I've been talking about this on here for a while. We just assume it will always rain enough, so the management of water in the UK is totally disastrous. Now, after a relatively few dry months, we are approaching a calamity. We have done it to ourselves. Yet again. We are a deeply unserious country.

To be fair on the (London) Times, their Gallagher-era fall from grace is absolutely nothing on the dismal collapse at the Post.

As Stephen says, this is an incredible line. The previous government cut National Insurance by 4p and had future spending plans that the independent forecaster basically called fictional! They seem to have expected reality to be more respectful of their manifesto.

If people in small town northern and midland England, and south Wales, want to be represented by economically illiterate xenophobes and bigots, let them get on with it. Pandering to reactionaries cannot work and will only do damage.

Labour losing every Red Wall seat to Reform at the next GE would be good for the Labour party and the country. Building an electoral strategy around a reactionary, older demographic that, at best, will only ever lend you its vote in extremis is hugely damaging for Labour and the country.

How ever since Labour came to power, the British media has started to notice a whole series of problems they spent the previous 14 years completely ignoring www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-great-...

Spurs were terrible, truly awful, for 85% of that game. Shocking defence for both goals. United dropped points there.

Reeves should be aiming to get off two cycles: “every budget is an ordeal, every minor fluctuation in the forecast is a nightmare“ and “we did some small tax tweaks to raise £2bn and whoopsydaisy, something has fallen over unexpectedly/inflation is higher”.

"More young adults to leave UK because of low salaries and rising tax burden" - on.ft.com/498VbP7 I really don't understand why the FT carries stories based largely on quotes from wealth managers. It's very thin stuff

Yesterday this was all the UK's fault. Now it seems the story is slightly more complex. Whoever would have thought it?

When I was first elected, evidence showed it would take 193 years to bring London's air pollution within legal limits. Due to our policies, we've done it in 9. In Brazil this week, we showed that cities are giving the world reason to hope when it comes to tackling the climate emergency.

www.bigissue.com/news/politic... It's a long, long list.

Laurence Fox is never again going to be able to threaten to sue anybody for calling him, an increasingly overt racist, racist

“Between 2020 and 2025, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose by 59% in Madrid and 47% in Barcelona” @brendanboyle.bsky.social

Triple-locked pensioners have the security to indulge their luxury beliefs. alastair-meeks.medium.com/of-heaven-an...

I admit it's niche, but I don't think I have rated a Labour politician as much as I rate Darren Jones since early Tony Blair. I think he has outstanding potential. He talks like the Britain Labour should be pitching at. And he does it entirely naturally because it's where he comes from.

A meta point is that it was Sue Gray who drew up the priority list which reflected existential priorities rather than political ones. So obviously McSweeney got Starmer to sack her. And thus was Rohan brought low from the start.

"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate" was mostly unspecified magic fairy pixie bullshit then, and it's not going to get any more realistic in the hands of a bunch of Reform clowns who don't know how anything works, don't care to learn and disdain anyone that might.

only in the small print of this article do they make clear that the pensioners paying an extra £2,500 of tax would have to have “earnings over £125,140” I know many pensioners are asset rich but how many have income at that level?

He never really got over the break up with Heidi Klum did he?

I love the rain. And I love it best of all as the dusk approaches.

Teach it all, the contradictions, scandals, adventures, violence, connections and complexity. And stop seeing it entirely through the prism of feeling.

It's all about age.

Good article. It remains totally bizarre Labour strategists could not see this happening. Sadly, though, the real beneficiaries will be the right. That’s FPTP for you.

So, I saw that John Lewis ad. It didn’t work at all for me. Poorly acted, all the wrong reference points (I am sooo old). And it’s not even being close to close to Christmas. FFS.

Suspect this question is often a proxy for "Would you like to be young again?"

Flag removal costs the taxpayer over £11,000 - The people who put them up should be billed. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Starting a war and expecting to move freely in Europe is hard to justify. The EU is tightening visa rules for Russian nationals amid continued drone disruptions and sabotage on European soil. Travelling to the EU is a privilege, not a given.

The stupidity of the willingness to criticise a British Labour politician for saying they have "not really followed a New York mayoral election but good for the guy on the left that won as seems nice" is a far better example of Labour and the left's problems in the UK than the original clip itself.

We need to live in the real world. We are a bog standard western European country, at the lower end of the productivity scale, that expects and requires high public spending. There are no magic wands to wave.

I am not opposed to a wealth tax. What I oppose are claims it is a simple silver bullet the government opposes because it is in hoc to neo-liberalism etc etc. Yes, tax wealth. But if we want no austerity and better public services, it means more tax rises on top. Sorry. That's the real world.

Which highly successful wealth tax in operation elsewhere in Europe should the government seek to emulate?

Just as Jeremy Corbyn is the world's unluckiest anti-racist, Nigel Farage is the world's unluckiest crusader against corruption.

I always find it interesting how the story changes when a lawyer gets to court. They can say anything they want outside of court without accountability but the rules are vastly different in court where you can get seriously penalized for lying.

This is nothing new. The Spectator worked out years ago that promoting racism and racists is lucrative.

This is great. How the gitano population of French Catalonia are the ones keeping Catalan alive there. The conflicting emotions this will stir in blood and soil Catalans south of the Pyrenees are delicious to contemplate.

We're now at the stage where it's impossible to credibly deny racism was not always a primary driver of right-wing Brexitism. All the prominent, white-skinned advocates of leaving the EU have shown what they really are over recent times. It was always there.

It's also worth noting that leaking to UK journalists that UK-EU talks are in a bad state is a classic Brussels move to ratchet up pressure on states that need a deal more with the EU than the EU does with them

Hoxe en 1659 asinábase a Paz dos Pirineos, que puxo fin á guerra entre 🇫🇷🇪🇸 e fixo que territorios como a Catalunya Nord pasasen a 🇫🇷. Dende entón, esta rexión catalanófona forma parte do estado 🇫🇷, e nas últimas décadas o uso do catalán caeu rapidamente até ~25% da poboación

It would be very difficult/impossible to deliver a trumpian hellscape in the UK while we have the ECHR protecting us. Outside it, we are well & truly fair game. Which is why billionaire disaster capitalists & asset strippers are flocking to Farage. yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics/res...

"Far from draining our welfare system, migrants are supporting the British state’s solvency." New analysis by @lgilbert.co ukandeu.ac.uk/lower-migrat...

If we are willing to pay lots of money to have a super capable machine in our homes controlled by Elon Musk we actually don’t deserve to survive as a species.

The state taking ownership of the means of production is literal communism.

Taking the think out of tank

Basically, Labour can try their hardest limit the ways the Mail/Telegraph can attack them but they're going to attack them anyway....

This seems entirely reasonable.

This from the nation that selected Boris Johnson on a landslide. You really are kidding yourselves.

🔴 Los tres años más calurosos registrados hasta ahora en el planeta son 2023, 2024 y 2025 elpais.com/clima-y-medio-a...

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...