Richard Haviland

I wrote this over three years ago for @bylines.scot With a BBC reporter this week telling us that the RNLI are ‘coming under increasing scrutiny’, it feels like things have only got worse.

Former chief of defence staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin tells @ldfreedman.bsky.social that Boris Johnson was so uncertain whether to back Ukraine just days before the full-scale invasion he asked for papers to be drawn up on supporting Ukraine or 'looking the other way.'

Very good thread. 'We'd like to rejoin - we've changed!' 'How much have you changed?' 'We want our biggest opt-out back...'

I ❤️ you Brazil!

It’s amazing to think that people who used to write that Trump was a good thing and now write that he’s a bad thing will still get paid to write stuff in the future.

I haven’t slept a full night in three weeks ahead of the polls opening in Brazil today. I might be shouting into a void here, but if you can spare a few seconds to send good energy towards our elections today and for the largest country in South America to beat fascism, please do so. 🇧🇷

First Orban, now Vučić. Both fundamentally undone by rank corruption of their regimes. Which is so often the reality of the authoritarian right in power. Really worth paying heed to in Western Europe right now

BBC report sanitises the overt racism: It notes that organisers warned marchers not to talk to journalists, then gives the "anti-immigration group"'s own sanitised description of itself. It does not report they chanted "England for the white man" in the streets. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

‘I’ve always wanted to travel abroad but those local visitor taxes always scupper my plans’.

“A gaping wound of earth” 🌎 😕 Google illegally knocked down 250,000 trees in Finland to build a data center. @nonewdatacenters (From the Guardian)

Pubs against fascists. This is a cause I can get behind.

Straight out of Moscow's mouth. As a Russian warblogger puts it: "The free-thinking Elon Musk, sympathetic to the Russian people, explained why the war in Ukraine is continuing." (t.me/apwagner/69842)

The thing about phrases such as ‘unnecessary forms’ and ‘pointless bureaucracy’ is that they can be read literally as ‘just the forms that are unnecessary’ and ‘just the bureaucracy that’s pointless’ but they will be interpreted as ‘all forms’ and ‘all bureaucracy’. See also ‘suicidal empathy’.

I fervently want America to mend, and for the millions of decent Americans to take back control of their country and society - for their sakes and for all of ours. But I can't even begin to imagine what's to be done about that element of America's politics and society that is as broken as this.

Enoch Powell level bile and lies from the Times www.thetimes.com/comment/the-...

If you're not watching Al Jazeera investigates live now, you *really* should The most remarkable undercover footage I've ever seen. Turning Point UK actively involved in soliciting what they think is a hit UK police really need to be watching www.aljazeera.com/video/live

The transmission of anti-Somali racism from the US to U.K. is one of the big tells about the British right. Their hatred of Sagal Abdi-Wali was second hand and pathetic.

Maybe he should have just said Rubio’s government is effectively killing them.

I once wrote a “hero” article about Martina for the Guardian. I used to admire her so much. But she’s fallen down that rabbit hole where all she can hear are the bots, AI accounts, and Russian posting farms affirming her descent into trans panic and hate.

It is obvious that the US under Trump is a hostile state. Ministers can’t say that but the rest of us across the UK and Europe can and should. It might help to focus minds (while we pray for sane people to regain control of that country).

Mearsheimer’s Putin apologetics stand out because they go against the IR theory that made his career. In Offensive Realism, states are inherently power seeking and revisionist, so Russia was always going to try to regain what the USSR lost. This “look what you made me do” BS is utterly discrediting.

‘The truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie’.

It is obvious that the US under Trump is a hostile state. Ministers can’t say that but the rest of us across the UK and Europe can and should. It might help to focus minds (while we pray for sane people to regain control of that country).

These guys will do anything to kill reform. They're partisans. They don't give a damn that FPTP is mangling our electoral system or that it could hand total executive control to Nigel Farage. They just care that a few times a century Labour has a majority. www.politicshome.com/news/article...

What no-one will write about Burnham's "headphone dodgers" plan is that it's partly a neurodiversity issue. I wrote this open.substack.com/pub/maybeima...

Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain says the electoral success of his political party would "inevitably" lead to civil unrest and rioting. His argument is increasingly that civil conflict has become unavoidable + absolutely necessary (if still partly regrettable + somewhat to be blamed on opponents)

This is as good as everyone says it is. But also note that the - I’ll be polite - ‘hostile questioner’ had no fear for his physical safety and walked away humiliated but unharmed. Would this be the case at a MAGA event?

You know what? I'm starting to think it isn't just a few bad apples who slipped through Reform's "stringent vetting process" and that the party which proposes massively deportations, shooting unarmed civilians, ending the rule of law etc might attract racists. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“Donald Trump is a traitor. And he’s not simply a traitor in the loose sense of someone who commits an act of betrayal…Trump is a traitor in the very particular sense laid out in the U.S. Constitution…’adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.’” www.americaamerica.news/p/donald-tru...

Another triumph for Starmer. I think firing Robbins without cause was the moment Whitehall completely lost faith in him.

Breaking news: The Pope is a Catholic. The sun rises and sets every day. Reform UK is full of racists.

"Hiding their true beliefs" behind a laughably thin veneer of deniability. Anyone prepared to engage their critical faculties for 5 seconds could see through it. But we were consistently shut down with demands that "legitimate concerns" be "respected". And now we're supposed to be shocked.

If Putin stops fighting, the war ends. If Zelensky stops fighting then his country will be occupied, leaders murdered, language banned, businesses stolen, children kidnapped. That's what happens in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

I get the closing of ranks, but the lionisation of people like Khaldoon Al-Mubarak is really odious given who he works for and what his job entails. These are very bad, very dangerous people and they work for a state that is responsible for death and destruction of a scale that's hard to fathom.

A reminder that Manchester City's UAE owners are playing footsy with the UK far-right, have been credibly accused of torturing scores of UK citizens, deployed an assassin to UK soil, and probably hacked 10 Downing Street. And unlike Man City, we publish our evidence 👇 fairsq.org/petropopulis...

Good job this psychopath is no longer in the Marines.

I'm sure former UN ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi will be delighted to have been introduced, very crisply, as "Abdullah al Mussolini" by Justin Webb. Seriously, how does this man still have a six-figure job at the BBC? When he is not busy being biased, he is busy being useless.

You know those ‘spot the difference’ puzzles? I’m thinking of launching a ‘spot every racism in this political cartoon’ alternative….

Maybe the most amazing aspect of the Russo-Ukraine War is that Russia is getting backing from both China and the USA, the two largest powers of the moment--and Ukraine could still emerge triumphant as long as Europe backs it stoutly.

Let me join the Ukrainians and the whole world by telling America it’s time to get a new president and lock this one up for the rest of his days.

Trump remains a whiny little loser: no Nobel Prize. By contrast, my humble brother and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019 for their work in alleviating global poverty. Please celebrate with this "My Brother is a Nobel Prize Laureate; Trump Is Not" Starter Pack. go.bsky.app/PSn3i6q

Just so we’re crystal clear: Trump is now funding the murder of Ukrainian women and children to try and win the midterms. America is lost.

Dear tv and radio producers. Thankyou for the invitation. But, no, I do not want to appear on your show to defend the idea that I am English, after 50 years of living and working here, because the increasingly feral right want to turn this into a "debate" and you cannot see how you're being played