**AFFORDABILITY CHEQUE** **Last August Reform UK's coffers were boosted by a generous £100,000 donation from the UK franchise of Sotheby's International Realty.** It isn't hard to see why the property agency, whose UK and Dubai franchises are owned by businessman George Azar, would be interested in supporting Reform. Not only is it the estate agent used by the party's treasurer, Nick Candy, but Reform is hoping its planned tax exemption for multimillionaires prompts wealthy people to relocate to the UK, which would boost the luxury property market Sotheby's deals in. Less clear, however, is how Sotheby's was able to afford its donation to Reform. Its accounts for 2023 show the company was heavily in debt, with net liabilities of more than £12.8m. The company's accounts for 2024, which might have shed some light on the matter, were due by 31 December 2025. But, more than three months on, they still haven't been filed, which is a criminal offence under the Companies Act. Alas, whether Sotheby's had made sufficient profit from its UK operations to fund its generous gift remains, for the time being, a mystery.

Pretty terrible that heavily-indebted Sotheby's has donated to Reform UK. Via Private Eye

A starfield filled with thousands of stars and shining clouds of dust. The Milky Way\u2019s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy\u2019s spiral arms, about halfway from the center. Credit: NASA

OH. MY. GOD.

THIS IS THE MILKY WAY SHOT BY THE ARTEMIS II CREW. LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS!!!!

The Ellastone Fastener - The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery If you are reading this post near the start of 2026 then there’s a good chance you might be aware that we are campaigning to raise £150,000 to secure an incredibly rare Bronze Age treasure – a gold ‘d...

Gorgeous Bronze Age 'dress fastener' needs our help so that it can be bought by Potteries Museum in Stoke.

If we can't, it will be handed back to finder/landowner & likely sold at auction... 😭

Donate here: www.justgiving.com/charity/pmag...

www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag/the-ell...

#Archaeology 🏺

Terrifying reality check on Al Jazeera. Israel is systematically detonating and completely destroying entire civilian towns and homes across Southern Lebanon. This is not a war, it is a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing and total erasure of Lebanese communities.

Where’s the outrage 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

I will never forget this piece of evidence.

If this is not an NHS “overwhelmed” then I have to ask what is the government’s and the Senior management’s idea of “overwhelmed”

If we don’t face facts head on how can we solve the problems?

Home Office U-turn will let some dual nationals use EU passport to enter UK EU citizens with post-Brexit settlement status in UK will not have to present British passport to airlines

Important news for EU citizens with settled status in the U.K. who naturalise - Home Office says you CAN use your other passport. Made change to gov.uk two weeks after telling everyone British dual nationals could not

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Rain spattered watercolour - Turner caught in a shower while painting Cader Idris.

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

Iranians came together to bid a final farewell to 168 young girls, aged 7 to 12, who were killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike targeting their elementary school.

Hello darkness my old friend...

Earlier this week the Aziz family stood with Sadiq Khan on stage and praised London’s community values. Now they’re conducting a sudden clearout of almost all private tenants from their vast residential property holdings, seemingly to replace them with more profitable temporary accommodation.

More superb reporting in London Centric on the Aziz family, this time evicting hundreds of tenants from residential properties, which comes on top of dodgy tax evading gift shops, trying to close the Prince Charles Cinema etc – absolutely depressing that politicians can't do anything about this lot.

Just wanted to say thank you for sending ’Meridian’. Love it and glad there is a place for poetry despite all the difficulties x

It’s almost like they didn’t read Lord of The Rings

Bridget the cat infiltrates the 'Abbey Road' cover shoot and becomes THE definitive fifth Beatle.

THREAD.

My parents' cat Bridget vanished. As the weeks dragged on they became ever more worried, so to distract himself my dad began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up at some of art & music's most important moments.

I've collected his work here...

🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

🧵 1/2

National Trust types! It's AGM time, do vote for the suggested candidates & block the right-wing, 'anti-woke', mysteriously-funded Restore Trust, who are against eg rewilding and discussing colonial history / LGBT+ heritage (last week my sister saw OOTW in an NT shop, would it be if they had power?)

I think so! I too have wondered if I should go grey but my hair is naturally very dark so 🤷‍♀️

My mother is 90 and still has brown hair

Utterly shameful

Me too

…’’burnishing the UK's wider international standing." apparently

Written by a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital, London after the Tommy Robinson march on 13/9.

Here’s the page you need if you want to join the class action:

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

And the Authors Guild statement on who may be eligible for a part of the settlement:

authorsguild.org/news/what-au...

Poem response to Starmer's Farage/Powell cosplay - full text in the link

Island of Strangers - by @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social m.facebook.com/story.php?st...

🧵In March I wrote about how Trump's attacks on science & universities followed the authoritarian playbook & set out Qs as warning signs for escalation.

🚨 THESE ARE NOW HAPPENING

This 🧵is on how those warning sign Qs have been realised

full post:
christinapagel.substack.com/p/warning-si...

1/15

The UK car industry contributes £22bn to the economy and employs c 35k people.

Universities contribute £265bn and employ nearly 400k, over 10x as much.

Yet he seems ok to let that sector implode.

Handwritten recipes for dyes used in William Morris’s fabric designs, from the Merton Abbey Dye Book (1882-91)