TobyBailey - will follow back

Late starter to Uni @ 50. Joined OBU and thought I’d start with something simple like…. an MBA. (Probably cos I wasted 20 yrs before I got into recovery)#FBPPR

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

Thank you @Femi_Sorry for this clear take down of Brexit.

[Femi @Femi_sorry]

#BrexitDisaster

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

A clear analysis of what will happen should Reform gain power. Yet missed the impacts on workers rights, and minimum wage. Or the removal of the NHS… https://t.co/z7OVgLThQg

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@DavidLewis40051 @JoJoFromJerz Your naivety and ignorance on this is beyond comprehension. Art has been a driving force throughout human history for bringing about change.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

You'll want to be sitting down for this bit.

Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends.

And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence. 👇

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@VeryBrexitProbs @SueSuezep Literally turkeys voting for Xmas…

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@PaulTaylorIeng @justdavenow89 @Nigel_Farage @reformparty_uk Yes…. Like Turkeys voting for Christmas…

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

I need 100,000 signatures to win a parliamentary debate about the ownership of the water industry.

Do your thing internet.

https://t.co/kZz1cXBtz3

[Ivan Katlianik @katlianik]

Find out who to vote for in May. Created a quiz matching you with a party that suits your views. Free, open-source, no data collection.

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@AdamJ10812 @premnsikka See Finland.

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@RosesJB1 @justdavenow89 Real change? Do dig deeper. They want lower taxes for the elite. They want lower wages for the poor. Why do you think this is real change?

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

THREAD THREE of CALLING OUT PROPAGANDA (numbers 30 to 39)

CALLING OUT PROPAGANDA No.30

“THAT’S A CONSPIRACY THEORY!” is a comment designed to ridicule, without needing to engage with an argument – and to warn others to stay away from the subject.

SOME conspiracy theories may be rightly dismissed as “nuts” and fit for sneers about “tinfoil hats”. But others should not be so easily dismissed.

People with power absolutely do conspire together in their mutual interest. It would be strange if they did not.

Adam Smith, father of economics, famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Here are just a few events previously derided as “conspiracy theories” which were or are “conspiracy facts”:- Watergate; various CIA coups; suppression of facts by the asbestos and tobacco industries about how their products are fatal; undercover police in protest groups; suppression of facts by the fossil fuel companies about the climate crisis.

Michael Parenti is funny and trenchant:
“[They mock]: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?”

For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever.

And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists.”

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@BNGardnerUK @jneill @PolitlcsUK There were complaints from multiple employees. And still you refuse to explain why you refused to complete your DEI training.

[TobyBailey - will follow back @bailey_toby]

@FUDdaily @eng_dad Well… you need to read more…

[The Receipts UK ♿ @david_hollas]

Richard Tice lent his own party £1.4 million through a private Mayfair investment company. The Companies House accounts never once named him. Three years running, the auditor signed them off.
We've identified specific discrepancies between the Electoral Commission loans register and the 2023 accounts. A £40,000 loan filed under the wrong reporting period. A £613,000 debt-to-donation conversion that doesn't appear in the 2024 filing. A statutory auditor who named Tice in the going concern paragraph but not in the related party note.
We sent right of reply letters to Richard Tice, Reform UK, and their auditors CK Partnership on Wednesday morning. The deadline passed today. None of them responded.
A Freedom of Information request has been submitted to the Electoral Commission seeking the submission history of the anomalous loan entry. Ref: FOI 046-26.
Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates has described the quality of Reform UK's financial reporting as poor.
Full investigation publishes tomorrow morning.

[Woke Lefty 🫣 @SalfordMe2023]

Some things Nigel won't tell you as he heralds this 'great victory'

The sitting councillor, who was also England's longest serving councillor died.

Normally, when a death happens within six months of an election, the election takes place with the others.

Reform used an old law to force a by-election at a cost of £20,000 to the taxpayer.

This took place before David had even been buried.

The turnout was 17% - reflecting the apathy and disgust felt by residents.

On May 7th, the people of Barton and Winton will once again be asked to vote, just like everywhere else.

This was a stunt that cost Salford council, and therefore the the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds.

Michael Felse, the councillor who 'won' last night got 676 votes compared to Labour's 643.

Reform are to be congratulated though - they seem to finally be becoming LGBTQIA+ friendly

Mr Felse was parade queen at Manchester Pride in 2011.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.