Another example of political perceptions of the world not matching reality. Freelancing is becoming more important to the economy as there are fewer large employers, but governments treat this as an aberration to be squashed.

Self-employed people! Sorry to put a downer on your Sunday, but in case you'd not seen, the Government wants us to pay our tax *monthly* like we're employees or something With the World Cup and all the politics, I'd missed the consultation they put out last month, which is here: 1/

In the Republican era of safety regulation, the rule is 'it's up to you to avoid exposing yourself to disease from companies who don't have to tell you if you're buying exploding diarrhea food, presumably by sheer luck or magic".

The US is adopting a strategy of attacking water storage and desalination plants designed to render the region uninhabitable. If continued, this strategy will make the Gulf littoral uninhabitable in the coming decades. Yet there is no discussion of these tactics and their repercussion in the US.

You can read a fuller history of one of Edinburgh's most unusual park features here: threadinburgh.scot/2025/02/04/t...

Essentially, this would be (1) paying Donald Trump to (a) make market-moving statements, and (b) provide inside information about those statements—and hence (2) setting up a market manipulation scheme and giving Trump his cut of it.

Police operation targets ongoing anti-social vehicle related behaviour at Hawes Pier in South Queensferry Police recently carried out routine patrols in response to ongoing anti-social vehicle related behaviour at Hawes Pier, South Queensferry....

If other news was reported like climate change:

"I can't afford security so I was given £5million, which I didn't spend on security, so I need the state to protect me, oh wait they're cops and will rat on me, oh woe is me"

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

Apropos of nothing at all, if the water used for lettuce contains nasty microbes, they can get in via leaf stomata (microscopic holes on the underside) and you cannot wash them off again. If this happens at source, there's nothing a retailer can do. This is why regualtory bodies are vital...

‘This looks absolutely rubbish’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... Important article on how NHS public money gets siphoned off to hubristic companies with shoddy products.

📢 Once more for the people in the back: - Most [more than 95%] of archives have not been digitized. - Most of humanity's knowledge and memory is *not* reachable by LLMs. - Believing that AI can provid you with comprehensive, definitive, "intelligent" results is folly.

'Super' El Niño and the war on Iran are a double shock to our food system: Big Ag’s fertiliser- and fossil-fuel-heavy model turns every climate hit and shipping disruption into higher grocery bills for millions. This isn’t random inflation, it’s a crisis built on dependence. #fossilflation

*With the El Nino crop failures worldwide, and the sudden inability of Russian farmers to get diesel, plant crops or even export wheat, I'm smelling Famine on the way *I know that sounds rather Four Horsemen, but War and Plague have both been doing great lately

This is crazy. Peter Thiel’s spy tech Palantir is embedding itself in the British state, and makes hundreds of millions from Government contracts in health, policing and defence, but pays barely any taxes

Congratulations to Britain on becoming the kind of country where the police have to walk on eggshells when talking about a murder case, because one false move could set off a week of fascist rioting by the vicious far right swine our whole system is increasingly designed to please and impress.

It's an AI web, and we're just rats in the walls

You're going to get left behind if you don't use Al." Leave me then. Leave me with my critical thinking skills, my ability to read and write long- form, and books without needing Al summaries.

The Trump administration has appointed a noted skeptic of mainstream climate science to lead the government-wide program that compiles the National Climate Assessment, the country’s flagship report on the impact of global warming on the U.S.

Least surprising poll finding you’ll ever see: 73 per cent of people think that the investigation into Nigel Farage’s finances should continue even if he wins the Clacton by-election.

Conventional wisdom says rooftop solar meets **exisiting** electricity demand. What if rooftop solar actually **increases** electricity demand, improving living standards and driving economic growth? This is exactly what our new analysis of Pakistan's solar boom shows. Let's dig in.. 🧵

"I imagined myself as someone working in the Russian presidential administration, thinking through how I’d buy influence in the UK. My conclusion was that it would cost around £25m to do it properly." ✍️ Former Diplomat Andy Pryce bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/a...

MPs "have demanded full publication of an explosive report by the UK’s spy leaders that found the collapse of ecosystems overseas would have catastrophic consequences for the UK’s national security." www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

In middle of THIRD climate exacerbated heatwave, BBC promotes genocidal oil industry. Entire article promotes ReformTory policy of Drill Monsters Drill. Only one sentence in entire article given to climate protectors, buried at end. #ClimateGenocide www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If this is correct, it means that last night tax evading shops benefited from the tax the rest of us pay to ensure we have a functioning fire service.

"the administration is softening one of the strongest legal protections American workers have: the right to hold an employer accountable when retirement savings are mishandled."

Next time you see the UK government celebrating the huge economic and soft-power impact of the British film, music, tv, game, sfx, design, etc etc industries, perhaps ask them why they don't want anyone to work in them in future

M&S saw the plausible weather forecast for 2056, peaking at 45°C, that we produced with the Met Office and made the decision to invest in upgraded refrigeration. This comes after some of their fridges brown down during the recent heatwave. www.independent.co.uk/news/busines...

It is amazing and depressing how often Trump has ridden to Putin's aid since becoming President. Just some of his actions include: 1) Cutting off all US military and economic aid for Ukraine 2) Slow walking vital military sales to Ukraine 3) Rehabilitating Putin by inviting him to the USA .

Calling a by-election over the sovereign right of every MP to take secret gifts from a convicted criminal. What a time to be alive.

Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

Maybe this hasn’t sunk in for anyone who should care but the NHS was birthed when the UK *literally had negative money*. The USA had razed us of every penny to pay for weapons to defend ourselves against Germany, Germany had bombed all our industrial sites. We still did it in 6 months. 6.

I ran an absolutely 100% human, zero AI-involvement at any stage passage of my writing through an "AI detector," curious if it could really tell human from AI work, and it said my own writing was "84% AI written" then asked I wanted to pay to have it "humanized." So there's that to keep in mind.

He's being illustrative here but this this actually summarizes so much of conservative policymaking on issues well beyond immigration. "We must drop everything to focus on being as cruel as possible or risk a wildly improbable, highly contrived scenario I have just invented."

The emoluments clause wept

We've moved past the point where this contrarian bullshit should be treated as a simple difference of opinion. This person is advocating for harm to others. To poison their water, to pollute their air, and to make their climate more dangerous. This person is extremely dangerous. #spéirgorm

Remember: The real freeloaders in this country are the rich — not the poor or immigrants or any other group of people vilified as scapegoats. The richest 1% evade over $160 billion in taxes every year. The United States literally has yacht and private jet tax deductions. Hello?

AI search could kill the web without new quality signals and revenue models

Step 1: close all the youth centres Step 2: ban children from shopping centres "because of the crime" Step 3: harass children in parks "because of the crime" Step 4: ban children from online social media … Why are all the children depressed, antisocial, and bored? Why are they turning to crime?

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.

why more people don't realize capitalism will suck them dry of every cent they have & shove their dessicated bodies in a pit is a great mystery

The Trump administration has approved the use of cancer-linked pesticide trifludimoxazin, a PFAS forever chemical. This is the fifth PFAS pesticide approved for use on food crops during Trump's second term.

Everybody in the "climate space" (which means everyone on earth...) needs to understand these mind-blowing figures. Google's "total electricity consumption jumped from 31 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 to 43 TWh in 2025." In ONE year. The AI corporate arms race is eating the world.

The weird thing about that second comment is that it doesn't understand that these are taxes on *profits* - ie it's impossible to send a company under, unless you are asking for years of back taxes.

This is an absolutely wild thread that has blown my mind. Half!

Burnham is on a collision course with Scotland He claims he wants a new collaborative way of doing politics yet he’s already picked a fight with the Scottish govt with threats to strip power from Holyrood It’s just more of the same domineering crap from Westminster In @heraldscotland.bsky.social

It's hard to believe, but 45% of the corporation tax due from small businesses goes uncollected, against around 6% for mid-sized businesses and 4% for large ones:

Across all taxes, small businesses fail to pay between £30 billion and £48 billion of tax. These figures are massive. Enough to fund significant tax cuts or additional expenditure