James Branch

And today on the Today programme we’ll speak to a Tory MP followed by a Tory donor just before the 8am news, when our listenership is at its peak. Textbook.

Fuck me, give it a rest.

Starmer will put Sultana in the House of Lords for this.

Labour's asylum plan is straight from the Trump playbook – it'll backfire on them It’s time to stand up for the values of compassion, humanity and basic fairness

"Like so many government policies in recent years, Mahmood’s proposals should be seen less as practical policy, more as positioning: the accelerating descent of our politics into a media spectacle rather than as a means of building a better society"

Me for @theipaper.com
inews.co.uk/opinion/labo...

GRADE INFLATION OFCOM chairman Lord Grade joined the campaign to beat up the BBC with a letter to the BBC’s chairman insisting the corporation take the leaked Prescott bias memo “seriously”. Grade was a Tory peer until he was appointed to Ofcom by the then Tory culture secretary Nadine Dorries (now with Reform) in 2022. On taking up his Ofcom role, he unconvincingly claimed to be an “unaffiliated” peer, and he remains a logical recruit for any right-wing scheme to bully the Beeb. But is he an advert for “serious” judgements? One of Grade’s higher-profile recent business enterprises was Gate Ventures, a media investment firm he ran with, er, Sarah Ferguson. Grade chaired the firm, which raised money from Chinese investors for West End shows. Fergie and Grade’s role on the board was to show investors “backing at the highest level of the British establishment”, according to evidence at a court case that followed the firm collapsing into administration in 2020. Believing Fergie was a reassuring presence was a spectacular misjudgement by Grade and his fellow directors. The high court also heard Gate Ventures made “unexplained” six-figure loans to her. Awkwardly for Grade, Fergie’s many business failures, including the Gate Ventures collapse, are now being re-examined in the press following further revelations of her and her ex-husband’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

Important point from the latest Private Eye - the chair of Ofcom was a Tory peer appointed by (now Reform member) Nadine Dorries.

He has joined the latest BBC bashing from the Right, appearing to endorse the Prescott dossier alleging left-wing bias.

Is he still a Conservative party member?

Meanwhile the print media could hardly be expected to hold the Tories to account, given their almost constant irrumating support for Conservatives. Of Britain’s 15 main national newspapers, only one backed the Labour Party. The rest vocally supported the Tories or their Lib Dem partners in the coalition. Thankfully, we could rely on the BBC to balance things out by flexing its renowned leftie muscles. The corporation’s controller of global news output, Craig Oliver, joined the Downing Street operation as David Cameron’s director of communications. Andrew Neil, editor of the right-wing Spectator magazine, fronted both of the BBC’s two leading political discussion programmes, This Week and Daily Politics. The editor of these programmes, Robbie Gibb, was brother of Conservative MP Nick Gibb, and later became director of communications at Theresa May’s Downing Street. Sure, Nick Robinson, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, had been national president of the Young Conservatives and then president of the Oxford University Conservative Association,but

those sympathies were balanced out by his deputy, James Landale, an old-Etonian close contemporary of David Cameron who was also offered – and declined – the Tory communications job. Meanwhile, a report by the University of Cardiff found from 2007 to 2012 (both in and out of office), Conservative politicians received 50 per cent more airtime on BBC News at Six than Labour politicians did. So if the tsunami of unmitigated failure that started in 2010 has been a revelation to you, nobody should be especially surprised.

The famously left-wing bias of the BBC.

(From The Decade In Tory)

My review of The Fraud, Paul Holden's explosive new book

"Holden’s book shows the contempt with which senior Labour figures around Keir Starmer hold not just the left, but also truth, decency and the law."

insidecroydon.com/2025/10/12/w...

I don’t use Twitter. I much prefer being ignored here.

What was Epstein thinking!

YouTube video by The Onion The Onion Investigates: Jeffrey Epstein

The Onion Investigates: Jeffrey Epstein

YouTube video by The Onion The Onion Investigates: Jeffrey Epstein

Welp, here it is: maybe the funniest thing we've ever done, in its entirety.

This follows the wholly disproportionate and deeply troubling decision to designate Palestine Action - a group that posed no risk to the public - as terrorists.

I voted against that decision in Parliament and again call on the Government to immediately overturn it.

You can't joke about anything anymore. Because you signed a multi figure contract with the Saudi government that said they wouldn't pay you if you did.

AOC: We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was. A man who believed that the civil rights act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake… His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

Nigel Farage looks uncomfortable as Jamie Raskin uses his opening statement to absolutely demolish him

You can’t compare men’s football with women’s football. When was the last time you saw a male footballer with a degree in sports science strap up their own leg on the pitch because they knew they were about to pull a muscle but needed to carry on?

Chuck Norris could beat a Jet2 Holiday.

It's time for a new kind of political party - one that belongs to you.

Sign up at yourparty.uk.

Watch this to the end.

She leaked it obvs.

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live The White Potus - SNL

youtu.be/o_1GzmjOvKQ?... #snl

Next update desk anchor - @mattgreencomedy.com www.chortle.co.uk

YouTube video by James Branch Stanley Kubrick - Exclusive (spoof) interview

Can’t believe I got to interview Stanley Kubrick.

youtu.be/vguuhz4Ssfc?...

Turns out Le Pen is not mightier than the fraud.

Your bills are going up because this government would rather protect the profits of a few corporations than the livelihoods of millions of ordinary people.

End this outrageous rip-off, and take water and energy into public ownership now.

Thames Water has been given a £3 billion bailout, paid for by you and me.

Why should households have to pay for the mess that Thames Water got itself into, just so execs and shareholders can protect their profits?

There is a better solution: take water into public ownership.

James Bond takes jobs with uncertain hours, low pay and likelihood of serious injury or death, he'll be right at home at Amazon.