If this happened at a steel plant there would be talk of government bail out to secure jobs

On reflection, and with thanks to the many people who have commented, I would like to withdraw the last part of this post which should have ended with a full-stop after '...feel'.

Of course luxury dining brands went global. Everything went global. Football teams, property, universities, K-pop, the Cotswolds, the English language, vaccines, luxury brands, spices, comedy festivals... This is the modern world. www.ft.com/content/94d9...

I’m afraid that if you emigrate to Dubai for the tax breaks and 24-hour security, you really should give up your citizenship here for someone who wants it.

It's a curious state of affairs when the Green Party - which claims to be in favour of zero-growth economics - has more pro-growth policies, especially wrt immigration and Europe, than any others....

Of course we know exactly what Jenrick means, not least because he just told us. 'Integration' to him means dispersal (of small numbers of black faces) among the majority white population 'so they can't congregate, talk foreign languages, drag an area down and generally threaten us'. It's grim.

Trump will get, and deserve, the Nobel Peace Prize if, as a consequence of this initiative, in a year's time there is a sovereign state of Palestine and a sovereign state of Israel fully at peace with each other. Up to him.

Remarkable thing is finding a Reform council taking its job seriously instead of indulging in infighting, resignations and scandal.

If you’re apprehensive that what you say or do now could come to haunt you in a more authoritarian environment in the future then this is your absolute cue that you absolutely must say or do something now.

Many pundits today are pushing the line that everyone who protests the genocide in Gaza is basically either antisemitic or tolerant of antisemitism. But isn't that precisely the conflation of the actions of the Israeli gov't with all Jewish people, which is at the heart of this wave of antisemitism?

Going to launch a campaign for British withdrawal from the OECD, just for a laugh

House is dauntingly full of apples, walnuts and quinces all in need of processing.

I don't know where this revisionism has come from about the suffragettes - people saying "if the suffragettes were around today, they'd be considered terrorists." The suffragettes were arrested and tortured, sexually assaulted and beaten by the state. They *were* considered terrorists!

My late mother would be absolutely delighted to see the downriver progress of the episcopacy of the distaff from Fulham to Lambeth. Her mother would be appalled....

As Israel continues its violent invasions in the West Bank, it has begun bulldozing Palestinian land to build a new settler-only road. The road will isolate 8 Palestinian towns & cut residents off from their own olive groves. This is apartheid.

Shock, horror, thoughts and prayers and all that for the victims and their friends and families of the Manchester attack. But let us not shilly-shally around. A significant part of the blame for the attack surely lies with the genocidal government of Israel.

If scrapping indefinite leave to remain (ILR) entirely, as Reform would do, is racist, according to Labour, what is making ILR twice as difficult, expensive & humiliating to obtain, as Labour are doing?

I think we need a new word, for the flag of StGeorge when flown from a gammonazi's arsecrack or painted on a roundabout rather than in support of the Red Roses or the Lionesses...

Some good news. London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces. The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.

... of implications. The question really ought to be something like 'Having fewer immigrants in your local community will mean fewer care workers, fewer dentists, fewer bin men, less tax raised for your community etc. Do you support restrictions on immigration?' It is the job of politicians ...

Let’s balance up this poll… POLL: Is Reform's migrant visa plan racist? www.express.co.uk/news/politic...

Aching somewhat. We usually have our friends and their teens for Autumn half-term, and they get stuck in collecting and crushing the apples for the cider. But the apples are more than ready, so I've been on hands and knees picking them up to save them from the wildlife....

American decline. This sort of system has been up and running in China for years, and chief US techbro is still only dreaming of it. If the Republic's to be saved, it certainly won't be by playing survelliance-tech catch-up with the Chinese Communist Party. (or by techbros at all, in fact)

“I understand your legitimate concerns” should only be used when there happens to be actually legitimate concerns about something real Not to reinforce unhinged fears based on loudly repeated hateful lies thinking that’s the way to appease those fears You idiots

Someone needs to make Adolescence, but for grown-ups who lose their marbles on the internet. And also make it funny. Like Four Lions

Every journalist in the country incapable of drawing any lines between Story 1: government making a compulsory national database of all your private information and Story 2: hackers holding people to ransom over pictures of their kids at nursery

One more thing to say on ID cards. This is a complex issue, worth detailed and expert discussion. It needs time and attention, not knee-jerk or rushed policies for headlines and short-term political gain. If we do this, it will be forever. We need to be very sure.

Here's a link to Labour's 2024 manifesto. It doesn't appear to mention rolling out a national ID scheme (which I think we can agree is a MASSIVE project). Yet Starmer's doing it anyway. If that's acceptable, why aren't introducing PR, or rejoining the SM, CU or EU? labour.org.uk/wp-content/u...

So, uh, yeah, I agree with Sir Keir about the left ignoring immigration fears for too long. They've absolutely failed to advocate for immigrants and explain how great immigration has been for the nation. And let the fash dominate the narrative.

Next target: the UK's Digital ID database.

It's going to be Palantir, isn't it? I mean, they've already got the gig, haven't they?

This ID card proposal sums up all that is wrong with governance in Britain today. It's back of a fag-packet policy-making in response to a problem it can't solve. I'm not as viscerally opposed to ID cards as I was last time, but if they are to be introduced, please not this way.

This:

The perennial myth about migrants eating swans stretches back to at least 2003 when the Sun printed it as a front page story. It was later obliged to clarify that it had zero evidence. Farage must be fairly desperate to be trotting that one out www.itv.com/news/2025-09...

It’s gone so quickly from ‘boat people’ to all immigrants. So quickly from ‘I don’t mind if they come here legally and pay taxes’ to ‘actually it’s anyone foreign’. We are living in the ‘first they came for’ poem. All to give the population a scapegoat so the super rich can hoard yet more wealth.

Look at the harm that Murdoch, Rothermere and others have done to British politics. No one under 40 reads papers anymore, but they do use social media lots. This is very, very dangerous for the world.

The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

This country made significant progress against racism in my lifetime - but we did not do so by chance. There is a visible visceral regression in experiencing of overt racism because the toxic fringe with the most extreme views have a sense of permission & impunity www.easterneye.biz/racism-in-uk...

“It’s the silence of our friends”

Just to be clear: no concerns about black and brown immigration are *ever* legitimate. And no advertisers' interests about my browsing habits are *ever* legitimate either. My full consent, or fuck all.

Someone desperately needs to start building a cross-party platform on the argument that people wanting to come to our country and live here is good, actually.

💯. Progressives have to stop franchising out their consciences to the courts. Politics is about moral choices. The problem with Reform's proposal isn't that "the courts won't allow it". It's that it's grotesque and inhuman. If we're democrats, we must believe that this argument can be won.

Autism isn’t “caused” by Tylenol. Or vaccines. Or anything. It’s inherited. It’s natural. It’s human. The hunt for a “cause” is just the hunt for someone to blame - and blame only makes sense if you think being autistic is bad. We’re not. But if you continue saying this shit, you are.

Public service announcement. If you’re voting for Farage “because Starmer”, then you didn’t need Starmer at all. You’re just a fucking racist who lacks the courage to defend your views. Ends.

Did we all take organic chemistry & the MCAT & miss the social part of our early 20’s and work 80 hours a week for 3+ years for the brain worm guy who doesn’t know what a p-value is to destroy our nation’s public health system? No. Time to lean into our expertise and speak up.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan failed to report direct admissions of rape by multiple priests, lobbied against extending the statute of limitations for sex abuse, and moved money off the church books to hide it from victims of sex abuse. In case you were wondering.

Reminder: The existence of these in most Scottish supermarkets and corner shops is proof that anyone shilling for the notion that multiculturalism can't work on this island is a charlatan

Obama: So we have to extend to people during their period of mourning We can also at the same time say I disagree with the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake I can disagree with the suggestion that my wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain processing power.

Ageing population challenge - more care needed to be provided by fewer people. Couple with being a services economy. And the need to provide public services to the population. This is obviously far more than a question of immigration. But crucial to it.

The last political column I was allowed to write in the @washingtonpost.com was a criticism of Obama. His people took issue with my piece, but we were respectful. Now he is tweeting in support of me. This is how free political speech and respect for debate *actually works*. Or used to work.