Sean Scannell

Former professional brewer. Now a business consultant. All round Truth Monster.

I voted Remain. I did not vote Tory. #SupportTheNHS

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

It's like a science experiment for people who don't believe in science

[Viral Reel Addict @ViralReelAddict]

The Trump administration took the names of nine enslaved people off a memorial at George Washington's home. A judge ordered them back.

That memorial sits at the site of George Washington's presidential home in Philadelphia, and the order to restore it came Friday from U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston.

Her ruling forces the Interior Department to put back the slavery exhibit there, along with the signs and displays it pulled from parks and monuments nationwide because, in the government's own words, they "do not align with its preferred narrative."

The fight comes down to one question: who gets to be in the story of America?
This administration decided it could delete the people it found inconvenient. The judge said no.

It started with an executive order Trump signed in March 2025, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."

The order claimed a "revisionist movement" had smeared the country as "inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed," and sent the Interior Department into the parks to scrub anything that fit. It named one target directly: Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, where the nation declared that all men are created equal.

That is where you see what the words meant. The Park Service took down the memorial to the nine people Washington enslaved at his presidential home.

Those were the same people who cooked and cleaned and were owned by the first president while he ran the new republic. Their names stood on that wall until this administration decided visitors should not have to read them.

Another judge had already ordered that one restored. She compared the government's claim that it gets to decide which history is true to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's "1984."

Kelley went wider. Her order swept in exhibits on abolition, immigration, labor, women's suffrage, civil rights, and the climate, quietly pulled from sites including Fort Sumter and the Grand Canyon.

She did not soften it. The government, she wrote, had tried to "rewrite the Nation's history with a white-out pen," telling "half-truths" about the country it claims to honor.

The Interior Department's entire response was to call her a "liberal activist judge" and threaten an appeal.

It had no answer for the white-out pen, because there isn't one. Slavery happened. The people who built this country existed, and their names were carved into a wall in Philadelphia until someone here decided to erase them.

America turns two hundred and fifty this year. This administration's idea of honoring that was to pick which Americans were allowed in the story.

The white-out pen is going back in the drawer. The names go back on the wall, by the Fourth of July, by court order.

[Gordon Fielden @GordonFielden]

Chris, what is most striking about your piece is not the reporting of events, but the relentless effort to frame every development through the prism of impending collapse.

Throughout the article, readers are presented not with objective analysis, but with a succession of loaded phrases and assumptions designed to reinforce a predetermined narrative. A premiership is described as "flailing", potential rivals are elevated into waiting successors, and routine political disagreement is transformed into evidence of a government supposedly on the verge of disintegration.

What is conspicuously absent is any serious examination of the reality facing any government today. Defence spending does not emerge from thin air. Every additional pound committed to the armed forces must either be raised through taxation, borrowed, or diverted from another area of public expenditure. That is not a political slogan. It is a fiscal fact.

You devote considerable attention to those criticising the Defence Investment Plan, yet remarkably little attention to what their alternative would be. If the spending settlement is inadequate, what precisely should replace it? Where would the money come from? Which taxes should rise, or which public services should face reductions? These are the questions that matter.

The article also appears determined to portray every resignation as a judgement on Sir Keir Starmer's leadership while giving scant consideration to the possibility that ministers can disagree on policy without it amounting to an existential crisis for the government. Westminster may enjoy perpetual leadership speculation, but governing a country requires rather more than gossip, intrigue and anonymous briefings.

Perhaps the greatest weakness in your analysis is the assumption that political commentary can substitute for political reality. The government remains in office with a substantial parliamentary majority, inflation has fallen significantly from its peak, economic growth has returned, and major policy decisions continue to be implemented. Whether one supports the government or not, those are facts rather than interpretations.

In the end, your article says far more about the current appetite among sections of the media for leadership drama than it does about the actual condition of the government. The country deserves analysis grounded in evidence, not a running commentary built upon Westminster's favourite pastime: predicting the imminent downfall of every Prime Minister.
https://t.co/iHgb3apH0G

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

Hahaha, this is INSANE:

These trumpers can't even take responsibility for their own fails, they want to blame Democrats for the algae in trump's renovation of the Reflecting Pool.

I suppose Joe Biden shit in trump's diaper too, huh? 🙄

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Gentle reminder!!! Don’t let Trump reframe this war as a campaign to “free” the Strait of Hormuz. The strait was open. It was open right up until the US and Israel attacked Iran.

Trump didn’t ride in to open a closed strait. Trump’s war is the reason the strait is closed.

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

It’s true!

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

This is what Donald Tusk said recently about Ukraine 🇺🇦:

"Even the Nobel Peace Prize would not be enough.

Some say that Ukraine should be grateful for everything. The truth is exactly the opposite.

The rest of us should be grateful to Ukraine."

I would very much like to see relations between Poland and Ukraine regarding the Russian invasion remain as functional as they have been so far.

[mainstream @Nillo82948721]

Boris Johnson the most deceitful slug in modern UK history.

He knew full well when he wrote those 2 articles that Brexit would be horrendously damaging to the UK but he put career and personal ambition over the future of the UK by choosing the leave option.

Modern day traitor

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

The White House was built to serve the American people.

Tonight it was used to promote a company the President owns stock in, sell subscriptions, promote corporate sponsors, push Trump crypto, and enrich the President and his family.

The founders warned us about kings enriching themselves from public office.

They did not fight a revolution for this.

[Seth Abramson @SethAbramson]

This CNN photo seems to confirm that Trump is punishing the Kennedy Family and America for making him remove his name from the Kennedy Center—a name he put up illegally, knowing it was illegal to do so—by covering *Kennedy's* name via a *permanent* tarp.

I hope he burns in Hell.

[Bluebird pooped an X @bluebirdpoopies]

This is not residual algae. This is not sabotage. This is not sea monkeys. This is not going away. This is the result of incompetence and creating a heat sink in a shallow non chlorinated pool.

[The Iran Spectator @IR_Media24]

🇺🇸TRUMP: "I've settled eight wars, actually nine, and now it looks like we could have 10."

🇮🇷IRAN: "This man actually started a war, lost it, and fools everyone by saying he settled it. Absolutely crazy." 🤣

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Greta Thunberg sends birthday wishes to Donald Trump: “My initial thought was to give you a one-way ticket to The Hague as a birthday gift, but that comment would probably go above your head. I will instead give you a can of alphabet soup; the sentences you poop out will be more coherent than anything you have ever said. Now you can finally take part in meaningful public discourse”

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Pete Hegesth, "Obama begged Iran for a deal, we bombed Iran"

"Document says Iran won't have a nuclear weapon, won't seek one, won't buy one"

Journalist, "The JCPOA (Iran deal) did that too"

Hegseth, "We devastated their military"

Imagine celebrating achieving the thing a previous president achieved without killing the 3,000+ Iranians dead since the US/Israel attacks

Then imagine gloating about a blockade in response to the closing of the strait of Hormuz which has caused global economic turmoil as if that is something to celebrate

It's like a scene from Idiocracy

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

So what is in "The Deal with Islamic Republic of Iran"?

If you're confused, it's normal: the US and Iran already publicly disagree on what they agreed to, and it's not even a "deal": just a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that sets the terms for negotiating the actual deal within the next 60 days.

We do, however, know a few things:

1) Israel is actively trying to undermine the deal - for instance by striking Beirut yesterday Sunday.

Israeli media say that the deal is causing "profound concern among Israeli officials," that "Israel, despite having started the war alongside the US, was not involved in the negotiations," and that "the deal do[es] not achieve the goals of the war that were set out by the US and Israel" (https://t.co/hMqvezz08J).

That last part is clear: the very existence of this MOU proves the objectives of the war were not met, as they certainly didn't include the US negotiating an exit with an undefeated Iran while Israel is freaking out about it on the sidelines.

2) We know, because both parties and Pakistan (the mediator) confirmed it, that a finalized MOU does exist and that it's due to be formally signed on Friday in Switzerland by JD Vance and maybe Trump himself (Vance told Fox News: “I certainly plan to be there, but it’s possible the president himself could be there” https://t.co/sTmdfAv7DS)

3) We know Trump ordered the US naval blockade to be lifted (supposedly today, Monday)

4) The Strait of Hormuz will reopen on the Iranian side (though both parties publicly spun the terms differently - Trump says "toll-free," Iran's FM Araghchi says with "service fees")

5) The war would end on all fronts including Lebanon - both sides used this exact phrase. Israel, obviously, is trying hard to spoil this.

6) Some form of sanctions relief is included - Iran speaks of "termination of all sanctions" (https://t.co/3v7Xa3n9lv) and a senior US official confirmed the structure is "Iran would earn economic rewards each time it met a set of US demands"

7) The MOU apparently does not agree on anything wrt nuclear, just that it will be discussed during the 60-day negotiation window, with Iran maintaining its current nuclear status quo in the meantime

8) In fact I suspect the MOU defers most things truly contested - like nuclear - to later negotiations while resolving in the immediate only the problems the war itself created: stop shooting, reopen the strait (under updated Iranian rules), and lift the blockade.

Which means that, most likely, this "deal" is - at this stage - less a deal than an acknowledgement of the new status quo reached in the war. It differs from the April 5 ceasefire in that, this time, the US is lifting all coercion it introduced in the war - including the naval blockade it imposed on April 13.

So in effect the war had two phases of failed coercion (military, then economic with the blockade), and the MOU formalizes the failure of both.

In exchange what the US is getting is a conversation about its initial stated war objectives (like nuclear), which it will now have to pursue after having proven it cannot impose them by force.

Needless to say, you don't get better terms at the table after showing you couldn't get them on the battlefield 🤷

[Chris D. Jackson @ChrisDJackson]

Biden at 80. Trump at 80.

One rode bikes, worked out daily, passed historic legislation, released yearly physicals, and answered endless questions about his age and health.

The other falls asleep in public, rambles through speeches, looks visibly swollen, and has reportedly taken multiple cognitive tests ordered by doctors.

Guess which one the media treated like a five-alarm health crisis. 🙄

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Sen. Jack Reed: "Reuters is reporting that part of the deal is $24 billion in sanctions relief for the Iranians. So this is not a 'we win and you do what we say.' This is, 'how can we open up the straits? What will it cost us?'"

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran just published all 14 clauses of the MoU. Read them carefully, because this is not the deal Trump described.

The headline numbers: $300 billion in reconstruction commitments from the US and allies. $24 billion in released frozen funds, half before negotiations even start. Complete naval blockade lifted within 30 days. US forces withdrawn from around Iran.

Here's the big one: Hormuz reopens under Iranian arrangements, meaning Iran keeps management of the strait.

The nuclear clause is Clause 9: Iran reiterates its commitment not to produce nuclear weapons. That's it. No enrichment cap. No dismantlement. No inspector access beyond existing frameworks.

The actual nuclear terms get negotiated in a separate 60-day window, and Clause 14 explicitly removes Iran's missile program and support for resistance groups from the agenda entirely. Permanently.

Iran's Deputy FM called it a total victory this morning. He wasn't spinning.

Source: Mehr News / Writer: Oliver

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 Northern Ireland farmer, 10 years on:

“I voted for Brexit in 2016 because I thought there were things I agreed with. But down the line, no. If I could do it over again, I would vote the other way.”

The £350 million a week for the NHS? “Absolute nonsense.”

Brexit is now a busted flush and the momentum is with BreJoin.

[Thomas Standfield @TStandfield1789]

Well, well, well.
Farage now plans to "cap the recruitment of foreign doctors to ensure that British patients are not being put at risk".
So foreign doctors are a danger to patients?
Stupid fucking racist twat!
Foreign doctors save lives every day in the NHS.
@Nigel_Farage