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James Meek

@jamesmeek.bsky.social
4.1K followers 179 following 409 posts

Writer, London

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Reposted by James Meek
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 27/09/2026
‘You can be entirely innocent, with obvious vulnerabilities, imprisoned for 38 years on evidence that is completely false, but the Court of Appeal will still not feel it needs to learn anything from what went wrong.’ Matt Foot on the need to reform the Court of Appeal. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Matt Foot · Short Cuts: Rejected Appeals
The judges might argue that the Court of Appeal is a court of review, whose job is simply to assess whether a conviction...
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Susan Pedersen in @lrb.co.uk
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I would trade a dozen brilliant left-wing economists for one brilliant left-wing manager
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Adam Shatz @adamshatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Richard Lloyd Parry, writing brilliantly in the @lrb.co.uk on the “Kimmification“ of American politics. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Richard Lloyd Parry · Keeping up with the Kims
For the Kims, nuclear weapons have never been an end in themselves; they are an insurance policy against attack by their...
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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.” Bertie Wooster
Daniel Thomas and his Black Shorts in London today.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 08/09/2026
@ stephenkb.bsky.social hitting the nail on the head of course. "the Labour Party has now produced two governments whose response to acts of thuggery and intimidation is to reiterate that perhaps the thugs have a point" - as.ft.com/r/97d33f08-a...
as.ft.com
Labour’s muddled migration policy won’t stop thuggery
A government that can’t distinguish between ‘legitimate concerns’ and open racism is only making things worse
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
"It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police and Home Office seem to be incapable of an appropriate response to the threat of far-right activity and violence."
nicklowles.substack.com
Did Kent Police ignore a 999 call?
Contrary to their public statement, HOPE not hate can exclusively reveal that Kent Police were tipped off about the Patriot Platform mobilisation – and seemingly did not act on the information.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Know there’s a typo here but not sure if ‘warns’ should read ‘brags’ or ‘cackles maniacally that’ ? - Ed.
bbc.co.uk
OpenAI chief scientist warns no-one is prepared for consequences of AI
The post comes as the firm releases GPT-6 Astra, which it says is its most powerful product yet.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I know almost nothing about the original Pink Floyd or their music, but this, by @andrewhickey.500songs.com, with help from Kenneth Grahame, is moving and mysterious
pca.st
Episode 157: “See Emily Play” by The Pink Floyd
Episode one hundred and fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “See Emily Play”, the birth of the UK underground, and the career of Roger Barrett, known as Syd. Click…
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 06/09/2026
So in one week: 1) Reform get stung for dodgy finances, and the regulators play pass the parcel about enforcement 2) Farage announces plans to largely dismantle independent scrutiny of govt, and barely any press discussion of it 3) Masked thugs blockade a port, with narry a word from senior govt
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Whew what if the Normans had won just imagine
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Nadine Batchelor-Hunt @nadinebh.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The moment Reform admitted on camera the “grim reality” is they can’t bag any British donors was the moment I realised how bad it was
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Katharine Schopflin @schopflin.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It's 15 years old, but Private Island by @jamesmeek.bsky.social still has a lot to tell us about how we ended up here. Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else | Verso Books share.google/oo21S3JaSfyy...
share.google
Private Island
“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the b...
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
This is truer than ever when lived experience is of rapid polarisation in those realms of municipal prosperity and decay outside the state’s ambit; when entire towns are gentrified and degentrified by population shifts and the end of the proximity-to-work requirement
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Wow this is a bad result for Farage. In the most Reform friendly seat in the country should get more than this - and Binface’s result shows once again that the centre and left will vote for literally anyone to try and stop him.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Related anti-disappointment PSA Actual size of the hole through which the sun enters a home-made pinhole camera: • Actual size of the image of the sun projected: o
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Back in the 70s in Scotland an actual German ex-Nazi was wheeled into our RE class to lecture us about the perils of Naziism and within a few minutes he was shouting angrily at us for not keeping quiet and paying his story the proper respect
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
To be fair, “Councillors and council elections don’t matter” are a load-bearing part of the “Kemi Badenoch is doing well and the Conservative party’s prospects under her are looking good” thesis.
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Jules Birch @julesbirch.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
John Healey as housing secretary would have been good but John Healey as a chancellor who gets housing is arguably even better
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David KC @davidmuttering.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
For those who prefer their hair to be nasty, brutish and short
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Seva @seva.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
interesting to see all the reviews framing Odyssey around its veteran-trauma-PTSD themes. War as something that happens to soldiers’ psyches. This is I dare say a very umbombed mentality. Processing war as individual moral injury when the actual subject is collective destruction
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Aw and just when Pete Hegseth was about to make them leaders of his testosterone task force www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Tate brothers arrested in US as further UK charges take total to 59
The Crown Prosecution Service says it has requested their extradition from the US, while their lawyer says they are innocent.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
One of the things that surprised me when I went looking into the failure of a battery plant in Northumberland last year was the degree to which government support for tech is an immense structural failure underpinned by a myriad mutually reinforcing boosterish PR departments
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Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I feel conflicted atm because while I can see a number of potential problems already looming for AB’s policy agenda, and also a number of worryingly familiar patterns playing out, the starting point for some commentary has a sneering element to it
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
The crazy notion that a ‘policy levy’ on a privatised essential service is somehow not a tax serves two constituencies: the private rent-seekers, and governments trying to smuggle regressive taxation onto the bills. Electricity ‘policy levies’ are taxes, and very unfair ones. Make them general!
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
To me, the big picture problem here is that it sets Labour back on the same failed course as 2024 to 2026, of offering nothing to social liberals but going “don’t worry. Can I interest you in some failed economics instead?”
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
This is a real inflection point. Huge statement of Zelensky’s shift in priorities from Ukraine’s survival to his own if this happens. Europe’s ‘we provide the money, you provide the sons’ deal with Ukraine would look very weak if it can’t stop this happening.
giftarticle.ft.com
Zelenskyy expected to remove Ukraine’s popular defence minister
Moderniser behind country’s drone development at risk of being ousted in cabinet reshuffle after just six months in post
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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Hello, I’ve an event for my Muriel Spark biography next Weds (15th) at Waterstones Liverpool. We’ve sold barely any tickets, however, and it might be cancelled as a result. Please get a ticket if you’re nearby - it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll bring badges! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...
A picture of me, accompanied by the text: JAMES BAILEY
IN CONVERSATION WITH JESS WHITE AT WATERSTONES LIVERPOOL
WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 6.30PM
The Nine Lives of Muriel Spork
5 cat-shaped badges, with text reading Muriel Spark Fan Club, pinned to a shirt
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kyleayers.bsky.social @kyleayers.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Not saying that game was stolen from Egypt but it is now on display at museum in London.
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Hattifattener @hattifattener.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
As in 1066 England will prevail against the Norwegians before tragically losing to the French a couple of weeks later.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
This summer has been exquisitely curated to help awkward Englishmen converse. The heat, the football. All pauses safely filled.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Your first thought about this ST description of Farage’s bagman’s crypto gambling firm is ‘how grotesquely dodgy’ until you remember most household name multinationals mock jurisdictions in just this way
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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 04/07/2026
This is basically every story that I write about London now, you don't have to want to live with Germany bureaucracy to want someone to do very basic checks. And the 'ease of setting up a business' is great (I've done it myself! It was so easy!) but unfortunately it's created scam central nation.
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Why Labour MPs are still on X
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Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
He could strangle a teenager on camera and they would say he “defied a long-held tradition of presidents not doing that”
NYT: Trump’s Moneymaking Run: Unrivaled in Presidential History
The president’s move to open new business ventures, rather than eliminate potential conflicts, defies a long-held tradition.
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James Wallis @jameswallis.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Babe wake up, new industrial band five-album discography just dropped
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Coal merchant just called, asking if I fancied a ton of household coal at ten per cent off. And they say Brits can‘t hustle.
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The most persuasive part of Larry Elliott’s no-regrets Lexiteer piece in the Guardian. I have great respect for him, but a long article about the impact of Brexit that doesn’t mention how it helped gentrify racism, doesn’t mention immigration at all, makes me queasy
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Ian Boucher @desolationrow5.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Compulsory reading for anyone who hasn’t followed Burnham in GM I think and even for those who have. Absolutely nails every detail. All the things you hear from those who have worked with him are in this.
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Nick Holdstock @nickholdstock.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Or to paraphrase Michael Herr even further: "conventional journalism could no more reveal the Britsh electroral system than conventional politics could win it, all it could do was take the most profound event of the British decade and turn it into a communications pudding."
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Interior. Night. A bathroom. ANDY BURNHAM lies naked on the floor with a bloodied hand. He opens his eyes. ANDY BURNHAM (V/OVER) London. Shit. A MASSIVE ROLLING PEAL OF THUNDER ANDY BURNHAM (V/OVER) Everybody gets everything they want. I wanted a premiership. And, for my sins, they gave me one.
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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
All of left politics right now is some version of ‘here is my one weird trick to avoid sticking 5p on the basic rate so we can actually pay for public services’ so I am excited to find out what burnhams one weird trick will be.
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 21/06/2026
"The Americans can't get the slime out of their capital's monument pool and will arrest you for touching it," sounds like the sort of lie they'd tell us in the Soviet Union so we'd stop bitching about bread lines.
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Erin L. Thompson @artcrimeprof.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Sometimes you find an especially perky ancient little guy and you need to make a gif to express it, ok?
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James Meek @jamesmeek.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
@ameliagentleman.bsky.social sharp as ever on Mandelson's way with words, and what punctuation tells us about a power dynamic www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Mandelson messages could form a manual in the dark arts of wielding power and keeping it
Files shed light on how the Labour grandee juggled patrons and supplicants using flattery, fury and contempt for three decades
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
We only went and won it!! 🎉🎉🎉 A newsletter has just won the biggest prize in British journalism Absolutely delighted. Huge thanks to Khadija and to all Democracy for Sale’s supporters 😊
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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 30/05/2026
devastating story:
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