Jess

Never forget!

What are we doing? Unbelievable decision making. Spend £x zillions on arms, intelligence, space, technology etc. and yet buttons to support this extraordinary, human being led and soft powerful institution.

I absolutely despair. Same re World Service and BBC in general.

The shame.

Blimey. What cinema do you go to? £10-12 in our local. And this film is worth it! As is I Swear, the french film Young Mothers and a brilliant Swedish doc called Last Journey. Really enjoyed the trashy F1 film recently too.

Standing with Maccabi’s football hooligans against local police – is that what patriotism looks like now? | Jonathan Liew Tommy Robinson is said to be going to Villa Park as a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan. Do the politicians jumping on this bandwagon care what they are doing, asks Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

Agree.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rich LehmannSwale Political Forum 1h · A video was leaked over the weekend showing some acrimony in the Reform ranks. The articles accompanying this have mainly focussed on the swearing and arguing, but one section which stood out for me was KCC leader Linden was talking about council tax... "if we can avoid putting up council tax by the full 5%, that is going to be the best thing that we can do to show that Reform can actually run something as big as Kent County Council" ... "Because, let's not forget, we are the shop window in KCC. Nigel knows that. He is super aware that we are the flagship council." This is important as section 2a of KCC's constitution states that "The role of the Council is to improve the quality of life of the people of Kent." To me, Linden's comments sound a lot like she's suggesting the primary reason not to put council tax up by 5% is not because it would be the best thing for the people of Kent, but because it would be good for Reform, and it would make Nigel happy. NO PARTY, Tories included, wanted to put up council tax by the maximum amount for any of the past four years, but it was widely accepted that it was what needed to happen to minimise the harm of the cuts. Reform have recently admitted that there's almost nothing left to cut, so by trying to put council tax up by less than 5%, they are just forcing themselves to add millions of pounds worth of additional cuts if they are unable to meet the deficit (which is tens of millions of pounds) through improving efficiency. In practical terms (and these are ballpark figures), if Reform put council tax up by 4.7% instead of 5%, they'd need to find another £2.4 million of cuts for the sake of saving people living in Band C houses (the most commonband in Swale) 37p a month. This is not how politics should be done.

Interesting post from a Kent cllr on *that* expletive-laden Reform meltdown

KCC leader: "We are the shop window in KCC. Nigel knows that. He is super aware that we are the flagship council"

Kent's constitution says: "The role of the Council is to improve the quality of life of the people of Kent."

Mishal is so, so good. And so patient. Incredible how she tolerated Farage with his gross, patronising and repellant garbage. Need him under this sort of pressure for the world to see who this individual really is.

Presumably it could be both?

Exactly. Extraordinarily poor judgement. Again. Just so depressing

Exactly. Everyone knows these fans have been a disgrace for years. If UEFA had an iota of a spine and really wanted to stamp out racism, they and many other European teams would be playing behind closed doors.

Just extraordinary. I stopped going to football as it was just so awful. Appalling racism, intimidation and violence and became terrifying. Also so shaming. Backpacking around Europe aged 17 Summer 1985 was mortifying.

Stomach churning. And such nonsense as well.

Gosh, he's good.

Again.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

Even in this place, I feel the sheer scale of foreign aid being demolished isn't fully appreciated. As it stands, it is perhaps *the* most catastrophic change to preventable deaths in our lifetimes, and the salience - even in presumably friendly spaces - is basically zero

apnews.com/article/myan...

Phew. Had been panicking.

Excellent. Glad to hear it.

Hope you have lots of rest planned to aid recovery.

Booked for Thurs night!

I support animal rights—do I look like a fucking alpaca?!

I’m a woman, and Carole Malone does not speak for me.

Gosh, he's good.

I am once again begging you to boycott Tesla

Agree. Easy to condemn Starmer and Govt just on one issue. Trump is appalling and gross, wish we stood up to him more, also think current Brexit stand is pathetic. But I mainly want Ukraine's freedom and Putin's Russia in the bin. Starmer has to get that - even at the cost of his and our dignity.

Wow! Dua Lipa is such an extraordinary performer. And she looks incredible.

8vl

Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company, PPE Medpro, has just been ordered to refund the Government £122m from a PPE contract.

There are two very odd things about PPE Medpro that may affect the odds of the Government ever getting that £122m...

Thread:

Same. Beyond depressing.

And seems to be against "woke" culture. So bizarre that being tolerant and kind is seen as a bad thing.

Is it? Since Mr Farage started talking about revoking settled status, this no longer seems the case.

An absolute catastrophe for our public services, science, technology and for all those wonderful immigrants who call our country home, their families, friends, all of us and our humanity.

Any journalist or commentator who writes a wrap-up of this speech that suggests that any of it was normal, worthy of respect, not absolutely deranged, not an insult to the audience, not an embarrassment for the US, should be relieved of their jobs.

statistic of the day

And if he stands again (and why not?), he'll get my vote along with many millions of other londoner's.

Trump can f**k off with his lies and sticking his nose where it should not be. And Americans: keep your cess-pit of a president to yourselves.