Update: Ukraine expects a slow road ahead to rebuilding relations with incoming Hungarian PM Péter Magyar, as he doesn’t back an accelerated accession to EU membership for Ukraine & has admitted Hungary will depend on Russian oil and gas “for some time.”
www.politico.eu/article/what...
Watching Hungary with avid interest
Latest data by HRANA:
6,473 confirmed protesters killed in Iran (most likely much higher), including 212 children.
65 other civilians killed who weren't protesters.
11,730 other fatalities still under review.
11,022 civilians injured. 51,790 arrested, including 122 students. 331 forced confessions.
Best Christmas card I've received this year
If Reform apparatchiks say they'd ditch candidates for offensive comments from decades ago (as they should) then it'd be hypocritical for Farage to dodge questions about his own past comments or to threaten to sue The Guardian for publishing allegations.
Whatever the right and wrongs of individual cases, the BBC is one of the most professional news organisation in a darkening world and a lot of the attacks on it come from bad faith actors who have a vested interest in seeing its downfall.
Farage also told the House of Commons that 'instead of human rights, we should bring back birth rights'.
Would be interesting to see if by that logic he'd support bringing back birth right citizenship for children of foreign nationals born in Britain which was abolished in 1983?
During his 10 min rule bill speech today Nigel Farage told Parliament "I don't believe in state given human rights which can be taken away by states".
I thought the whole point of 'enshrining rights' in international treaties like ECHR is that they can't be easily be taken away??
Farewell and best wishes to Lord McFall who is stepping down as Speaker of the House of Lords in February.
I remember a time when talking on the phone on a train carriage felt like a social taboo. Now it feels normal for people to shout to their phones. Somewhere along the way we lost the sense of what's antisocial and what's acceptable, the unwritten rules of living in a society.
Hi @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social,
Just to flag, there is a little typo with the IfG story.
Love the blog. Many thanks
Just to be clear, our health care system can't be free at point of use for everyone and not be funded from taxation and somehow deliver better quality of care than the NHS.
Reform is misleading the public.
Nigel Farage and Reform want an insurance based system and health care not to be funded by general taxation and yet apparently to be also free at the point of use.
Either they are naive to think they can have it all or they are deliberately lying to you.
BBC's Laura K asks 'when will Labour retire the argument about their inheritance [from the Tories]?'
What Labour inherited from the Tories is important context behind the choices the Govt is making. It's not something that's gonna go away if they just stop talking about it.
By his own admission, Nigel Farage is an inept disorganised MP who 'keep[s] missing stuff'.
It must be difficult juggling 9 different jobs and earning hundreds of thousands of pounds alongside being an MP.
By his own admission, Nigel Farage is an inept disorganised MP who 'keep[s] missing stuff'.
It must be difficult juggling 9 different jobs and earning hundreds of thousands of pounds alongside being an MP.
From July 2024 to Feb 2025, the Labour government has signed up 117,800 claimants to Pension Credit, meaning they continued to receive Winter Fuel Payments and other support they may not have previously received.
This is the kind of story, you may not see covered by the media.
A very good collection by the BBC
www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...
By all accounts, Pope Francis was a man of humility and gentleness in a world which is increasingly engulfed in pride and chaos. May he rest in peace.
This is a frankly astonishingly ill-judged thing to write on the BBC website - it’s both a) opinion and also b) not really well-founded opinion either.
Is it closing? That's sad
Rupert Lowe (Elon's favorite for Reform leader) has said Nigel Farage acts like a 'messiah', needs to learn how to delegate and that he'd "not be by Nigel’s side at the next election" unless Reform's governance was overhauled.
Yet some commentators hype up Reform as some serious contender for power
As in the one at the Tube station?
For too long, the Iranian state has threatened and intimidated those in Iran and abroad who dared to stand up to the regime.
The measures we’ve announced today will reduce the threat from the Iranian Intelligence Services and help keep our country safe.
www.gov.uk/government/s...
A conversation that smells of big oil
Badenoch wouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story
Slightly mind blowing to think that 9 out of 13 years of New Labour's term in office were when Britain still had a larger economy than China
I have a working theory that by messing around with the algorithms so much, so that your followers who followed you to actually see your tweets no longer see your tweets, Musk has done some of us a favour by making 'tweeting' and 'x' increasingly unappealing
The Tory amendment to the Children's Wellbeing Bill was just cynical game-playing to produce disingenuous headlines. Even if voted, it wouldn't have brought a new inquiry.
It would have only thrown out a bill designed to protect vulnerable children from falling through the cracks in the system.
