Simon Barrow

Writer | Poet | Politics, ethics, beliefs | Art | former director @Ekklesia_co_uk | NUJ | @TUG_SNP | Music: @MusicTippett @YesSolidMental

[Simon Barrow @simonbarrow]

'Transforming Christian-Muslim relations', with Rowan Williams, @monasiddiqui7 & @simonbarrow Videocast now online https://t.co/lEO7tqT2cO

[Dan Walden @dwaldenwrites]

Complete nonsense from beginning to end. There is no shortage of first person verbs in Homer, and Achilles’s lament for Patroclus is incredibly self-reflective. Open the schools!

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

Sagal Abdi-Wali has just filed her first register of interest in Parliament, revealing who funded her election campaign in the Holborn & St Pancras by-election where she defeated Zack Polanski.

And they stink.

They are from sources with strong historical ties to Labour Together. And through one of her key donors, Sagal is linked to investments in companies like Palantir and Elbit Systems and Boeing. There is something completely broken about how the reporting regime for donations works that we're only finding this out now, after the election.

The returns show that Abdi-Wali had two big donors: Daniel Luhde-Thompson and his wife Cressida Pollock who donated jointly, and Green Britain Group Ltd, the holding company of Dale Vince's Ecotricity. Both donated £50k to the campaign.

Daniel Luhde-Thompson is mega-wealthy. He is one of the co-founders of the quant-trading hedge fund Quadrature Capital. Quadrature, whose holding company is registered in the Caymans, donated £4m to the Labour Party during the 2024 General Election.

It was the single largest donation Labour had ever received. But nobody knew this fact during the election itself, as the donation was only declared after the election as it was made in a specific week-long window that was exempt from immediate reporting.

As I revealed in OpenDemocracy in October 2024, Quadrature had held shares in companies connected to the genocide in Gaza in late 2023 and early 2024. It held an average of $121m in shares in companies linked to the genocide in Gaza between December 2023 and July 2024. This included shareholdings in arms companies like the lead contractor on the F-35, Lockheed Martin.

I've just checked Quadrature's most recent SEC filings submitted at the end of June 2026. They show that Quadrature still has investments in arms companies like Boeing and Lockheed. The June fillings show it held $9m in Elbit shares and an astonishing $117m in Palantir.

What is it with the Labour Party and connections to Palantir?

Luhde-Thompson also donated to Labour Together. He donated £50k at the end of November 2023: smack-bang in the middle of the period when Labour Together hired APCO to investigate journalists (including me and my family) who had exposed Morgan McSweeney's failure to report donations in violation of the law between 2018 and 2020 (of course there is no indication Luhde-Thompson knew about this).

Dale Vince, Sagal's other donor, was also a big donor to Labour Together. He has, most recently, strongly supported approving drilling at Jackdaw and Rosebank oilfields.

We found out about Dale Vince donating to Sagal during the campaign because it was leaked to the Independent. But voters in Holborn & St Pancras had no idea that she was also being funded by Daniel Luhde-Thompson, linking her to Quadrature and, through that, investments in companies complicit in genocide.

There is really something deeply wrong here. Voters were deprived of key information before they cast their vote. Our electoral laws around donations, which allow the mega-rich to dominate our politics, have to be reformed.

[Rivkah Brown @rivkahbrown]

NEW: 260 British Jews – among them British Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, human rights barrister Margaret Owen OBE and journalist and politician @andrewfeinstein – have accused the @BoardofDeputies of genocide denial in an open letter.

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

Spotify is rolling out an AI tool in 2027 that lets users remix & alter any song

It threatens creative integrity & ownership
It will fill the platform with a tsunami of AI-generated slop
It will devalue the years of work behind original tracks

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

"Steal This Story, Please!" is now available ro rent or buy on digital platforms. The documentary, made by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, tells the story of journalist Amy Goodman and the independent news outlet Democracy Now!

https://t.co/0YP1Tv1QKi

[BELLA CALEDONIA @bellacaledonia]

This 1000% 👇

[Priyamvada Gopal © @PriyamvadaGopal]

Utterly scandalous that this isn't getting wider traction and outrage.

A clear national asset & treasure, a repository for knowledge that is of national & global renown, as significant a living monument as any damn slave trader statue--and not a peep from the heritage brigade.

[Rosie Kay @RosieKayK2CO]

This is rather amazing.

[Simon Barrow @simonbarrow]

Dreams show us that consciousness is fundamental https://t.co/qIodRa0fVz

[Simon Barrow @simonbarrow]

A problem with the Scottish government too.

[Adam Ramsay @AdamRamsay]

Andy Burnham said he wanted to fix Westminster. But he’s got the Boston Consulting Group in to write his ten year plan - as though massive outsourcing to the big consultancies isn’t a huge part of the problem!

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Of course he did. Palantir hired Tom Watson to schmooze his old pals. And he did.

There is no world in which Palantir helps boost "the UK's tech sovereignty". We need to know exactly how @YvetteCooperMP made this decision, based on what evidence & what data?

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

What if the foundational metaphor of modern neuroscience and AI is completely wrong?

For decades, we’ve treated the brain as hardware and the mind as software. If that’s true, conscious AI is inevitable.

But philosopher Dorothea Olkowski contends that the "brain-as-computer" metaphor is a fatal scientific error.

True consciousness doesn't emerge from cold calculation in the cortex, but from the ancient brainstem, steeped in hormones, emotion, and bodily chemistry. You cannot reduce a living, chemical signalling system to binary logic.

Tap the link to read more. https://t.co/m4qEr3xWp6

[𝘑𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯 @JustAskJillian]

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

~W.B. Yeats

[Prof Bob Davis @Rokewood]

Urge the British Library not to close its reading rooms - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/KSN5T75EBg via @UKChange

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

The best bookmark.. 😅

[Pat Kane @thoughtland]

Tricky for @AlynSmith to come out swinging for data centres in Scotland, just as the "blue tsunami" in the US is substantially driven by opposition to them & AI. Maybe some critical distance, rather than boom mentality, would do us good. My @ScotNational column https://t.co/wsS6Fkmh8L

[Jash Dholani @oldbooksguy]

Mozart on when his ideas flowed best

[Simon Barrow @simonbarrow]

@MhairiHunter Well said, Mhairi.

[Megan Fritts @freganmitts]

In the piece I'm working on, I'm arguing that what drives a lot of AI recklessness and anti-humanistic sentiment is an inability to accept limitation (perhaps especially mortality) as an essential and valuable aspect of a human life. (1/2)

[Adam Ramsay @AdamRamsay]

It’s important to understand here that states aren’t allowed to sue for libel. There is no need for the BBC to do this, they just want to. (And tbf, Victoria Derbyshire makes it very clear she doesn’t want to say it).