Sky News, like many other broadcasters and journalists, were trying to find Nigel Farage to ask him legitimate questions. If he’d come out of hiding to answer them, no one would have had to go to the bother of checking out obvious places he might be. How does his daughter feel about that?

This year’s Summer Season in Clacton is going to be tremendous…

Count Binface bringing down Farage may turn this country around.

There is precedent: no one serious ran against David Davis in 2008. Also, some guy called Andy Burnham said Davis should pay the costs of the vote.

Former MP for Clacton: Nigel ‘Clacking on, Clacking off, Clacking on again’ Farage. Everyone should simply unite behind Count Binface to defeat him.

Who’s in charge of scrutinising Farage’s funding/expenses in the forthcoming Clacton by-election? Can we all join in?

Belgium players mocking the US and Trump's meddling in the World Cup by doing the Trump dance after scoring the 4th goal against the USMNT

“After it ended, the Belgian team’s social media account had a message to the U.S. on Twitter: “Overturn this.” Perfect. #WellPlayed #Belgium

In one chapter of his book entitled 'The Art of the Bribe', Nigel Farage donor and convicted fraudster George Cottrell describes how politicians can be bought www.ft.com/content/7a0f...

On this occasion I do in fact have to support this kind of silliness

On top of everything else, it’s being called an “Artificial Intelligence Campus”. Time for graduates of the University of Life to show these upstarts, and their ravenous swallowing of the world, the withering contempt they deserve.

Great 🧵. “In plain sight” may be the modern criminal tactic of choice, but when the world turns, the opprobrium can be devastating - as Farage is about to discover. This Is just the start.

In 2017, The Telegraph published this extraordinary piece on Cottrell - and Farage. A dizzying read, lots of detail (no paywall): www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking...

Bloody hell. Nigel Farage was with George Cottrell when he was first arrested. Much to marvel at in this 2017 Telegraph piece (no paywall) on Farage’s felonious funder and fixer. www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking...

Hmm. There seems to a theme here… Close Farage aide George Cottrell arrested for crypto and wire fraud in 2016, close Farage aide Nathan Gill arrested en route to a Moscow crypto and politics conference five years later…. It’s not that cryptic in the end

Another wonderful piece from @david-batty.bsky.social, not least for showing how very Enid Blytonesque much of the official narrative on forced adoption has been - and even remains: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

There’s a big difference between chippiness in the North and South. For some unimaginable reason, the easeful, quick bucks, South thinks any accompanying gravy means some sort of “train“. (In the North, it’s a reward for hard graft). #GravyTrain

This thread‘s a marvel. The craft of thinking - a deeply human, necessary skill. If only we had all had this preparation for our current, fiendishly complicated - for most, ununderstandable - computed world:

AI drafts your job application and reads your job application. AI writes a report and then the reader has AI summarise it. The AI on both sides of the transaction just got real with this neat fraud. You get AI to make garbage music, get AI to listen to it, and get paid! www.ft.com/content/8a47...

@duncanrobinson.bsky.social You may enjoy this ‘stray’ observation: bsky.app/profile/geer...

A rare surviving copy of the Declaration of Independence has been discovered by a volunteer at The National Archives, Kew, the only example of its kind outside the US. It is one of 11 copies printed in Exeter, New Hampshire in July 1776. 👇 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“Thiel has argued that the Antichrist could manifest not as an individual but as a world government that seizes power by promising to protect humanity against existential threats such as AI or global warming.“

But also there's hundreds of thousands of us, and we have issues which relate to being separated from our mothers, in varying degrees. There are reasons adoptees are _35_ times likelier to attempt suicide. We need support for what the British state encouraged religious institutions to do to us 🥚

@rogermosey.bsky.social I, like you, was successfully adopted and had a very happy childhood. I later read contemporary notes and accounts of the circumstances, and wishes, of my birth parents in my detailed, comprehensive adoption records -

@evanhd.bsky.social “Common Ground” is excellent. When it comes to the chasm between Northern & Southern outlooks, pride & identity, a pertinent detail is that in the mid-1980s the Chief Exec of the Halifax Building Society (a Mancunian) was urged by a new breed of Southern investors/financiers 1/2

At a poet’s memorial, I saw how Andy Burnham could be a different kind of prime minister | Blake Morrison

Heck. This arid Westminster anti-puff piece from #bbclaurak on Burnham, with nameless ‘government’/‘party’ sources proffering unevidenced opinions, may help fan a few flames of cynicism (so presumably ‘balance’ a BBC coverage seesaw) but otherwise appears to serve not a jot of journalistic purpose:

Starmer’s diplomatic strategy with this marauding numbskull seems to have been very well judged. Eluding 100% tariffs while calling him out may prove a headache for Burnham. Only lies thrive when truth is anathema.

"If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit." - Andy Burnham

Burnham’s Manchesterism will upend the notion that regions need “expert assistance” from Westminster, via “innovation squads”, to “Test Learn and Grow”. It’s dosh, not central government disdain, they’re crying out for. (Short 🧵from a year ago ⬇️)

Al Carns is *still* Armed Forces Minister (and, incidentally, posted yesterday here on Bluesky). Bold.

A bursting bubble, soon to be renamed “ExSpace”.

Why efforts to ensure online “safety” for kids may be opening the door to Big Tech’s (and its allies’) mass surveillance ambitions - and harms for us all: Important 🧵

Reversed, wrong-headed, lied; unhinged, wrong-headed, deprived.

Ooft!

Al Carns has been posting on X - at generous length - about his five “tests”. And Dominic Cummings has ‘helpfully’ just reposted this. Nice. x.com/alistaircarn...

@dorianlynskey.bsky.social @iandunt.bsky.social Do watch this sublime summary of Brexit from the BBC’s Look North (Yorkshire) programme yesterday. (Available on iPlayer until 7pm tonight.) Tom Ingall compiled it. Subtly…perfect. Starts at 11’32”: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Burnham has a lot of admirers. Interesting piece.

Wait till Trump hears about the (very much open and flourishing) Strait of Manchester...

Genuinely think it'll need a high profile politician to do a McAlpine and mass-sue hundreds of people for posting or sharing outright libellous allegations. Would be unwise for Burnham but might make sense for Sadiq Khan, who's politically secure and whose haters tend to be outside London.

Irony, n.

Elon Musk loses billions as SpaceX shares slump in tech sell-off

Too hilarious for words. bylinetimes.com/2026/06/23/a...

Great response from @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social. Perhaps we’re finally entering an era when wild, offensive nonsense like Badenoch’s is seen as nothing more than bonkers self-decapitation. “Lost her head” puts it perfectly.

I’m feeling very nostalgic today for Harold Wilson, a PM who - uniquely in recent history - personally chose both the timing and manner of his departure. The shock of his resignation announcement has proved unforgettable.

It’s a measure of his dynamism that Burnham’s ideas manage to generate not just hope but excitement. (It’s also notable Starmer‘s already got the ball rolling in some areas with changes that have been widely overlooked - perhaps even deliberately curated not to draw obstructive attention…)

Making “there” “here” and everywhere “ours” and “us” should be the first task of any PM seeking to make the UK united and whole again. And history shows why Manchester’s the perfect choice:

I've had 2 journalists today asking if Miliband as Chancellor would be a "Liz Truss moment" and find it difficult not to just respond "are you on crack?".

remember one of the things I found most disgusting ten years ago was Farage talking about the referendum having been won “without a single bullet being fired”, a week after Jo Cox was shot (and stabbed) to death by a far-right assailant