Jonathan Gullis has defected to Reform. What a coup for them! Jonathan will add: Hair Grunts An odour of hay An itchy hole Fungi Wrinkled shirts Porridge Jizz Conker hairs Squirrel food And damp patches wherever he sits. He truly will be a great asset. 🇬🇧

James O’Brien discovers that Reform’s Richard Tice and his new recruit, Jonathan Gullis, have history...

Seriously how can anyone publish something like this on the bbc. When did it turn into opinion columns the absolute dirge of newspaper publishing

The Green's ever reliable message of simply 'tax the rich'. Covers a multitude of sins, but they never have to account for having to implement the policy because they'll never win enough seats.

Oh wow, that's awkward. #Gullis

Hi. We’re Reform. We’ve got all the worst Tories you can imagine, and a bunch of our own candidates who are even worse.

It’s a challenging time for our High Street shops and other local businesses, particularly after the budget. Buying local for our Christmas shopping this year is a great way to help and show our support. I want to hear your recommendations and over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing a few of my own.

We were unable to record last night but we're doing so tonight, so if you do have any questions, then chuck em here :-)

Think this is exactly right - political journalism that is completely abstracted from policy, which was not the norm before 2017, has become the default. Impossible to have a serious attempt to either shrink what the state does or widen the tax base (have to do at least one) on that basis.

Jonathan Gullis defects to Reform saying his former party has "lost touch with the people it was meant to serve". He should know. When he was in Government he took a five-figure donation from JCB, then stayed silent when it axed hundreds of his constituents' jobs just two weeks later

The correct argument from the right is surely not 'she lied in order to justify tax rises to pay for welfare spending (some of which they also supported)' it is 'there's at least £30bn of reckless assumptions here about how to secure the public finances':

I have been shortlisted as a finalist for 'Best Non League Editorial' by @nlbible.bsky.social which is incredible! I would love to go one step further and pick up the win 🙏 All votes can be cast here - nonleaguebible.weebly.com/editorial.html

Zipcar is shutting down its UK operations, basically the only car club that worked in London. Massive kick to anyone who tries to live in capital without owning a car. Having been a customer for 17 years and used Zipvans to move house repeatedly, this is.... very bad! (Zipcar is owned by Avis)

Lucy White's overt racism - she wants Nus Ghsni banned from the Commons (birthplace), and Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel & Shabana Mahmood banned from office - may have finally gone too far for TalkTV. The GB News response is disingenuous. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

A very unfortunate outcome but on balance the right decision imv.

The BBC does such important journalism internationally. Why can't it match that quality with its domestic offering?

“When Water Burns - The Fight for Georgia” - a one-hour BBC documentary on the November-December 2024 episode of #GeorgiaProtests and the use of WW1 toxic compounds by the Georgian Dream is now available. m.youtube.com/watch?v=z4-k...

If you look at the ridiculous case studies they dredged up & the desperate attempts to hang Reeves for ‘lying’ about the rationale behind a policy she *did not introduce*, you might work out why right-wing media is straining *not* to talk about the finer detail of her (unremarkable) budget.

Hilarious video by a South African knobhead desperately willing a pleasant London street to be a war zone. Nearest he gets to danger is a woman telling him to stop talking nonsense.

For context the 'Middle England' referred to here is the 0.5% of households living in homes worth more than £2 million

Honestly the completely weird Budget coverage is mostly a sign of how pretty much any attack can stick when you’re unpopular enough. Of course Rachel Reeves didn’t brief the full Cabinet on Budget details weeks in advance! No chancellor ever does! It would immediately leak!

What we're seeing is exactly what we saw in the late 1940s, the late 1960s and the mid- to late 1970s: a concerted and hysterical campaign to delegitimise a Labour government, and indeed the very idea of Labour governments at all.

There's a certain irony in listening to an old couple bemoan people's use of headphones in public as anti-social, when ten mins later the woman of the couple is watching a video with the sound on.

Precisely. We have an ageing society, a productivity problem & a crisis in local govt. The costs of defence & climate change are all growing, & we have a US president addicted to tariffs, who may be about to start a war in Venezuela. The budget was *not pessimistic enough* about the public finances

I feel like we're moving closer to the inevitable day when Liz Truss announces she's defected to Reform, and Reform frantically spins that she absolutely has not

"It is my job, after a careful examination of the facts, to call it..." No it is not, Chris Mason! It is your job to report the facts and points of view on a hotly contested issue and leave me and other audience to make up their own minds! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“Georgia's authorities used a World War One-era chemical weapon to quell anti-government protesters last year, evidence gathered by the BBC suggests.” 1/3 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Chris Mason sounds utterly absurd, trying to turn the screws on Rachel Reeves while acknowledging that she has done nothing that one wouldn't expect a politician to do.

Look around. The case for more, not less, liberal arts education - actual, real education in reading, writing, thinking, arguing, analyzing, & synthesizing by doing the actual hard work for which there is no substitute - is stronger than it’s ever been at any point in human history.

Very fair summary.

Don’t say this lightly but Birmingham Mail’s gaming of its position on Apple News/Google to farm clicks makes it one of the most effective spreaders of false information in the country. Could list a dozen way more egregious examples of fake ragebait it’s pumped out recently.

Rightly lots of debates about growth this weekend - rightly because it was low productivity growth that saw wages entirely flatline during the 2010s.

Farage would take it one step further, creating a Putinesque or Trumpite oligarchy.

An underlying trend since the 1980s has been a transfer of wealth from labour to capital. Badenoch would resume that process, reversing gains about to be enacted on UK worker rights and further slashing social safety nets. Hence, she is primarily an advocate for powerful vested intetests.

This weekend's match, featuring a fox, the trains doing trains things, and eventually the best match I've seen so far this season.

We didn't get the chance to record the podcast last night because things got in the way, but we'll be on it this evening and it'll be with you in the morning.

“Over nine months, Sky News’ Data and Forensics team investigated whether X’s algorithms amplify right-wing and extreme content. Their findings were clear: Elon Musk’s X is boosting right-wing and extreme content, as well as politicians Musk favours.”

If this is really a BBC journalist we really do have a problem.

Genocide just as Lemkin defined it. euromaidanpress.com/2025/11/27/r...

It's interesting reading all the wailing and gnashing about Spurs. At Wimbledon when I was on the board of the owners, we had to go through a lot more than just mid-table meh and the odd crap result before things turned around under the new manager. We dropped as low as third bottom of League Two.

"Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions.” www.wsj.com/world/russia...

When I was young, the Independent was the best designed newspaper on the stands. This is what it looks like now: a par of text sandwiched between two ads, an auto-play video and a pointless and intrusive swipe function. It's as if it hates the work of its own writers.

They've completely forgotten or ignored this

Proper town, proper weather. Välkommen till Luton!

It's completely ridiculous. Pre-budget everyone thought the headroom gap was £20-30bn including policy changes (e.g. on welfare). It was in fact £16bn. It's hardly a massive difference.

The very reason that scumbag Osborne introduced it in the first place is below. He didn't give two shits that it forced kids into poverty. All he cared about was winning elections. He's one of the people who helped create the modern mess we now live in.

REPORT: Wimbledon came away with a point in a frantic 3-3 draw with Huddersfield Town 🗞️ #AFCW 🟡🔵 🔗 www.afcwimbledon.co.uk/news/2025/no...

“STOP POPULISM" Leverkusen-Dortmund also kicks off in silence as protests continue ahead of next week’s Interior Minister Conference (IMK) and the restrictive stadium security measures due to be discussed. #bundesliga

Muscular Christianity. “Wear some headphones, kid. And put your shoes back on”

The sheer scale of media outrage this week about plans to lift hundreds of thousands children out of poverty, by taxing millionaire homeowners, tells you everything you need to know about the real priorities of the British press www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-real-b...