Arthur Girling

Working on policy at @sustrans. Here to share my own opinions on politics, the environment, bikes and books.

[Weather Monitor @WeatherMonitors]

🇬🇧🌊Today, This is not Valencia, this is the town Tenbury Wells UK.
The moment the flood entered.

#StormBert

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

Eight stories. Eight stories of Lebanese families sleeping in their beds without even so much as a faux-warning from the IDF minutes before.

[איימן עודה أيمن عودة Ayman Odeh @AyOdeh]

The full speech that Speaker of the Knesset did not allow me to complete

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

results from yesterday’s un vote on “the right of the palestinian people to self determination”

usa, israel, argentina, paraguay, micronesia, nauru vote against

that's it

[Hey, Dave! @davegreenidge57]

Here’s a video produced by “Led by Donkeys” out of the U.K. that puts down the timeline of how Musk used X to get Donald Trump elected. I would save it because I don’t think it will be up for long.

[Fern Leigh Albert @FernLeighPhoto]

Great article by Lewis Winks @curiousways in @TGOMagazine 'The Supreme Court case to camp on Dartmoor should concern all outdoors folk – here’s why'... 📸 - Wild Camp at Hayne Down #Dartmoor @EveryonesStars @Right_2Roam
https://t.co/Ig9Vgmaujq

[Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK @PIK_Climate]

“A full #AMOC collapse would be a massive, planetary-scale disaster” tells PIK scientist @rahmstorf the @NewYorker. “We really want to prevent this from happening.” Interesting article on the fate of #Greenland & what it means for the rest of the Earth.
https://t.co/NVFsnCikog

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Israel’s genocidal mayhem has given me a hideous understanding into the great horrors of the past.

How could so many people who regard themselves as decent, humane, ‘moderate’ become complicit in unspeakable atrocities? It’s something I’ve always wondered.

After all, only a tiny proportion of any society are actually sociopaths.

Well, this great crime of our age offers the answers.

The British media and political elites are full of people who aren’t even pretending.

Their worldview is clear. Israelis are “us”. Palestinians are “them”.

Accordingly, every Israeli life has meaning and value - it is inherently precious.

A Palestinian life is worth virtually nothing. It is less than cheap. A bag of rats drowned in a lake is likely to elicit more sympathy.

Violence against a single Israeli life - “us” - is therefore seen as intolerable and unbearable.

Endless violence against countless Palestinians, on the other hand, doesn’t even produce a genuine emotional response.

We’ve seen this tested to destruction.

It doesn’t matter what the atrocity is.

Newborns cooked alive in rubble, or left to suffocate and rot in bombed hospitals.

6 year olds shot in the head by snipers.

Terrified children deliberately blown apart in their families’ cars by tanks, the paramedics sent to save them butchered, too.

Entire family bloodlines exterminated in moments.

Detainees gang raped. Bodies thrown from roofs. Civilians riddled with bullets while trying to get food.

The worst imaginable atrocities committed over and over again, but because the victims are Palestinian, no outrage or horror or anguished demands that this must stop, whatever it takes.

There is, at best, empty handwringing and platitudes, while our government continues to arm the perpetrators.

But when an attack is launched against Israel in which not a single Israeli is killed, then there is wall to wall horror, disgust, outrage from our political and media elites.

So if you’re wondering how so many who regarded themselves as decent, modest, upstanding, morally sophisticated citizens actively made themselves complicit in all the horrors of the past you read about in books - well, now you know.

What mattered to them was who was “us” and who was “them”.

I used to passionately disagree with these elites - I work, after all, in the British media, and have now for 13 years: even hold them in contempt. But it took this genocide to make me realise:

I don’t live in the same moral universe as these people. They now disgust me: I am repulsed by them. It is what it is: my job is to be honest about my opinions, and I could pretend this isn’t how I feel, but for what moral reason?

I’m not telling you because it’s cathartic, even though it is. It’s because what I feel is felt by many others, and that matters - a lot.

Millions of people in every country, on every continent, are feeling this, and it gets stronger with every passing day,

The consequences will be felt for many, many generations.

[Walk Wheel Cycle Trust @WalkWheelCycleT]

Sustrans has been in Parliament this morning for the launch of the #CyclingOpportunity report.

2M people on low income or not in employment are priced out of cycling and the benefits it brings. This inequality must end.

Read the report here:

https://t.co/d2jgz4XoVG

[Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann]

Carl called it three decades ago

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

I know Dr Maxey. He’s an incredibly decent man. He’s just been sentenced to 3 years in prison for trying to draw attention to the FACT that the planet is hotter than it’s ever been in recorded history and we are in major trouble. Please listen to what he has to say.

[Jeff Masters @DrJeffMasters]

Climate change will inevitably stop being a hazy future concern and will someday turn everyday life upside down. At the risk of causing counterproductive doomism, I offer observations and speculations on how the planetary crisis may play out. 1/25 https://t.co/OG3BnGKVL4

[Walk Wheel Cycle Trust @WalkWheelCycleT]

"If you have to hop in the car just to buy a loaf of bread, you’re not going to have many opportunities to walk or cycle."

Dan Simpson explains how we can unlock new housing by creating communities where it's easy for people to walk, wheel and cycle: https://t.co/Tl2kOjq7wQ

[Joshi Herrmann @joshi]

As mobs attempt to burn down hotels housing asylum seekers, don't forget Nigel Farage led a campaign to publicise these hotels.

He recorded himself turning up at a series of them in 2020 and asked his followers to identify more hotels, saying some residents "might be ISIS".

[🇮🇷🇪🇬® حَلِيِمّ🐺 @7leemo]

@ecomarxi @celtjules66 That's all u need to know of this hypocritical world

[Kim Leadbeater MBE MP @kimleadbeater]

Shocking scenes from America this morning. There is no place for political violence in our societies. My thoughts are with President Trump and his family and all the victims of this attack.

[Armando Iannucci @Aiannucci]

The extreme Right are very loud rather than very popular. But as long as the media mistake loudness for popularity, the extreme Right will keep getting more airtime than their rivals. That’s not to underestimate the very real frustrations with politics that many of their supporters feel, but it does give us the first very real sign that the march of the Far Right is not as relentless and unstoppable as they would browbeat us into believing. It’ll be hard work and demand full attention, but they CAN be stopped. And that gives me hope.