Back in the 70s in Scotland an actual German ex-Nazi was wheeled into our RE class to lecture us about the perils of Naziism and within a few minutes he was shouting angrily at us for not keeping quiet and paying his story the proper respect

To be fair, “Councillors and council elections don’t matter” are a load-bearing part of the “Kemi Badenoch is doing well and the Conservative party’s prospects under her are looking good” thesis.

Chris Terry-Enescu@cjterry.bsky.social · 11h ago

It's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line.

John Healey as housing secretary would have been good but John Healey as a chancellor who gets housing is arguably even better

Paul Brand@paulbrand.bsky.social · 2w ago

BREAKING: John Healey is Chancellor

For those who prefer their hair to be nasty, brutish and short

interesting to see all the reviews framing Odyssey around its veteran-trauma-PTSD themes. War as something that happens to soldiers’ psyches. This is I dare say a very umbombed mentality. Processing war as individual moral injury when the actual subject is collective destruction

Aw and just when Pete Hegseth was about to make them leaders of his testosterone task force www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Tate brothers arrested in US as further UK charges take total to 59

The Crown Prosecution Service says it has requested their extradition from the US, while their lawyer says they are innocent.

bbc.co.uk

One of the things that surprised me when I went looking into the failure of a battery plant in Northumberland last year was the degree to which government support for tech is an immense structural failure underpinned by a myriad mutually reinforcing boosterish PR departments

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 2w ago

It’s a mistake to scrap DSIT, which as far as I can tell the Labour case against it is simply “not invented by us, ewww“, but even if it were a good idea, a mistake to do so when have only 18 months left to deliver anything:

I feel conflicted atm because while I can see a number of potential problems already looming for AB’s policy agenda, and also a number of worryingly familiar patterns playing out, the starting point for some commentary has a sneering element to it

The crazy notion that a ‘policy levy’ on a privatised essential service is somehow not a tax serves two constituencies: the private rent-seekers, and governments trying to smuggle regressive taxation onto the bills. Electricity ‘policy levies’ are taxes, and very unfair ones. Make them general!

To me, the big picture problem here is that it sets Labour back on the same failed course as 2024 to 2026, of offering nothing to social liberals but going “don’t worry. Can I interest you in some failed economics instead?”

This is a real inflection point. Huge statement of Zelensky’s shift in priorities from Ukraine’s survival to his own if this happens. Europe’s ‘we provide the money, you provide the sons’ deal with Ukraine would look very weak if it can’t stop this happening.

Zelenskyy expected to remove Ukraine’s popular defence minister

Moderniser behind country’s drone development at risk of being ousted in cabinet reshuffle after just six months in post

giftarticle.ft.com

Hello, I’ve an event for my Muriel Spark biography next Weds (15th) at Waterstones Liverpool. We’ve sold barely any tickets, however, and it might be cancelled as a result. Please get a ticket if you’re nearby - it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll bring badges! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...

Not saying that game was stolen from Egypt but it is now on display at museum in London.

As in 1066 England will prevail against the Norwegians before tragically losing to the French a couple of weeks later.

This summer has been exquisitely curated to help awkward Englishmen converse. The heat, the football. All pauses safely filled.

Your first thought about this ST description of Farage’s bagman’s crypto gambling firm is ‘how grotesquely dodgy’ until you remember most household name multinationals mock jurisdictions in just this way

This is basically every story that I write about London now, you don't have to want to live with Germany bureaucracy to want someone to do very basic checks. And the 'ease of setting up a business' is great (I've done it myself! It was so easy!) but unfortunately it's created scam central nation.

damowar@damowar.bsky.social · last mo.

There is no working regulation in this country.

Why Labour MPs are still on X

Sarah Clarke - Not your doll@damselindystopia.bsky.social · 2y ago

"We need to be in the room"

He could strangle a teenager on camera and they would say he “defied a long-held tradition of presidents not doing that”

Babe wake up, new industrial band five-album discography just dropped

Coal merchant just called, asking if I fancied a ton of household coal at ten per cent off. And they say Brits can‘t hustle.

The most persuasive part of Larry Elliott’s no-regrets Lexiteer piece in the Guardian. I have great respect for him, but a long article about the impact of Brexit that doesn’t mention how it helped gentrify racism, doesn’t mention immigration at all, makes me queasy

Compulsory reading for anyone who hasn’t followed Burnham in GM I think and even for those who have. Absolutely nails every detail. All the things you hear from those who have worked with him are in this.

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last mo.

Absolutely terrific magazine piece by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social. You can read it here, or in the FT Mag in the @ftweekend.com on Saturday:

Or to paraphrase Michael Herr even further: "conventional journalism could no more reveal the Britsh electroral system than conventional politics could win it, all it could do was take the most profound event of the British decade and turn it into a communications pudding."

Interior. Night. A bathroom. ANDY BURNHAM lies naked on the floor with a bloodied hand. He opens his eyes. ANDY BURNHAM (V/OVER) London. Shit. A MASSIVE ROLLING PEAL OF THUNDER ANDY BURNHAM (V/OVER) Everybody gets everything they want. I wanted a premiership. And, for my sins, they gave me one.

All of left politics right now is some version of ‘here is my one weird trick to avoid sticking 5p on the basic rate so we can actually pay for public services’ so I am excited to find out what burnhams one weird trick will be.

"The Americans can't get the slime out of their capital's monument pool and will arrest you for touching it," sounds like the sort of lie they'd tell us in the Soviet Union so we'd stop bitching about bread lines.

Sometimes you find an especially perky ancient little guy and you need to make a gif to express it, ok?

@ameliagentleman.bsky.social sharp as ever on Mandelson's way with words, and what punctuation tells us about a power dynamic www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Mandelson messages could form a manual in the dark arts of wielding power and keeping it

Files shed light on how the Labour grandee juggled patrons and supplicants using flattery, fury and contempt for three decades

theguardian.com

We only went and won it!! 🎉🎉🎉 A newsletter has just won the biggest prize in British journalism Absolutely delighted. Huge thanks to Khadija and to all Democracy for Sale’s supporters 😊

Private Eye Magazine@privateeyenews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

And the winners of the Paul Foot Award for investigative and campaigning journalism 2026 are... Peter Geoghegan and Khadija Sharife of Democracy for Sale.