Even if it had still happened, it’s a high possibility that Gore would not have turned pursuit of bin Laden into an Iraq war.

And then we’d have had 25 years of reducing fossil fuels, rolling out renewables. Reduced reliance on, and bankrolling of, Gulf states. And been closed to a healthy planet.

A high probability that 9/11 would not have happened, because Rumsfeld wouldn’t have been able to pursue a divide and rule management strategy over the intelligence services - so they would have been sharing the intelligence they had, which was enough if pooled to prevent attack.

There’s a fork in the timeline back in 2000, in which Florida didn’t screw over the USA to foist Bush jr on the world…. And this man became president.
I would very much like to be in that timeline.

!
Not okay BBC. Really not okay

Love this. Comedy as campaigning always feels like a great way to do things.

Apple Book
A premium e-reader, and notepad. Designed for offline, distraction free use.
Read books and make highlights and notes on the page. Read PDFs and make notes directly on them. A beautiful simple notepad for handwriting and sketching notes - or connecting a bluetooth keyboard to type

Yes!

An indecipherable error message from an online system's login page. It says: Message not found. Application: FND, Message Name: UMX_LOGIN_HELP_UNEXPECTED_ERROR. java.sql.SQLException: ORA-01403: no data found ORA-06512: at "APPS.UMX_LOGIN_HELP_PVT", line 574 ORA-06512: at "APPS.UMX_LOGIN_HELP_PVT", line 659 ORA-06512: at line 1

Ah yes, it must be time to try to login to my publisher's Oracle royalty statement system.

This is why you have to pay the big bucks to get Oracle quality.

And I think in the UK, even in 2026 we should never underestimate the deference to titles and the assumption that people with them must be a decent sort and it must just be the evidence that is wrong.

Here comes the buildup to the next global shipping crisis !

My wild and inaccurate guesses on contributing factors:

1. I saw report that the red flag was around links with China, rather than Epstein. Perhaps Perm Sec decided that wasn't a blocker here?

2. Mandelson had been at the highest level of gov before, so may have been assumed ok

3. He was a Lord !

It seems to me like a lot of people haven't followed the details of why folks have issues with Substack, and basically assume that leaving the platform for moral or social reasons just automatically means giving up money.

But I don't think that's supported by the actual math.

Ah yes, FT reports that pay for FTSE CEOs is up 18%.

Jolly good. Was worried how they were faring.

Also importantly, 60 minutes is now a MAGA controlled programme, so it’s probably just propaganda through and through (inc the claim about Iran being close to making bombs)

I wonder if Ray-Ban and Oakley are going to see sales of their wider range suffer because the pervert glasses are designed to look like their existing models — and most people will not want to be mistaken for wearing pervert glasses

I’m no artist, but run my own businesses and I find Starling are pretty good and not-yet-fascist-pricks or robbing bastards

“They would literally do almost anything to have such a system”

Except vote for a leader who wants them to pay some of what they pay corporates for healthcare as tax instead.

A letter to act on.

Did he mean "No other country could mistakenly paint another country's flag in the sky above the royal palace" though? 😜

It’s the thing that most frustrates me about modern life: Ignorant users unknowingly snitching on everyone to giant manipulative corporate surveillance machines that then get used against us.

This is what Facebook does too.
Even if you choose not to provide Meta with all your data by having an account, they have it because your family and friends have snitched on you, uploading their contacts to share your email and phone, uploading photos of you, sharing location when you hang out… etc

Hey look, here’s Google casually offering to breach everyone you know’s rights (and make no mistake, they’ll blame you)

Also when it’s done, it’s done. There’s no turning back and you can’t know who everyone’s face will eventually be sold to

Take a moment to think before you *don’t* dive in

Would have been great to be able to filter for that in my dating days - but then we now know that data on us would have been sold to marketers as probably the most valuable targeting data !

I’m team early to the airport, early to the gate, but then there’s a divide after that;

Work/solo trip: late to board
Family trip: early to board as need to stow so many more bags and keep them near us

And the closing bell, just after

The RFK Jr penis harvesting operations have scaled globally in a way nobody could have predicted

Cc @bencollins.bsky.social

And didn’t Brown leave all meetings huffily ? 😜

I had to interview him a few times, and apart from trying not to stare at the jaw action as he thought or talked, he was second only to Prescott for his huffiness with anyone asking questions.

So that’s a second hand account. Who is the John that is recounting this story?

I certainly wouldn’t say it’s fair to claim that was what set Brown against the Euro. He was against it long before then.

That makes sense.

Damn people’s fixation with currency as a national symbol and emotional touch point, rather than simply a tool.

I don’t think anyone could have imagined how stupid UK (and world) politics could get.
Even the useful idiots through which it was achieved got a bit surprised I think.

Thanks - I’ve been wondering about this.

My background feeling (without expertise) is that Brown did the UK a solid by keeping the UK out at the time… but the Euro and its governance have matured now to the point it would make much more sense. Plus the UK situation has degraded!