People using AI to invite me to speak to their book groups have of late been replaced in my inbox by people using AI to offer me jobs. So refreshing to know that a gazillion tonnes of carbon is being emitted so they can waste both their and my time.

Tbh, I think I might struggle more with a smaller animal. I would have far more chance against a horse than a mouse, say. bsky.app/profile/lond...

I am able to walk and chew gum at the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. "The only thing prohibiting me from walking and chewing gum at the same time is that I'm not able to," he said. "It is possible for me to do so were I capable of doing that."

While we're no longer on the subject of whose face should be on the £50 banknote: ethnic minority people are disproportionately victims of financial crime, so could we honour their contribution to the UK by not printing £50 notes at all, since they're only useful to financial criminals anyway?

I'm trying to think who this idiocy is for, who would say: I wasn't going to vote Labour but now they've blocked a clearly exceptionally bright Sudanese woman from doing a postgraduate course in computational biology at Cambridge, I'm all in? www.ft.com/content/4493...

I met a young conservative the other day, who was in all respects indistinguishable from a young conservative back in the late 1990s.

I would like to vote for a party that said: "we keep being buffeted by forces outside our control. This is because we've allowed our capabilities to degrade. We're going to build them up again so some moron can't just bankrupt us with a stupid idea. It will take a while but here's the plan".

Cor, sure would feel great right now if we were self-sufficient in renewable energy, and laughing at all the rubes reliant on global oil supplies. We'd have a bit of a swagger in our step today.

I went to get some diesel yesterday, and the woman behind the counter told me I'd been clever to fill up while there's still something in the pumps, since the Strait wouldn't be opening any time soon. I've never received geopolitical advice in a petrol station before.

A chilling crime by Pete Hegseth and the US Navy. Iranian warship IRIS Dena was unarmed and taking part in an int’l exercise with countries including the United States when she was sunk off Sri Lanka by a torpedo fired by a US nuclear submarine, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors.

Hmmmm, interesting to see how google categorises @transparencyuk.bsky.social in its search results...

In decades to come, hundreds of historians will pore over documents from March 2026 desperately searching for, yet consistently failing to find, the tiniest clue as to what in the living fuck was going on.

So I've just discovered that I can make my stapler work better if I hit it really hard. Take that with your whole 'AI aids productivity' thing.

strikes me that one of the most obvious things this government should do is properly resource regulators. There’s a gigantic gap between law and its enforcement, yet politicians always focus on announcing new rules rather than applying the old ones www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Clarification: he didn't break US bank secrecy law, it's just that the foundational US anti-money laundering law is, for historical reasons, called the Bank Secrecy Act. If you'd like to know why it's called that (You Would?!), you should read Everybody Loves Our Dollars www.ft.com/content/6e0e...

If Trump attacked the UK, Badenoch would demand to know why Starmer wasn't helping. bsky.app/profile/samf...

I know someone who moved back to the UK from Dubai with her kids so they could attend a state school, while her other half stayed in the UAE to make sure he didn't have to pay tax. It would be awful if he had to pay for an evacuation flight.

I'm still scratching my head a little at the fact that the Tories managed to get 706 people to vote for them.

🎥 BIG MONEY IS CORRUPTING OUR POLITICS 🎥 UK politics has a big money problem 💷 The super-rich use money to buy honours, influence and access to power. It erodes trust in our politics and undermines our democracy. The UK needs a cap on donations to end big money in our politics. More below ⤵️

"If I have one wish ... it would be for more transparency - if only for law enforcement - around who owns the different forms of corporate structures registered by the [US] states" - @oliverbullough.bsky.social speaking to @ianpgary.bsky.social from @factcoalition.bsky.social youtu.be/9Nr-q7yj9Kw

Would Peter Mandelson (were he to end up in court) have a jury made up of other members of the House of Lords like in Kind Hearts and Coronets? This could be really something.

If the tariffs are illegal, does that mean the US government has to give all the money back?

If he's found guilty, the sentence will be to lose another bit of his name.

Important conversation from #BBC @tds153.bsky.social at #BBCSounds Turkish writer, @ecetemelkuran.bsky.social’s new book Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding a Home in the 21stC explores the rising global displacement of people who will need to forge stronger connections amid political+social upheaval 1/

Interesting piece, but I think there's a risk of overthinking this. If the revelations from Bellingcat or the Litvinenko inquiry show us anything, it's that the Russian secret services are staggeringly incompetent. bsky.app/profile/will...

Maybe there's an innocent explanation, and the misapprehension arose because a million people have pretended not to speak English when Nigel Farage tried to talk to them? bsky.app/profile/benc...

I know no one cares, but isn't breaching capital controls illegal? www.ft.com/content/7b60...

Just did a quick tally of how many tickets are left on the WRU web for Wales v France on Sunday. I make it 16,638, which is more than a fifth of the Principality's capacity. Grim times.

My take on the Corruption Perceptions Index, and the steady decline in Britain's score: the CPI is a crass, incoherent measurement that should never be published. If it came close to reflecting how corruption works, Britain would have been down the bottom of the list for decades already. However...

I'm happy to be prime minister for a bit, if no one else is keen? It's likely to be my turn before too long so I may as well get it out of the way.

There are strong similarities in approach between the leaderships of the Welsh Rugby Union and the Labour Party. Have they ever been photographed together?

I really really enjoyed this long chat with @aaronjbastani.bsky.social from @novaramedia.com about money laundering, handbags, cash, and all the good stuff. I hope it's as fun to watch! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd_Z...

Tune in for 'Let's Talk'...with Giles Brown - live from 10.00CET. Today, Ian Breckon on 'Mad Tom's Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir William Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil', and @oliverbullough.bsky.social with 'Everybody Loves Our Dollars'

I mean, you can't argue with the diagnosis, though I fear they're struggling to understand who exactly those "dark forces" are. www.ft.com/content/f869...

For basically my entire adult life, Mandelson has been resigning from one job after another in distinctly unedifying ways. The fact he keeps being rehired presumably shows he's very good at something and I'd be interested to read a brief summary of what exactly that is. Does anyone know?

Clearly being prime minister isn't easy but Starmer is really really bad at it, isn't he?

All-time great correction on Xan Brooks' review of Melania? www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

Roses are red All property's theft

“There is essentially a global wave of governments being captured by big money, whether that’s big crypto money or big tech money." *Really* recommend this interview I did with @oliverbullough.bsky.social on how money laundering is taking over the world www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEkK...

Can watch full video of my interview with @oliverbullough.bsky.social about how money laundering has taken over the world - and governments have woefully failed to stop it Hard not be angry listening to Oliver youtu.be/uEkKT7yzVGY?...

"There is a global wave of governments being captured by big money, whether that’s big crypto money or big tech money." Great to talk to @oliverbullough.bsky.social about how money laundering has gone global - and it's capturing our politics democracyforsale.substack.com/p/dirty-mone...

SAVE THE DATE: On February 26, FACT will host journalist and bestselling author @oliverbullough.bsky.social for a virtual discussion of his new book, “Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won”. Keep an eye on our page for further details! www.ft.com/content/e1fb...

An idle moment so had a quick check of Cardiff's Nantgarw cinema. Screenings of Melania scheduled: 5 Tickets sold to date: 0 tickets.showcasecinemas.co.uk/login/0114/1...

A bold new frontier for enshittification! Stage one: self-driving. Stage two: adverts on the windscreen so you can't see out the front. Stage three: advertisers buy data about your response to not being able to see. Stage four: Tesla ups prices for the advertisers. www.ft.com/content/78d5...

Thanks to the Guardian for publishing this extract from my new book. It's about one of the many very bleak aspects of the global anti-money laundering system.

I've been looking for a film worthy of being screened in a double bill with Cats. Could this be it? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I always said I'd never vote for Reform because they were a bunch of nasty, mediocre spivs but now Suella Braverman's joined, well, that pretty much changes everything.

Andy Burnham vs Kier Starmer is the defining ideological battle of our age, and a prolonged stand-off between these two titans of political thought is therefore not just necessary but desirable.

If the person who keeps trying to hack into the old email account that I keep for notifications ever manages to actually get in, they're going to be so disappointed.