So, let’s be clear: almost everything said about the wealthy and their willingness to flee from tax is total nonsense. Might we, therefore, politely ignore them in the future?
If that’s true then why does absolutely every proposal for a wealth tax come with an inbuilt exit tax?
The US embassy in London is also offering grants of up to $500,000 for “public education” programmes that foster a “national conversation” about “shared civilizational values” between the UK and US.
Right up my street. Magna Carta, free markets, jury trial, right on stuff.
Sadly, you’ve also got to actually do something. Sigh.
In 2015, a row broke out in which the renowned University of Leeds sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was accused of multiple instances of “self-plagiarism”. Colleagues claimed those allegations were motivated by another scholar’s “personal agenda” and said they were “tantamount to a form of intellectual violence wrapped in objective scholarship that plagues the academy”.
This is even better:
What I do have to say about Jason Arday is really very simple. The overwhelmingly white dons and administrators at Cambridge chose one academic – unrecognised by many of his black peers in the field – and felt his was an appointment with which they could feel comfortable. This resembles a pattern we see elsewhere in public life, where the disproportionately few black people who are selected by white gatekeepers are sometimes chosen for reasons that seem to have little legitimacy among black peers.
Black academics, and black people in general, have never and – it’s my confident prediction – will never demand the right to plagiarise, lie or fabricate our credentials. What we have been demanding is to be treated equally. To be appointed to the levels commensurate with our actual credentials, to have our work taken seriously by intellectual peers, and to be paid fairly and on equal terms for our labour. To not have opportunities taken away because of our race. To have our work, performance and legacy held to the same standards as everyone else’s.
We are very far from anything resembling this.
Whitey’s to blame. As ever.
But interviews with former schoolmates have produced conflicting accounts of his childhood. Two remember him speaking at primary school, describing a chatty child who loved making jokes, while two others say they did not hear him speak until he reached secondary school.
Jonathan Stewart, 40, told the Guardian he remembered Arday from when they were children growing up in south London. He described him as a good mimic who entertained other pupils by putting on accents and singing songs.
Stewart, a YouTuber who says he was in the year below Arday at Heathbrook primary school in Nine Elms, south-west London, said the academic was known as the class clown. “He was always cracking jokes. He was the comedian guy, he would even put on voices,” claimed Stewart, who said he regularly attended church with Arday.
Stewart said that in the Sunday school minibus that would pick them up, Arday would entertain his peers by singing the jingle from the 90s advert for Baby All Gone dolls. He said Arday, a talented goalkeeper, would bring in his own pair of gloves and dive to save shots, even on the school’s concrete playground.
Oh……
Dear Customer,
Thank you for sharing your perspective. We understand your point that a change in ownership does not necessarily mean that the airline itself is being “sold by the UK,” and that the distinction between the company and its shareholders is important.
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The only place I’ve made that point about “the UK” is on Twitter. And I substantially doubt that Easyjet is monitoring that, connecting it to my email, then writing to me about it.
But then I also substantially doubt that some scamster is going to all that palaver either. So quite what this email is about I’m at a loss to explain…..
Britain is being told to fear a Russian invasion and spend accordingly. The evidence says otherwise. Russia is losing an estimated 30,000 soldiers a month in Ukraine, according to the Financial Times, with casualties now exceeding 500,000 killed and 1.4 million in total, or roughly one in every hundred Russians. Recruitment is failing even with £40,000 signing bonuses. This is a country that cannot defeat a vulnerable neighbour, let alone mount a conventional invasion of a NATO state.
The real threats are cyber attacks and drone warfare, which is cheap, deniable, and already happening, yet current defence spending is still aimed at ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers and tanks that are increasingly vulnerable to the drones doing the actual damage.
Yes, but Russia has direct, hands on, blood and guts, experience of drones and drone warfare. The sort of experience you only get by actually fighting such a war.
No, this doesn’t mean that Russia could just roll over Europe. Nor that it wants to. But given that they are up to speed – even if not quite No 1 – with this new method of war and we are not then they are a potential danger.
Reading Corrigan again at present and it’s really quite obvious that no one does know how to fight in the new way until they’ve done it for 12 to 18 months. Actually done it, not trained to do it.
There are more votes in tolerance and decency than in toxic division.
This could be true. The general shrieking about capitalists and billionaires makes me think the left itself doesn’t think so. But maybe.
It doesn’t take a great leap of political courage to fight back against Reform
Bit of a non sequiter, no?
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has been accused of using “nasty tactics” in an attempt to intimidate journalists and deflect attention from his own financial affairs after issuing a legal threat to the Guardian.
…
“The essence of a free press is that journalists can use verified information from sources without being forced to reveal who they are. This betrays a failure to understand how important that principle is to journalism.”Margaret Hodge, the peer and former Labour MP and anti-corruption campaigner, said: “It is never acceptable for individuals to seemingly abuse our laws to silence investigative journalism and close down public criticism. That’s why we need to urgently reform our laws to stop rich people using their wealth to close down legitimate scrutiny.”
Jemimah Steinfeld, the chief executive at the Index on Censorship, added: “This has the appearance of an attempt to force a journalist to break the golden rule: that sources must be protected.
“This has been vital public interest reporting by the Guardian. The sources of such journalism are sacred. If the facts are incorrect, then they can be challenged, but the sources should not be chased down.
Note that my comments are nothing to do with who is involved in this.
Over in the US they have shield laws. A journo can report on something even if the info/doc was provided to them illegally. And they cannot be forced to reveal the source. I’m wholly sure that UK journos would like to have the same. But I’m pretty sure that they, in fact, do not. So what we’re getting here is a lot of huffing that it’s very nasty to insist rather than an assertion that you may not.
In Tirana, Albania, is a bizarre glass pyramid that the tyrant Enver Hoxha constructed as a museum about his life, and in which he is now buried. In Rome’s EUR, Mussolini and his city planners designed a neighborhood scaled for the race of Fascist giants to which they imagined they belonged.
So it comes as no surprise that Donald Trump has invested so much energy, sacrificed so much popular goodwill, and already spent a fortune on the East Wing ballroom, a project that will occupy an astonishing 90,000 square feet.
Not wholly sure that it’s the same, no. But if it makes you happy to think so then fine.
Housing
Housing costs are one of the biggest pressures on household budgets.
Questions:
Why are house prices and rents still rising faster than many people’s incomes?
House prices are falling as a multiple of median wages. This is a number ONS publishes, should be possible for even Spud to look this up.
Rents are going up because the insane have been reducing the amount of rental housing available by changing contractual terms for rental housing.
What will your government do to make housing genuinely affordable rather than simply increasing supply?
Like more houses won’t mean lower house prices?
Britain continues to have some of the highest electricity prices in Europe despite generating increasing amounts of renewable energy.
Questions:
Why are British consumers still paying such high electricity prices?
It’s not despite, it’s because.
How will you reform the electricity market so that cheaper renewable power permanently reduces household bills?
It’s not cheaper once you add in the subsidies and the grid costs, that’s why.
What are you going to do to reduce long-term energy costs rather than offering temporary subsidies?
Nuclear maybe?
Childcare
Many parents find childcare costs make working financially difficult.
Questions:
Why has childcare become so expensive?
We’re a rich country. Therefore wages are high. That’s definitional, high wages, rich country, they mean the same thing. Thus services which are primarily human labour cost a lot. Baumol had things to say about this. It’s the same reason the NHS *needs* that 4% real budget increase each year.
Etc, etc……
Fiona Tomas
Camera crews told to shoot female athletes respectfully – it should be a given
In battle against sexualisation of sportswomen, latest guidance must be paired with improvement of gender diversity in broadcasting
By definition humans like looking at fit young women. Yes, this includes wimmins too – the wimmins’ mags are hadly full of hags now, are they? You’re just complaining about the species itself which, you know, isn’t the way to go?
Anyway, it does create a business opportunity. So the major broadcasters do it this proper way. Leaves a gap for a few enterprising lads to shoot differently, doesn’t it. Or even enterprising lassies.
Including, obviously enough, the right to say things that are untrue, even those that are true but hurtful:
Speaking on the Alex Armstrong Tonight show, Farrow said the march was “not about gay rights” and had instead “become about celebrating every single sexuality that isn’t heterosexuality”.
She said this included “some very bizarre and unhealthy kinks and quirks, you know, like furries and bestiality and even minor-attracted, they call themselves minor-attracted people, you know, paedophiles”.
The remarks prompted an open letter signed by Polanski and Bimini calling on Ofcom to deal with the “dangerous” disinformation.
If she’s not allowed to say that then we’ve got censorship, not free speech.
So, Ofcom gets to fuck off then.
Make insurers give you the best deal upfront
A lot has been done to improve the experience of renewing your insurance policies. Insurers are supposed to offer existing customers as good a deal as they do new ones, and your renewal letter tells you how much you paid last year so that you can see if the cost has gone up. And yet the annual dance continues: if you don’t call your insurer and query an increase, shop around or threaten to leave, you will probably end up paying more than you need to. It is a system that still penalises those who stay put.
This is to ban introductory offers. Has The Guardian spoken to – say – The Times where you can sign up for £1 for 6 months, after which you pay full freight? Because that’s exactly the same thing…..
Absolutely no information at all:
Police are investigating whether Joshua Kerry, the man charged with the murder of the former Reform UK and Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe, had any role in an attempted burglary last year at the then London home of Nigel Farage.
Kerry, 28, from Rotherham, was charged with the murder of Widdecombe, 78, who was killed at her Devon home in July, after an investigation by counter-terrorism police.
On Friday, police said they were reinvestigating an incident in April 2025 at a London address where Farage was living at the time, which they have said was an attempted burglary. Other sources describe it as an attempted arson.
Police attended the incident, which they initially recorded primarily as a burglary. The Guardian understands detectives are studying fingerprints taken from the scene, as well as video from CCTV cameras in the area and from devices such as video doorbells. They examined the scene to see if an accelerant, such as lighter fluid, was used.
But it could be that security is/was required, no?
Adani was charged in 2024 with agreeing to bribe Indian government officials so a subsidiary of his Adani Group could win approval to develop a solar energy plant, then misleading US investors by providing reassuring information about his company’s anti-corruption practices.
Now, as to whether I think he might have done that, well, that’s irrelevant. Whether it can be proven in an Ameriucan courtroom is another.
US judge drops criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani
Justice department says it decided to abandon fraud and bribery case in which Adani Group has denied wrongdoing
Probably the right decision there.
Paul has long held that Fauci funded research in China that began the pandemic, and then lied about it. Fauci strongly denies all of that.
Because there’s certainly a case to be made on that……
Not all the criticism of Fauci belongs in that category. The respected academic Zeynep Tufekci has posited that the government’s shifting pandemic guidance
Jeebus, she’s a sociologist. And a columnist for the NYT, so we can guess where her political sympathies lie twicely, no?
The media is infatuated with Gadi Eisenkot, the ‘anti-Netanyahu’. Why?
Mehdi Hasan
Mebbe that corner of the media you inhabit, Mehdi, but the rest of us have never heard of the guy let alone obsessing over him. Or is it her? Perhaps because we’re not obsessed over every detailed action either by or against The Joos.
The total loss is now thought to amount to more than 500,000 people.
Many more have been wounded, some with lifetime disabilities, of course.
The situation is now so desperate that Russia is paying recruits the equivalent of around £40,000 to sign up to fight.
Despite that, as the FT notes, it is still struggling to secure the recruits it needs.
That is not surprising; actual war is a deadly business, and the one with Ukraine especially so, particularly on the Russian side.
With that many losses, there can be almost no one in Russia who does not know someone, or the family of someone, who has died.
And the net gains are negligible. The lesson from all this is that Putin’s war is an exercise in vain folly pursued at cost to the people of Russia.
And despite this, we in the so-called West are told that Russia is the great threat that requires us to increase our defence spending considerably, although on what we do not know, except that this must come at the cost of sacrificing support to many of the most vulnerable people in the UK.
That there’s a fascist bastard out there willing to take 500k casualties is good reason to reduce our own defence spending.
So why are we going to spend so much on armaments for no good reason? And who is going to talk about what we might really need to do, and why, including how we can help people in need, except by spending fortunes to get them up to go to war?
THERE is a question that is often asked in the USA but rarely mentioned in Scotland – “What are your priors?” A person’s “priors” are the belief system that supports all the judgements they make on any issue.
That makes this question particularly relevant in politics. It also matters when you write a column for a newspaper, but I will return to that later.
I regret the absence of this direct questioning in this country, because its purpose is to ask anyone presenting an apparently unsubstantiated claim just what assumptions they are making that support the beliefs that they are claiming to hold.
If you ask Spud that you get told that your time here is up.