The chaos being created by Reform in local government is almost as scandalous as the issues around its funding at national level.

Reform Party UK Exposed@reformexposed.bsky.social · 8h ago

Reform UK Warwickshire under George Finch’s toxic leadership have haemorrhaged councillors. They have now just 17/57. He wouldn’t survive a vote of no confidence.

NEW | Since the Telegraph decided to use my name in vain… FROM A LEFT-WING AGITATOR WITH A BOOK TO FLOG brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/from-a-lef...

From a Left-Wing agitator with a book to flog

This edition is a bit meta. Consider it a sequel to yesterday's Rod Liddle obituary.

brokenbottleboy.substack.com

Murderous heat, an endangered food supply, decimated landscapes: embrace the Mediterranean life | George Monbiot

Murderous heat, an endangered food supply, decimated landscapes: embrace the Mediterranean life | George Monbiot

As climate disaster stares us in the face, the radical right says ‘Embrace the Mediterranean life’. Embrace death, more like it, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

theguardian.com

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

The US has now used up 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during the Iran war, Reuters World News reports.

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · yesterday

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

If you, to take another entirely random example, describe recent immigration a "squalid chapter in our politics" a "failed experiment", and promise to "shut down the lab" you are contributing to the problem of norm erosion www.gov.uk/government/s...

PM remarks at Immigration White Paper press conference: 12 May 2025

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's remarks at a press conference on the Immigration White Paper.

gov.uk

As a general rule: explaining something you know well to smart people who ask good questions but do not know the topic well is a really useful exercise. If nothing else, they tend to ask interesting questions which you hadn’t considered.

I am further drawing attention to this very important public announcement

Otto English@ottoenglish.bsky.social · 5d ago

The good news is that people really love the audiobook version of Notorious. The even better news is that as of today, it's an absolute flipping bargain! www.audible.co.uk/pd/Notorious...

"[Byline] revealed that Cottrell entered corporate finance under a false Swiss identity, hired by the same City network that produced Reform UK’s own treasurer, Mehrtash A’zami. "Byline Times has since confirmed that this identity was stolen from a real person – Cottrell’s old school friend."

Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker

The accountancy firm that administers George Cottrell’s Montenegro company, has invested in a property development with the alleged ringleader of the country’s largest money laundering cartel

bylinetimes.com

The micro bulletin on 6 Music leads with Farage followed by vox-pops with boomers saying the hot weather is glorious. Anyone defending this trash because it's the BBC is in love with their childhood.

Shouldn't the AI regulations also explicitly include, as issues of transparency and "deceptive techniques," the deliberate use of anthropomorphic language by AI companies in the media, along with its perlocutionary effects and the epistemic ambiguous impressions they create?

After the cruel impact of changes to the skilled worker visa scheme, there’s another hostile action from the Home Office, this time directed at EU citizens granted right to remain after Brexit. These life shattering letters disrupt peoples’ lives built in the UK and are are utterly shameful.

We need a reset over the whole subject. Until someone says clearly that it’s been exaggerated, weaponised and worse, I can’t see how we can get that.

What a thread 🧵! Do read it to the end.

Tomasz Oryński@orynski.eu · 3d ago

I am seeing more and more posts in places like Reddit from British people wanting to move to Poland and struggling to get a job. Oh, how the tables have turned. But I didn't want to talk about it but about why I don't predict many of them to be too succesfull. Why? Here is a thread for you:

Very obliging of #r4today to lead with Reform’s ‘plan’ to stop the boats using the Royal Navy, pretending it’ll be some great WWII-style escapade, rather than a hateful, costly, diplomatically incontinent mess. A total waste of everyone’s time as they’ll never be in power and it’s unworkable anyway.

What an incredibly depressing photo op. It doesn’t matter what the details of the message are. This is just horribly misconceived by Mr Master Communicator. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Burnham pledges to be 'relentless' in curbing small boat crossings

The prime minister says enforcement is increased but there also need to be more safe routes into the UK.

bbc.com

This talk by Daniel Mendelsohn about his excellent translation of the Odyssey is an entertaining and fascinating counterpoint to the Emily-Wilson-isation of Homer. youtu.be/ER92zBZ6BZY?...

Daniel Mendelsohn on The Odyssey

YouTube video by Charleston Literary Festival

youtu.be

Monique Hawkins, acting chief executive of the3million, said the impact of the Home Office’s retrospective review was devastating for many. "People applied to the EU settlement scheme in good faith...by building their lives in the UK and putting down roots." www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

EU citizens in UK get letters telling them post-Brexit residency rights were given ‘in error’

After years of building lives in UK, potentially hundreds of thousands of EU citizens are being told they have no right to remain

theguardian.com

🚨Two Polish citizens, who have lived in the UK for 80yrs after their parents fled the second world war, were told they didn't have post-Brexit rights to return to UK & refused boarding by Ryanair https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/30/how-couple-lived-in-uk-80-years-got-stuck-in-krakow

‘Ryanair refused to let us on’: how a couple who’ve lived in UK for 80 years got stuck in Krakow

Maria and Czeslaw Krupa, who arrived in 1947 and 1948 as dependents of displaced Polish service members, were told they

theguardian.com

Per UBS, OpenAI and Anthropic will account for 27% of Google Cloud's 2026 revenue and more than 48% of 2027's. Investors are being sold a story about diverse AI demand that is simply not true - hyperscalers spent a trillion dollars to feed money back to themselves and pretend it's real growth.

Ed Zitron@edzitron.com · 5d ago

Was awesome to join Bloomberg to talk about the lie of AI - everyone's buying into the mag7 believing CapEx is going towards diverse AI demand, when all it's really doing is supporting the circular cloud revenues of two unprofitable, unsustainable AI labs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHcZ...

Russia attacked Ukraine with 35 missiles, including 27 ballistic missiles, and 185 drones overnight. In Kyiv, nine people were killed and 28 more were injured. Seven districts of the capital were affected.

Fewer people are sleeping rough on London’s streets. That’s welcome progress a year on from launching my Rough Sleeping Action Plan. There’s still a way to go, but I’ll do everything in my power to keep London on a path to ending rough sleeping by 2030.

There’s another phrase for this “Trump Transaction Tax.” It’s a “corruption tax,” and it’s lining Trump’s pockets by skimming off the top of Americans’ paychecks. Want lower costs for working families? Vote to flip Congress and hold this corruption accountable. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Some good news: Youth rough sleeping is down almost half in London. To everyone who’s helped make this possible, from the teams at City Hall to sector partners and outreach workers: thank you.

Youth rough sleeping in London sees 45% annual fall, report finds

While the overall rough sleeping population fell 10%, it fell by nearly half among those aged 18-25.

bbc.co.uk

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 28% (+5) RFM: 23% (-4) CON: 20% (=) LDM: 10% (-1) GRN: 10% (-3) SNP: 3% (=) Via BMG Research, 28-30 Jul. Changes w/ 23-25 Jun.

The paradox of devolution

Ash@queerash.bsky.social · 5d ago

it's an interesting contradiction of devolving power to local people when it's a pretty consistent finding that they don't really care about exercising that power

Thames Water’s service has been shoddy, expensive and wasteful. They need to stop moaning and get a grip. Not a penny of taxpayers' money should be used to bail out their shareholders.

Sadiq Khan tells Thames Water to stop ‘moaning’ and ‘get a grip’ | LBC

Lord Sadiq Khan said Thames Water’s bosses and the regulator Ofwat needed to “get a grip” after years of “shoddy service”

lbc.co.uk

Good thread. There’s another thing I’ve been wanting to comment on in relation to wildfires. Climate change contrarians often raise the fact that globally, wildfires don’t burn bigger areas than in the past. But how useful is that observation? 1/

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · last wk.

In recent weeks, there has been a remarkable surge in large, intense, fast-moving, and unfortunately in many cases destructive/deadly wildfires in multiple Northern Hemisphere regions spanning a wide range of climates & ecologies, but they all share one key commonality. [Thread]

Farage has dropped to his lowest approval rating since the general election. Less than a year ago, he was polling as the most popular political leader... 😬