I visited Otxandio a few years ago. The first town to ever be carpet bombed. Sadly not the last. On 90th anniversary of that disastrous precedent, with wars raging in Europe & the Middle East, we should redouble our efforts against fascism & militarism. bsky.app/profile/ehbi...

Every summer now rural Spain is ablaze. This year seems particularly bad because the heatwaves are never ending and winter & spring were quite wet, so the grass has grown long. The Govt has to force big landowners to properly manage their land: prevention is the only way!

The Trump administration has also made it abundantly clear that it expects foreign countries to let Silicon Valley run wild. They've proven that they will lobby aggressively to block regulations in Europe that can hurt the profitability of American big tech. Uber is Teamp Trump.

Another EU tech firm swallowed up by Silicon Valley. I'll shed no tears for Delivery Hero, among the worst exploiters in the industry, but Uber is the biggest, most ruthless exploiter of them all: it will fight rights for riders with all its got, backed to the hilt by Washington. 🧵

When you consider private rent prices in Edinburgh are up 104% in 15 years, then what constitutes "intermediate" or "mid market" rent is not going to be affordable for people on low-to-middle incomes. Edinburgh needs more social & council housing with rent pegged to real incomes.

Reading new book on service work called 'beneath the wages' & apparently the majority of jobs created in the US since the 2008 crash have been in the gig economy. On 250th anniversary of the US, might be worth reflecting on when & how the country stopped producing decent jobs.

Lieferando has suspended operations tomorrow in Berlin due to temperatures expected to reach over 40 degrees. But will all riders be paid? I've spoken to a number of riders this week who work for sub-contractors which do not respect workers' most basic rights @lwc-berlin.bsky.social

There's a good exhibition at the Spore Initiative in Berlin on the Namibia genocide, a dark part of German history too often overlooked. Impressed that it includes a letter in solidarity with the victims of the Gaza genocide which criticises German complicity & authoritarianism

Final part of series on Scotland's demographic crunch looks at how to close 'the fertility gap': the difference between how many children that women have and how many they want to have. "What is required is a coherent project to make life easier" sceptical.scot/2026/06/demo...

Part 2 on Scotland's demographic crunch (link below) looks at the impact of an ageing population, focusing on elderly care. - 69% of care homes have staff vacancies - The current old-age dependency ratio is 3.3:1, rising to 2.85:1 by 2049. - There will be an additional 250,000 pensioners by 2049

Reviewing this book for Jacobin, which will be released in August. It's an exhaustive (and, at times, exhausting) analysis of corporate power in the digital age. Who are the rulers? Rikap has a clear answer. The three 'cloud hegemons': Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Feels like we've reached an inflection point with this World Cup, where a toxic combination of hyper-commercialisation and state authoritarianism is now pushing fans to stay away. Seeing reports that hotel bookings are much lower than expected. A backlash against Football Inc.

Incredible stat: just one in 10 young people in Spain now move out of their parents home before they are 30. Handing over the keys to housing to rentiers and speculators is a sure-fire way to undermine the fabric of your society.

I've been working with @etuc-ces.bsky.social on the re-launch of the Digital Platform Observatory, which is now live. Click on any EU country on the map, you'll see an update on the transposition of the Platform Work Directive. Also info on strikes, agreements etc digitalplatformobservatory.org

In any case, ideological position is not the same as voting preference. Older people are less likely to shop around with their vote, less attracted to new up start parties and more likely to back traditional parties of power. See the last German election for a clear example of this.

Written a piece for @greeneujournal.bsky.social about “grey power”: what the growing political power of the elderly in the context of an ageing population means (link below). The grey vote matters, but it doesn't mean we should embrace inter-generational conflict as the future of politics🧵

There's a growing number of stories like this: big tech execs saying all that AI spend isn't translating into productivity gains, and can't really be justified when staff are being laid-off to make room for it. Is Uber just behind the curve, or is the AI hype exaggerated?

I didnt think anything would beat seeing Hearts win the cup in 1998. I thought that was the peak for a Hearts fan. But winning the league for the first time since 1960 & breaking the old firm duopoly for the first time in over 40 years would top it by a long way. 'Mon the Jambos!

This is a good read. Modern capitalism is expensive & alienating for young people. Its been built for hyper-consumption, not family formation. That explains why the fertility gap - the gap between how many children young adults want to have & the reality - is so large & growing.

Spanish wholesale electricity prices are less than half the EU average (and less than half the UK figure) because oil & gas have been pushed out of the system over the past half decade. Gas only sets the price 9% of the time now, down from 55% in 2022. bsky.app/profile/janr...

Being a tenant in the private sector rather than a home-owner takes two and a half weeks off your life EVERY YEAR. Rentierism kills.

There are more people in Spain who own multiple properties than there are people who own one property. A country increasingly divided between landlords and tenants.

Important 3-day strike of Glovo food delivery couriers begins tonight across Spain. It's the first national strike since they became employees last July. The union, @ccoociudadania.bsky.social, say Glovo has moved from bogus self-employment to bogus employment. Will have a report on Monday.

At a petrol station in Oñati, Basque Country: 'wars of the imperialists, misery for the workers'

The UK is not really a sovereign country.

If there is an agreement on this basis, it's the end of US hegemony in the Middle East, because Iran will police the Strait permanently. Iran will have come out of this war in a much stronger position than it started. In other words, Iran will have won.

Never forget that this was the official stance from Brussels 12 hours ago. Consistently on the wrong side of history.

If the US or Israel use nukes on Iran, everything needs to stop. Global general strike until Trump and Netanyahu are in the Hague.

Its actually quite terrifying to think what the US and Israel are capable of in this war. If this is how desperate Trump is now, imagine if this goes on for a month, or even six months, longer. Not sure the use of a nuke has ever been closer in post-WW2 era. They must be stopped!

Where are the leaders willing to speak out against Trump and say 'enough of the genocidal talk, respect Iran and give diplomacy a chance'? Spineless European leaders should never have allowed this sort of rhetoric to become normalised, it puts us all on a path to destruction.