David Cottam

It's a good job Suella Braverman claimed £45,000 for water bills on her parliamentary expenses. If she had failed to declare a ten quid overpayment on Universal Credit, she'd have been in serious trouble then.

If you're a chief executive on a telephone number salary, at least have the grace not to complain about the taxes the fund the benefits your workers have to claim because you refuse to pay them enough to live on

Today I feel that the zeitgeist is tilting towards a more progressive politics. I can only hope that it’s a world wide rejection of Trump’s shite-heist. His gang of disgusting creeps and felons will not accept defeat gracefully.

🔴 REVEALED: Palantir led closed-door review of how MoD buys software The review was presented to defence minister Luke Pollard by Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley in Feb and has mostly been implemented None of this was made public New investigation🧵 democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-p...

As Burnham decides whether to end Palantir’s £330m NHS contract, the questions about its access have never been more vital Read the full investigation, and the documents: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-p... Democracy for Sale is reader-funded. If you value this work, please subscribe 😊

Still going on. Twenty minutes uninterrupted coverage so far. Robert Jenrick is currently talking about sex chat bots.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... This discussion on Joyce’s Ulysses between Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones is extraordinary . I was so enthralled and stimulated I will have to subscribe to hear the last section.

The Duchy of Cornwall says it collected £503,711 rent from the King for Highgrove House. Prince William is the Duke of Cornwall. Father pays rent to son. No money left the family but nice PR. Previously, King Charles was the Duke of Cornwall. He was paying rent to himself.

Has Lisa Nandy taken a sabbatical?

Funny isn't it how the "we're protecting our streets" people always start menacing anyone who questions them

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

@peterjukes.bsky.social @bylinetimes.bsky.social

We have until Thursday 29th October to stop Thames Water from being bailed out yet again at our expense Andy Burnham, block the bailout, remove their licence, TAKE IT BACK. Sign the petition 👇 weownit.org.uk/act-now/tham...

For anyone needing a few moments of calm transcendental musicianship: Leon Fleischer playing Sheep May Safely Graze Such lucid simplicity is vary hard to achieve. youtu.be/fTWf82WLEcw?...

A sign of how fast the Overton Window is moving to the Right? @petergeoghegan.bsky.social

Guy who pardoned insurrectionists says what?

Nah. It's just that Reform have worked out a hack - they go into hiding. They send out nobody to do the media rounds to defend this stuff, so most broadcasters drop it.

You may have seen reports about the campaign for charities to be more 'transparent' about who funds them. Well it turns out the mysterious new right-wing think tank behind it won't say who funds or runs them, and used fake names for the authors of the report which launched their campaign

A billionaire-controlled media is no freer than a government-controlled media.

Listening to Gove talking to Aditya Chakrabortty. I note the politeness and the encouraging “mmms” uttered by Gove. He’s such an ingratiating slug. Courteous , articulate and impossible to pin to any of his former opinions. What gives him away are the encouraging “mmms”. Really untrustworthy !

Scaramucci, Scaramucci, shall I do the fiasco? Blunderbolts and farting, very soon departing… She!

Obviously it's telling that Trump seems to have no problem with Putin violating the supposed ceasefire first

This is what data centres in Australia are doing - claiming to be carbon-neutral or to be powered by renewables but actually relying on spurious offset programmes and gas-fired generation. @ketanjoshi.co has documented it in detail.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Serhiy Beskrestnov confirms Elon Musk's Space X crippled Ukrainian capabilities last night. In other words, the US deliberately sabotaged European defence operations mid-mission. Every country in the world should move away from buying American hardware ASAP.

Watching Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, I was shocked to see the damage the chicken industry is doing to rivers, communities and animals. And now I’ve learned the Government wants to expand Big Chicken. I've signed the petition to stop it 👉 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

This is what many suspected was going on but we were thought cranky and conspiratorial. It’s time to reexamine the targets of Russian money and influence in the UK and name the beneficiaries who still thrive untainted. Nathan Gill wasn’t the only one they bought, just the cheapest.

"Vance" is a useful new verb in the English language, and one consistent with our Latinate heritage. Compare: ➡️ ADVANCE: To move something forward. ⬅️ VANCE: To cause a situation to decline or devolve. In a sentence: "Donald Trump's second term vanced the American economy."

Nathan Gill - Reform's leader in Wales - is serving a ten-year prison sentence for accepting Russian bribes. And still Farage insists that that Russia doesn't attempt to influence British politics.

This was a wonderful conversation full of calm convincing insights based on masses of corroborated testimony . I warmly recommend it to anyone who still gives Johnson, Trump or Farage the benefit of the doubt.

It comes after years of cover-ups & denials not least from Boris Johnson who was in charge of MI6 as foreign minister at the time & whose first act as PM was to ennoble the Baron of Siberia. But it also went beyond Johnson & Starmer continued it too. We now finally need some sunlight. 2/

God. Since @carolecadwalla.bsky.social left it, even the @theguardian.com gets it wrong. There weren’t just four meetings between Banks/Leave EU and Kremlin officials during Brexit: the judge in the libel case concluded at least a dozen

Hard to know if the foreign secretary who went to his Russian friend's villa in Italy to party hard with Kremlin-linked Russians, without his security officers, directly after a NATO summit, could be fibbing about Russian interference.

This also would demonstrate the difference between the two sides in the argument (if a difference exists), that for one evidence precedes opinions, and for the other identity precedes opinions.

The correct response to this would be to make all the evidence used to draw the conclusion public, then challenge Farage to respond, otherwise people will just pick their opinions on the matter based purely on who they trust.

Zelenskyy says Trump has betrayed Ukraine.

Why am I not surprised? Kemi is incompetent at every level, including fact-checking her rejection of Net Zero. She herself championed it as a minister at a Glasgow COP26, when she saw political opportunity in climate action. Now she's just trailing Faux-Rage and the fossil fuel lobby for funding.

If you’re reading today’s papers and thinking, did I watch a different Badenoch speech, may I recommend our sanity-restoring review? “The same people who could not build a railtrack from London to Manchester for £100bn, will build the Kemi Death Star for 10bn. It’s so ludicrous as to be offensive.”

Number crunching: “the poorest in our society” From the new Private Eye, out now.

This does however solidify my theory that Reform are simply planning to spend *all* the crypto billionaire cash before the Electoral Commission and police even put their shoes on

So what this week has taught us is that the Conservative offer is to: - prioritise the wealthiest - blow up the public finances

From the new Private Eye

Thousands of active UK companies may have fraudulent directors. Anyone can form a company in the UK. Companies need one natural person as a director who can be non-UK resident. Too many small companies are fronts for crimes I have long called for companies to have one UK resident director.

Do check out Rupert’s website. It’s amazing. And so is he. thelonekayaker.wordpress.com

The Prime Minister @andyburnham.bsky.social has pledged to hold a Wildfire Summit later this Autumn (which may cover other extreme weather too). The Summit must agree a plan to re-wet the UK’s peat bogs, restore lost ponds in farmers’ fields, and stop grouse moor owners setting fire to moorland.

Archer’s resignation from the London mayoral race after it was revealed he lied in court was the thing that got Paul Foot up from his sickbed and contributing again, having first started chronicling Archer’s lies and misdemeanours in 1969. From the Private Eye archive. Issue 992, December 1999.

Nelly has settled in to her new home and a big comfy bed. She has weaned her pups and retired to join her grandmother Jessie (who is 11) for country walks and a quiet life sniffing the grass.

TweedleDumb & TweedleSly #streetart

Apparently "Kemi" has "fresh solutions" uniquely tailored to Britain's current problems. <excitedly prepares to take notes> Cut taxes, reward the wealthiest, punish the poor and sick, alienate our allies, deregulate big business, and privatise any remaining state function. WAAAAAAIT A MINUTE!