Nik Sunil Williams

I hate on London a lot and will never move back but the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow is a revelation.

Westminster Meeting House raided by Metropolitan Police again. Statement: “For Quakers, faith and action are inseparable. Peaceful protest, prayer and nonviolent action are integral parts of many Quakers' religious life. Whilst we take the planning of criminal acts very seriously, we believe that this incident is a deliberate targeting of committed young people who want to make our country a more equitable place. This raid is part of a systematic stifling of dissent. That this is the second time in a year that the police have raided our meeting house dramatically illuminates the broader trend in the UK of cracking down on those who disagree with the government. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy. It's a key part of how people make their voices heard between elections.” – Oliver Robertson, Head of Witness and Worship Quakers in Britain, 5 March 2026

Yesterday evening, for the second time in a year, the Met Police raided Westminster Quaker Meeting House and arrested a number of young nonviolent activists.

STATEMENT: www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

🟡 Workshops starting at 12:00 | #UKMFF26

Parallel sessions:

#SLAPP First Aid Kit
Samantha Thompson & Thomas Otter (RPC)

Using FOI to Investigate Power
Jenna Corderoy & @tbij.bsky.social

SLAPP Risks for Students
@nikwilliams.bsky.social, Gill Phillips & @mediadefence.bsky.social

#UKMFF2026

A table with reports and promotional materials as well as a display and banner in the background

If you are at the Media Freedom Forum today and want to learn more about SLAPPs please check out the UK anti-SLAPP Coalition table.

Would be happy to chat all things legal abuse related #StopSLAPPs

A few days after hearing about the potential closure of Trongate 103 due to alleged rent hikes by the @glasgowcc.bsky.social arms length landlord City Property, I received a Council Tax notification.

Funny that Henry David Thoreau in Concord came to mind

CPJ calls on Swiss authorities to protect Azerbaijani journalist Emin Huseynov - Committee to Protect Journalists New York, February 27, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Swiss authorities to ensure exiled journalist and human rights defender Emin Huseynov’s safety after Huseynov said he was followe...

Azerbaijani journalist says he was surveilled and followed by armed men in Geneva: cpj.org/2026/02/cpj-...

New tagline for the US has dropped

"Do not rely on the US Government"

Oligarchs Are Building The World's Biggest Propaganda Machine. Their Success Isn't Guaranteed. America's wealthiest, shittiest people are trying to hoover up the entirety of new and old media companies in a bid to pummel the plebs with propaganda. But what they want, and what they actually get,...

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the Paramount/Warner deal, how it's best viewed as a well-funded attack on informed consensus, and how we still have collective agency to determine whether or not it actually succeeds.

Myself and Andrea Campbell from @ebu.ch, on behalf of the platform, authored this @euobserver.com op-ed highlighting what the dire picture for media freedom means for European democracy euobserver.com/204824/the-r...

Photo of a five person panel at a press conference at the Press Club in Brussels

Photo of two panellists sitting next to each other on a press conference with name tags Gunel Safarova and Nicholas Williams

Honoured to launch "On the Tipping Point: Press Freedom" the 2025 @coemediafreedom.bsky.social report looking at the deteriorating state of #MediaFreedom in Europe.

fom.coe.int/en/rapports/...

@article19europe.bsky.social @ecpmf.bsky.social @globalfreemedia.bsky.social @europeanjournalists.org

I have lived in Glasgow for nearly a decade and have loved it but this hollowing out of what the city offers its inhabitants, what it professes to value and the damage we are expected to put up with is unacceptable.

. @glasgowcitycouncil.bsky.social's consistent acts of sabotage and cultural vandalism doing everything they can to encourage people to leave the city

Will there be any galleries left in Glasgow?!

This is damn absurd

Badenoch seems committed to debasing the official opposition at every opportunity. This is utterly disgraceful yet totally consistent with her constant blurring of opposition with trolling.

Also is she asserting dual loyalties?!

Refugee status to be temporary as Shabana Mahmood rips up rules on UK asylum Home secretary announces 30-month protection limit, with refugees required to leave if their home countries are later judged safe

Why wait for Farage to commit refugees "to certain death" when we can do it?

Not sure the Home Secretary has thought this through, or perhaps she has and that is the terrifying part.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Everything about Badenoch can be understood through the fact she sees the world through the lens of her “ethnic enemies”: a totalising worldview that will always, always, make the people who hold it say and do stupid things.

Just saw the superb Eagles of the Republic by Tarik Saleh. A potent and riveting profile of the costs of being complicit. Needless to say it has resonance beyond Egypt these days...

Then the always brilliant Jim Jarmusch, with Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, a gentle yet precise exploration of families highlighting how each is at times uniquely awful yet awfully unique

@glasgowfilmtheatre.bsky.social

Good GFF weekend. Watched the UK premier of Miguel Ángel Jiménez's The Birthday Party with an excellent Willem Defoe, saying more about wealth and power in a minute than Saltburn could muster in its entire run time.

Yep. Great move by the Guardian.

📢Save the date ! 🗓️
The 2026 Europe Press Freedom Report will be released on 3 March.
Join the press conference
🔸online or
🔸in presence in Brussels
For more information and updates ➡️ go.coe.int/LjTes
#EuropeForMediaFreedom

I know it is just a film, but Stone loves using fiction to make a point sharp enough to cut through the curtain that separates truth & fiction. This film doesn't operate solely as a yarn or an alternate reality, I believe it is intended to tell *a* truth. Perhaps Stone believes it to be *the* truth.

Have just rewatched Oliver Stone's deranged, yet enjoyable, opus JFK. A conspiracist fever dream yet I believe that if Jim Garrison presented this court room diatribe in real life, he would be disbarred.

It is nothing but an *approximation* of what Stone believes we want justice to look like

imo the threat posed by CBS News and CNN getting absorbed by pro-regime billionaires isn't that they're going to produce right-wing slop that convinces people to be right-wing, it's the dismantling of newsrooms capable of doing investigative reporting on the administration. Fewer eyes on the street.

The Handbasket 100% independent journalism by Marisa Kabas

Now that CNN and WBD are set to become state media in a sale to Paramount/Oracle/TikTok, it is especially important to support independent media.

Off the top of my head:

www.thehandbasket.co
404media.co
www.garbageday.email

Add your favorites in the replies. Fuck state-backed media monopolies.

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?

Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths - Committee to Protect Journalists Key findings Introduction At a time when armed conflict has reached historic levels around the world, journalist killings also reached an all-time high primarily due to the actions of one government: ...

A new report by @pressfreedom.bsky.social finds that 2025 was the deadliest year for journalists since it began documenting killings more than three decades ago.

Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024.

Read the full report⬇️
cpj.org/special-repo...

Police and MI5 waged campaign of illegal interference against BBC journalist, tribunal told Former Northern Ireland correspondent Vincent Kearney subjected to ‘unprecedented’ surveillance, says lawyer

This does make me ask, especially after what happened to Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, were there any journalists *not* spied on in Northern Ireland?
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

"Lie back and think of Nigel."