Cat's Cradle

"See the cat?
See the cradle?"

History does not repeat itself. It rhymes. (Mark Twain)

[Cat's Cradle @MajorCerinthe]

Please consider this. Rog is a proper scientist.

[Rog Tallbloke (Righto/Chief) 🇬🇧 @RogTallbloke]

@Pardalis33 The correlation between UK surface T and UK sunshine hours is a lot more convincing than that with CO2. Cloud albedo controls our climates. Not trace gases.
@petagna

[John McAfee 🇺🇸 News @mcafeenew]

🚨THEATERS IN GREECE PULLED “THE ODYSSEY” AFTER JUST TWO NIGHTS — “IT’S AN INSULT TO HOMER’S LEGACY!”

Follow @RedLivesMatterQ

Even the Greeks couldn’t take the wokeness.

Christopher Nolan’s new “The Odyssey” premiered in Athens to a packed house… and by the end of the first scene, half the audience had already walked out. By the final credits, only four people remained in the theater.

Greek theaters across the country have now pulled the film after just two nights, calling it “an insult to Homer’s legacy.”

Greek Foreign Minister Jostaki Barronopolous put it perfectly: American film companies need to learn some respect for ancient works of art. “This wasn’t the movie to go woke.”

Casting a man as a woman (or whatever they’re calling it) in one of the foundational stories of Western civilization was the final straw. The people who actually invented the story rejected it on the spot.

Hollywood keeps forgetting that not every culture is willing to desecrate its own history for modern politics.

Share this everywhere so every studio still pushing this garbage sees what real audiences think!

Follow @mcafeenew for more drops.

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

Our friends and allies within the EU don't seem to struggle at all to recognise that the UK financial services sector is booming outside the EU, and that it is the flexibilities that came from EU departure that are fuelling that boom.

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

This is genuinely sad to see.

The Government can find the money to increase foreign aid from 0.2% to 0.7%, while we already send Pakistan £133 million a year.

Yet we can't find a few million to keep Britain's largest space telescope open.

It helped support the Apollo missions, tracked Soviet rockets during the Cold War, and inspired generations of scientists.

Our priorities are completely backwards.

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

The Government's trade deal with India means that, for an engineering firm, it's about 10% cheaper to hire an Indian worker than a British one.

And the "deal" makes it easier for companies to bring Indian workers here.

More mass migration. More undercutting of British workers.

[WasAcop @WasAcop]

🚨UK axes £2.8 million from the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank — the UNESCO site that tracked Sputnik and Apollo — shutting down decades of world-leading science.

The exact same £2.8 million went as “aid” to China via the British Council for education, arts and English programmes.

China has its own space programme.

We just lost ours.

[Carl Benjamin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @Sargon_of_Akkad]

Jodrell Bank costs under £3m a year to run, by the way.

We spend a £1bn a month on benefits for foreigners.

[freebooting stevie @BrianSkirrow]

So Burnham flies to Manchester on a 30k flight and is then transported by a whole squad of Met police who have slogged up the M6 in a fleet of armoured Range Rovers.

Nice to see an end to profligate spending.

[Sedd @SeddSezz]

UK restaurant chain Beefeater is closing all of its 106 sites.

The group directly blamed crippling cost pressures stemming from Government policy.

In particular, Reeves's increases in employer NICs and business rates, both of which rendered the traditional pub-restaurant business model "unsustainable."

The cost of living crisis has worsened year after year since Covid, and Labour's tax rises have put the final nail in the coffin.

British industry is crumbling under Labour's watch!

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Er....2026 is the quietest year for wild fires in Europe by some distance.

[Debi Evans @DebiEvansMatron]

😏‼️Well well well 😏
This wasn’t decided in a week was it #OurAndy 😏 how much is that costing 🇬🇧

This is the brownfield site #Manchester where the permanent number 10 North will be. 😲 #ToyrRUs

Credit JarmainUnfiltered 👏👏

Full video ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

https://t.co/GYxNlfrN7C

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

“Unfettered capitalism caused the 2008 crash!”
- paid naked celebrity spreading statist propaganda from a bathtub

No.

The Fed cut rates to 1% and manufactured the 2008 crash.

When a central bank forces interest rates artificially low it sends a false signal that savings are plentiful, so businesses and households load up on debt and the cheap credit races into housing since it’s the sector that responds fastest to rate cuts.

That’s the core process of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory that Mises and Hayek identified decades earlier.

From 2000 to 2003, the Fed drove its target from 6.5% all the way to 1% and held it there for a full year.
That flood of artificial money built the bubble, drove the leverage, and produced the derivatives and Wall Street excesses that still get treated as the root cause.

Distorting the cost of money itself is what produced the crisis.

They shifted the blame onto “unfettered capitalism” and Wall Street and stayed in the business of manufacturing bubbles as if nothing happened.
Now see who they’re blaming next time.

[Strix @strixperegrinus]

You get off the train at Piccadilly, midday.

"Ah, smell that Manchester air!" you think to yourself, not recognising the smell of diesel. You don't linger in it for long, jumping straight into a taxi outside.

"No10 North, please!" you say with pride.

"Where!?" asks Ahmed, your driver.

"Heron House," you say. Ahmed stares blankly at you in the rearview mirror. "Slug & Lettuce, Albert Square" you say reluctantly, and the cab pulls off the rank.

The squalor of Piccadilly Gardens is a sight to behold. Feral gangs of ethnic teenagers dressed all in black on this sunny summer's day, drug dealers operating with impunity, illegal deliveroo riders scowling at passers by, leering at women like an unexpected meal...all of which you would have seen if you'd looked up from your phone. Luckily for you, you're busy. You've work to catch up on. The wifi was patchy on the train from London, so you've lost about two hours.

The cab pulls up at "The Slug", as you're sure you'll soon be calling it, and you begin to alight. Suddenly, you realise it's lunchtime! Honestly, where *does* the time go!?

"Where's the nearest Pret?" you ask Ahmed through the window.

"What?" he says.

"Nevermind. Thanks for the journey," you reply, opening your phone to check maps. Deansgate Pret is...90 seconds away!? That's almost two minutes! How do these savages live like this!? So much to be done for this area, what a good decision this venture was. Since you can't spare that sort of time, you'll have to order in.

You walk past security, using your lanyard as a shield and daring them to peruse it. Upstairs and you see the door, o that wonderful black door! How you missed it on the journey up. And behind it are all the familiar faces from London - phew! You've been in Manchester 6 minutes and seen absolutely none of that famous charm, so it's nice to see a friendly expression at last. "I'm doing a Just Eat order," you say, "who wants what?"

You go round the team, and half an hour later you're ready to check the order. "So it's chicken fajitas for Lydia, falafel wrap for Jeremy, Millie just wants an oat milk matcha latte and Benjamin you're fully immersing yourself in the culture with a couple of sausage rolls from Greggs, is that right?" And the order goes in. Quick, efficient, no-nonsense and authentically civil service.

You open your laptop to get down to business. Oh! Lunch is here! Fabulous, let's set work aside for a moment to check out the new breakout spaces. You enjoy a terrific meal while catching up on all the office gossip. But wait! Look at the time! It's almost 2! You really must dash for the train back.

"Sorry all, would love to stay, but I can't be late picking Arabella up from nursery debating club again"

You get in the nearest taxi and head back to Piccadilly. The traffic's worse than you thought - everyone up here must still be on their lunch break! You're going to have to change workplace attitudes in these parts. You make it onto your train with only 17 minutes to spare and sink into the plushness of your reserved first class seat, safe in the knowledge that you have redistributed power safely and effectively to the regions. You'll sleep well tonight.

[No Farmers, No Food @NoFarmsNoFoods]

July 23 2026 was the busiest day for commercial air travel ever. 153,359 commercial flights were tracked worldwide. But hey, let’s blame cow burps for environmental damage.

[Pete Brailey @pijoe1212]

Drill baby drill - an often heard phase about North Sea and how to get it moving. Misses the point.

Adura ( shell and equinor 50/50) have drilled Jackdaw, installed platform and pipelines - it’s ready to go pdq. It’s not about drilling. It’s all about final consents to produce - it’s ready to go with c.£1.5bn capex expended.

Rosebank has the FPSO ( float production storage and offload ) vessel onsite. Early production wells drilled. £1.5bn capex expended ready for early 2027 production.

It’s not about drilling- it’s all about consents to start.

Next time you hear politicians or others talk about “drilling” - it’s not. It’s all about consents.

BTW - do you really think equinor ( operator of most of Norway’s gas exports) will find uk top of the list this winter for exports? I can think of 1.5 billion reasons why not.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Britain's Defence Firms Won't Let Staff Talk in These Cars. The Government Is Selling Them to Everyone Else.

A driver monitoring camera now sits above the wheel in many of the Chinese-built cars filling Britain's roads. It watches the driver's face throughout every journey, reading for fatigue and distraction. The manufacturer says the footage stays local and is never stored. Whether that claim should be taken at face value is not a question for this piece to answer. What is worth asking is why the people whose job is to worry about exactly this kind of thing have already answered it themselves, and answered it differently to how ministers are behaving in public.

BYD's growth in Britain has been extraordinary. Registrations reached almost 38,000 in the first half of this year, a rise of 95 percent on the same period in 2025, making it the country's best-selling electric vehicle brand and overtaking Tesla, BMW and Volkswagen along the way. Ministers have welcomed this. Net zero targets depend on exactly this kind of adoption curve.

At the same time, Britain's own defence establishment has been quietly treating Chinese-built vehicles as a live security risk. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory produced a formal assessment warning that EVs, particularly those made in China or built with Chinese components, could function as mobile spying platforms. Major defence contractors, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Thales among them, have told staff not to connect their phones to Chinese-built cars and not to discuss sensitive matters inside them. Personnel at RAF Wyton, one of Britain's most sensitive intelligence sites, have been instructed to park such vehicles at least two miles from the base.

These are not fringe objections. This is the settled, practical judgment of people whose profession is assessing exactly this kind of threat, and their judgment is that a phone plugged into one of these cars should be treated with the same caution as an unfamiliar USB drive plugged into a work computer.

Why does that judgment not extend to the general public. A car's infotainment system, once a phone is paired, has access to contacts, messages, call history and often banking and social media logins through connected apps. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law requires Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence services if asked, a legal obligation that exists regardless of what any individual manufacturer intends or promises. That is not a claim about BYD's conduct. It is a fact about the legal environment BYD operates within, and it applies whether or not any data is ever requested.

The health service has already offered one preview of what that kind of access can look like once granted. Wes Streeting pressed ahead with transferring half a million GP records to the UK Biobank despite objections, at the same time Chinese access to that data was under active security service scrutiny. The health information of those volunteers later turned up listed for sale on Alibaba, one of numerous exposures since. If personal medical data can end up harvested and resold once it leaves British hands, the question of what happens to the far larger volume of everyday personal data now flowing through millions of paired phones is not an idle one.

None of this proves that ordinary drivers face the same exposure as personnel at a defence intelligence site. The risk calculus for a family SUV is not the risk calculus for a military base. But a government that has spent the past year building the case, documented across its own decisions on the Chinese embassy, on NHS data, on Chagos, that Beijing's access to British information is treated as manageable rather than disqualifying, owes the public an explanation for the gap between what it tells its own defence contractors and what it tells everyone else.

"Personnel at RAF Wyton have been instructed to park such vehicles at least two miles from the base."

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

The smallest astronomer in England was 4 foot 3, scarred by smallpox and trained as a house servant. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

Then she found something in the sky no woman had ever claimed.

Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover, a bandsman's daughter. Smallpox scarred her face as a little girl. Typhus at 10 nearly killed her and stopped her growing at 4 foot 3. Her mother decided no man would ever marry her, so she was trained for the scrubbing brush, a servant in her own family's house.

Then a letter came from her brother William, a musician in Bath. Keep his house, and learn to sing. In August 1772 she stepped ashore in England. It would be home for the next 50 years.

By day she ran his house and sang his concerts. By night, her brother answered to a different master: the sky. He ground telescope mirrors for hours on end and she fed him as he worked. In 1781, from their back garden, he found Uranus, the first planet discovered in recorded history. The King made him his astronomer, and Caroline came along as the housekeeper. Again. 🔭

Then William built his little sister a telescope of her own. She swept the sky with it, and the night began to give things up. New nebulae of her own, 14 of them.

And on 1 August 1786, with William away and the telescope hers alone, she caught a blur that had not been there the night before. It moved. A comet. The first ever found and claimed by a woman in her own name. The court called it "the first lady's comet". 🔥

A year later King George the 3rd put her on a royal salary. £50 a year, in her own name. The first woman in Britain ever paid to do science. The girl trained to scrub floors was now paid to read the sky.

7 more comets followed. 8 in all.

England kept her for 50 years, until William died. Back home in Hanover she set 2,500 nebulae in order, a catalogue for everyone who came after. In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society sent its Gold Medal to Hanover. 🏛️

No woman won it again until Vera Rubin. In 1996. 🇬🇧

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Her second comet is still out there, on the long road back. It returns around 2092.

A girl in school today could live to watch it come home.

She should know a girl 4 foot 3, told to scrub floors, got there first.

We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you in it.

👉 https://t.co/rih7iKwVkN 👈

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Cat's Cradle @MajorCerinthe]

@fuzzfoster @GuidoFawkes @RichardJMurphy Ask a Marxist prof, get a Marxist prof's answer

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

Dr Art Laffer explains the Laffer Curve

[The Spectator @spectator]

Even with the Sentencing Act changes, by 2032 we are expected to be jailing between 92,400 and 100,000 prisoners.

And yet, every major prison building programme is rated either 'amber' (feasible, but facing significant issues) or 'red' (appears unachievable) by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.

✍️ David Shipley

Article | https://t.co/IJOnGNYglA | @ShipleyWrites

[Just Right Frank @justrightFrank]

I posted a front page about how much money is wasted on DEI within UK police forces.
This has been happening since the Blair Government which Burnham was a part of.
Here is the proof:
In 2002 Labour MP Ann Cryer was approached by parents who said their children were being Groomed.
Ann reported the matter to Home Secretary David Blunkett and local police chiefs who told her that "most people who sexually abuse children are white".
Blunkett changed the law to make it possible for police forces and judges to accept "hearsay evidence" from parents and 2 groomers were prosecuted and given very light sentences for sexual assault but NOT for sex by penetration, even though it had occured.
So why did they get such light sentences and why were rape charges not pursued?
And why did no other force take advantage of the legal changes to nip grooming in the bud?
I believe that the answer to both questions is DEI.
Read on: