PFI didn’t just burden NHS trusts with huge debt, it trapped them in decades of overpriced maintenance contracts. One trust was charged + £300 to change a lightbulb. Outrageous. And now the gov is exploring PFI-style schemes again. Fight back with us: bit.ly/NHSandBudget

"In the solitude of a book, we find ourselves a little more willing to be vulnerable to having our mindset challenged." - Nick Raines The main difference between people who want to ban books and me: They would feel threatened by that quote. I feel *energized* by it.

What I see every time putin or some other terrorist supporter says that russia should return to its historical borders:

The US stranded a pair of astronauts on the International Space Station for months. After an accident stranded three taikonauts, the Chinese launched their rescue mission in less than two weeks. arstechnica.com/space/2025/1...

Watching Kemi Badenoch's budget response speech with the sound off.

When I was young, the Chancellor's budget speech was received in silence. The boorish braying that punctuates each point nowadays is irritating and childish. The speaker should evict each one, mercilessly, even if half the house is gone.

I do believe that's the first time The Green Party or its leader have ever been mentioned during a budget speech! Things are looking up for @zackpolanski.bsky.social

Good grief! What a cock-up. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) report has been posted ahead of, instead of after the budget.

Hands up, the oldies who still remembers their chief school bully from 50 years ago. How evil must the bullying be to mar the adult political career? How changed should they be? Do you believe, as the Dulwich College chaplain did, that such fascist behaviours "are often deep-seated, and are meant"?

I wonder if the libraries can hold off the book burners, in hope. Maybe they could get away with storing banned books for a while?

People of all ages read. If you don't know any, thats on you, they are there; you're just not communicating with them. Just for the record, I consider listening to audiobooks & blogs to be reading; they're not negated just because they're delivered via different sense receptors. #dyslexia #books

In case anyone is confused as to why Donald Trump's regime has singled out Venezuela for military aggression: energy-oil-gas.com/news/6-count...

Sat in a patisserie in Stroud's Five Valleys shopping centre, next to an amazing mural. The artist has continued the tables and chairs through onto the mural with identical matches of the real ones in the patisserie, making the whole look like we were sat in a scene from Paris.

This popped up in my phone 'memories'. A peaceful moment near St David's in Pembrokeshire.

This vision of the Tory Party no-longer exists. It barely exists in the Labour Party. Where is the case for 'profit for a purpose'? Where is the implacable opposition to inequality in the two old parties? It will be the task of the 'minor parties' in the years ahead to reassemble this perspective.

Jubilee Lake, Royal Wootton Bassett. I noticed that the willow trees, instead of dozing for the winter, were putting forth catkins and pussy willow buds. #climatechange #artoutdoors #art

Russia was the first oathbreaker in 2014, but the United Kingdom and Unites States followed quickly when they reneged on the Budapest Memorandum and did nothing to ensure Ukraine's security in the face of Russian aggression, and continue to offer too little, too late to Nuclear-disarmed Ukraine.

This is one of the big accounts boosting Tommy Robinson, Farage and Reform and ‘English Patriots’. It’s Russian.

Why does a massive US private healthcare company own 2 NHS PFI projects?🚨🚨🚨

A little graphic to remind us the cost of commuting across two routes operated by different rail operators, each a monopoly for that transport type. And they wonder why we cling to our petrol cars!

Yet another unique way to stimulate cellular immunity against cancer. “Using the gut immune system to induce cellular immunity is a unique approach,” Shirakawa notes. “And it should be very easy to extend it to other antigen proteins and also infectious diseases.” #ScienceSunday

The Far-right is worried that one middle-eastern religion is being replaced by another.

The UK is a strongly pro-choice country with 86% of Britons wanting abortion to be legal in all or most cases. But the US anti-choice movement has been investing heavily into campaigns in Britain, and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party seems to be support the interference.

I just saw the eye-watering rail season ticket prices between UK cities as the government announces a price freeze. This is tinkering at the edges of a huge, privatised cash cow. If they are taking climate change seriously, they should tax the rich, re-nationalise then subsidise all public transport

This is the best article I've found for deterring parents from letting their kid have or ride an e-scooter in public. Share this side of Christmas. www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/a...

Alex Karp got Denethor's Palantír.

A good read from the Raspberry Pi Foundation about why we should teach kids to program, even as AI tools appear to make that skill unnecessary. #Computing #pedagogy #raspberrypi #programming static.raspberrypi.org/files/about/...

Montage of 19 clips of Trump insulting, berating, demeaning and attacking female reporters over the past few months. Part 1.

Playful and intelligent #Tucuxi are small #dolphins 🐬 of #Amazonian rivers in #Peru 🇵🇪 #Brazil 🇧🇷 #Ecuador 🇪🇨 and #Colombia 🇨🇴. #PalmOil and #GoldMining are major threats 😿 Fight for them! #BoycottGold #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

Subjects must stand while the king sits on his throne.

Many countries reflexively voted in right wing governments after the banking crisis and we've all suffered if we've been citizens of one of them. Seeing this stupidity Continue into later terms, electing governments with pro-Russian rhetoric and mafia-style financial decisions, is mind-boggling.

In the interests of political neutrality, apparently! 😂

This (photo from my TV screen) is the seismic shock of Scotland fans celebrating at the final whistle of the Scottish men's football team against Denmark. Seismologists said it registered like a small earthquake.

Earthquake in Bangladesh near vulnerable, dense population area. substack.com/app-link/pos...

Why are vehicle dealers who sell dodgy goods treated as if they weren't selling unroadworthy, potentially deadly vehicles and allowed to phoenix, like those who just leave people without money rather than potentially without their life? Is it time to licence car dealers, like we do gas installers?

So, it looks like Trump and Putin are set to agree that Ukraine should cede Lebensraum to Russia. Because that went so well for Czechoslovakia in 1938 when Germany invaded after the allies agreed a similar deal (and again in 1968 from Russia's USSR - they have form!)

Mahmood Shabana Mahmood says that paying failed asylum seekers £3k to leave the UK voluntarily is better value for money for the taxpayer than the cost of people remaining in the country. It might cost votes among those who have rarely or never had £3k all at once in their entire lives.

The catastrophic illegal waste dumping in Oxfordshire (see next post) is a direct result of the deregulation-by-stealth I wrote about in 2021, when my dead goldfish became a registered waste disposer. I warned it would let the mafia in. And here we are.🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

DNA evidence has been available for decades. Why did it take so long for Peter Sullivan, who has always protested his innocence even at the cost of staying in prison, to get to the front of the queue? Merseyside Police should question any surviving officers involved in his interrogation & conviction

Difficult to keep up with Russia's relentless, slow creep into Ukrainian territory. This website has comprehensive information of which this is a summary.

Nestlé still are at it. I haven't drunk Nestlé coffee for four decades because of the horrific baby milk scandal. With a multinational the size of Nestlé, it is hard to avoid their products, but I do try because the company knows what it is doing, and does it anyway. voxdev.org/topic/health...

Driving through the middle of Avebury stone circle.

💷 PFI buried the NHS in billions of debt 💸 Now it’s being rebranded + repackaged as a “new solution.” But let’s not be fooled — a bad deal with a new name is still a bad deal. Help us uncover the truth about PFI 👇 bit.ly/NHSandBudget

This is what many of us have been saying. Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill is based on a myth: that we don't have enough homes because wildlife and green spaces are protected. It will solve nothing, and inflict terrible harm on our remaining ecosystems www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Just to be clear, politicians have engineered a situation whereby the NHS is in crisis and people are so scared and angry that many no longer feel empathy for the doctors tasked with holding the service together. Doctors are not the problem. Politicians are the problem. 💙🚨

This man is truly speaking truth to power about the radical changes we need in society. @zackpolanski.bsky.social