Different players same financially doped club.

Well yes, but Farage / ERG appear to have an entirely different radical wish, and it seems , the main stream press and media will happily amplify them.

Big Oil and offshore Britain How Big Oil reaps in the profits while avoiding contributions to the public good by using Britain's network of offshore tax havens.

Big Oil companies, including shell and BP, making mega profits from Iran war but abusing tax system by using UK's network of secretive offshore tax havens.

HMRC does special deals but does not disclose

Staff from oil companies, tax dodge industry seconded to HMRC.

Govts squeeze normal people.

Five key questions: who overruled decision to deny Mandelson security clearance? Ministers and civil servants face scrutiny after revelation Foreign Office overruled vetting procedure for US ambassador appointment

Well, well. Mandelson failed the security clearance, but two days later the Foreign Office overruled it.

By then the fact that Mandelson was Starmer’s pick as US ambassador was already public knowledge.

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

If that is true, he lied to parliament. I genuinely hate to say it but, he gotta go if so.

I've been looking into the Mandelson vetting kerfuffle and think I've identified what went wrong.

So, when a potential US ambassador fails his / her security check there are 2 options -

(a) tell the PM
(b) don't tell the PM

I think they went for b instead of a. Case Closed.

So I return from Brussels to London with a renewed sense of possibility - and unfortunately a growing to-do list. But equally - a sense that my work often in effect translating Brussels to London and vice versa might not be in vain.

I think that ‘was’ the case, I wonder now if both sides would be more open to a re-join, effectively as we were. I think Roberta Metsola said something on this recently. I suspect ‘Rebate’ might be the ‘noisiest’ sticking point once Farage/ERG started up.

Just the saddest most pathetic shit I've ever seen in my life.

Incoming Hungarian PM Péter Magyar calls for the UK to rejoin the European Union:

"I remember when I was a diplomat in Brussels... We were able to influence decisions. At the time, the Brits were also part of the EU. Let's hope they will rejoin."

it feels quite bad that it's basically impossible to argue that much of the modern right in the west has become both entirely intellectually shallow and deeply, fundamentally morally corrupt without sounding like a tedious teenage tankie, because it is.....the factual truth

The most important of Tony Benn’s questions for democracy: How do we get rid of you?

Orbán's Hungarian experiment runs out of steam Péter Magyar's historic win offers peace for a country exhausted by the tensions of Viktor Orbán's rule, Nick Thorpe reports from Budapest.

Appalling whitewash of Orbán by the BBC.
No mention of the cronyism, the "richest man in Hungary" son in law, the domination and bleeding dry of the Hungarian economy by his clique and his vanity "ideological" projects.

Absolute shame on the BBC and Nick Thorpe.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cartoon by @andertoon.bsky.social.

This is a no-brainer.

French central bank nets €13bn by pulling gold out of US reserves France’s central bank has sold off the last of the gold it held in the United States Federal Reserve and replaced it with higher quality bars in Paris, taking advantage of rising prices to make nearly...

France has sold off the last of its gold held in the US Federal Reserve and now holds all its gold in Paris.

German groups are now pressuring the government to repatriate its own gold.

“How lucky is the United States that everytime they look for democracy in other countries they find oil instead”- Spain Deputy Gabriel Rufián

Awesome view from Artemis II this morning.

Ridiculously transparent April Fool's day joke from the BBC, who seem to think people will really believe that we're going to have 2 non-rainy days over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

Open them, if they last another two days after that…..👏👏👏…..!!

But it’s simple. It sounds plausible and keeps the fossil fuel money rolling in. Farage wants the same.
Tories and Reform don’t give a damn about what *actually* works for the country. Just money for their parties and votes from people, too uninformed to notice how much they’re screwing them over.

And this.

Bernie Sanders has pulled one out for the books.
He has suggested a reading of the Epstein files as a filibuster to the Save Act.

from Fraser Nelson:

This is the state of the union.......

He is talking to 45 in the mirror.

Hard core Brexiters know equally well. It works for them so they don’t care as the last thing they are is genuinely patriotic.

😯

We are lost, morally, ethically, in all the ways you can think of, when this is allowed and ignored. It's been said many times over, but I just can't imagine a Dem president getting away with anything remotely close to this. Gross power dynamics aside, Republicans were apoplectic at Clinton having