Just Tom... 🐁

AvPD (according to my therapist), Antifa, Lefty Anarchist, radically Green, and still somehow a believer in the essential goodness of mankind. Baritone and tenor sax, #music, #reading and occasional #blog writing. GM8YUG. A lover of high latitudes, ice and snow. Gardener, woodworker and owned by two affectionate cats. Still trying to make sense of an increasingly senseless world.

Music: An eclectic mix of all sorts but primarily Classical (esp. J S Bach.)
Country: An independent Scottish Republic
Pronouns: All of us together
Website: www.tompearce.co.uk/wp

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Last Notes

2026-05-25 21:05:56 UTC

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Indeed it is. I don't fully understand the shift to the right by the electorate. Some of it is plain disillusionment with the establishment parties (and who can blame them) and I think that some is down to a lack of critical thinking that means that the ridiculous claims of Reform and the far right are not critically evaluated by voters. Then there's the print media ownership and what I see as a bias in the BBC. It scares the living daylights out of me as an avowed lefties 😢
@npub1n5t…hrcm

2026-04-12 16:16:09 UTC

So let me see if I have this right:
The Strait of Hormuz is open to all shipping.
The US unilaterally starts a war against Iran
Iran closes the strait, charging those vessels it permits transit.
Negotiations to reopen the Strait fail at the first hurdle (Why would you let Vance negotiate anyway?).
The US will blockade the Strait now and intercept and charge vessels that have transited said Strait.
No - that can't be right...

2026-04-11 20:05:11 UTC

Even more relevant today than when the words were written by Franklin D. Roosevelt for his second inaugural address. I can't imagine such sentiments from the mind of Donald Trump...
<Edited> Not, as I had misremembered, on the walls of the Scottish Parliament building...
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/387/866/909/233/248/original/87bbe769a3043fa2.jpg

2026-03-27 06:24:22 UTC

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Heinberg, and Meadows et al have been the mainstay of my life, together, perhaps with Joseph Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies where he develops the argument that diminishing returns with increased complexity eventually make the cost of maintaining that complexity too much and the society regresses to a simpler form. I believe we are approaching that point globally.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/299/704/710/248/781/original/224b3e4efb20395f.jpg

2026-03-22 10:56:20 UTC

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I see Cameron lumping together Reform UK and the Greens as populist against whom the centre must marshal their forces. I, as a supporter of much needed radical Green politics, find that incredibly offensive, the more so because it comes from the unrepentant architect of Brexit.

2026-03-22 07:52:41 UTC

A few weeks ago Yuri, my little calico friend, developed a rapidly spreading black patch on her face, losing the hair in the process. The vet and I both thought it was an aggressive melanoma. Biopsy showed only a severe dermatitis and on steroids (fun and games, I keep finding the ones I thought she had swallowed spat out when I'm not looking) she looks much better. Tailing off the steroids now, so an end to the fights is in sight. Will her fur grow back? TBH I'm just glad it wasn't worse...
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/271/740/412/329/020/original/1ebda0883d43cd1f.jpg

2026-03-20 18:09:20 UTC

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Given Keir Starmer's record on U-turns, I suspect such a commitment would last only until the moment the polls close in May.

2026-03-19 07:16:37 UTC

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Whenever the topic of GDP comes up, I'm reminded of Robert F. Kennedy's dismantling of GDP as a metric in 1968 with the summation of his speech: "it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." increasingly economic activity appears to have a somewhat tenuous relationship with the well-being of society as a whole,many of whose members have seen incomes stagnate while rent seeking entities take an ever larger portion of that already stretched income.

2026-03-10 11:39:19 UTC

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For further reading, (if people have the stomach for it), Jess Hill's book "See what you made me do" is a very sobering and sometimes uncomfortably graphic analysis of the shocking rates of violence against women and girls worldwide and the causes.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/204/683/838/305/057/original/1aeaaa96c417f63b.jpg

2026-03-07 22:13:49 UTC

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Increasingly the man lives in a wee world of his own, completely out of touch with reality. The tragedy is that he still has the support of the Republican Party.

2026-03-06 08:04:04 UTC

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I have long admired Michael Marmot and his work, together with that of Wilkinson and Pickett who all show starkly how much wealth inequality damages the health and wellbeing of a society. Yet government after government show that they, like Mandelson, are "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" (even in the unlikely event that they pay their fair share of taxes). Huge wealth inequality is bad for everyone (even the wealthy).

2026-03-04 18:05:52 UTC

From "Today's Edition Newsletter" by Robert B. Hubbell. Photographer unknown.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/172/222/359/167/991/original/8790c3e706b05fd0.jpg

2026-03-04 14:55:18 UTC

Can someone explain to me how an Iranian warship, in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka constitutes a legitimate target in an undeclared and probably illegal "war"? I remember the outrage at the sinking of the General Belgrano...

2026-03-02 07:37:39 UTC

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I never ever imagined that a party, founded in the belief that it should support the most vulnerable in society, could be taken over by those so full of antipathy towards those vulnerable people. With every pronouncement Keir Starmer digs his party deeper into a hole. I always knew to expect this from right of politics, but Labour is aping their worst instincts. They deserve the fate that is coming in May and at the next General election. I hope the Greens succeed.
@npub1ecs…kh2u

2026-02-27 20:19:34 UTC

A good read, and yes:
"As part of the reactionary international, [Goodwin] displays an obvious dislike of a universal and equal franchise. In the days before the election, Reform had raised the spectre of ‘sectarian’ or ‘religious’ voting. It’s fatuous to claim that a Muslim voting for a feminist plumber standing for a party that’s vocal on trans rights and headed by a gay Jew is somehow making a religious vote, but the claim persists.”
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/02/27/sarwar-as-necromancer-manchester-the-wake-and-the-autopsy/

2026-02-27 06:45:15 UTC

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Wonderful news. The Green Party of England and Wales has, at long last, become the parliamentary representation of left wing environmental politics that those of us who know them always knew they should be. "I don't vote for the Greens because under FPTP they have no chance" is history now.

2026-02-19 23:09:20 UTC

"The BBC and the wider Brit media seem to think they are talking down to the masses and people aren’t buying it. Expect the Royals to be heckled and harassed at every public event, and people to be arrested for not bowing down to this rotten, exposed feudal relic.
Abolish the Monarchy."
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/02/19/the-fall-of-the-house-of-windsor/

2026-02-19 22:57:20 UTC

It's not a "sad thing", it is another of the reprehensible people in Epstein's circle being investigated - and for something only perhaps tangentially related to his sexual proclivities. It's time the activities of the person who pronounced this to be a "sad thing" were put under the microscope. He, after all, was at the very heart of Epstein's cabal. https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/andrew-arrest-donald-trump-epstein-files-b2924010.html

2026-02-17 17:30:43 UTC

Borrowed from Robert B. Hubbell's "Today's Edition Newsletter" ICE are very definitely NOT the Borg!
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/116/087/149/879/428/711/original/b4d5f22419fbf982.jpg

2026-02-13 11:06:35 UTC

Kudos to all those who put their money where their mouth was and demonstrated peacefully against the proscription of Palestine Action, risking a criminal conviction in the process. The proscription was an outrageous assault on the right of free speech and this defeat for the government and the Home Secretary means that justice has prevailed. How dare Mahmood intimate that she intends to appeal the ruling!

2026-02-11 19:34:29 UTC

Watching the daily revelations about the very wealthy I'm frequently reminded of the adage: If you want to know what God thinks of money, you just have to look at who he gives it to...

2026-02-08 11:11:37 UTC

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Is it wrong of me to wish for that?

2026-02-06 22:32:57 UTC

When I wake up tomorrow who will be toast?

2026-02-04 16:22:08 UTC

George Washington, first President - "I cannot tell a lie"
Donald Trump, 47th President - "I cannot tell the truth"...

2026-02-03 16:39:24 UTC

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"... I keep hearing frantic commentary about what this means for Keir Starmer, for Fergie, for Mandelson’s peerage, whatever. How about the biggest and grimmest question of all: what it means for women and girls to be able to clearly see that we live in a world where so many of the richest and most powerful men alive are just not bothered enough by their exploitation. Or worse."

2026-02-03 16:29:14 UTC

Horrific story:
"...I’ve been collating the emails from extremely famous men who actively sought to help the since-deceased underage sex trafficker trivialise his crimes in the years after his jail release in 2009. Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew (obviously) – all of these men offer strategic advice, or media training, or chummy solidarity. Or, in the case of Chomsky, all of the above plus a drive-by on the notion of female victimhood." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/03/jeffrey-epstein-powerful-men-women-girls

2026-02-03 13:14:55 UTC

I had forgotten until a post reminded me this morning that it was Mandelson who said that "We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". The measure of the man, perhaps, a man who seemed to enjoy the company of those "filthy rich" a little too much for his own good. Out of the House of Lords, straight to jail, do not pass "go"...

2026-01-26 07:38:31 UTC

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Hmmm... Despite the title "UK towns and cities..." a substantial part of the UK seems to be missing here! The Grauniad once again confusing England and Wales with the UK as a whole.

2026-01-16 08:02:48 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115901022866433993
This (hopeful) thread that sees the huge opportunity presented by the rise of Zak Polanski and, under his leadership, GPEW as a whole. As with so much of Cory Doctorow's writing, well worth a read. It has brightened my morning considerably.
#note170g…vwwn

2026-01-14 16:59:56 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115894410440299999
I will NEVER (for as long as it is possible to do so) buy an "internet-connected" domestic appliance or other gadget. Selling things has been replaced by rental and extractive economics.
#note1mhk…g5hg

2026-01-06 22:47:16 UTC

In a very real sense, with "approximately 10-12,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in the UK, primarily at RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, supporting air operations for Europe and serving as a crucial hub for the U.S. Air Force", Orwell's characterisation of the UK as "Airstrip One" seems to be about where we are, still a state tied firmly to a "Special Relationship" that is very clearly highly asymmetrical and which benefits the US and not Britain. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/01/06/scotland-caracas-and-the-trump-corollary/

2026-01-02 22:38:40 UTC

Blue "Labour". The Overton Window has been decisively shifted, hasn't it! What a sad end (and I suspect it will be an end) to a once proud party that represented those who really earned the wealth of the country. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-wealth-tax-budget-b2893442.html

2025-12-31 13:48:38 UTC

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As someone who spent his working life in a profession where conflicts of interest were simply not permitted, I am profoundly mystified by the demonstrable ability that politicians have for convincing themselves that somehow the concept doesn't apply to them, that they, uniquely in this world, are somehow immune from the inevitable biases and self-serving that ensue. How easily they kid themselves.

2025-12-11 18:52:56 UTC

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Well that's the US off my list of countries I can visit, which will not be good news for my son in New Jersey... 😢

2025-12-10 16:55:38 UTC

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- Next thing he will be wanting to use Comic Sans for all official documents...!

2025-12-06 20:59:13 UTC

Wow, that's BOUND to work. A stroke of "genius" from Reform UK Ltd. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/farage-reform-uk-scotland-tartan-falkirk-b2879329.html

2025-12-03 21:41:07 UTC

Once again, the leader of "Reform ltd" is out to cause disharmony and dissent in Scotland. As a junior doctor I recall a colleague being asked by the judge in court what the acronym in an A&E patient's notes "TBR" meant. "The bum's rush", he muttered beneath his breath. "Would you repeat that for the court" he was instructed. Where Farage is concerned it needs to be said loud and clear... https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/12/03/farages-glasgow-dog-whistle/

2025-11-24 12:12:48 UTC

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I always refer to Zohran Mamdami, who made tackling the economic insecurity of so many New Yorkers the basis for his campaign. Labour, in trying to outdo Reform, have lost their way completely. Why vote for a "Reform - lite" that has been such a disappointment, when you can vote for the genuine (!) article.

2025-11-24 08:10:22 UTC

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And pales into insignificance next to the money lost through tax avoidance and evasion.

2025-11-23 14:31:20 UTC

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How utterly wasteful to have all those graduates and all of the vacancies in specialties and end up with expensively-trained medics unable to fill the posts. Some, no doubt, will go abroad, and others into graduate jobs of one sort or another; a great many will disappear into the general workforce with their ambitions unfulfilled through no fault of their own. What complete madness!

2025-11-22 20:15:05 UTC

I hope that he enjoys his new accommodation when he takes up residence in HMP something-or-other. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/22/boris-johnson-took-four-days-off-as-nhs-warned-covid-could-overwhelm-system

2025-11-14 13:08:15 UTC

Sooner or later many of us will need care because we are no longer able to manage unsupported. It is past time for reform.
"Instead of facilitating the care of children, older people, disabled and learning disabled people, our care system facilitates the extraction of value and wealth from places and local public service budgets. While executive pay booms, frontline workers receive little more than the minimum wage."
https://neweconomics.org/2025/11/ending-extraction-in-the-uk-care-system

2025-11-12 21:59:23 UTC

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I hate "AI" and will have nothing to do with it. Intelligent it is not.

2025-11-12 20:59:29 UTC

Not exactly new news (it was known more than 12 years ago that there was a strong correlation), but another disease that can be laid at the door of EBV. That is one dangerous viral infection. MS and a number of autoimmune diseases?https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/12/epstein-barr-virus-appears-to-be-trigger-of-lupus-disease-say-scientists

2025-11-02 09:56:06 UTC

Meanwhile, in the Sainsbury's car park this morning, someone put their clocks back further than they intended last week...
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/115/479/502/227/009/134/original/1681e754bf624a95.jpg

2025-10-31 18:47:45 UTC

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😢

2025-10-31 18:45:50 UTC

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...and how are they going to keep it intact when assaulted or moved on by random people and the police? Or countries could follow the example of Finland and actually house the homeless.

2025-10-28 21:41:25 UTC

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I have just finished "See What You Made Me Do" by Jess Hill - an often harrowing exposition of the facts behind Intimate Partner Violence and Coercive Control. She makes the case very strongly for a) believing children when they fight against being made to spend time with one (abusive) parent and b) a wholesale reform of the family courts and the training of those who provide advice (on things like "parental alienation") to those courts. It makes for difficult reading.

2025-10-27 11:28:03 UTC

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Oh dear! "A nightmare vision..."? Only in the fevered imaginations of an exploding Macwhirter and his ilk. Bring on the Celtic alliance, free from his "Anglo-Saxon England" with all of its painted roundabouts and flegs.

2025-10-22 14:30:14 UTC

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Indeed, and as Michael Marmot pointed out in 2010,the Borough of Westminster has some of the the starkest disparities in the UK with consequent huge disparities in health and life expectancy.
@npub1dl6…jqx6 @npub1ndx…w8le @npub19f7…2kpt @npub142w…n2y5

2025-10-22 08:15:19 UTC

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@npub165w…lfr7
I will never ever forgive her for what she did to UK society. Brought up in Sheffield, I witnessed the destruction of the steel and coal industries, workers thrown on the scrap heap. I saw the same in the SW and Central belt of Scotland when I moved there. We are still living with the consequences of her policies. "Thatcherite" should be a term of abuse.

2025-10-21 07:58:57 UTC

Proud to belong to this group of young (at heart) radicals.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/115/411/093/853/050/819/original/faec9b9e53f4986e.jpg

2025-10-17 07:16:13 UTC

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That's a sobering read, and one that doesn't bode well for the health of the planet or for the future of humanity. I have a great deal of time for Kate Raworth and her co-workers; her work ought to be compulsory reading for politicians and economists.

2025-10-13 11:16:08 UTC

At the moment I'm reading "See What You Made me do" by Jess Hill, a book that, as it says on the cover, is about power, control and domestic abuse. It's a slow and difficult read. Then today I saw this in the Grauniad. It too is hard going. I wonder sometimes whether men in our society will ever come to grips with their responsibility to end this. Just now I'm not optimistic. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/13/these-men-think-theyve-done-nothing-wrong-philosopher-tried-understand-gisele-pelicot-rapists

2025-10-10 18:17:23 UTC

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After a long day yesterday, there's a fourth thing - the opportunity to sit down now and reflect on the goodness and generosity of others with Astor Piazzolla on the radio and a book on anarchism on my knee.., 🥰

2025-10-10 18:16:49 UTC

#threegoodthings :
Tori, Aimee and Evie, my three granddaughters, three of the best things ever to have arrived in my life.
Visits by them, their dad, the straight-talking but endlessly caring friend who is teaching me by example to be a better person and by my friend/gardener with whom I shared tea and cakes.
Getting around the supermarket (accompanied and still a little tottery) to shop for essentials.

2025-10-09 06:10:08 UTC

Oh the irony is off the scale this morning. The King (not my king) is, according to the news this morning, going to appear on UK television to tell us all about living sustainably. I'll believe that the day he renounces the homes and palaces, gives up helicopter travel and moves into a modest home on a council estate with his bidie-in.

2025-10-07 18:28:58 UTC

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I hope that your wife is now better. End user experience is good, but always better avoided.

2025-10-07 13:27:40 UTC

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As an addendum, I am profoundly aware that a moment's inattention in the workshop, two visits by a crew of ambulance technicians and one of paramedics, a ride to hospital, emergency surgery, three CT scans, Parenteral nutrition, and two weeks on High Dependency and another ward would, had I been in the US, have bankrupted me.

2025-10-07 05:57:04 UTC

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I was discharged yesterday from hospital after emergency surgery and a couple of weeks recovery. The two highly competent surgeons were from the Middle East, I had nurses from Zimbabwe, India, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere. The crew doing the CT scan were from Cameroon, whilst behind the scenes were countless others without whose good-natured expertise the Scottish NHS would cease to function. It is no exaggeration that today I recognise that I owe my life to them all.

2025-10-05 08:40:51 UTC

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Oh FFS this is a world I nearly departed just over a fortnight ago, and now I'm on the mend it's worse than ever 😢😢😢
@npub12pw…zvxn

2025-10-05 07:26:23 UTC

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Threatened by quiet non-violent "Gandhian" protest, and in the mean time those who protest violently about "Immigrants", threaten communities, threaten to burn down hostels and paint the flag of St. George on road furniture get a free pass. The world is topsy turvy.

2025-10-04 09:42:12 UTC

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Sympathise with their view - absolutely not. Empathy - being able, as far as it is humanly possible, to "enter their world and to try to understand" is still achievable. Without that we run the risk of making judgements without understanding. The difficulty is in being able to truly empathise without being drawn in. Friedrich Nietzsche put it well: "When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".

2025-10-04 07:50:11 UTC

A radical kills one worshipper on the streets of the UK and we are, quite correctly, asked to consider the grief of the Jewish community. Israel and their Zionist government murders thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in their (appropriately named) "offensive" in Gaza. Where are the calls to consider the grief and anger of the Palestinian diaspora? Are these not people too, do they not bleed and mourn? We have entirely lost any idea of a common humanity.

2025-10-04 07:12:52 UTC

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...and amen to that! I remember a time when there was a thing called "constructive dialogue" that relied upon being able to take the perspective of "the other".

2025-10-03 09:32:22 UTC

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I'm not sure what it is that sets Mastodon apart, but given the lack of algorithmic content promotion is what largely sets it apart from social media in general, I suspect that has a significant role to place. Conversation, whilst perhaps partly siloed, (aren't our social lived IRL also characterised by silos?) is generally and genuinely respectful, thoughtful and appreciative. The antithesis of life on the bigger platforms.

2025-10-02 14:53:12 UTC

My son brought me a pair of Bluetooth headphones to my hospital bed, and helped me connect them. Listening to Anton Webern's Langsamer Satz and, like Arnold Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, it's absolutely gorgeous music. How could I not have discovered it sooner?

2025-09-15 10:44:58 UTC

Do others who are now "getting on in years" feel, as I do, that they have an increasingly marginal place in a society that is moving in a direction that feels as though it's leaving the behind? I don't say this out of nostalgia for a mythical past, I've no emotional attachment to my past, but rather that I see a world in which I feel alienated, that my beliefs about mutuality, empathy and community are being trashed systematically by people who believe in nothing but wealth and power.

2025-09-13 12:31:06 UTC

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@npub1prm…a9wj @npub1m0j…qy4f
Thank you for the additional info. Mastodon at its best.

2025-09-13 10:43:45 UTC

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It's a descent into the madness of what is already a low-grade civil war, perhaps a continuation of the one of 1861-65. My understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that the ideology of the Confederacy was founded on a belief in the supremacy of the "white races" (and the right to own and abuse slaves). My fear is that the current violence, encouraged by white supremacists like Fuentes, Kirk and Trump, will escalate into a full-blown civil war. Trump is despicable.

2025-09-10 20:20:36 UTC

No-one should die in gun violence but the phrase "Live by the sword..." does seem to be appropriate here. It's just crazy that the USA, with a population of 340 million should have around 400 million guns in private hands. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/charlie-kirk-shot-utah

2025-09-10 19:41:15 UTC

I scroll down my feed and get angrier every minute. There's enough food in the world to feed everyone adequately.
There's enough money to house them all.
There's enough goodwill to see an end to wars and expansionism.
Instead we let children go to bed starving, we build and trade in weapons, and we let a handful of people accumulate enormous wealth.
Call ourselves "civilised"? No we're (those who make these things possible) not! Time for Mme. la Guillotine...!

2025-09-10 19:35:27 UTC

But as long as the GDP goes up and the wealthy get wealthier, then all's right with the world? Shame on politicians and the wealthy
"Britain is facing a deepening hunger crisis with more than 14 million people going without food because they can’t afford it, shocking new analysis has revealed.
A total of 3.8 million children (27 per cent) are among those estimated to be living in homes where people are forced to skip or cut back on meals because of financial concerns."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-hunger-crisis-britain-trussell-report-poverty-b2822926.html

2025-09-10 14:45:31 UTC

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- Dot com all over again but even bigger this time. I don't know what they'll do with all the left-over data centres, but perhaps that will be the least of our problems.

2025-09-10 10:31:17 UTC

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The wiping out of the entire indigenous population of Tasmania was carried out systematically by Colonel Arthur after whom Port Arthur was named (a bleak dreadful penal colony for convicts shipped there, often for trivial offences) . British colonial history is a catalogue of similar shameful acts. The shame we should feel is a stark contrast with today's brutish British exceptionalism from a reinvigorated racist far right. https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-evidence-for-the-tasmanian-genocide-86828

2025-09-08 22:02:32 UTC

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I was thinking particularly about people like Johnson and Gove, but it seems to me that when these people are in charge of so much that affects the well-being of so many of us, then the very least we ought to expect is that there are basic competencies which every member should achieve. In the case of work (e. g. Clacton) then there must be regular surgeries for constituents. In other places, the need for a mechanism to "retire" those who are no longer fit for office is glaringly obvious.

2025-09-08 21:54:06 UTC

Politics is a weird business. Take airline pilots. Long training, regular line checks to demonstrate competence, restrictions on alcohol and drugs, and a professional approach to their work ( with a duty to report concerns to a regulatory body). Politics? None of that. No need to prove your mental fitness for the job, little or no training, no way to weed out underperformers, drink at subsidised rates in bars provided for your use, and don't mention the (alleged) coke habits of some members...

2025-09-06 21:06:47 UTC

If you live in the UK have a concealed phone that you keep for emergencies, one that you would rather not have others know about, then it would be sensible to turn it off tomorrow afternoon. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/emergency-alert-drill-mobile-phone-b2821517.html

2025-09-05 06:56:21 UTC

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Around Christmas last year (thus not a New Year resolution) I decided I would read a hundred books in 2025. Like you I read avidly as a teenager. All kinds of things got in the way and I forgot the enormous pleasure that reading can give. Now on my 80th book.
@npub1ef2…j7q4 @npub1ny7…uv57 @npub1354…3rrz

2025-08-12 17:55:28 UTC

How could we have forgotten so much about the events of 1935 and the subsequent decade when there are still those of 90 or over who remember (and when there is so much documented evidence)? I am not sanguine, not at all...

2025-08-09 18:14:25 UTC

At the moment, and as I see it, Trump is destroying everything in the world that I hold dear - human (and especially Women's) rights, enlightenment, science, the rule of law, environmentalism, tolerance, fairness, even optimism. We will be left with a dystopia, a wasteland and only a few wealthier billionaires to show for it.

2025-08-09 15:55:47 UTC

The "I support Palestine Action" are those on the right side of History (and Yvette Cooper is on the wrong one). There is a genocide being carried out in plain sight by the Israeli Government in Gaza and anyone that can't see that this is utterly abhorrent has no place in government in the UK. If government and police think that arresting those justified in protesting will make the issue magically go away, then they are as wrong as they were about the "Poll Tax" protests. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-protests-palestine-action-arrests-terror-ban-live-updates-b2804813.html

2025-08-07 12:04:47 UTC

https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/987/387/274/515/905/original/b56655d20a53511a.jpg

2025-08-07 11:36:07 UTC

As one who has travelled to work, both in this country and abroad, but who has in his seventy-odd (seventy odd) years taken, let me see, one honeymoon, two foreign holidays, three trips to visit a son in the US, and a couple of days stopover in Iceland and Malaysia, this article resonates. I prefer travelling with the mind, with the imagination. I'm told I ought to learn solo travelling, but it holds few attractions. Am I really that boring? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel

2025-08-05 16:44:04 UTC

This strikes home. I struggle with the callous inaction of governments every day, (and still more so with the actions of governments that supply the arms that prolong the suffering of the Palestinian people). https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/08/05/gaza-is-also-a-war-on-the-human-instinct-for-compassion/

2025-08-04 21:14:11 UTC

I'm off to my much-needed bed. Before I go, I'd like to express my admiration for Iceland and its leaders. I could live happily with people like this...
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/972/549/134/132/494/original/401b695c26ee795e.jpg

2025-08-03 20:37:20 UTC

already looking windy out to the west of Ireland... https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-8.61,54.07,3257

2025-08-01 21:14:10 UTC

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- crackpot "journalist". "An eye for beauty"? Trump the aesthete? Tawdry gold-plated everything. The man majors on vulgarity. Someone please call the men in white coats for Simon Jenkins...

2025-07-25 19:28:14 UTC

Way too little and way too late. It was indefensible months and months ago. Now it is quite plainly genocidal and a war crime. We (rightly) were in uproar over Srebrenica and Rwanda, but somehow only now are we timidly saying to the Netenyahu regime "Would you please mind not killing so many people by shooting, bombing and starving them". https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gaza-palestine-israel-starvation-aid-b2796196.html

2025-07-23 17:11:31 UTC

A a child I knew of the horrors of the Ghettos and the concentration camps. It was hard not to know of them; memories were fresh. Then, we recoiled from the horrors that were inflicted by the Nazis. In my mind, there is not the tiniest sliver of a difference between what was done then and what is being done now. The fact is that several nations of the world are permitting this. The world could stop it now - and doesn't. It MUST be stopped. NOW. Before more die. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/israel-gaza-starvation-humanitarian-groups-letter

2025-07-23 15:19:53 UTC

My current book. I naively believed I understood that the world is largely conceived by men for men. This is eye-opening. Thanks to Nairn Public Library for having it in a prominent position on their shelves. #bookstodon
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/903/219/778/933/778/original/8b495914f7da2222.jpg

2025-07-22 14:11:21 UTC

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A government that is quite unable to tolerate dissent or criticism is weak beyond belief.

2025-07-20 13:09:49 UTC

Yet again "It doesn't have to be this way" springs to my lips, this time in response to John Harris' distressing article about the way that we (society) treats the learning-disabled and, all too often, those with physical differences too.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/20/learning-disabled-people-book-winterbourne-view

2025-07-20 11:20:03 UTC

I have, this late in life, come to love the work of anthropologists who, looking broadly at both current or recent communities and those in the deeper past say that "It doesn't have to be this way, that communities and civilisation can be ordered differently, in a way that ensures a decent quality of life for all". Perhaps standing out is the much missed David Graeber. It simply doesn't have to be this way. We prioritise the wrong (capitalist) things and give power to the wrong people.

2025-07-13 17:58:02 UTC

Leakey's second hand bookshop in Inverness. The largest second hand bookshop in Scotland.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/847/218/553/249/255/original/a2af04a5f0620996.jpg

2025-07-10 21:09:54 UTC

Ten o'clock in the evening and still light enough to pick myself a handful of cherries from the tree as a treat and reward for good behaviour. Well, maybe not that last bit!
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/830/986/028/456/952/original/b24d6fbc1e1a3c96.jpg

2025-07-09 21:32:01 UTC

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- "Trickle down", like the Laffer Curve, bears no relation to real life. It was a way to justify the unjustifiable huge remuneration increases at the top (just as the Laffer Curve was simultaneously arguing that lower taxation would increase the tax take overall. It is the economics of fairy tales.

2025-07-07 06:17:06 UTC

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Once again. It is becoming a habit of this government to attack the rights and downgrade the welfare of its most vulnerable of citizens. All predicated on the "no magic money tree" mantra. It's inexcusable for any government to propose such an attack on those least able to defend themselves, but for a "Labour" government it is beyond belief. It's long past time for them to reform taxation. A decent first step would be to tax investment income at the same rate as earnings.

2025-07-04 10:57:59 UTC

As I watch the behavior of the leaders of the US and more often than not, the UK, I am reminded of the words of Hannah Arendt, someone who saw more barbarism than most, and who recognised its root causes.
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/794/606/028/938/300/original/b1aa7eaa6c089c48.jpg

2025-07-03 06:28:52 UTC

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What has been done and is being done to the Palestinian people in Gaza in the full view of the world is almost certainly the most inhumane murderous thing that has been done by a nation in my lifetime. To call it warfare is obscene. It is the greatest of ironies that there has been nothing like this since the Holocaust. And we (the government and much of the media) in the UK are complicit, connive, assist, and provide cover for the people who do this. We all should be PA.