In the 2001 general election, the Conservatives campaigned under the slogan, “Save the Pound.” That worked for them …

The irony with this supposed affront to a quintessential English condiment is that all the ingredients have to be imported.

This week, Brexit finally killed our family business. We cleared out our warehouse, handed back the keys, paid the final bills and said goodbye to our last employee.
What was once a thriving firm died a slow, sad death, all thanks to Farage, Johnson and the gullible idiots they conned. 1/18

My favourite thing about the paywall fade you get is that it's the perfect encapsulation of slowly backing away from the nutter in the pub who tries to tell you about how MI5 are controlling his teeth.

Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada

A new contender for best headline

An evocative picture of a July day in Scotland.

Screenshot of a tweet saying: * WTF: Lincolnshire Church of England primary school allegedly forced 7-year-old children (none Muslim) to perform full Islamic prayers to Allah in RE lesson. "We did prayers to Allah yesterday," one girl told her father. Pupils were shown a demonstration video then told to kneel, bow heads & copy the movements themselves. Angry parents reported it to Lincolnshire Police. School unnamed amid backlash fears. Disgraceful. There is a Picture of children in school uniforms kneeling on the floor, heads down, in a classroom setting

I have deleted my original debunk of this story as it appears it is actually an amalgamation of 2 stories...

(Don't let anyone tell you I'm not prepared to be corrected!!)

So let's look at them individually:

We'll start with the photo...

So what's going on?

🧵1/12

Significant day for UK trade policy. With the announcement of the EU-Australia FTA the UK now only has an FTA where the EU doesn't with Malaysia and Brunei as part of CPTPP. The EU meanwhile has a deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay that the UK doesn't.

I remember an adult education initiative in North Yorkshire to get people into education for the first time by offering very short taster courses. The local press labelled it as “dumbing down.” It was destructive of something good and wrecked it. This is worse. Irresponsible propaganda.

Wow.

Graphic with a black and white photo of France Ellen Watkins Harper. On top of the photo, there is a poem by Frances Ellen Harper, an abolitionist and suffragist titled "Bury Me in a Free Land". The poem reads "I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might/Can rob no man of his dearest right; My rest shall be calm in any grave/Where none can call his brother a slave."

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a prolific writer who fought for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery.

She was one of the first Black people to publish a short story, authored many celebrated poetry collections, and helped enslaved people escape through the Underground Railroad.

It’s so funny to think about the fact that there’s people out there deferring every life decision to this

Seriously, there are people on here who think a numerical reduction in immigration will reduce Farage’s appeal.

Immigration *never* caused the harms Farage ascribed to it. It was all a xenophobic lie. The actual numbers never mattered.

Another thing many underestimate is the sheer rage and the depth of the misinformation they're facing. Much right populism is emotional and psychological, a deep phenomenon which may not be particularly amenable to policy. At its simplest it's a turning outwards of insoluble frustration. (1/3)

To be pedantic, it would be a third referendum after 1975 and 2016. The current score is 1-1.

An 'expert' is just another word for someone who knows what they are talking about.

iPaper headline: Photo of Farage speaking with small boat photo superimposed WHO BROKE BRITAIN? Farage's great project is to destroy the country he claims to love

Extract: THE EFFECT ON BRITAIN Farage has taken the demon in Powell's 1968 speech and used it to undermine Britain in 2025. He has the same currency as his hero and trades in the same goods. He is defined by hatred toward minorities. It could be that person on the train speaking a foreign language, or that bloke next door who might be Romanian, or the Polish plumber who came to fix the sink, or the desperate young man who made it over on a boat. He will make those people's lives a misery. He will make them afraid. He will make them feel unwelcome. He will turn this country's instinct towards decency around so that it is replaced by antipathy. Every time we follow him down this path, we become poorer and more miserable, tarnishing our own wellbeing through our devotion to his political goal. Minorities suffer because of Farage. But Britain suffers most of all.

“We have sacrificed our national success because of our fear of immigration. And now, if Farage has his way, we'll do it all over again”

Superb, important analysis of the profound harm Farage does to our country in his rabidly racist and egotistical bid for power
liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/407...

FoM meant that you could apply to stay for unlimited time within the parameters set by EU law. The UK never imposed those conditions. Why?

That ‘providing’ is doing some heavy lifting! You had unconditional rights to stay for three months. After that you had to register, which here meant showing proof of address, proof of employment and/or income, 4000€ in a Greek bank account, a tax number, and health insurance.

Faced with that choice, most chose to stick with the 90 days visa free limit, which was all they theoretically were allowed under FoM without registering. Some were already here full time, and others like me were able to become full-time residents. We had a really helpful local police.

The irony was that anyone who had registered previously and had five years income tax returns (even if they were nil) got ten year residency. The EU gave us an excellent deal and we had better terms than EU citizens - allowed a five year absence rather than two year before losing residency.

That was an added complication, though mitigated by the UK's double tax agreement. I know people who were 'living under the radar' who faced a dilemma. Registration and tax residence or to leave and limit their time. Under FoM they were already limited to 90 days but it was unenforceable.

It was very much the issue round here when Brexit struck. It's not about tax payable but tax residence. There were a lot of people staying for long periods without registering, even though under FoM they were required to for any stay over 90 days, which theoretically meant tax residence.

Immigration salience has less to do with aggregate Immigration numbers than
- visibility of boats & asylum > visas
- general vibes about integration
- elite cues from media & political discourse in shaping public perceptions

This is more true when immigration is falling then when it is rising

This post. The rise of the far right is a crisis of legitimacy not of popular opinions. The legitimacy of the far right is a product of elite endorsement of opinions held but not expressed.
I would add that when fascists come to power, they do so as minorities enabled by elite collaboration.

Indeed it is. But he muddles Farnborough in Hampshire - the town with the air show - with the Farnborough in Kent where Farage was born. The Kent town has no connections to aerospace at all. As someone born in Bromley, these things pathetically matter.

Nobody in The Moral Maze gets eaten by the Moral Minotaur, which is a fundamental flaw in the programme.

That said, I do have sympathy with people who had made a long term investment in a home with a view to moving or spending more time there when they could give up work. If you weren't able to do that, Brexit would have scuppered your plans. We were lucky, we could take early retirement in 2020.

In that case, the concern is with tax, not residence.

To do that that you had to show health insurance, proof of residence, and sufficient funds. In Greece that meant tax returns too, even zero ones. Greece had a paper based system of blue and beige cards. The UK never bothered to implement the rules. If they had the result may have been different.