among people who write for a living but then again what does that tell us.

I have listened to many hours more of Lynskey and Dunt than I would’ve wanted to, but their whole thing is that they are well-meaning dolts incapable of understanding the world around them. It is IMO dismaying to see they too are now unacceptable.

@AllyFogg @Streettough Lots of builders -- like lots of people in all works of life -- have mental health problems. Anyone who doesn't know that probably doesn't know any builders.

@Streettough Literally had a roofer pack it all in and fuck off out of the country, mid-job, a couple of years ago.

I’ve had tradesman simply not turn up because the weather is a bit nice out mate. Are roofers immune to mental health issues or having personal stuff going on?

@yorksranter We also need the government to stop trying to create that very state, though.

Yes. Can we please stop behaving as if we were in a sinister garrison state dominated by the Viz magazine Bottom Inspectors?

At the last election, Labour’s candidate for North Durham, Luke Akehurst, promoted conspiracy theories claiming that IDF atrocities were faked by Palestinian crisis actors. Why did Hope Not Hate give Akehurst a free pass?

This is very disturbing from @GoodLawProject Henderson was the Lead Commissioner overseeing the EHRC's investigation into the Corbyn-era Labour Party. That report was filled with the most basic, head-slapping factual errors, never mind it's dubious legal interpretations. One example: the Labour Party was found collectively guilty of harassment for Facebook comments made by a Councillor Pam Bromley, because she was an "agent" of the Party. Bromley - with good reason - has vehemently denied her comments were antisemitic. But most importantly she wasn't an agent at the time the comments were made, because she had been suspended. The report noted the date of her suspension, the dates of her comments, but didn't put two and two together. To reiterate: the Party was found guilty because of the conduct of an agent of the Party, WHO WASN'T AN AGENT OF THE PARTY. Just astonishingly poor, slapdash stuff. I interviewed Henderson in 2020 following that report. I was not impressed. If this was South Africa, where the general public can show locus standi in legal reviews, me and my colleagues would have challenged the EHRC's findings and overturned it - just as we did with the Seriti Commission in South Africa, creating ground-breaking Commonwealth jurisprudence.

If there were a clip to highlight the disfunctionality of parliament it’s a working class woman proposing MPs shouldn’t be allowed to drink subsidised booze on the job followed by said MPs jeering her and the PM completely avoiding the question. Clear the lot out.

@AllyFogg @Botticelliwoman I've signed up a lot of paper candidates (?50?) and I've always been honest about their chances of victory -- for most, non-zero, for a few, proper zero. It must have been very tricky for London Greens to go from 3 target candidates to 60, though.

@Botticelliwoman 💯

Obviously it couldn’t/shouldn’t be retrospective, but in future I agree with this. Parties should be obliged to check candidates are eligible (and appropriate) to serve as councillors before they stand as councillors. Not going to make excuses when it’s us.

1st of a selection of documents to be uploaded tonight. Here @joshsimonsmp (Labour Together) emails Morgan McSweeney & Paul Ovenden, copying in Tom Harper (APCO) Worldwide. Harper led investigation into me, my family, colleagues & journalists including @Gabriel_Pogrund

They were holding UK citizens (who tried to stop evictions and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank) at gunpoint 20 years ago. What's new is the videos and the glee. This is why I've changed my attitude towards the state of Israel.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released a video showing detained participants of the intercepted Gaza-bound flotilla being bound and dragged in Israel's Ashdod Port, writing, "That's how we welcome the terror supporters. Welcome to Israel." Read more here: haaretz.com/israel-news/is…

1/4.🧵 3 killed in San Diego. A targeted hate crime with Nazi symbols and anti-Islam messaging on the weapons. Security guard Amin Abdullah, father of eight, died protecting the children inside. We checked every major UK homepage. Not one led with it. Most ignored it entirely.

@WordMercenary Smart move by the Guardian TBH.

Josh "Labour Together" Simons, the man whose job was to crush and eradicate the left wing from the Labour party being offered a job as head of policy by Andy Burnham should tell you everything you need to know.

Our fleet is currently being intercepted by IOF forces. Every step of the way, people have asked us why we keep sailing, knowing that we will be stopped. The question is not why we continue. The question is why israel is not stopped. We reject the normalization of genocide. We reject the normalization of siege and starvation. We reject the normalization of piracy against peaceful civilians. ACT NOW - Contact your governments at gsumud.link/demand - Watch the livestream gsumud.link/live - Follow the boat tracker gsumud.link/tracker Links in bio!

Where is the COBRA meeting? This is a direct threat towards a minority community cheered on by hundreds. Where is the wall to wall media coverage condemning this hate speech?

@natalieben This is the classic imperial MO -- force an unequal treaty, then every time the colonised people revolt, use that as an excuse to establish full direct control.

No, the Greenland issue has not gone away. "The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. ... the American demands would tie their hands for generations" nytimes.com/2026/05/18/wor…

@danielgoyal I'd add 'properly fund social care and PIP' to that list, but I agree with this position: I'm strongly in favour of it in principle, but if we legalise it in Austerity Britain, we'll go the way of Canada and Belgium.

Fund palliative care properly, give all healthcare staff the right training, and educate the public about their options…then let’s talk about assisted dying.

"the BBC was captured by the trans extremists" is language we have heard before, in various forms like "the Jews run the media", "Britain has fallen" and what you will.

And it’s the whole reactionary politics thing: racists won’t tolerate Sensible Labour, nor will the Mail and the Sun, nor the crank terfs or the wacko war partisans. Every form of right wing reactionary these clowns thought they could impress absolutely *fucking despises them*.

There's a move in the establishment intelligentsia to persuade us that Thatcher's project is a standard episode of Conservative statecraft. If we buy that we'll be stuck in this doom loop forever, with increasing doses of fascism. We have to replace 1979 with a new model.