Peter Dyke

No Prince Philip either

With this there would have been no Mo Farah. No Freddie Mercury. No Lenny Henry. No George Michael. No Meera Syal. No Sadiq Khan. No Sajid Javid. No Salman Rushdie. No Hanif Kureishi.

Marc Isambard Brunel - Wikipedia

Possibly also no Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as his father was a refugee from revolutionary France, via the USA.

Depends whether his engineering skills would have been enough, or if his background in an enemy military would have been a disqualifier.

Complex story:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Is...

Oligarchy (noun):

A government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. Their power and wealth increase as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets, and create monopolies that put more wealth into their pockets.

A reminder that when Kemi Badenoch hacked Harriet Harman's website it was an offence carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script At least eight MEPs elected for Ukip or Brexit party now known to have been focus of efforts by jailed Nathan Gill

Three more British MEPs in Nigel Farage’s bloc now alleged to have “followed the script” given to Nathan Gill by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors.

At least eight UKIP and Brexit Party MPs were focus of efforts by Nathan Gill

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

We’re human beings, not cogs in some massive economic machine. That’s as true for migrants as it is for others.

That should be our starting point.

From the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent

The best way to demolish reform is to remind everyone what the Farage has bought us: Brexit busting Britain, lies, corruption, greed, and meanness. Is this a country you want to have like this?

That sounds like an invitation from Farage for the police to investigate to me...

Hardline migration policies are fuelling people smuggling, report finds As leaders try to break smugglers’ business model, research suggests strategy so far has had opposite effect

It's almost like every single reputable expert who has been saying this exact thing for years was right.
Home Office recognised this fact 15 years ago. Successive governments, globally, continue to ignore it, and continue to push harmful "tougher" policies. 1/

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

The fact that four hostile drones tried to hit Zelenskyy’s plane & it’s barely a blip in the news cycle should terrify everyone. We’ve been dragged so deep into the chaos era that an attempted strike on a world leader doesn’t even break through. When this becomes normal, the world is in real danger.

Four unidentified military-style drones breached no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy's arrival in Dublin Gardaí are investigating whether the drones took off from land in Dublin or from an undetected ship.

Wow ... "Four unidentified military-style drones breached no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy's arrival in Dublin. Gardaí are investigating whether the drones took off from land in Dublin or from an undetected ship." www.thejournal.ie/drones-dubli...

Reform accepted £9 million from a former Boris Johnson backer & crypto-multimillionaire.

Today, Nigel Farage postures as a righteous defender of the same democracy he actively undermines.

Democracy should never be for sale. It's time for a cap on political donations.

Crypto Investor Donates £9 Million to Reform UK After Nigel Farage Plugs His Company and Tells Industry 'I Am Your Champion' The Reform leader recently used media interviews to back Christopher Harborne's company while promising to cut taxes and regulations on crypto firms

Nigel Farage used an LBC appearance in September to accuse the Bank of England of being “dinosaurs” for seeking to place restrictions on the use of Stablecoins by crypto firms like Tether.

He did not declare that Reform had just received a £9 million donation from one of its biggest investors

Putin is a far more successful manipulator of Western psychology than he is a conqueror of Ukrainian defensive positions share.google/t4tDq7zXBj7o...

Reform received a £9 million donation from Christopher Harborne.

No wonder Reform had a slew of full page ads in most major newspapers recently.

(There are no spending limits outside of election periods.)

x.com/steven_swinf...

Crypto Investor Donates £9 Million to Reform UK After Nigel Farage Plugs His Company and Tells Industry 'I Am Your Champion' The Reform leader recently used media interviews to back Christopher Harborne's company while promising to cut taxes and regulations on crypto firms

A Thailand-based crypto investor has handed a record-breaking £9 million to Reform UK, shortly before Nigel Farage used media interviews to plug his crypto firm and promise lower taxes and deregulation on the industry
bylinetimes.com/2025/12/04/c...

The super-rich rightwing are pouring money into Reform. Do ordinary voters really think their aim is to even out social inequality and make their lives better? Do they think they’re doing it so Farage invests in infrastructure and public services? Ffs. Democracy being beaten to death in plain sight.

“The tree we planted and cared for, as if raising our own son, has been cut down”

An elderly Palestinian woman in the West Bank breaks down as she shows the devastation left after Israeli settlers destroyed all 200 trees on her family’s land.💔

🇺🇳 The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that the Russian Federation immediately return Ukrainian children

We've had laws against incitement to racial hatred on the books for sixty years, but we seem to have forgotten how to enforce them...

Interesting

Whatever the original derivations of the words, "sausage" and "burger" have come to be used to refer to any items of a particular shape, hence their use to refer to things which are not food at all. To ban their use to refer to food items is therefore ridiculous.

1. The European Parliament’s attempt to ban plant-based foods from being sold as “sausages”, “burgers” etc is a direct response to livestock industry lobbying. This is a short thread on how utterly bleeding ridiculous it is. 🧵1/6

Time to admit the truth: Brexit has been an unmitigated economic failure, says The Telegraph.

Brexit Effect:

UK GDP down 8%
Investment down 18%
Productivity down 4%
Employment down 4%
Immigration not cut
No trade benefits
No regulatory freedom

Why do some still vote for Farage?
archive.ph/L2Gqp

One of my abiding impressions of Brexit is the way it slammed doors of opportunity in the faces of young people several rungs below Boris Johnson’s countless children on the ladders of privilege & advantage.

The BBC is obsessed with not appearing a political outlier amongst its competitors, but unfortunately its competitors are primarily hard-right tabloids/GB News, for whom fairness/reality doesn't matter

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

High windows. 32 Pearson Park, Hull.

Philip Larkin lived in the top floor flat for 18 years, from 1955 to 1973. Most of the poems in 'The Whitsun Weddings' and 'High Windows' were written here. The windows look out onto Pearson Park with its lake and bandstand, and statue of Queen Victoria.