M.R.Carey

Writer, ex-teacher, lapsed Scouser, brooding introvert, maturing like fine milk. He/him. Trans rights are human rights.

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@Seattle_Author Thanks, @Seattle_Author!

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@Marie_O_Regan Thanks, Marie!

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

Once Was Willem won the World Fantasy Award for best novel last night! I found out around midnight. Very happy and very proud. Also slightly sleep-deprived. 🙂

[Locus Magazine @locusmag]

The World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel went to Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
#wfc2026

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@CamJohnston Thanks, Cameron!

[Colonel Frog @SFcrowsnest]

Liverpool does it again: M. R. Carey wins the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel with Once Was Willem, and Clive Barker takes Life Achievement. Somewhere, a Cenobite is very quietly proud.

https://t.co/RR3UierlXZ

@orbitbooks @RealCliveBarker #WorldFantasyAwards #fantasy

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@PaulKaneShadow Thanks, Paul!

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@timlebbon Thanks, Tim!

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@Jock4twenty Thanks, Jock!

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

The BBC gaslit its audience for 3 years, routinely caveating death tolls from Israeli massacres in Gaza with "according to Hamas-run health ministry", all in the name of "transparency".

Yet again, that "transparency" runs only one way: no mention that this Bell review is far from independent, as we explain below.

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

The reality of the "independent" review telling every school in England to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism: its author, Sir David Bell, was being paid by a government agency while he wrote it, and a pro-Israel charity has listed him on its council for ten years.

The government told the public he was "independent of Government" and had "no conflict of interest". Neither is true.

What we found:

- Bell was paid £20,000 a year as vice-chair of Skills England, a government agency, in a seat the Department for Education gave him. He held it until August, through most of the review.

- The Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East has listed him on its council since at least 2016. Its website says its one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel. It gives talks on Israel in schools, which is exactly what his review was asked to judge.

- In 2005, as chief inspector of schools, he singled out Muslim schools as a challenge to "our coherence as a nation". The chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools called it Islamophobia, and his own inspectors said he had presented a personal view as inspection evidence.

Then we followed the money:

- The department's £1.3 million antisemitism training contract had one bidder, according to the tender record. It went to Palace Yard, a company set up in 2022 by the former Labour MP Natascha Engel.

- That contract says all its training must use the IHRA definition "as a foundation". It was signed eight months before Bell was appointed. His review then recommended IHRA.

- Two of the people who advised Bell, from Partnerships for Jewish Schools and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, now sit on the group putting his recommendations into practice.

- The Union of Jewish Students, also on that group, holds a contract worth almost £1 million to train universities. Its own policies include "UJS to advocate for Israel within UK Policy and International Law".

- UK Lawyers for Israel* (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism* (CAA) both say the review adopted their recommendations.

*For context, UKLFI once justified the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli occupation as "good for obesity". Both these groups have staunchly defended Israel throughout its perpetration of a genocide in Gaza, and regularly conflate Jewish people with the apartheid state.

This matters because the review decides how every school treats what pupils and teachers say about Israel, and the IHRA definition it recommends treats some criticism of Israel as antisemitic. A review with that power should come from someone with no pay from government and no tie to a pro-Israel charity. Bell had both. The government put one in a footnote and left the other out.

We mapped every link, each with its source, explaining just how far this review is from "independent": https://t.co/bPsbRjZNaN

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@HilzFuld What a ludicrous and asinine statement. As of last July half the population of the UK believed this. It's probably a much higher percentage now, after NAZA. https://t.co/2WnI2I4P21

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

There was a deeper reason why the film NAZA left the entire audience speechless.

This film isn’t about the tangible, visible horror of Gaza. It was about something more hidden, something far closer to home.

This was about the horror lurking within each of us. What the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”.

We were stunned, I think, by the realisation that the 24 Israelis up on the screen – each of whom admitted, often dispassionately, sometimes a little proudly, carrying out the most monstrous of crimes – could have been our son or daughter, our brother or sister.

The only reason to applaud, as happened at the Venice Film Festival, it seemed to me, was to drown out the still, small voice of one’s conscience asking, “Might I have done as they did? Might my children?”

NAZA is a gut punch not because it tells us anything we did not already know or suspect about Israel and Gaza.

The enclave’s Palestinian journalists showed us daily the evidence of the genocide, before each was picked off by Israel’s AI machinery – in the largest slaughter of media personnel ever recorded.

No, the film tells us something far more shaming. It tells us who we are. It tells us exactly what the pillars of our western “civilisation” stand on.

Today’s western privileges were built on a long history of naked, racist colonialism – of greed, of pillage, of slavery, of genocide – that we have never truly renounced or forsaken.

Israel continues that tradition for us, both in sharpening colonialism’s technical efficiency with endless, murderous experimentation on a captive Palestinian population and in obscuring our own complicity in this barbarity.

That is the reason why it was so effortless for our leaders to collude in Israel’s genocide: to supply the bombs, to pass on the intelligence, to provide the diplomatic cover, to excuse the “excesses”, to crush the protests.

NAZA silences us not because of the monstrosity of what Israel did but because it serves as irrefutable proof of our own monstrosity. Our societies watched it all and did nothing. We are all guilty.

This is an extract from my latest article NAZA is not just about Israel and Gaza. It’s about the evil lurking in us all. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️

[Media Lens @medialens]

The BBC have been “very compliant to Israel, reporting their arguments even where it’s screamingly obvious, even to viewers, that what's happening in Gaza is an international scandal,” a BBC insider has said.

[...]

The anonymous BBC insider said there’s “still a tendency to refer back to the Hamas attack on the festival as if that was a balancing moment against what has come up subsequently.”

The source continued: “There's a tendency for the BBC to hide behind objectivity” instead of doing “the core journalism job of bringing truth to power”.

While BBC staff are afraid to speak out “because of the threat of job losses and restructuring. And that there’s a malaise within the organisation where people feel troubled by how things are progressing,” the source said.

via @ScotNational

https://t.co/gyhzIjGIpB

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

Lucy Powell wants every school in England to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Seven of its eleven examples are about Israel. We analysed the review as well as the 37 news articles about it.

What the review shows:

• Its longest section, 1,073 words, is about pupils and teachers showing support for Palestine with badges and flags. It mentions antisemitism twice.

• 2,407 words on political impartiality. 267 on supporting the victims of antisemitism.

• 23% of the review is about Israel, Palestine or political expression. In the staff conduct chapter, it is 60%.

• It says a view held by 45% of British adults, that Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated Jews, could be antisemitic. Source: a YouGov poll for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, September 2025.

• Its terms of reference committed it to IHRA's definition of antisemitism in March, eight weeks before the call for evidence opened.

• The review says there is "confusion around the boundary between legitimate political expression and antisemitism". It asked people that directly: 526 of 590 said they could tell the difference. It leaves that answer out.

• 158 of 587 responses criticised the review, including its use of IHRA. It quotes none of them.

• "Three in five Jewish pupils" rests on 70 students.

• A charity named The Academic Study Group, whose only firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel, lists Sir David Bell on its council. The terms of reference say he has "no conflict of interest".

How the media framed it:

• 27 of 37 reports named the IHRA definition. Only 4 quoted any of its examples about Israel.

• None mentioned the 45% passage, the 158 critical responses or Bell's place on the Academic Study Group council.

• Critics of the definition got 883 words across 37 reports, 828 of them from one NEU statement. The Community Security Trust alone got 1,119.

• 9 reported any criticism of the definition. In 6, the only critic was the NEU.

• 8 put badges, flags or political symbols in the headline or standfirst, in an attempt to reinforce the message that solidarity for Palestine is linked to antisemitism.

• The Times cut "and the genocide in Gaza" from the NEU leader's words and put an ellipsis in its place.

Antisemitism in schools is real, and Jewish children must be protected. A definition that cannot tell Jewish children apart from the Israeli state only benefits the Israeli state, by conflating the two and misrepresenting real antisemitism.

Read the full analysis, with the evidence and our data:
https://t.co/pivWqQcUbf

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@Styo28183449 @Donna_Rachel_ It would be her publisher's remittance of the royalties that would be illegal, not the sale of the books. So you weren't that much help at all, really.

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@Donna_Rachel_ You said "what she can't do". Just making it clear that she's broken no law. The withdrawal of her books from sale in the UK is emphatically an act of censorship, based on misapplying UK law to the citizens of other countries. This is not normal, or acceptable.

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

The past 20 days have marked one of the most monolithic pushes by British media to vilify the Zionism is Racism Green Party motion.

Imbalanced coverage would be an understatement.

The papers wrote 447 articles on the Greens' Zionism vote. Israel, pro-Israel groups and the Chief Rabbi got 12,133 words. Palestinians got 3,173.

Any institution that parades as a "news outlet" can no longer be taken seriously if it covers this motion without also covering the people, Palestinians, who have endured, suffered and been oppressed the most by the ideology in action.

What the figures show:

• Israel's government alone got 3,904 words. More than every Palestinian put together.

• 2,422 of the 3,173 Palestinian words came in stories tying Lubna Speitan, the Palestinian who proposed the motion, to al-Qaeda.

• Apart from Lubna, two Palestinians were quoted across 436 articles, for 76 words between them. Nobody in Gaza, the occupied West Bank or Lebanon was quoted at all.

• Lubna told the Telegraph that 56 members of her family had been killed in Gaza. One article mentioned it: the Telegraph's own al-Qaeda story, in paragraph 44 of 51.

• Lubna has received death and rape threats since the vote. Al Jazeera reported it. None of the 447 British articles did.

• 43 articles said, in the paper's own voice, that the motion meant the destruction or abolition of Israel. The motion calls for one state with "equal rights for all".

• 36 headlines said antisemitism. Not one of 447 said genocide.

• 304 of the 436 articles we read in full never mentioned the genocide at all.

• 0 of 89 comment pieces backed the motion.

• The Daily Mail ran 38 articles on the motion, and in that time, just 2 on Israel's ongoing attacks across Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Full report: https://t.co/4liNwhBG2g

[Donna McLean @Donna__McLean]

I don't care if you like Sally Rooney's books or not. This is about the UK effectively banning an author's work because she is vocal in her support for the Palestinian people. I don't care whether you personally like her. Nor should you. It's about censorship. It's unhinged.

[M.R.Carey @michaelcarey191]

@realzoestrimpel So the Nobel prize was legitimate when it went to Kissinger, responsible for the bombing of Bach Mai children's hospital. And when it went to Mother Teresa, who let thousands die without treatment and "offer their pain up to god". But NOW it's ruined? It's you that's grotesque.