Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

I shall not be taking questions at this point Wordle 1,637 2/6 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Once more for the haters...

Putin hasst die EU. Trump hasst die EU. Elon Musk hasst die EU. So schlecht kann die EU doch nicht sein.

💙 Happy birthday to the European flag! Adopted 70 years ago by the Council of Europe, it became the #EU emblem in 1985. 12 stars. Blue sky. A circle of unity. A symbol for the whole of Europe and shared values. Learn more: go.coe.int/HmDIt

"It helps that the form suits Starmer. Truss has taken to television like a duck to a woodchipper, but a long wall of grey text is very much our current prime minister’s natural medium." @roberthutton.co.uk on top form re. the PM's new substack.

Actually what shocks me is how they talk about him in front of the scenes….

Decision in the Sandie Peggie case. She was not directly or indirectly discriminated against, her claim of victimisation fails entirely, her claim of harassment fails largely and her claim against Beth Upton fails entirely. www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sa...

🇺🇸 attempts to force 🇺🇦 surrender are currently 0 from 3. Europe is winning, even if it doesn't realise. Trump's national security strategy exposes weakness. Its attitude to Europe is like the obsessive ex stalking the former partner, wondering who that new guy is. open.substack.com/pub/arthursn...

Neid und Hass von sehr dummen Menschen, die sich darüber aufregen, dass andere Menschen ein besseres Leben haben, aber nicht begreifen, dass sie ein solches Leben nicht haben können, weil sie dumm sind.

The National Security Strategy document attacks Europe with a rhetoric that could have been written by Joseph Goebbles himself, it's replacement theory where the suppressed White Race of Europe faces extinction within decades and the continent itself will be destroyed by immigrants. This is nuts.

The question, as with all of these, must be why the Commission continues to fund a Neonazi organisation like X: X axes European Commission’s ad account after €120M EU fine – POLITICO share.google/mOtwgS9kVzlY...

Who’s been good all year? Me, that’s who. #StNiklas

It's a mark of our moral disintegration that there's even a discussion about Ukraine giving up land. To even countenance it is to reward colonialism.

You know what? I really don't think it is. Great domestic political posturing, but Labour have no plans to go beyond the 'reset' agenda, certainly none the EU are likely to accept. This will be talk to little if any action.

Happy hump day lovely phone family. It's pre-op day for me, but more importantly it's International Day of Persons with Disabilities. As someone who 'doesn't look disabled' but definitely is, I know the importance of not judging on face value! Have a beautiful day and always #HaveCourageAndBeKind 🥰

Imagine a world where the economic effects of a major set of policy announcements are viewed as of secondary importance to the resignation of an anonymous civil servant or an arcane debate about whether people said things a month ago as part of normal political messaging. Oh, we live in that world.

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...

Off to a great start, I see… news.sky.com/story/zarah-...

Budget calculator. I presume that this means that once again, they're not asking people like me who could afford it to make a contribution (other than the threshold freezes).

The "don't have an extra kid if you can't afford it" brigade get awfully upset when you suggest they don't stay in their £2m house if they can't afford it, don't they?

NEW: Net migration falls sharply to 204,000 in the year to June. That’s a fall from 649,000 in the year to June 2024. It is a drop of nearly 80% from its 2023 peak.

Whatever else this government do (and there's plenty of issues with this budget) ministers will always be able to point to this as an incredible important contribution to the country's future. Almost half a million kids taken out of poverty.

This hex-map breaks down the share of 15-24 year-olds in Germany and the regional contrast is hard to miss. Eastern Germany shows much lower shares except for larger cities, while many western and southern areas have noticeably more young people. #30DayMapChallenge Day 25: Hexagons #ggplot2

"Coronation": the latest thinking on how to overcome the fact the Labour membership would never choose Wesley.

Still reeling from the Stanford report on Brexit. Reduced GDP by up to 8% and investment by as much as 18%. The UK Treasury would have £40 billion more each year if Britain had remained in the EU. Devastating self-immolation.

Why the two-child limit has to go, in a chart.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

This 👇

Hi All, just released my free weekend update. Its fascinating who backed the Trump-Putin 28 point plan, and what it means about the US government being a mouthpiece for Russia. Plus, you cannot back Trump and Ukraine--if you back Trump, you can only have one master open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

The fact that in both 2019 and 2024, the winning party did so with a set of manifesto promises that could not be kept and dissolved upon contact with actual office is something that as an industry we should be much more bothered by than we are.

We now have leaders of allied nations unable to trust a word the US tells them. We are witnessing one of the greatest diplomatic and foreign relations blunders of our lifetimes.

Public Accounts Committee: “Labour’s unexpected decision to restructure the NHS in England, which Streeting had ruled out in opposition, was not “prudent”, was decided upon despite no money having been set aside for it and no impact assessment done”

Asked about Tommy Robinson supporting her asylum plans Shabana Mahmood replies that "Tommy Robinson doesn't even think I'm actually English, so he will certainly not be supporting anything I've got to say." But he is supporting what she's got to say. That was the point of the question

The tone of an organisation is set from the leader on down, and the tone of Keir Starmer's leadership has always been 'say it if it is convenient'.

“Is it possible that you could have a life here, a job here, maybe kids going to school, a family here, then after 19 years if your country is then considered safe you get booted out and sent home?”

Love the way that #shabanamahmood blithely high-fives those folk who, when the chips are down, would deport her without even blinking.

🚨📉 Major new paper by Stanford professor Nick Bloom and coauthors. They find Brexit has: ⬇️ Reduced UK GDP by 6-8% ⬇️ Reduced investment by 12-18% ⬇️ Reduced employment by 3-4% ⬇️ Reduced productivity by 3-4%

Well, you can't say fairer than that

Boris Johnson says the idea that criticism of the BBC is being organised by the right is ‘complete and utter bollocks’, which makes me think there might be something in it.

there's a moment in PARADISE LOST where Satan arrives in Eden and realizes Hell isn't a place; it's a thing he carries within him and it'll follow him wherever he goes. and i think about that when i see these awful rich men whose monstrous wealth has enriched them not at all

"Research released this month by economists at the Bank of England, the Bundesbank, King’s College London and the universities of Stanford and Nottingham underscored the economic hit from leaving the EU. Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6-8%" on.ft.com/4p1NoHv

Of course, because this is precisely why they were put up and what they’re for.

www.theguardian.com/politics/liv... People *who were told* Brexit would cut regulation were betrayed. By those lying to them.

This day in 1989 we watched TV and one of us said “He said what? Schabowski said what?” The next day, the streets of Kiel echoed to the sound of 2stroke Trabants. Family came to visit who had never visited before. #BerlinWall It felt eternal and yet it’s been gone longer than it’s been up.

There’s a young southern woman on tt doing an experiment: calling churches & asking if they can help her get baby formula, saying she can’t afford it. Of the 30+ she’s called, nearly every church has said no. The ones who said yes were: Black Baptist Churches A Mosque A small Appalachian church

Well. Wordle 1,604 5/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 🟨⬜⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

LABOUR Home Office minister writes...