BBC burying the lede here until paragraph 3 - JKR bankrolled this and LOST. I repeat - JKR bankrolled this lawfare against the Belfast Film Festival and... LOST. It can be done! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Let's be absolutely clear: there is no amount of new drilling in the North Sea that Burnham could approve which would be consistent with our climate goals. If we are to avoid complete climate breakdown, we need to turn all effort to clean renewable energy - not doubling down on dirty fossil fuels.

Excellent and essential letters here, laying to rest some pervasive myths about Carbon Capture and Storage, and raising further concerns about both the astonishing financial outlay and the vast climate damage it will cause.

Heatwaves are killing thousands in this country. Fossil fuels are an economic dead end. Approving new oil and gas drilling would be environmentally disastrous and economically illiterate.

I suspect there’s almost a perfect overlap between the people harassing this language hub and the people who regularly have fannywobbles about immigrants not speaking English.

Our country is at breaking point. Rent controls. Wealth tax. Invest in renewables. End Rip Off Britain. www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Zack Polanski, "The hoarding of assets is causing inequality in the country" "If you're the poorest billionaire in the country with £1 billion, you're making £1 million passive income every week" "That's unsustainable when we have nurses queuing up at food banks"

Just shoplifted £10bn worth of stuff from Tesco. Said to the Police Officer who came, "It was an honest mistake." He said, "You know what we won't even investigate and you can just keep it all."

Andy Burnham says that "eradicating the insidious briefing culture" in politics will be central to his leadership of the Labour party. Make a note of that one

'Patriot News' reporter Chris Atkins (scatatkins.bsky.social) was just kicked out of Liz Truss' CPAC conference for asking the wrong questions. So much for free speech.

Andy Burnham, "Britain took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s" "The country surrendered control of the essentials: housing, water, energy, transport, and left people exposed to higher costs" "The right use the phrase, take back control.But they are the ones who gave it away in the first place"

"It's in everyone's interest that we have a Prime Minister who is capable of facing the real challenges. I want to see rent controls, I want to see a wealth tax and I also want to see action on the climate and nature crisis." - Zack Polanski's message to Andy Burnham today

We had all these Police Tents outside Nicola Sturgeon's house for £400,000. But they won't even investigate £10,000,000,000. Blatant corruption.

One thing though: if Burnham is unashamedly Labour, he won’t have Mahmood anywhere near his cabinet. That’s the test. He will fail.

@zackpolanski.bsky.social says the country needs bold transformative policies not tinkering at the edges and if Burnham is prepared to do them he'll work with the govt, "but every signal we're seeing so far is actually they're going to do the opposite & more of the failed status quo"

Govt asks private equity bosses why they are not listing UK companies in London. Not asked to explain devouring of town centres, water, energy vets, care homes, NHS, supermarkets Invited to discuss tax perks, deregulation, boost City commissions Poor not asked to discuss poverty. archive.ph/S2VHC

Consumer group Which says the price of some everyday essentials has risen by more than 110% in the last year, and some of the biggest rises overall are in supermarket own brand products (the budget ranges many people rely on) We need price caps on essential items.

@zackpolanski.bsky.social : "If we'd frozen rents in 2022 we would have saved the average UK renter £2,400 every single year & saved the govt £2bn every single year.. rent controls are a win win for everyone"

@zackpolanski.bsky.social : "We know if we taxed 1% on assets of £10m or 2% on assets of £1bn or more, we could be raising between £15-£24bn.. & just as importantly, we would stop the hoarding of assets. Its that hoarding of assets that's creating the inequality in this country" 🎯

I don't get how Burnham can say he will be "unashamedly Labour" while vocally supporting arguably the most significant rollback of human rights in more than 70 years, unless he is actively acknowledging that Labour no longer stands for human rights.

So Count Binface is pledging to do everything Farage doesn’t as a MP, utter genius❗️👌🏼 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 He will👇🏼 Hold weekly constituency surgeries✅ Answer all letters and emails within 3 days✅ Spend 10 days in Clacton for every day spent abroad✅ Outside earnings will be donated to Clacton charities✅

The UK is increasing the Pension age to 68. Poland has lowered theirs to 60 for women and 65 for men. Their pension provides a better standard of living too. (Oh and in case you are wondering how it can be afforded the Polish Government privatised very little.)

I'm old enough to remember Starmer pledging to abolish the House of Lords and today he's appointing 26 new members that we all have to pay for.

Scottish National Party chief executive Peter Murrell went to jail for 5 years for £400,000 of fraud. There was £10,000,000,000 of fraud in PPE, but it was an 'honest mistake'. So instead of 125,000 years in jail, there won't even be an investigation.

Jess Phillips is asked why, as the minister for violence against women & girls, she voted against an amendment to exclude sexual offenders from early release. "Because there is a prisons crisis" Got to free the rapists to make room for people who oppose genocide, I guess.

Blimey... Save the Children, third biggest charity in the UK, accusing Starmer of complicity in the killing of 21,000 children in Gaza "To the next Prime Minister: what will your plaque say?"

There's no avoiding the conclusion, however much dust the UK government throws into the air. By providing weapons, rhetorical and diplomatic support to the Israeli government as it has committed genocide in #Gaza, Keir Starmer and his ministers *are* complicit in this great crime.

What's wrong with 'The Treasury View'? youtu.be/N33sSSzi558?... Just about everything, as it turns out.

We don't know what the cabinet will be yet, but the mood music is becoming really ominous. A Labour Party subservient to the City of London and harking back to the Blair years would be catastrophic for this country. People simply won't stand for Rip Off Britain any more.

No, Micah, it has not been great to watch. It's been pretty much entirely spoiled by a team having the greatest player of all time and yet electing to play like a bunch of moustache twirling villains.

Exactly what I was just saying to my other half. It’s been terrible to watch 😡

"He's a decent man." No. No decent man would have appointed Mandelson. No decent man would have given the Island of Strangers speech. No decent man would have claimed that Israel did have the right to cut off power and water to Gaza, when he *knew* that they did not. Not decent.

Yup … technology is not all it’s cracked up to be … #cdnpoli

I don't watch the world cup but it would be funny if Spain won and the orange man had to give the trophy to a country he currently seems to really dislike.

Fantastic - but bleak - overview of Andy Burnham’s inheritance by @samfr.bsky.social. Astonishing to me that there are still people who think Starmer was doing a good job, as opposed to planting bombs under his own government. Astonishing to me Reeves is still trying to keep her job:

The Met Office State of the UK Climate report for 2025 demonstrates how climate extremes are becoming the new normal for the UK. Published today by Wiley in @rmets.org More details in the news release: bit.ly/4eZCnV4 Read the thread for some of the report’s key findings ⬇️🧵1/

The word that should be in quotes here is 'wasted'. Because this money wasn't 'wasted' it is now sitting in a handful of people's bank accounts. Where is can be taken back from.

Truly awful that this loathsome individual was re elected to the presidency as a felon, and is now an adjudicated rapist who has finally paid his court ordered penalty for defaming the woman he raped. How much lower can we fall?

You know things have got bad when even a novelty candidate in a Fox costume start saying “this is all a bit too unserious for me, I’m out.” Which is quite a shame really, as I’d loved to have seen a fox v. Fox storyline in this growing farce.

As politicians demand billions more for 'defence spending', younger people will have to wait longer to get their state pension. What exactly are we defending?

A new Met Office report: "more extreme weather is becoming the normal now in our climate" Climate change is here. Where is the national conversation about the urgent need for adaptation in the years ahead? Instead what we get is politicians demanding billions more for bombs

Obviously, there are other big stories around today. But, as far as I can make out, the Indy is the only paper that splashes this morning on the Covid Inquiry's tale of billions wasted. Can only imagine the field-day the right-wing press would have had had it happened under a different government.

If you’re wondering why the right wing press are going after Farage so diligently now, as opposed to listening to @carolecadwalla.bsky.social yrs ago? They haven’t *just* realised he’s a shady MF They know how explosive the upcoming revelations are & want to pretend they held him to account too.

"Entitled idiots" - a brilliant description of many millionaire father, Eton & Oxbridge MPs which the Reform Act of 1832 did little to change ...

What would be the repercussions for anyone who made an “honest error” on their tax or benefit forms? This was no honest error, this was a deliberate flouting of procurement. An error would be one event, not so many different events that it adds up to £10 billion. They really do think we’re stupid.

Jesus. 35 UK universities quietly- without debate - joined the Ministry of Defence’s “Battlefield Alliance” which seeks to “reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security” They’re destroying the social sciences and humanities while militarising the institutions

Two years ago the ICJ issued its finding that Israel must "rapidly" end its presence in the occupied territories and that all states should not render aid to that occupation. The UK hasn't even bothered to respond to it, despite numerous calls. icj-cij.org/case/186

Good analysis of Farage’s disrespectful, self-serving “people v the establishment” garbage where “people” are only the small minority who agree with him. The rest of us don’t count. “Populism usually ends in the erosion of democracy, and Farage's nonsensical by-election couldn't sum that up better”

The evidence that the people running things are not, and never have been running things in the interests of ordinary people, has never been clearer. We've built a system that forces the world to serve the short term, massive greed of a tiny, handful of people, out of the survival of life on Earth.

Guess when the last major reservoir was built in the UK? THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. We simply cannot afford to have our water industry owned by profiteering private forms who pay billions to their shareholders, fill our rivers and seas with shit and do FUCK ALL TO SAFEGUARD US AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE