Alt text: Screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla (@Abdulkhaleq_UAE), with a verified badge. The post reads: “This is what I told Reuters today: The UAE no longer needs America to defend it, as it has proven during the Iranian aggression that it is capable of defending itself with distinction. What the UAE needs is to acquire only the best and latest weapons that America has. Therefore, it is time to think about closing the American bases, as they are a burden and not a strategic asset.” The post is labeled “Translated from Arabic by Grok” and shows a timestamp of 10:21 AM · 4/19/26 with 139K views.

NEW: UAE scholar Abdulkhaleq Abdulla says the UAE no longer needs U.S. protection, calling American bases a “burden, not a strategic asset” and suggesting they should be closed. The United States’ standing in the region has been obliterated.

As many of us said, Reform peaked at 30%—from there, it was always downhill. Today, their support is fading fast.

This country won’t repeat America’s mistake with Donald Trump. UK learned the hard way after trusting Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage on Brexit disaster.

That mistake won’t be repeated.

Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.

"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X

The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.

I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).

So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.

Grok will end up running Kent County Council.

To be fair to him he's obviously trying to avoid the landed aristocracy stereotype - based on that photo alone I'd assume he's never seen a welly. Or the sunlight.

The Must-Have Item in Silicon Valley Is a $178 Sweater With a CEO’s Face Leaders at companies from Nvidia to Palantir are now driving fashion, signaling a new era of the cult of the founder.

Are the tech bros okay?

No. No, they are definitely not.

www.wsj.com/tech/silicon...

Text: Disparaging Farage Sir, Nigel Farage (interview, Apr 18) said, perhaps tongue in cheek but disparagingly, “if you want a government full of social workers, fine”. Of course, no one would argue that parliament should be drawn from any single profession. But it is not clear why social work should be singled out as a less desirable route into public life. Social workers make high-stakes decisions every day in conditions of uncertainty, balancing care and control, individual rights and public protection, autonomy and risk. They must account for those decisions transparently, with limited resources and under intense scrutiny. They engage with people whose lives are directly shaped by government policy. If anything, a parliament with more people who understand how policy operates in practice, and who are trained to navigate ethical complexity, would be better equipped. David Wilkins Professor of social work, Cardiff University

Letter in Times today in defence of social workers

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

I'm always skeptical of BBC-bashing, but BBC News website hasn't reported on the Tice tax scandal since 12 April, when the headline was "Tice £91,000 tax row is 'minor administrative error', party claims".

Leader of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party logs onto the Leopards Eating People’s Faces app & is shocked to find leopards eating people’s faces.

“X is now becoming a very unpleasant and a very dangerous place”

...says Nigel Farage today

Dinesh wants to move on.

It might be time to move on when the men who abused the women & girls trafficked by Epstein & Maxwell have been named & prosecuted.

As not a single one of these men has yet faced justice, we’re clearly *not* done here. We’re not even started.

Tice attended the independent Uppingham School* & became a property tycoon, splitting his time between the UK & Dubai. Oakeshott literally went to the same independent school as the King.

Just pay your taxes, you posh grifters.

*current fees £7,315 per term for day pupils £16,810 for boarders

Not much political judgement going on here if Isabel Oakeshott does not realise that Farage & Tice are senior members of the British establishment. Relevant here is that Oakeshott is the partner of Richard Tice jumping to the defence of Tice & his tax evasion.

Standard website transfers to Independent with more than 30 staff leaving The Independent has completed a "long-term" deal to run the digital operations and print advertising of The Standard.

The Evening Standard employed 364 journalists and staff when Lebedev bought it for £1 in 2009.

It now has 16

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/r...

Make it make sense.

We are spending billions to keep our entire navy in the Strait to fecklessly fail to open a waterway that wasn’t closed until Trump’s pointless war of choice closed it.

He’s just burning your tax money.

They‘re buying stuff from people who just make stuff they want to buy, instead of playing mind games with their weird neighbour who mainly wants to insult them, punish them with tariffs & keeps threatening to annex them.

Yeah, sure, they must be crazy, Howard. You nailed it, genius.

“Carney has a problem with us. He gets on a plane and he goes to China," Lutnick said. "…China is entirely an export-driven economy, right? So what do you do? [Carney] came back and said, 'Oh, we'll take their electric cars.' I mean, is this nuts?"

🤨 Oh yes, only we’re not the nutzo ones.
#capoli

Streeting refuses to publish secret Palantir NHS briefings | Good Law Project The health secretary wants to keep us in the dark about Palantir’s systems for handling sensitive health records, so we’re taking legal action with Democracy for Sale to fight back

If you want to support their extraordinary efforts, welcoming in a Trojan horse built by American tech oligarchs with a barely-hidden agenda of destroying socialised healthcare & democracy in general ain’t the way to do it.

We need Palintir out of our NHS.

goodlawproject.org/streeting-re...

We helped *rebuild* Germany and Japan after World War II.

Palantir is, clearly, run by information-deprived and simple-minded ideologues.

In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.

strange these op-eds about women being too angry have all come out the last few days when during the same time there's also been a massive investigation published on an online rape academy with millions of viewers a month and none of them have bothered to even cover it, even as news

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.

This @bylinetimes.bsky.social podcast & article are essential listening & reading on the world energy crisis
bylinetimes.com/2026/04/16/t...

BYLINE TIMES PODCAST: The Iran War - And Why The World Has Reached Fossil Fuel Tipping Point Byline Times Investigations Editor Nafeez Ahmed tells Adrian Goldberg why the Iran War isn't a re-run of the 1970s oil crisis, but rather a harbinger of energy crises to come - precipitating a coll...

NEW: The Iran War - and why fossil fuels have reached a tipping point...

@goldbergradio.bsky.social hears from @nafeez.bsky.social
@bylinetimes.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/400713

An excellent, well-informed discussion which puts the immediate crisis into the context of the systemic problems which have been building in the fossil fuel-based economy for years.

A must-listen IMO. 👇

Fate whispers to the president “A swamp needs draining”. And the president whispers back “I am the swamp”.

I think we are going to have issues when we get back to the car.

#dogsky #dogs