Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Stewart Smith

TransActual @transactualuk.bsky.social · 6d

🚨This is an emergency🚨

This Government is currently sitting on an EHRC Code of Practice that will lead to the segregation and exclusion of trans people in public life.

Use our tool to email your MP: tinyurl.com/scrap-the-bathroom-ban

@transsolidarity.bsky.social
#ScrapTheBathroomBan

Image of a flashing red siren. Text reads: Scrap the Bathroom Ban This is an emergency. Tell your MP to say no to segregation. Write to your MP: tinyurl.com/scrap-the-bathroom-ban

9 330 480

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 8d

Some great ballads and pop tunes on Tim and PTMM but I miss the daft snottiness. And Westerbeg totally lost his touch with the hard rockers once they went major label. Stuff like Dose of Thunder honks.

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 8d

A certain centrist music journo claimed half of LIB is terrible and Pleased is their masterpiece. *shakes head*

2 1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 8d

The way he lets that feedback ring and ring then finally cuts through with that perfect howl. One of the greatest moments in rock n roll.

1 1

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 15d

Free Greta Thunberg and the rest of the illegally detained flotilla activists.

450 7.9K 24K

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 14d

This is grim & dangerous over reach.

This is a government that have lost the moral argument & are still selling arms to Israel. Now further cracking down on dissent.

Absolutely the opposite of what they should be doing - so of course this is what the Labour Government choose.

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 14d

NEW: Home Office announces planned new anti-protest powers, mainly aimed at pro-Gaza protests like those for Palestine Action. Police will be able to consider the "cumulative impact" of repeated protests and potentially order that they be relocated.

65 730 1.9K

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 16d

Great album, love the near silence to molten heaviness dynamics

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 16d

Hugely excited to be putting on the great Bhutanese experimental guitarist Tashi Dorji @dorjitashi.bsky.social at @starandshadow.bsky.social on Monday 6 October. A post-colonial disembowelment of guitar traditions RIYL Derek Bailey, John Fahey and Bill Orcutt www.starandshadow.org.uk/programme/ev...

Star and Shadow: Tashi Dorji

www.starandshadow.org.uk

1 2

Reposted by Stewart Smith

DavidMcKenna @davidmckenna.bsky.social · 19d

One piece of infallible advice I'd pass on to future generations would be to never trust anyone who says they're neither on the left or the right. They're always on the right.

Simon Love @simonloverules.bsky.social · 19d

What a surprise #badpeopleonbothsides

3 7 40

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Lort Burn Specials @lortburnspecials.bsky.social · 19d

LORT BURN SPECIALS: 3

Featuring OWEN HATHERLEY, ANDREW HANKINSON, KATE LISTON and music from BEN LOWES-SMITH

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER 7PM

@alphabettitheatre.bsky.social

MAKE NEWCASTLE MITTELEUROPA AGAIN

7 11

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Ben Dickenson @benjitoon.bsky.social · 22d

Newcastle says no to fascism.

The far right brought a hundred or so with them, bussed from far and wide. This city turned out 1000s, from local communities, estates and streets. Geordies of all backgrounds coming together and outnumbering the purveyors of hate by some distance.

Newcastle united.

28 310 1.1K

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 27d

It’s a stunner!

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 27d

Or rather drops Friday!

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 27d

Just dropped. All guitars plus two pianos, so it’s all about the strings. Bill Frisell, Brandon Ross… henrythreadgill.bandcamp.com/album/listen...

Listen Ship, by Henry Threadgill

16 track album

henrythreadgill.bandcamp.com

2 2

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · 27d

Seconded! You heard his new one, all guitars?

3 1

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · Sep 17

No words.

The lives of those living in Gaza are deemed less important than maintaining relations with Israel and, by proxy, the US. At the personal level, on Labour's doorsteps, this approach plays out in the most callous of ways. Dalloul al-Neder is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, who was a constituent of the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
He got to know her, meeting several times: she visited his takeaway shop in 2019 and posed for pictures, declaring "Palestine must be free". She took him on a tour of parliament.

PHOTO: Dalloul al-Neder, who lives in Manchester, with an image of his late mother - he has lost several family members in Gaza bombings.
Photograph: Sean Hansford/MEN Media

Within weeks of the genocide beginning, in October 2023, his mother, brother, sister-in-law and two young nieces were killed by an Israeli airstrike. Desperate to evacuate his wife and four-month-old daughter - who had been buried under rubble three times by Israeli attacks - he emailed Rayner twice to seek help evacuating his family. He says received no response.

In January 2024, he attended a Labour fundraiser in Stockport addressed by Rayner and her colleague, Jonathan Reynolds, and got to his feet, clutching pictures of his dead mother, begging her to support a ceasefire, emotionally declaring "I lost my family in Gaza". The whole tawdry episode is on camera: he was aggressively ejected from the meeting and on to the street. Rayner did nothing, except to say "thank you, you've made your point". She then unfollowed him on social media. Days later, she was interviewed by Sky News' Beth Rigby, who framed the incident as an example of the threats politicians face, linking it to the murder of the MPs Jo Cox and David Amess.
Since then, so many of Neder's relatives have been slaughtered by the Israeli state that their names take up three pages of a notebook.

11 450 800

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · Sep 14

Whether it is out of sheer incompetence or ideological alignment, this government is doing the far right's work

The only consistent thing they have done since getting in power is echo reactionary talking points. There is not one bad faith reactionary tirade they won't lap up and recite.

Headline: Scale of ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march shows free speech ‘alive and well’ in UK, says minister – UK politics live

Peter Kyle said he was not ‘disturbed’ by huge Tommy Robinson-organised far-right protest but condemns violence against the police

1 30 95

Reposted by Stewart Smith

Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana.bsky.social · Sep 14

Where is Keir Starmer? Where is the leadership?

Fascists marched on our streets yesterday and he hasn’t said a single word.

Instead the Prime Minister spends his time defending the “best pals” of paedophiles.

He is a coward. He should resign.

57 280 1.1K

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 11

Posh lad jazz-rap horrors aside, I do hope that some of the jazz students in the audience will have been put on some righteous paths from hearing James Brandon Lewis and the Fugazi rhythm section up close.

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 11

...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it feels a bit secondhand, like they're catching up with the London and LA of a decade ago. Worst bit was when we went to see JBL & Messthetics and a local student band supported. The bandleader put down his horn to rap about his skiing holiday... 😳

2 2

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 11

My experience of the RC in Glasgow is that it's the classical students who gravitate towards the local experimental/improv scenes. The jazzers have little to do with it, which is a real shame. There's long been folk crossover, but the current ones are going for the groovy stuff...

1 1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 11

Interesting... I think it really depends where you go, who your teachers are, what local scenes you're part of etc.

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 10

Too many conservatoire jazz musicians with really boring taste in guitar music. They need a solid diet of Napalm Death, Bill Orcutt and Ava Mendoza.

1 7

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 10

Don’t even think it’s good ragtime. It doesn’t do anything characterful or innovative with it (unlike say, Threadgill in the 70s or Jason Moran more recently), it’s just pastiche. Same goes for the classical stuff on there.

1

Stewart Smith @drstewartsmith.bsky.social · Sep 10

There are a bunch of “fringe” events around Newcastle for it, but it’s very much industry led, not much from the grassroots.

1