British values

US taxpayer “slush fund to get MAGA-style things going” & “fund European organisations to undermine government policies”, says Reform UK source. www.ft.com/content/f869...

Very clearly communicated argument about the plan 2 tuition fee system by Oli Dugmore

🔴 BREAKING: Labour Together paid controversial PR firm £30k to investigate journalists who were digging into how its undeclared funding Reporters from Sunday Times, Guardian and other outlets targetted *And* Morgan McSweeney knew about it Full story: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

This quote from a Reform UK councillor sums it up beautifully. Cross-boundary moral outrages, exported online and sold (especially, but not exclusively) to generations that grew up before the internet, are such a central feature of radicalisation today. www.kentonline.co.uk/maidstone/ne...

"Rhe only reason we know any of this [about Mandelson] is because Epstein became entangled in the MAGA movement’s narrative. "What we still aren’t asking is how similar networks of influence are operating elsewhere today." New on D4S: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/release-th...

V interesting. And well done Anthropic for being upfront on the trade-offs here. www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

One thing that really strikes me throughout this whole scandal – from Mandelson’s chumminess with Epstein, to passing Gov info to him, to his “I’ve done nothing wrong” response today – is Mandelson has told us who he was since 1998, and a whole succession of PMs have never actually listened.

NEW: Previously unreported Epstein emails show Peter Mandelson discussing a Panama-linked tax avoidance structure for a £750k Rio apartment - with Epstein as his "chief life adviser". Exclusive Tax Policy Associates report:

Have lost most of this morning to searching Epstein files docs at www.justice.gov/epstein/search The nexus between political power, inherited power and media power laid completely bare Corruption at the very highest levels, with impunity

Wait, one is Labour and one is Tory? Yet they’re setting aside their political differences and teaming up to host a politics podcast?? This I gotta hear!

Even when there’s no accountability, the record matters. Credit to the Wikipedia editors maintaining this page.

🤖 A test by The Guardian found that OpenAI’s platform ChatGPT cited Elon Musk’s anti-Wikipedia Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers. „GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions.“ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The quiet guy at the work Christmas party after a couple of drinks:

New - Nigel Farage has been found by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to have made 17 standards breaches, adding up to over £380,000 in late declarations. He’s apologised, so no further investigation (which seems unusual for a breach this large)

howling at this utter indictment of the rest who were there!

New: meet ELITE, the Palantir app ICE is using to find neighborhoods to raid. Map interface; officers search for immigrants; click person to bring up individual dossier. This is clearest link between what Palantir is building and ICE's activities on the ground yet www.404media.co/elite-the-pa...

Jenrick’s biggest favourability boost coming from Green voters 🫡

“Ministers assure the public that Palantir doesn’t have access to “patient-identifiable data”, which might be more reassuring if Palantir were not a company that specialised in joining up different data sources to spot patterns and identify people.” www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-c...

Now only paying subscribers can make violent non-consenual sexual imagery of women and children - Grok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

In this essay I will acknowledge and then inexplicably discard the academia which says he is, in favour of a small selection of examples of academics who say he isn't. Also examples of reasons why not? Trump "thinks war is stupid" and believes in small state, except he doesn't when it suits him

There we go. That there’s a headline.

Add “AI is not a person” to all newspaper style guides asap

A week on from Barca quietly dropping its crypto partner, and then briefing it had done so without any financial loss, ZKP is still featuring Barca branding prominently. Which means Barca got no money for the deal *and* will have to use expensive lawyers to clean things up. An economic masterstoke.

everywhere I look I see hidden agendas, secret alliances, and shadowy figures. except for my mysterious benefactor, who is beyond reproach

The actor Michael Sheen used all his money to start a fake debt collecting business, buy 900 people in Wales's debt, and excused it. If Musk bought ALL $194 billion in medical debt in the U.S. and excused it in the same way, he'd still be the world's riches man by hundreds of billions of dollars.

OpenAI hires George Osborne to spearhead global ‘Stargate’ expansion ft.trib.al/kpZiA3a

Taking a financial hit for the cause of opposing authoritarianism and hate is a brave thing to do, regardless of how wealthy you are. Well done Mick Foley www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/spo...

Massively overdue. Very glad to see this happening Comes a week after a Labour MP in Commons cited Democracy for Sale’s cash for access investigation as evidence of how weak Britain’s are

This is something that is constantly pushed by online influencers to stir up anger for their own gain, and has been for a long time. Then "serious" figures regurgitate it and it starts to crystalise as somehow true

Go and get the Garth Marenghi meme.

Shameless

Britain threatened to cut off ICC funding over Netanyahu arrest warrant, claims prosecutor

Liz Truss is back. The short-lived UK prime minister and businessman Robert Tchenguiz are launching an ultra-exclusive club in London. Truss and Tchenguiz are hoping to recruit 700 founding members — each paying £500,000. Find out more here: on.ft.com/493H1hI

🔴 REVEALED 🔴 The Institute of Economic Affairs – the anti-state, anti-climate pressure group that "incubated" Liz Truss – was bankrolled by oil giants and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. 📝 Exclusive findings from @desmog.com 👇

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

And this isn’t the first time that allegation has been made by one of his team. A campaigner was caught saying the same on an undercover Channel 4 camera and later said it was a joke. That campaigner now runs the anti-immigration Centre for Migration Control www.channel4.com/news/exclusi...

Who has made this 🤣

The tech oligarchs are the most organised, determined anti democratic force we’ve seen this side of World War II For way too long this has been ignored, elided and under estimated What someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time

Feels like it’s going a bit under the radar among the ‘Farage schooldays discussion’ that Alan Sked alleged that Farage used the n-word in 1997, when he was in his 30s… www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

🔴 Nigel Farage’s Reform is more reliant on super-rich backers than any major party in modern British political history 75% of *all* Reform donations *ever* have come from just three rich men Is this what democracy looks like? New on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/75-of-refo...

Lobbyist / ex Tory MP Ben Howlett has been done by an undercover sting. As ever, the most revealing thing is how very very cheap it is buy access in British media/politics — and especially how Howlett controls one of the biggest UK pol Twitter accounts! democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-o...

Another victory for the revolving door

Much like with their US counterparts, Glasman and fellow British culture warriors/reactionaries are so WEIRD. This is not how median Brits think nor what they care about Obsessing about lanyards and transhumanism is pure X brain rot

Sorry to keep banging on about it but it's literally *they are on Twitter and think it's the majority view*

And that's their 43rd councillor to be suspended or quit this year.... bsky.app/profile/josi...

I hate the "huh, not surprised" and "huh, were you surprised" responses to investigative journalism. Such a thoughtless way to trash months of work. Because you ARE surprised, because you are reading something that no one else has revealed before. It doesn't make you superior to not be surprised.

The Yookay meme is something British Journalists keep using as if it doesn’t obviously mark them out as overly online freaks.