Arthur speaking in 1988. After reading this in June 2026 you realise that neither the Tories or Labour Governments have made any real improvement to the lives of the working class. Thatcherism is still alive!
“Comrades, since the Tories came to power in 1979, they have adhered to a systematic course of destruction, decimating public industries and services, stripping national assets and removing power, step by step, from institutions of potential or actual resistance, such as local authorities or trade unions.
The twin aim of the Tory strategy was the creation of mass unemployment (now standing in real terms in excess of four million) and the introduction of employment legislation designed to render trade unionism virtually ineffective.
The Prime Minister has never made any secret of her determination to wipe socialism from the agenda of British politics. A central plank of this Government's ideological approach has been its attack on our public service and nationalised industries. We have seen the privatisation of British Telecom, British Gas and British Airways. We now face the prospective sell-off of electricity, steel, rail - and coal.
Tory Government policies have systematically closed down the nation's manufacturing industries; only the remaining revenue from the North Sea oil is holding off the worst economic crisis in the history of modern British capitalism.
Dependence on imports has grown as our industries have collapsed, rendering Britain's social/economic landscape desolate. Hopeless and despair are now rife in both city and countryside, especially among young people, who see little chance of a future worth striving for.”
Arthur Scargill June, 1988.
The circle of mushrooms in your lawn is the visible edge of a single fungus that has been growing for years, possibly centuries.
"Fairy rings" start when a single fungal spore lands in a favorable spot and begins to grow outward in all directions through the soil.
The mycelium (the actual body of the fungus) is a network of microscopic threads called hyphae. It can spread underground at a rate of 1 to 2 feet per year, fanning out from the central point. The mushrooms you see above ground are just the fruiting bodies, like apples on a tree.
Eventually the center dies out as the fungus exhausts the nutrients there. The outer edges keep expanding. The result is a ring that gets larger every year, sometimes for decades. Some grow to 33 feet across.
One of the oldest known fairy rings is in France, estimated at 700 years old and 2,000 feet in diameter. A fairy-ring-type Armillaria fungus in northern Michigan covers 37 acres, weighs an estimated 21,000 pounds, and has been growing for around 1,500 years. It's one of the largest single living organisms on Earth.
The ring in your yard is almost certainly smaller and younger. But the principle is the same: you're not looking at scattered mushrooms. You're looking at the edge of an organism most of which lives below the grass, has been there for as long as the lawn has, and will keep expanding outward whether or not anyone is watching.
"Raffi Berg in his own words"
A detailed analysis of @BBCWorld Mid East editor's habitual framing of stories according to Israeli perspectives by his colleague of 8 years Martin Asser & how it undermine's the Corporation's neutrality on Israel/Palestine
https://t.co/u0a7zCxmn7
GOOD NEWS STORY
Anonymous donation given to help preserve two Mackintosh designed properties
An anonymous donation of £625,000 has boosted a conservation project aimed at preserving two buildings designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh.
The National Trust for Scotland said the funding was one of the largest anonymous donations it had ever received, and would go towards the Mackintosh Illuminated scheme.
It is centred around raising funds to support two publicly accessible Mackintosh sites – the Hill House in Helensburgh and the Mackintosh Tearooms on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.
The overall project is estimated to cost £20m, with the National Trust seeking to cover £14m of that total.
The project also plans to deepen public understanding of Macintosh's wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, who he credited for much of his success and who was a skilled artist in her own right across a range of disciplines.
It is hoped the project will show how the couple's artistic contribution, creative partnership and influence helped shape Glasgow's style.
The charity are hoping to accomplish this by 2028, which will mark 100 years since Mackintosh's death.
Phil Long OBE, the chief executive at the National Trust for Scotland, said the donation was hugely appreciated.
He added: "Building on the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we have ambitious plans to shine a light on the work of Mackintosh and Macdonald, to continue our pioneering conservation work at the stunning Hill House and to bring all of this to people in Scotland and beyond."
The 120-year-old Helensburgh building is considered to be Mackintosh's most complete example of a domestic home.
It was placed inside a chainmail box several years ago in an attempt to protect its saturated walls from further damage and allow them to gradually dry out.
Work at the tearooms will "strengthen interpretation, visitor engagement and future programming" at the site.
The tourist attraction is housed within Catherine Cranston's original building, where she commissioned Mackintosh and Macdonald to create and design their famous interiors.
The National Trust claim this work will help position the Tearooms as a key cultural destination within the city centre.
Liberation Scotland Update June 2026 #1
from C-24 in Managua, Nicaragua
"Scotland actually has three separate claims to the right of self-determination. And bear in mind, the right of self-determination is only the right to decide. It doesn't mean you're automatically independent, it means you have a right to decide your own future without being contested.
"So the first right of determination consists in the fact that multiple prime ministers, and officials of the British state, have categorically, including Keir Starmer back in 2020, have categorically said that the Scots have a right to decide to go it alone; that they have a right to independence if they want.
"In international law, because the Brits don't have a written constitution, this becomes a constitutional principle, if it has been said long enough and often enough by representatives of the state. Prime Minister speaks on behalf of the state, of course. Like Supreme Court speaks on behalf of the state, they're considered to be state organs.
"So now in international law, Scotland has been established as having that right. When David Cameron agreed to an 'opinion poll' that was called a referendum, he agreed in principle to put a mechanism in place to allow that right. He didn't follow up, he didn't allow the international standards. Nonetheless, that precedent was there. So that's one.
"Number two, the British state claims that it's founded on the Treaty and Act of Union, that's its authority. It said that most recently in its submission to a parliamentary report, published in February this year. The constitutional foundation that means its authority is the Treaty and Act of Union. Well, the Treaty Act of Union, have something called a 'condition precedent'.
"Basically means the union is conditional. What's the condition? It's a hoary old, absolutely irrelevant Act 1706 of the Presbyterian Faith, Preservation of Presbyterian Faith, which lifts the Claim of Right as part what has to be ratified along with the articles of the Union.
"Claim of Right gives the people of Scotland, unequivocally, the right to remove a government that no longer serves the interests of people. Very specific about the violations that caused the government to cease to be legitimate and stop them.
"But it very clearly shows that the sovereignty of the nation of Scotland lies with the Scots, and cannot possibly lie with Westminster. So either, and that condition is there, Claim of Right is still there and we still have that right, or there's no union. There's no British state, because precedent comes before, underpins native conditions. Without it, there's no union. With it, we have the right to leave. That's international law, that's treaty law.
"And finally, the right of self-determination for a people who have been made a dependency, that's a colony, by a larger state is absolutely entrenched. It's a fundamental principle of international law.
"Does that apply to Scotland? Absolutely. The British State has said, Scotland is not a dependency, that's a colony, because we have a partnership with the UK, it's a voluntary partnership. We've all heard that. Voluntary partnership requires an agreement. The agreement is the Treaty and Act Union.
"And hey, guess what? This underpinning authority of the British state has never been given effect. We don't have a treaty, and because we don't have a treaty, in other words, we don't have a partnership agreement, we are not a partner. We can only be a dependency. And that means that under International law, Treaty Law, Scotland has a right to decolonize.
"Not secession, not to fight for a remedy to the way the British state has treated us, a fundamental right to decolonization. And that's what we're doing in Nicaragua, because the vast majority of the international community does not know that Scotland is a dependency.
"It has no idea that the United Kingdom is a fraud. It has no idea that Scotland is not part of a unitary state. Once that has been clearly established, everything changes, the whole game changes.
"So everything hangs, basically, on the ability of British state to hood-wink the international community. And Liberation Scotland is here making sure they can't succeed any longer. And then having that formally recognized, that Scotland has this right to self-determination.
"Once that happens, that doesn't make us independent overnight. What it does do, it clears the path. No more Section 30, no more Westminster permission, no more Westminster interference in the right of Scots to decide their future. It's a way, simply a way to clear the road ahead. And after that, it's up to us." @SSalyers2@LiberationScot@broonpot@PAlanMcMahon@thomsonchris@CraigMurrayOrg@rblackqc@IndyScotParty@LiberateScot@SalvoHighlands@ScotSalvo
@GerryHassan Is that a lightbulb moment Gerry? It has always been about England & what England thinks & does. Scotland, Ireland & Wales are not even an afterthought anymore as English nationalism rises to the top. Perhaps time to look at your own country & suggest a positive way forward.
Just to put this out there with clarity: Robbie Gibb, who is responsible for turning the disgraced JC into a right-wing Pro-Netanyahu propaganda rag, is one of five people - including the Director General - on the @BBCNews editorial guidelines and standards committee. It’s on the BBC website.
Minutes of the last meeting show they discussed complaints about Israel/Gaza. Quite apart from the fact he is not remotely impartial on the Middle East, how can the owner of a paper with such poor journalistic standards have a role over the BBC’s?
Robbie Gibb gets to censor the BBC's Middle East coverage. He needs to resign today.
https://t.co/SnaJNlkH8w
eat 🪶 sleep 😴 preen ✨ repeat
A day in the life of Jupiter, the white-tailed eagle chick, now 34 days old on the nest. No drama today — just eating, sleeping, preening, and the serious business of doing very little.
Live 24/7 → https://t.co/EK9PrDvtsi
#C4News Here we go. @Channel4News “journalists” interviewing other Channel 4 News “journalists” and framing the narrative on behalf of their Corporate/Establishment/Govt.
Starmer “having a good war…”
“There’s no money for public spending…”
Pure propaganda, not “News.”
It’s terrifying when you realise that the “Good Old BBC,” “Auntie,” is actually a gigantic, malignant lying machine, manipulating its millions of listeners and viewers every minute of every day, across multiple platforms, usually pushing very unpleasant, right wing narratives…
Oh dear. BBC Scotland has concealed the fact that it was the *SNP itself* that contacted HMRC. The headline invites the reader to infer otherwise. For people whose profession it is to ensure accuracy when reporting, this can only be deliberate.
Only negative Scots stories are important to the Brit media, unless an athlete wins, but better the story if he refuses to hang a Union Jack across his shoulders and chooses a Saltire.
When Crown Counsel at the Murrell case said the £400,000 was "principally" donations and members' fees it wasn't because it may have included public money, but because party accounts at the time included £107,000 Murrell himself had loaned to the SNP.
The BritNat media is deliberately misrepresenting the Crown Counsel's words to imply Murrell may have embezzled *public* money. The reason the BritNats are doing this is because Westminster has no legal locus to hold an inquiry into Murrell *unless* his crime involves public money.
We are witnessing a massive journalistic and political fraud being perpetrated in plain sight. Any inquiry held by Westminster will cost sums of money considerably greater than the sum Murrell stole from the SNP ... and this time it *will* be public money. How ironic is that?