On #DifferentClass 🏏 "A modern day John Arlott" @PeterHain "A book all cricket lovers should read" @mihirbose "the most invaluable contribution to cricket literature this century” @tribunemagazine “A worthy successor to Mike Marqusee" @bigissuenorth repeaterbooks.com/product/di…

I've only just discovered the story of Jack Barth, the original creator of Yesterday, and Christ alive, it's one of the most grotesquely ironic stories I've ever encountered in the film industry. For those unfamiliar with it, Barth was a struggling screenwriter who conceived an ingenious premise: a musician wakes up in a world where The Beatles never existed, realises he's the only person who remembers their songs, and starts passing them off as his own. Barth wrote the screenplay, originally titled Cover Version. After decades of trying to break into the film industry, he finally sold it. Enter Richard Curtis. Curtis rewrote the screenplay, transforming Barth's rather melancholy examination of artistic failure into a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy. Curtis received sole screenplay credit, while Barth was left sharing a story by credit with the considerably more famous writer. Now, Barth agreed to this arrangement. That's important. But what happened afterwards is what makes the whole business so bloody unpleasant. Curtis subsequently described receiving little more than a one-sentence premise, despite Barth's original screenplay containing several remarkably specific elements that survived into the finished film, including the elderly John Lennon and the Harry Potter gag. Barth has argued that his contribution was systematically minimised, leaving him struggling to convince people that he created the story in the first place. And here's where the irony becomes so vicious that Kafka himself would probably have rejected it for being too fucking obvious. In Barth's original version, the protagonist DOESN'T become enormously successful. He possesses the greatest collection of songs in popular music history and STILL struggles to make it. It's a story about the cruel indifference of artistic success. About how creative talent and commercial recognition are frequently separated by circumstances beyond an artist's control. Then Barth watches his own creation become an international hit, with another writer receiving the lion's share of the acclaim. And now, six years after Barth publicly complained about the whole miserable business, Yesterday is becoming a West End musical. Judging by his reaction today, the news appears to have come as something of a surprise to him. Fucking hell. I appreciate that contracts exist. I appreciate that Curtis substantially rewrote the film. I even appreciate that Barth received payment and agreed to the credits. But there's something profoundly depressing about an industry that can take a struggling writer's original screenplay, turn it into a multimillion-pound success, and leave that writer feeling practically invisible. And now the machinery is apparently gearing up to do it all over again, this time with jazz hands. As for Richard Curtis, a gigantic FUCK YOU.

A most welcome initiative - if somewhat late for many: foundation.lancashirecricket… #BlackHistoryMonth #cricket #community

Ashok Kumar gets it. You don't get anywhere by tinkering around the edges, trying to not upset the establishment. Any fight for radical change is always gonna get messy. If your best argument is that the fight for justice might upset comfortable people then you have no argument at all. Every movement for justice loses support among sections of the public. The civil rights movement was unpopular in the 1950s and 60s, but it didn't give up. The fight for Palestinian justice is much the same. To argue that it's strategically wrong to call the ideology behind a genocide "racist" is absurd. If we can't call out Zionism now, when? When the establishment gives us permission? Zionism must be defeated and it can only be defeated if people aren't afraid to speak the truth.

NEW: Ashok Kumar @comrade_kumar_ on Novara Media's recent coverage of the Green’s Zionism is Racism motion: “I guess my disappointment in Novara is that I would love if we had left wing media that would say yeah we’ll take a position on this. Maybe we disagree with the strategy, maybe we disagree with the policy beforehand, but now we understand the social forces – there’s a tidal wave of shit that they’re dealing with for 2-3 weeks. We won’t contribute to that shit, we’ll be a bulwark against that shit.”

BREAKING: Two of what are supposed to be the better water companies have syphoned out £700 million EACH in dividends in the last 2 years Enough is enough. Bring them into public ownership, starting with Thames Water. Demand Andy Burnham block the Thames Water bailout: vist.ly/5pbs6

“Piketty, the man who documented American decline not only through macroeconomic figures but also through actual cuts to education — begun under Nixon, intensified under Reagan, becoming systematic and irreversible — explains in Le Monde that under Macron, education spending has fallen by 20%. Easy to say.” “This amounts to the end of public education, its effective collapse in France, the United States or Lima. Which leads to the destruction of the social mobility ladder. And which, in turn, makes inheritance the principal mechanism for gaining access not only to wealth, but also to ownership of things that until recently were within reach, such as a crappy apartment, or even a longer life expectancy.” ctxt.es/es/20261001/Politica…

I love Ashok's total rejection of decades of left melancholia: no more sitting on the sidelines, basking in the glory of high principles while complaining of being powerless. The strategy is not only stick to those high principles but fight for them at the v heart of the arena.

🎥 “We want to go the Farage route, not the Lib Dem route.” Ashok Kumar of Greens for Palestine spoke to Novara Media about strategy behind the Green Party’s “Zionism is racism” motion, which took a year to organize and was designed to expose Labour’s politics. He said PM Andy Burnham’s response revealed him as little different from Keir Starmer. Inspired by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed and its “strategy of conflict,” the idea is to set the terms of debate, provoke a backlash, and heighten contradictions to force opponents to reveal positions. Rather than chase more MPs by moderating its politics, Kumar says the Greens should use confrontation to shift the debate leftward and become an anti-establishment force. “We want to drag [the paradigm] to the left kicking and screaming.” @comrade_kumar_ | @novaramedia

Let's get this clear, if someone is upset by a teacher wearing a Palestine badge, the teacher is not being antisemitic. That person is being racist towards Palestinians. This really isn't hard.

An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class is now hitting all good bookshops. 📚

"You know who else are antisemitic vermin? Your school-age children" feels like a significant escalation in our political class's psychological warfare against its own citizens on behalf of a genocidal foreign state

Coming soon: Al Jazeera uncovers disturbing links between British right wing activists, the far right and loyalist paramilitaries. #Glasgow #Belfast #London

RT @PaperWhispers: 95%* of Black children in the UK have heard or directly experienced racist abuse at school. It is interesting that ther…

If you're not watching Al Jazeera investigates live now, you *really* should The most remarkable undercover footage I've ever seen. Turning Point UK actively involved in soliciting what they think is a hit UK police really need to be watching aljazeera.com/video/live

So many. But I was roaring the first time I saw this. 😂 piped.video/UHBOp7AUkc0?is=vImA…

I really think a huge dividing line among people's reactions to digger is if you have ever personally tried to change something in this world or even just at your workplace. great read

Not only did Whatley & Hancock order the release of untested & Covid sick hospital patients into care homes, they made residents wait a month after Pfizer was available for the much lower efficacy AZ vaccine because Boris wanted to stick one to the EU. They should be jailed.

So I just wanted to add this last thing to this video as well, which happened at the time. Jo had her producer down her ear telling her to get me off as can be seen in the video. And as soon as the cameras were off, the producer said to me, because I was in a separate room and not in the room with them all, these words “Mr. Shafiei, that’s the last time you’ll ever be on the BBC” And it was the last time I was ever on the BBC, even though I was the national election coordinator for the Workers’ Party of Britain during a general election. This is what you call total domination of the mainstream media space by Israelis and their minions.

Aberfan was the Grenfell of my childhood. But it was only today (radio) that I found out the removal of a second coal spoil tip towering over the village had to be paid for out of the family compensation fund. #c4news

Andy Burnham doesn't need to wait for civil servants in order to do something about the Thames Water disaster He can block the Thames Water bailout by Oct 29th - sign the petition: vist.ly/5p8ik