In authoritarian regimes, the government uses its powers to threaten, harass, and silence its opponents.

A driving theory test really isn’t *that* hard to pass.

Reminder that “may you live in interesting times” was meant as a curse

Thought this was a court case for a moment

If a company joins the X-odus, I’m wondering what the policy on corporate memory is. Although I note that a lot are simply saying that they will no longer be posting rather than deleting their account. And their tweets aren’t really in their possession. If X collapsed, they’d be lost anyway.

Wish the Remain campaign had it put as succinctly as Carney did in the first two paragraphs

That ICE cunt still hasn't been arrested and I didn't THINK he would be but I can't even see much discourse on whether or not it should happen from mainstream outlets. It's like we've just given up.

The hypocrisy is the point

Meanwhile in Minnesota, ICE agents are telling people filming them “Have you all not learned from the past couple of days?”

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"

There would normally be quite a lot of background checking for law enforcement roles. Not just things like convictions but also finances (risk of corruption), backgrounds of partners and family members. Just wondering if they’re dispensing with a lot of the usual requirements to ramp up recruitment.

Reminded of how you used to frequently see the term “gay sex scandal” back then.

If only there had been some clue that he was like this.

Could so easily describe him as a “man”. Why would you call him an “illegal alien” (a conceptually incorrect term) other to dehumanise him and make people think it didn’t matter?

Can a prize ‘awarded’ under duress even be a prize in any meaningful sense of the word? Bit like forcing somebody to love you or be your friend.

What a tiny man

Reminded of those Lib Dem bar charts

I'm good thanks. I think I probably won't move to the country where the authorities pump out neo-Nazi memes and masked militias roam the streets.

My legal pedantry: can people stop saying “guilty of” unless they actually mean convicted of a criminal offence. Just heard the BBC’s Martin Croxhall saying that Prince Harry accused the Mail of “being guilty” of “a grave invasion of privacy”

It’s truly a special kind of unhinged psychotic who will come up with “You didn’t give me the Nobel Peace Prize so I’m going to start World War 3.”

Why does somebody who thinks that aggression is strength want a peace prize so badly? Why would such a person see it as a compliment?

You know that thing where someone famous dies and you thought they’d been dead for ages?

Another MP to which my reaction is “surprised they hadn’t already”

Nice bourbon industry the USA has. Be a shame if anything was to happen to it.

Assuming he was previously NFI. That they think he’s worth inviting is an alarming sign that they clearly think he could be PM of a G7 country

💯 true

He’s right. But it’s also an attempt to intimidate others from speaking out. And I have no doubt that the chilling effect is working.

People investigated or prosecuted under Trump Walz/Frey Comey Bolton Powell

Did Jenrick really change his vowel pronunciation and Gary Gibbon claimed on C4 news

How do they know that he made those journeys? Did he touch in or out for some of them?

As Farage once said of somebody else, Jenrick has the charisma of a damp rag.

What happens when you employ a bunch of twenty somethings who think they’re in the West Wing

AKA bruising

This is proper How Democracies Die stuff

There’s quite a significant non-legal reason kids don’t go to nightclubs. The clue is in the name. Incidentally, they are allowed to go to places that serve alcohol and the law does forbid the serving of it to them. So I have no idea what her point is.

Don’t understand why people are so desperate for a peerage considering some of the non-entities they’ll be sitting alongside.

Wondering how the teenage Farage would have treated the boy who had arrived from Iraq if he’d been a fellow Dulwich pupil

Saying that Zahawi was Chancellor for just five minutes is not the gotcha people think it is. He was a long(ish) serving Cabinet minister. So yeah, whatever you think of him and I think he’s a creep), his defection to Reform is a big deal.

Don’t understand why somebody who’s had a distinguished political career and is a rich man would humiliate themselves this way.

Odds on how long until Braverman defects to Reform?

Oxford Street these days is looking increasingly threadbare especially since the collapse of Debenhams and House of Fraser, both of which took up a whole block. And this is the country’s biggest shopping street in a city of 9m people, lots working nearby, and a popular tourist destination.

A decade?

You used to be able to smoke on planes

Can you please stop using photos of small boat arrivals for stories about legal migration. Gives the impression that *any* immigration is inherently illegitimate.

@werd.io hi there, you popped into my timeline. My name’s Nathaniel Graham. I think we knew each other as kids in Oxford

British MP calling for the leader of a foreign power to interfere in our domestic politics. How patriotic. Incidentally, he’s made about £40k from his tweets.

Some parts of the state have become very efficient. Applied for a DBS check yesterday evening. ID verified by photo of my driving licence and facial recognition using my phone. Result available in less than an hour (all clean!) Text this morning saying the certificate’s in the post.

I get that TfL needs the money but allowing corporate brands to take over public infrastructure like this does seem a bit off.

By big accounts staying in X, they’re helping to keep it alive. Only when it dies off or becomes as irrelevant as Friends Reunited or MySpace, can something else take its place. Flowers don’t grow unless you pull out the weeds.

Suspect we might be about to find out why it’s important that people exercising power on behalf of the state including using lethal don’t hide their identities.