Almost £10 billion of the £15 billion that Boris Johnson's Government spent on PPE during the pandemic was wasted, the Covid Inquiry has concluded. The Inquiry found money was wasted on a "vast" scale, with companies with "connections to government" given first preference for contracts

This is shameful.

@plaidcymru.bsky.social Syniad da i rhoi neges allan yn cefnogi yr iaethoedd eraill? (os ydych chi wedi gwneud yn barod, da iawn!).

Reform UK plans to jail candidates for using Irish, Gaelic Or Cornish on their election leaflets. Nigel Farage’s party propose amendment to the elections Bill which would mean candidates using Irish and Scottish Gaelic would face up to six months in prison bylinetimes.com/2026/07/13/r...

At the turning of the millennium there were 769 satellites in space, 2026 there are 14,500 satellites. I spent 7mins photographing the Milky Way rising above Poatiri Mt Charles Hoopers Inlet, on Muaupoko (Otago Peninsula) this evening. Ōtepoti Dunedin, NZ #Photography

Submitted without comment.

Dramatic scenes from the auto polo fad of the 1910s and 20s. Reaching top speeds of 40mph, a driver would be accompanied by a malletman who would hold on to the side and attempt to hit a basketball toward the goal of the opposing team.

Death squads. That's what we'd call them in any other country.

I see Ann Widdecombe has died. When she was Home Secretary I showed her round Drake Hall womens’s prison. There was a pregnant woman on a bed in the early stages of Labour and she asked the prison officers why she wasn’t handcuffed to the bed. That’s the kind of woman she was.

Having failed to interest any papers in this story, I resorted to writing a letter to The Times, like in olden times. So when all that's left to watch is NASCAR racing sponsored by Cheetos, I can at least say I tried. #ITV #Sky #Comcast

The photo “confirms what thousands of testimonies from Palestinian detainees have exposed, and what we and other organisations have been reporting for nearly three years now: Israeli detention facilities are torture camps for Palestinians.”

Again, I beg MPs and the government to actually look at the policy they may or may not be implementing and think through both the human consequences and their willingness to have 1/6 of all care staff be deported.

In a second deadly series of attacks in days, nearly 350 Russian drones and 68 missiles were directed at Ukraine's capital and its region. Rescue teams report 26 civilians killed. Deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians are war crimes. Learn more:

Incredible

The govt is consulting on future of public service broadcasting in a digital age - including how to secure prominence & visibility online of high quality information www.gov.uk/government/c...

Statement from Belgian FA.

🚨 NEW: Nigel Farage appears to have breached MP rules after failing to declare that convicted criminal George Cottrell paid for his staff, security and social media output before the 2024 election [@thetimes]

When Barca partnered with ZKP, a major red flag was ZKP's secrecy which meant no one knew the address of the firm or the names of anyone who owned or worked for it. How would anyone be held accountable if it didn't deliver? And the answer, now the ZKP have vanished with $2.2m, is... no one.

Last week the BBC mentioned in local news that Ryan Bridge and Ben Cullen of Raise the Colours had been banned from putting up flags in Oxfordshire after a sustained documented campaign of intimidation This week Ben Cullen is on trial for making over 70 indecent images of children BBC: *crickets*

Health Insurance doesn't cover you. It doesn't even cover your children if they get sick. It takes a huge amount of your money in 'insurance', then bankrupts you when you get sick anyway. It's a con and it should be illegal. Ban Private Healthcare.

As Republican politicians cower in fear...one incredibly brave woman stood up to the man who assaulted her. She did this with full knowledge that he would use every bit of firepower he could muster to destroy her. And she won. YES! By @lizdye.bsky.social in @atrupar.com's PN:

Ben Cullen, a leading figure of the "Raise the Colours" campaign, will stand trial for three separate charges regarding a total of 78 indecent images of children. I have only seen this covered in local newspapers, so far. Grim as it is, it needs wider coverage www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2624087...

A prominent Ukrainian refugee has sharply criticised Reform UK ahead of a Senedd motion which calls on the Welsh Government to scrap its controversial Nation of Sanctuary policy ✍️Emily Price wp.me/p8Mk4U-1o1F

Write a critical AI book, and you become everyone's confessor for their AI sins. People in my life keep telling me about their guilty AI pleasures, in search of an explanation, absolution or condemnation: us.macmillan.com/books/978037... 1/

Not that I massively disagree, but swap "devolution" for "centralisation", and "local" for "UK" and it would be no less true.

There are several flags in the Norway flag.

And there it is… www.desmog.com/2026/04/30/r...

Britain is more than halfway towards reaching Net Zero. Most people don't realise this, not least as the fossil-fuel fanatics want us to think achieving it is impossible. Via YouGov

The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit—from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone—lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once sent onto the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes. @peterfrankopan.bsky.social foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/25/r...

Turns out there's a lot of neo-Nazis in Restore, the UK party supported by Elon Musk. searchlightmagazine.com/2026/06/rupe...

Ever climbed into a car that's been baking in the sun and wondered why our biggest car parks don't have roofs? The Government was considering exactly that. It has now quietly parked the idea. Here's why it matters.

Not content with trying to break the EU & ECHR, Farage also cofounded a group aimed at breaking the WHO. And would you look at that, it has links to the nicotine industry and doesn’t want regulations on vapes! As always with Farage, follow the money. He’s nothing but a political prostitute.

Galloway lives in Russia and has done since last year. Feel this has rather gone under the radar.

I’m not saying the debate in the U.K. has moved to the right, but Ed Miliband is basically seen as Pol Pot for aiming for a climate target first agreed to by…I think Theresa May’s government? Definitely Johnson’s. And this chat is going on during the middle of a record-breaking heatwave

Meaningless bs from the most anti-asylum government in living history. Community support schemes already exist, and shift responsibilities onto communities, and this government has blocked work/study visas for asylum seekers. These are not genuine "safe routes" 1/ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

A new granite walkway. Refinishing the wall to glue those hideous gold accents. Trump claimed he was paying for all of it. He lied. They’ve been looting the National Parks.

FACT CHECK This is a Member of the Welsh Senedd and Reform's Welsh shadow minster for "Fairness, Families and Communities". This is not "normal British summer". Yesterday the UK experienced its hottest June day on record.

Worth noting there's video evidence of two waves of missiles hitting the military compound next to the school www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

It was inevitable, wasn't it🙄 Of course the Telegraph would run with something like this👇 So let's remove some of the rose-tinted spectacles and also look at some of that data comparing 1976 with modern heat waves Because the 1976 nostalgia porn is wearing a bit thin at this stage 🧵1/23

"More than £100 billion in clean energy investment announcements has been secured since the government came to office, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has confirmed." Quite an impressive list of green projects at the bottom www.gov.uk/government/n...

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

For the first time in 30 years, child deaths are now rising, in large part due to USAID cuts Lancet modelling shows USAID cuts will cause 14 million deaths including 4.5m children, by 2030. Independent CGDev research backs this up

With hardly any media coverage one of Britain’s few world-leading sectors is, right now, being decimated. The university funding model does not work and anti-immigrant hysteria has deprived the country of the means by which we met the shortfall: international students.

Just Kate Hoey calling for a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Surely the worst crime committed by the leader of a UK political party. Horrendous.

It will never stop being funny to me that the street fighter subreddit has a much better, well reasoned ai policy vis a vis literally all universities.

I say this as an opponent of the Iranian gov: right now there is not a single other government - not one - doing anything to stop Israel’s ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon. That’s how low the bar is.

Two historic heatwaves in two consecutive months, with monthly records broken in both, something not achieved since 1911 and not something achieved by such a margin either. May's record was broken by over 2ºC, and June's record is likely to go by perhaps 3ºC, extraordinary.

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

The plan is for this plane to be in service for two years and then Trump will take if for himself. No President has ever stolen an Air Force for himself. And you paid for it. The total cost could be $1 billion of your money for a new luxury jet for Trump and his family.