Ok so don't borrow from them then, that's fine. Do it all with taxes, knock yerself out

Change can and does happen. Good change. 'Hungary will rejoin the Erasmus student exchange programme “as early as the next academic year” and “phase out” state-linked foundations that have taken control of universities, the European Commission president has announced.' 1/3

Quartet in Autumn is as beautiful a thing as I've seen on stage in years. Very funny, deeply sad, impeccably performed. Just a beautiful, beautiful thing. www.arcolatheatre.com/event/quarte...

This is very good on the logical preposterousness of the trans bathroom ban. It simply cannot have been the intention of the Equality Act or the governments which administered it. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

John Major is a better former PM than Tony Blair will ever be iandunt.substack.com/p/john-major...

🚨Elon Musk has boosted the public profile of Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe on X, pulling Britain’s political discourse towards extreme content and amplifying his influence ahead of a knife-edge election in Makerfield More @FT: as.ft.com/r/80f4639f-0...

The combination of crypto, prediction markets, online gambling and AI is just an unprecedented set of bad industries for a boom to be underpinned by.

Excellent, thorough piece on the perverse impact of UK's restrictive attitude to migration. Government claims it wants to improve economic outcomes and encourage integration -and is achieving precisely the opposite. (draws on @migobs.bsky.social/my research) www.economist.com/britain/2026...

"Everything is connected". The badge of the conspiracist nutcase through the ages.

🔴 Keir Starmer promised to crackdown on "Slapps" - abusive libel cases to silence journalists and critics Then Labour quietly dropped it We can reveal why: a three-year lobbying blitz by libel lawyers who've acted for Russian oligarchs, Epstein + more democracyforsale.substack.com/p/how-lawyer...

This is a big moment. Massive. We are now the closest we've come to electoral reform since 1997.

Honestly what struck me was how little reading he'd done and how little grasp he had of modern events. If he had read any authoritative analysis of the local election result, for instance, he would not have written that piece. Felt like the CEO of Blockbusters criticising the Netflix business model.

It really is obscene to have filmed this and then published it. There is also a weird theological bent to this whole ordeal.

Yes. Yeeeeeeeesssssss

Very good thread

One of the most intriguing examples was the 2024 Reform candidate for, of all places, Salisbury, who referred to Russia's war against Ukraine as an SMO (Special Military Operation, the Russian term) and claimed to have had a one-to-one chat with Putin in English "in a social context".

Part 2 of this is now publicly available.... Do listen. My take below. youtu.be/ZNDh3yYePvc?...

Final part of the JK Rowling story. If you've ever wanted a fair assessment of some of the claims on this issue - from male pattern criminality to women in sport - this is for you. We take each of the statements Rowling has made and assess it empirically. Some of it stands up. Most of it doesn't.

Blair's ideas are either vacuous, or commercially suspect, or irrelevant to the modern period. What a sad end to the most talented politician of his generation inews.co.uk/opinion/tony...

If you want to read something genuinely thoughtful about Labour's future, try this. A single paragraph contains more interesting ideas than all 5,000 words of Blair's nonsense.

Must just be some mad coincidence that all the Putin apologists find themselves in a party run by a bloke that really admires Putin

Fascinating intervention, in that it doesn't actually seem to have any strategic intent. Just a verdict handed down from the political Galapagos of the TBI. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Interesting that the idea of another EU referendum is regularly discussed on broascast media as something that would cause division and thus a bad idea. But plans to deport literally millions of people are discussed as administrative questions.

everyone is entitled to their view but I found discussion of migration policy here incredibly depressing - telling people what they want to hear not what they need. I fear the only beneficiary from believing most of this will be Nigel Farage. www.ft.com/content/7235...

Russia's most famous alcoholic now threatens to kill European diplomats.

This is an unforgivably stupid situation. It is an astonishing own goal to try and drive student numbers down to move an immigration number that in turn is totally ignored by the anti-immigrant head bangers.

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

Mum managing to send the most mum message ever

Watched The Bone Temple last night. I loved it in its own right but it also made me enjoy 28 Years Later more in retrospect. This new trilogy is so unashamedly weird, the product of people who do not give a fuck about your expectations.

He’s still flogging this dead horse, I see. 🙄

These events are starting to have the feeling of those ones you see advertised on scratty posters around universities by various Marxist fringe groups.

I’ve been reading a lot about the end of the Roman republic recently, and the slide of that empire into imperial monarchy. The stamping of the leader’s face on coins, colossal statues and a reworking of the forum. But even Augustus didn’t build himself a ballroom-fortress.

God above that's tight.

I watched a film with a character called Ian in it last night and I guess this must new very rare, because *every time* someone said his name I got incredibly confused and thought the cinema screen was talking to me.

Series creator Eric Kripke, who has acknowledged his show is a right-wing critique, said he would “never get a better review ever."

Copilot keeps offering to rewrite my thesis for me. I can’t turn it off and it’s been placed right next to the spellcheck tool, meaning I’m living in mortal fear I’ll accidentally hit the wrong button and then my thesis will be in the slop machine forever (and I’ll be unable to submit it).

Amazing to think I was once interested about what new phones and laptops were coming out. Now, every new development is an intrusive and unnecessary addition of AI, in a form that gets in my way rather than helps me, and which already looks horribly outdated.

↑↑ @iandunt.bsky.social is not fəcking about here.

How to build a good prime minister: We've fucked it up not once, not twice, but at least seven times in succession. Maybe let's do it differently this time iandunt.substack.com/p/how-to-bui...

Anytime someone says "false flag", it's the right time to stop taking seriously anything they say

SUCH A HATEFUL WASTE OF TIME. Honestly, we need a national hobby service so that people can find nice things to do in their spare time like watering plants or being nice to donkeys rather than inventing stupid things to be cross about.

There's some welcome bits and pieces in that EHRC guidance, particularly on clubs and associations being able to remain trans-inclusive, but in general it's a mess. Imagine having to make a major financial decision on the basis of the endless, hyper-anxious impenetrable drivel in that document.

If journalists were doing their job properly, it would simply not be possible for the public to be labouring under this degree of ignorance when it comes to immigration. inews.co.uk/opinion/immi...

Fuck my life, really

- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.

If anyone is interested in an arguably overly thorough analysis of the links (or lack of) between voting systems and political stability, here's one I made earlier: makevotesmatter.org.uk/wp-content/u...

Good work from Khan here www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Yep. We'll also need a chat about how you implement it if he wins. I don't think you need a referendum, a mandate at a general election will do. But sensible people often disagree with me on this.

This is a really good, sensible policy. I would give my right leg for the Labour leadership fight to be composed of ideas like this.