Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming
I’ve never quite grasped why this hated of Palantir. I think it’s the necessity for some of finding a bugbear, an omnicause that all can be blamed upon. Depending upon time and place that can be the capitalists, The Joos, Palantir etc. Can’t really think of any other reason here…..
The wealth tax, which Frederiksen announced in the Danish parliament, the Folketinget, as she called the election, is a 0.5% tax on assets held by an individual worth more than 25m kroner (about £2m) that will, among other things, lower class sizes for six- to nine-year-olds from about 26 to 14.
Money is fungible so of course no tax specifically pays for something. But the claim will always be that a new tax is to pay for something fluffy bunny. Rather than what should be happening, taking the last fluffy bunny that didn’t work out to be shot.
Gerard Lyons
Dubai rescue scramble shows we need to consider a citizenship tax
Passport taxation makes you a helot of the State by accident of borth.
It will also increase taxes upon everyone. For it will be more difficult to escape high taxation, this shifts the Laffer Peak to the right, therefore taxes will rise to that level.
The Companies House website was wholly open. Get into your own account with authorisation code and so on. Then, with a bit of wibbling about (I understand it was “press back 4 times”) you can get into any- and every- ones’.
Change the address of Shell, close down BP, etc etc…..
Brought to you by the people about to enforce Digital ID. And who gave you the Post Office thing about counting incomplete transactions as valid.
There are urban areas of England where no one lives within a 15-minute walk of nature, government data shows, as ministers scramble to meet their access to nature targets.
While the data shows 80% of people live within walking distance of green or blue spaces such as a river, park or woodland, it also reveals a disparity between rural and poorer urban areas.
Everyone will have to have access to green or blue space under the government’s environmental improvement plan, published at the end of last year.
Seriously, who let the gurning morons impose a target like that?
We’ve near no army nor navy left, The Musselmans are invading the beaches and government is measuring how many feet you live from a riverside walk? And then, get this, promising to make more?
The access minister, Sue Hayman, said: “Spending time in nature is so important for our mental and physical wellbeing, and this government is committed to delivering better access to nature for people across the country, no matter where they live.
“Access to nature still varies hugely between areas and we are working to make sure that this is a guarantee, not a postcode lottery. We have already taken action to improve access to nature by announcing the first of nine national river walks, the Mersey Valley Way and two new national forests.”
Fuck’s Sake. Hang the Lanyard Class
A spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “Our primary concern at this point is to ensure the safe departure of a group of individuals from an island that is not fit for human habitation, and on which any health emergencies or extreme weather could pose a serious threat to life.”
What annoys is that they think we out here are stupid enough to believe such tosh.
Four people have been arrested as part of an investigation into a gang that stole at least £3m in benefits.
The suspects were detained following dawn raids at four addresses across south London and Berkshire, according to the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).
The raids were carried out as part of Operation Mellow, an investigation into an organised crime group alleged to have used hundreds of hijacked identities to claim, falsely, Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments worth at least £3m.
Police seized an estimated £150,000 worth of items and cash at one of the addresses.
The suspects were taken into custody and interviewed under caution by DWP investigators. They have been released on bail pending further investigations.
D’ye think some local Somalis have been calling cousins in Minneapolis?
Labour will introduce new rules to revoke public servants’ pensions if it cannot stop Wayne Couzens from receiving a £7,000-a-year payout, The Telegraph can reveal.
Government lawyers are currently locked in a legal battle to prevent Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, from claiming his pension from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC).
However, two years into the dispute, no ruling has been handed down and Couzens, 53, could receive his first payment as early as next year.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said it was “absolutely determined” to stop the payout and confirmed it would introduce legislation if the court challenge failed.
Officials declined to rule out whether the new powers would apply to all public servants, raising the prospect of wider pension forfeitures.
Hard cases make bad law etc. Your pension is deferred pay. If they can’t come after you for what they’ve paid you before your conviction then why should they be able to come after your pension?
Yes, yes, I too an excited by the idea of stripping all the lanyard class of all their pensions. But – perhaps precisely because I am excited by it – I think it ends up being a bad idea. It’s not impossible to imagine it developing into the idea that people should be stripped for opposing the rainbow flag or summat.
The British countryside will be made into a less “white environment” under nationwide diversity plans.
Officials in rural areas, including the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, have pledged to attract more minorities under plans drawn up by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).
The plans follow Defra-commissioned reports that claimed the countryside would become “irrelevant” in a multicultural society, as it was a “white environment” principally enjoyed by the “white middle class”.
National Landscapes – previously called areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) – and their local councils have since committed to a number of diversity targets.
The Chilterns National Landscape team has set out proposals that include community outreach schemes to attract more Muslims to the area, particularly from nearby Luton.
More diverse staff will be recruited, marketing material will be produced featuring people visibly from ethnic minorities, and written in “community languages”.
Research has also been commissioned to support this work, some of which suggests that dogs should be kept under tighter control, as some groups are scared of them.
The government’s short of money these days, right?
So, something that works well enough must be changed:
Child sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.
My word, eh? Paternalistic!
the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements.
We must move from changing a life, one by one, to changing all of society in the Glorious Revolution! This also means no cash leakage out to actually aiding any individual at all. All casn be spent on the nomenklatura! Many meetings to be had!
ActionAid’s future is about solidarity, justice ……Better education, state welfare systems and healthcare should be the model – all responsibilities of a nation state.
Just think of the grift!
Lead
Lawson Max ,Bignell Harry ,Solá Brown Carlos ,Kamande
.Stahl Møller Rune and
Bignell Harry :manager publication and Commissioning
,Bush Alex of assistance the acknowledges Oxfam
,Damle Ashish ,Hersi Amina ,Franck Anouk ,Court Alison
Ceren ,Mofya Brenda ,Musili Beverly ,Monnens Bart
,Duran-Fernandez Cristina ,Putaturo Chiara ,Topgul
Rio del Emilio ,Perez Efren ,Jacobs Didier ,Xavier Deepak
,Smetts Eva ,)consultant external (Seery Emma ,Castro
Grazielle ,Parra Garcia Isabel Gloria ,Hassane-Nzi Fati
,Saenz Hernan ,Nelson Hanna ,Ivanhoe Hana ,Custódio
Garton Jane ,Frye Isobel ,Tamir Irit ,Aymar Macias Inigo
Patricia Jenny ,Gandour Jackson ,)consultant external(
,Bustamante Robin Jon ,Makina John ,Munoz Gallego
,Noah-Odour Linda ,Boe Kira ,Donald Kate ,Saunders Joss
,Mdalla MacPherson ,)consultant external (Cowie Lucy
Maria ,Sultana Mahmuda ,Lagman Mai ,Busck Mads
,Dorssen van Mirjam ,Vega La De Miguel ,Luarca Eugenia
,Dabi Nafkote ,Ahmed Nabil ,Abdo Nabil ,Talpur Mustafa
Nizar ,Crawley Nina ,Vercken Nicholas ,McCarthy Neal
Rebecca ,Castellani Paola ,Vaart der van Nout ,Aouad
,McTernan Seán ,Khalil Abi Sally ,Goodbun Rod ,Riddell
,Ruiz Susana ,Thomas-Price Steve ,Hannoun Stanislas
Harnett Victoria ,Arauco Paz Veronica ,Hauschild Tobias
and Santiago Viviana
All of those people to produce a 69 page report. Wouldn’t poverty be reduced rather better by having the occasional competent person writing and the rest of the money spent on reducing actual poverty?
A “catastrophic” decision by the Ministry of Justice to sign a 10-year lease on a prison where high levels of a poisonous gas had been detected is expected to cost the UK taxpayer more than £100m, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.
The public accounts committee said the 2022 deal to rent HMP Dartmoor from the Duchy of Cornwall was signed “in a blind panic” by senior civil servants looking to guarantee prison places.
So the reason they stopped using it is the radon gas (not unusual in granite buildings built on granite). But still they leased it:
“Under the contract terms, the department cannot terminate the lease until at least December 2033. Overall, HMPPS is currently paying around £4m per year for an unusable prison. This includes rent, business rates and security costs.
“Additionally government must pay additional costs – around £68m – on fabric improvements to the Dartmoor site over the period of the lease,” the report said.
They’re renting it off the Duchy of Cornwall. And given those numbers I’d say the rent is pretty much nothing. It’s the fully repairable nature of the lease which is costing the money. But, you know, there we are.
So, given this performance, how likely are we to believe those who tell us that really, government should be doing the investing in hte economy? With ever yet more of our money untimely ripped etc?
Under the scheme, they will target families who are not signed up with a GP or who struggle with travel costs, childcare, language barriers or other issues stopping them seeing a doctor.
Children will be identified by the NHS using GP records, health visitor notes and local databases, sources said.
So we’re going to find the kiddies not on GP registers by looking at GP registers?
Yes, sounds like this government…..
The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday. States’ funds will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”.
Of course, all such services should be paid for from state tax revenues anyway. Shrink the Feds back to being the State Dept and the military.
Make Washington DC a backwater again, not a swamp.
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is freezing federal funding for childcare programs in Minnesota after allegations of fraud – first exposed and prosecuted during the Biden administration – recently became the focus of conservative influencers and media outlets.
Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of health and human services, said in a video statement that the funding freeze was in response to what he called “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country … We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud.”
Well, OK, it’s become politically salient, it matches up with a political stance, sure, it’s going to be political.
A federal prosecutor alleged earlier in December that half or more of the roughly $18bn in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants are Somali Americans, they said.
Seems a pretty useful thing to get political about too.
Shirley’s video, which was widely viewed online, has been criticized for falsely presenting as new revelations allegations of fraud schemes that were extensively reported on in the local and national media during the Biden administration.
O’Neill said he has demanded that Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, submit an audit of day care centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.
“This is Trump’s long game,” Walz wrote on social media in response to the announcement from O’Neill, “We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue – but this has been his plan all along. He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans.”
As a defence that does seem weak, no? We’ve been trying to deal with this for years and yet not really got anywhere?
More than half a million pounds has been spent since 2024 on using social media influencers to promote UK government campaigns on subjects ranging from the environment to welfare.
The spending has included hiring 215 influencers since 2024, of which there were 126 in 2025 – an increase on the 89 hired in 2024 – and is seen as an attempt to use platforms such as TikTok to reach younger people.
After all, it’s said he’s got an audience and he’s very influential with it….
Monica Harding, the Liberal Democrats’ international development spokesperson, said even existing cuts to aid had resulted in a loss of UK influence
Everybody has to pay taxes so that foreigners look at Monica with respect, eh?
A Labour party spokesperson…. risks Britain losing influence and seats at the table
Think of the conferences apparatchiki won’t be able to go to. They’re all held in nice warm places during the Northern Hemisphere winter as well.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy….The Conservatives spent £230bn in real terms on foreign aid
Hell of a figure, ain’t it?
Plans by Reform UK to slash the aid budget by 90%
An excellent idea.
Gideon Rabinowitz, the director of policy at Bond, the umbrella group for development NGOs
When we’ve a bureaucracy for the bureaucracy of the aid leeches it is about time we swinged with an axe, no?
Keir Starmer has no coherent strategy to tackle entrenched inequalities harming the life chances of millions of people, the government’s social mobility commissioner has said.
“I am a bureaucrat. No one is paying enough attention to the thing I am a bureaucrat of. This must change.”
Spain’s socialist-led government is to launch a national public transport pass that will allow people to travel anywhere in the country by bus or train for a flat monthly fee of €60 (£52.70).
Imagine the lossses from someone using that on packed commuter trains…..which is, of course, the point of having different prices for different trips and times.
News of the pass – which has yet to be publicly costed – came as Sánchez’s coalition minority government struggles to survive a series of corruption and sexual harassment allegations that have engulfed his inner circle, his Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and his administration.
But they’re not doing it for economic reasons now, are they?