Pete

When I have nothing to say my lips are sealed..

[Tim Vine @RealTimVine]

@mattforde @England I haven’t got to that position of optimism yet. I was feeling that way when Gordon scored but after losing the game the way we did the flame didn’t just go out. Someone took the candle of hope from me and buried it in an undisclosed location.

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@ChelseaFC The club and this page; run by absolute idiots!!

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

Cannot understand a word Wayne Rooney is saying. Any chance @BBCSport could replace him with Thomas Hitzelsperger?🤷‍♂️
#ENGDRC

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@GenTXer2 The legendary Humble Pie, the original line-up with Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, Jerry Shirley and Greg Ridley. If you like British heavy 1970s blues rock give yourself a treat and listen to their live album, Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore👍😃

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There's a quiet coup under way in Britain, and it's not being led by mobs or tanks. It's being carried out by a government that has found a cleaner route to power: remove the public from politics, shutter the ballot box, and rule without interruption. Starmer's administration has delayed four mayoral elections for two years, on top of the previous postponements that already pushed votes back by a year. Add up the constituencies and timeframes, and you reach the blunt fact: millions of citizens are being stripped of the right to cast a ballot until the government chooses to permit it.

The excuse – "local authority reorganisation" – is the bureaucratic fig leaf regimes have always used to hide naked political self-interest. Labour claims it needs more time to "streamline" councils, as if democracy can be put in storage while Whitehall rearranges its paperwork. Yet if reorganisation were the real aim, the delays would be months, not years. Two years is not "administrative delay." It's a quarantine imposed on the electorate so the public cannot punish its rulers.

This is how democracies rot in the West. Not through force, but through rulers learning they can govern without consent. Starmer and his ministers talk endlessly of "restoring trust." They do the opposite. They extend councillors' terms from five years to seven. They install new super-authorities with no mandate. They insist votes can wait until the government has finished imposing reforms no one ever voted for.

The pretence that this is about "cost-saving" insults the public. Britain's ruling party has found £40bn for tax hikes, billions more for boondoggles, consultants and pet schemes, but claims it cannot afford elections because boundaries are "in transition." The truth is simpler: elections are expensive for governments that are losing. They cost legitimacy. They cost power. They cost heads.

What is corrosive is the normalisation of this power. Postpone one vote, then another, then a third, and the right to elect local government becomes conditional, subject to political convenience. A former Labour minister has admitted that trust has been "squandered." That is polite language for a colder truth: this government has decided the public must not interfere.

Britain isn't a dictatorship – yet. But the road bends that way. Centralisation. Mergers. Extended terms. Elections pushed into the long grass. A government that promised competence has discovered a harsher creed: power, once taken, will not be surrendered.

They claim to be reorganising councils. In truth, they are reorganising the people who vote for them. The public is being told to wait, to shut up, and to accept rule without voice.

Labour isn't reorganising democracy. It's rationing it. And once a government learns it can suspend elections without paying a price, it will do it again. And again. Until voting becomes a novelty, not a norm.

Democracy delayed is democracy denied. Britain is now learning how easily both can be done – with a press release and a shrug.

"Add up the constituencies and timeframes, and you reach the blunt fact: millions of citizens are being stripped of the right to cast a ballot until the government chooses to permit it."

[Raksha @caraksha103]

once Gmail decides your storage is full, it's over, no amount of deleting matters

[Matt Cartoons @MattCartoonist]

My latest cartoon for tomorrow's @Telegraph

Buy a print of my cartoons at https://t.co/ILFJjPmckx

Original artwork from https://t.co/bVPAkgE34y

[Anon Opin. @anon_opin]

We don't talk enough about how rubbish "8 out of 10 cats does countdown" is, maybe out of respect for Sean lock. They stole a popular show's format, because theirs doesn't work, and killed it with scripted set pieces, shouty characters and Jimmy-fucking-Carr

[Mark Hammond @MarkHam80780803]

“You boy! I’m naked from the waist down but it’s due to a medical condition.”

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@depressionlesss 🤣🤣

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@historyrock_ Hard Loving Man

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@historyrock_ Yes, totally agree with most of these, but you cut this clip off just before Ritchie’s solo!😫

[Briggs on Beer @BriggsonBeer]

How very true. Well said. 👏🍻

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

@RnRNationlive @RnRliveRadio Speed King - Deep Purple

[BAG 🍃💚 🍃 @Billericay_AG]

This accessible and biodiverse area - a 'green wedge' reaching the High Street architectural Conservation Area must survive. Thousands of people use the gorgeous footpath 'Furious councillors unite to object against 250 homes on south Essex green belt https://t.co/24j5i3wop8

[mick @Estreetman60]

Breaking | The CPS have authorised criminal proceedings against X users that use ‘your’ incorrectly instead of ‘you’re’.

[Pete @bluedjlatte]

Am planning to say Hussar! and take a drink every time @BBCSport say Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price’s name in full today. I expect to be paralytic by 6pm!🥴

[Billy @_billyreid]

Olympic athlete: *Makes one tiny mistake*

Me: "Pathetic"

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

This is actually the Labour party right now.