Matt Patterson

UK-India trade deal: conclusion summary

Exactly - here’s what the summary text says: “This agreement will operate on similar principles to the UK’s other Social Security Agreements (SSA) with the EU and countries such as Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Japan, Chile and South Korea.“

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Stop accepting the premise of Farage's never ending grifting quest to demand something, then scream about betrayal when it happens.

All trade deals are involve trade offs, but they produce a benefit for both sides that is worth those trade offs.

This is what you asked for Nigel, do shut up.

New square based moto incoming @sixdiceskills.bsky.social?

And they say the opinion piece is dead… it’s not dead, it’s become a fan fic genre.

Chances that the PM actually runs his own social media accounts is 0.
So getting wound up about it should probably be the dictionary definition of petty.
What a weird thing to think.

#YNWA

Seeing Velvet Underground 😥 immediately reminding me of Roger Daltrey and his Brexit love in.

Had to explain “the facts” on this to my 8 and 10 year old girls last week.
They found it hilarious/mortifying in ways only 8 and 10 year old kids can.
I’d say don’t tell, but ultimately you’re saving the RSPCA a call from a concerned resident, so in the end telling them is a public service.

The earthquake’s epicentre is a part of Mandalay where the main business district, Zegyo market, and my aunt lives - we’ve been trying to call her for the last hour

#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar

Totally get that, but by accident on purpose I followed a load of shitposter accounts right when things got busy.
Names I recognised from old twitter.
Not for everyone but honestly it’s great.
My feed is: political post, political post, random Warhammer meme, stupid dad joke, politcal post.

Putting the full-grim into Grimdark since the 30th millennium.

So glad I missed it. No point being gratuitously mean but it's a good thing he's no longer important.

I now need to know what @benansell.bsky.social ‘s Simon Case thing is… sorry.

Trusted my instincts, and I was right!
Always knew Eric Carle was a wrong’un.
George W Bush was a fan and all.

He’s currently happily asleep in his bed down the hall as I type but that period feels like a different lifetime.

I’ve relative clarity.
My 1 year old son was in and out of hosptial for non covid related illness.
Hospital was like a ghost town, crazy warning posters up everywhere.
When he finally needed intensive care we just got a room on our own because all the intensive care specialists were on covid wards.

Starting to feel HM King Charles III is almost trolling Trump now…?
Who’s he going to invite up to Balmoral next?
The President of Mexico and Hunter Biden’s laptop?

Is anyone gonna get that mad if playing Celine Dion and Bryan Adams’ music get a little more expensive?

Nb: no Alanis Morissette’s, Arcade Fire’s or Neil Young’s were harmed in the making of this joke… obvs Buble and Nickleback can do one.

As Vandenberg never said “Liberty stops at the waters edge…”

Making a big effort to “do” Dad jokes as my kids get older. Leaning into it like it’s some patrician duty.

So when taking my offspring around any castle or ruin on spotting a well, fountain or water pump will point and say, “now that’s an aged well”.

Demonstrably not funny but that’s the point.

Not sure being a Palace fan should be a qualifying factor for your views on national identity or a sign of isolation.

And now you gotta look at those old republicans surveying the wreckage of their grand old party, and the world they built out of the ashes of the old in the early 1990’s.
It feels a bit like their hurt pride at getting beat and losing to a boomer really has reaped the whirlwind for us all.

That angry outrage scandal culture morphed and grew angrier, it spread into and co-opted and cross pollinated with evangelicalism and conspiracy and eventually even white nationalism. Becoming pizza and gamer gate, Hunters laptop and “lock her up”.

And the thing that strikes me is how much of the current madness was birthed by the same Republicans who had worked under Bush 1.
Hurt and indignant that Bush had lost to what they saw as light weight boomer Clinton they help craft and find an outrage and scandal culture on the right in America.

I find it so odd that the “New World Order” birthed in the 1990’s that’s so despised by the American right and being dismantled by Trump and Musk was crafted by George HW Bush.
Only 2 republican presidents away from the incumbent and the one in between was the son of the first.

How it plays out in our politics and in public worries me.
How ready are people to pay the cost of this after the last 10-15 years.
We saw in covid that people could rally behind a common cause. But we saw after how fractured we still are.

100% she is terminally online. See such Badenock classics as "oops I hacked a Labour cabinet ministers website for kicks" and "Diane Abbott is a racist hypocrite".
That she's the first truly digital native party leader is an explanation for the past, but not an excuse for it continuing now.

UK wastes BILLIONS on foreign projects but dithers on defence spending BRITISH taxes are being squandered on shrimp farms in Bangladesh, poetry workshops in Colombian jails and gender lectures in Kenya. UK workers also fund diversity training in the Jordanian army and…

Feels a lot like the types of battles you’d see being fought in 2008/9 on DFID spend.
The trap Labour need to avoid is sounding so absolutist on waste, while having not invested in compelling story on aid, making it hard to defend what normal solid aid programmes.
www.thesun.co.uk/news/3340809...

Depressingly the Sun aren’t even waiting for the dust to settle before trying to use the chaos in USAID into a campaign on ODA spending here.