Douglas Jackson

Tower Hamlets Council refused the Brick Lane data centre unanimously. Nine resident groups opposed it. The council and the mayor asked for housing instead.
The government approved it anyway, through ministerial recovery, with the letter signed on behalf of Angela Rayner. The scheme offers 44 homes, six of them for social rent, and a data centre built around high-frequency trading.
Rayner's partner, Sam Tarry, has been senior adviser since May at NorthPoint Strategy, a lobby firm whose sectors include AI, crypto and energy.
Its chair is Tory peer Lord Wharton. Its crypto council lists Andreessen Horowitz among its clients. NorthPoint says Tarry helps clients "shape policy agendas".
The minister who decides where data centres go shares a household with the adviser to the industry that needs them. 🧵
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/free-zones-a…

We’re so thrilled to have won in the Outstanding Cultural Event or Festival category at the South of Scotland Thistle Awards last night!! Bring on the nationals! Congratulations to all the winners 🎉 #SOSTA26

If you were sitting at the front of the Glasgow-Edinburgh train earlier today and left a wee handbag behind, I've handed it in to Lost Property at Queen Street Station. Hope it finds it's owner! @ScotRail

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s exclusive interview is now available 🔗

Shortlisted for the 2026 Prize, Burnet discusses his bloody and historic novel, BENBECULA 📚

#WalterScottPrize #HistoricalFiction #AuthorInterview
@GMacraeBurnet @BirlinnBooks

youtu.be/3mVT52AXKUM

Today marks 33 years since my dad died. I was just four years old.

It feels quite fitting that today, of all days, I can finally announce that my book, A Son Never Forgets: Exposing the Infected Blood Scandal, is now available to pre-order.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been quietly working away on writing it when I can. It’s part memoir, part chronology of the decade I spent on the Infected Blood campaign and perhaps most of all, it’s about telling my truth.

There’s personal story about grief, family, identity and some rather unexpected discoveries along the way.

There’s been laughter, tears, anger and more than a few moments where I’ve wondered how on earth my life ended up taking the turns it has.

And somehow I’ve managed to squeeze it all into a book. Not bad for a lad who got a D in his English GCSE! 😄

I’m incredibly grateful to Biteback Publishing for believing in the story and helping me bring it to life.

I’m also pleased to announce that every penny of my author royalties received during the first year will be donated to Holocaust remembrance charities and Child Bereavement UK. Both causes that mean a great deal to me personally.

The book will be published on 26 November 2026, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon, Waterstones etc.

Above all, this book is dedicated to the man whose life, and death, set me on this extraordinary journey.

This one’s for you, Dad. ❤️

📖 Pre-order here: amzn.eu/d/05hS3cAX

I find it quite astonishing that the leader of HM Opposition at Westminster announces that they’ll close down Scotland’s democratically elected parliament if they get back into power and it doesn’t even cause a ripple on BBC Scotland’s news and politics pages. Beyond belief.

September 19, 1940. German soldiers are rounding up men off the streets of Warsaw.

One man sees the roundup coming and walks straight into it.

On purpose.

His name was Witold Pilecki. He was a Polish cavalry officer in the underground resistance, and he had volunteered for a mission nobody else would take. Get arrested. Get sent to the new German camp at Auschwitz. Find out what was happening inside. Build a resistance. Get word out.

Nobody had ever tried to break into a concentration camp before.

He went in under a fake name, Tomasz Serafiński, and became prisoner number 4859.

Inside, he started organizing. Small cells of five men who didn't know the other cells existed, so if one was caught and tortured he couldn't give up the rest. They stole food and medicine, helped the weakest survive, and planned for an armed uprising if the outside world ever sent help.

And he started sending out reports.

They were smuggled out with released prisoners and through contacts on the outside. Some of the earliest intelligence the Allies received about Auschwitz came from Pilecki. Mass executions. Starvation. And eventually, the gas chambers.

The uprising never came. The help never came.

After nearly two and a half years inside, Pilecki decided the only way to get the world to act was to tell them himself.

On the night of April 26, 1943, he was working a shift at a camp bakery outside the main fence with two other prisoners. They cut a phone line, forced open a door, and ran.

All three made it out.

Most people would have stopped there. Pilecki didn't.

In 1944 he fought in the Warsaw Uprising, was captured again, and spent the rest of the war as a German prisoner of war. When the war ended he joined Polish forces in Italy.

Then Poland fell under Soviet control. So he went back. Again. Undercover. This time to gather intelligence on the new communist regime for the Polish government in exile.

In May 1947 the communist secret police arrested him.

They tortured him for months. When his wife was finally allowed to see him, he reportedly told her that Auschwitz had been a game compared to this.

He got a show trial. The man who volunteered for Auschwitz to expose the Nazis was branded a traitor and an enemy of the state.

On May 25, 1948, he was taken to a cell in Mokotów prison in Warsaw and shot in the back of the head.

His family never got his body.

It was dumped in a secret grave. Communist Poland erased him. His name disappeared from history books. For decades, almost nobody outside his family knew who he was.

After communism fell, Poland cleared his name. In 2006 he received the Order of the White Eagle, the country's highest honor. His Auschwitz report was finally published in English in 2012. A British historian once ranked him among the six bravest people of the entire war.

Investigators have dug up a section of Warsaw's Powązki cemetery where the regime buried executed prisoners. They have identified hundreds of victims.

Witold Pilecki has never been found.

The man who broke into Auschwitz is still somewhere under Warsaw. Nobody knows where.

It's @ChildrenInRead time again, and this year I'm putting up a complete set of Jonas Flynt books in paperback!
All signed and dedicated if the winning bids so wish.
This is a worthwhile cause and there are many other great offers, so get bidding!
jumblebee.co.uk/auction/detail…

New: Reviews
Apple bit.ly/4B6TmOr Podfollow pod.fo/e/68523d @Spotify bit.ly/4yPlW5n
@bedsqpublishers @noexitpress @HoZ_Books @PenguinClassics @TransworldBooks @HarperCollinsUK @crookedlanebks @ScottMBlackburn @brownallover @aspectsofcrime @CrimeTimeUK

Here's another look at the Scottish gold lion of Robert III that was minted between 1393 and c.1403. The design of a crucified St Andrew was re-used on the coins of James II (1437-1460) & James IV (1488-1513). This specimen is from the Lord Stewartby Collection at the Hunterian.

I don't know how @CaroRamsayBooks comes up with such consistently compelling plotlines!
Complex family dynamics, organised crime, murder merge in a story told with insight, depth, humour & a strong sense of place.
From @severnhouse on Nov 3!

Coming soon! An exhibition about the Romans in Scotland is opening in Edinburgh this autumn, 'Roman Scotland: Life on the Edge of Empire', running from 14 November 2026 to 18 April 2027 at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street.
nms.ac.uk/exhibitions/ro…

New @BarryForshaw3 talks to Paul Burke about Spies on Screen 20/10 UK, 1/12 US @OldcastleBooks
apple.co/4jAfGJJ pod.fo/e/67741a Spotify bit.ly/4xXcpYy
@Spymasterspod @spybrary @aspectsofcrime @AspectsHistory @CrimeTimeUK @VictoriaSelman

New @BarryForshaw3 talks to Paul Burke about Spies on Screen 20/10 UK, 1/12 US @OldcastleBooks
apple.co/4jAfGJJ pod.fo/e/67741a Spotify bit.ly/4xXcpYy
@Spymasterspod @spybrary @aspectsofcrime @AspectsHistory @CrimeTimeUK @MarkEllis15 @rnmorris @BardosAlan

All of these are fantastic - check out the reviews on my blog. Although best read as part of the whole series, so treat yourself!

BREAKING NEWS…. New section of Scotland’s best preserved city wall!

A heads up that you can get 20 per cent off the paperback of Blood Enemy, the final novel in my Warsaw Quartet, if you pre-order it through Bookshop.org. You'll have to be quick though, the offer ends today.

I still get nervous about these things, but it was nice to be back on stage and in such stellar company at the weekend. @BloodyScotland

Some very flattering 5-star reviews for Blood Enemy on Goodreads.

'The horror of war and for those seeking to fight back against their oppressors is as well articulated as anything I have ever read.'

goodreads.com/book/show/2427…

@BloodyScotland was an absolute blast today. Couldn't have had better stage companions than @AlanJParks
and Catherine Merridale, and @Paulodaburka was the perfect host. Thanks to everyone who came along.