dan guerche

just taking a rest for a while.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇬🇧 A van driver in Kent saw armed police chasing a suspect on foot, pulled over, told the officer to get in the back, and just drove them after the guy.

They caught him.

Absolute legend move.

Writer: Oliver

[Sam @SamCKx]

If Keir Starmer does resign, history will look back on his reign and scratch its head as to why the hell he was so hated.

On paper, he's probably delivered more to working British people in such a short time than any PM for decades.

After inheriting an absolute mess: NHS waiting lists fallen. Worker's rights improved. Rail operators nationalised. Improved relations with EU and improved UK's global reputation. Removed non-dom tax status. Halved childcare costs. Boosted state pensions. Lowest homicide rate in 50 years. Lifted 550k children out of poverty. Immigration vastly reduced.

We are in the age of billionaire funded misinformation, whose sole purpose is to topple democratically elected leaders, and insert leadership that favours the wealthy elites over the working people. Looks like the game plan is working...

[The Goodman Report @TheaGood]

Queen Victoria's descendant didn't notice he'd knocked a cyclist down http://t.co/ndJWYdNJSF YUPPIE STOCKBROKER

[Hassan Mafi ‏ @thatdayin1992]

A blue whale's poop can weigh as much as 4 tonnes, making it the second largest piece of sh!t in the world just behind Donald Trump.

[Blonde of War (JJ) @BlondeOfWar]

The number of times I have watched this is bordering on obsessive.
I’m ded. ☠️
Send help. 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣

[aijamayrock @aijamayrock]

My waiter had dementia and forgot my order.

I visited a cafe in Japan that ONLY hires people with Dementia. It's called the Cafe Of Mistaken Orders.

Sometimes the servers bring you the wrong food, never bring your order, or sit down and join you instead.

But the point of this cafe is to be a place for dementia patients to feel needed and have purpose.

And this cafe is working. Japan has discovered that being socially connected actually slows down the progression of dementia.

So now there are 8,000 dementia cafes all over Japan!

The U.S. should be more like Japan. We should keep elders out of nursing homes, find ways to give them purpose, and part of society until their last days.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Ed Davey and Keir Starmer throw jokes at one another #PMQs

ED, "Labour now seems to be investing in a new weapon of war, long form essay. It gives another meaning to the phrase, drone warfare"

*uncontrolled fits of laughter*

"Tony Blair says the UK should suck up to Donald Trump, cow-tow to US tech barons, and go slow on Europe.. Blair also claims the sensible people aren't radical and the radical people aren't sensible"

KS, "I'm surprised he hasn't done more to welcome the savings we're delivering for family fun days out this summer"

"I really thought he'd be delighted for the cheaper tickets for soft play"

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Britain has gotten poorer over the last decade. Brexit didn't work.

Disposable income has fallen more than in other European countries and certainly more than in the US.

They cut their nose off despite their economic face, a populist, nationalist, emotional decision, and now they're stuck because you can't get the same deal with the EU you once had.

People are done with both parties and they want to throw the bums out.

Now Farage is rising. I've met him and think he’s a con.

Go read his economic proposals — some of them are hate-based, some are tribally based.

Farage's broader economic proposals are populist noise that will make the country weaker and hurt the very people supporting him.

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

I was an uptight 32-year-old who'd just left Goldman.

Barely any money when I started my own business.

So naturally my pompous little ass joined the Harvard Club — I wanted people to know I went to Harvard.

Four years of breakfast meetings, prospect after prospect.

Meanwhile Joaquin is busing my table every morning.

We'd chat often and I tipped well.

One day he comes over and says — Mr. Anthony, you manage money, right? We've had a personal injury situation.

My family just came into $35 million. You've always been kind to me.

Would you manage it?

The guy busing my table had a higher net worth than I did.

Be good to people. All of it comes back around.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Caroline Lucas of the Green Party reckons that Water needs to be Renationalised.

RT if you know it has to be.

[Jaia @Jaiathalien]

I found out the meaning behind “Annie are you okay” and I must admit Michael Jackson is one of the smartest minds the world has ever seen

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

Nigels' Dodgy Donations.
https://t.co/CHb4VKcq2E

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

[Jon Snowick @mcdev]

#WHCD #ShotsFired

[The Daily Show @TheDailyShow]

.@jonstewart has seen Trump's Iran negotiating skills before in "The Art of the Deal"

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

RFK Jr: "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."

[Gabriel Pogrund @Gabriel_Pogrund]

Tice, who said Angela Rayner would resign if she had "any moral decency", did not respond to our latest inquiries about his tax affairs or even acknowledge receipt. Nor did his lawyer or Nigel Farage's team.

However, he has now posted a statement saying of his wider affairs: "Naturally I am always happy to put things right and if numbers need rechecking, of course I will pay what is owed - be that more or less."

Where does that leave us?

- Story #1: Tice avoided £600k in corporation tax by classifying his company as a real estate investment trust in unusual circumstances and benefitting from a loophole meaning he did not have to meet technical rules that otherwise applied. Tice accepts this, and said everyone should seek to avoid as much tax as legally possible.

- Story #2: Tice broke the law by failing to pay at least £92k - or, per further analysis by @DanNeidle, £120k - in withholding tax before paying incorrectly large dividends to himself and his off-shore trust in Jersey. He says the dividends he personally received meant he ultimately paid more income tax, meaning HMRC received the money it was owed, or even more. He has not provided any evidence for this or addressed what tax the trust paid. He has dismissed the fact the law was broken - and the accompanying fact that the company still has an unsettled tax bill - as a "technicality". Farage, when asked to evidence Tice's claim that HMRC received equal/more tax, snapped at a reporter and demanded she provide a "lecture" on the nature of real estate investment trusts.

- Story #3: Tice failed to pay ~£100k in corporation tax on dividends deposited in four shell companies he owned and which were part of a group which donated huge sums to Reform. Last month he gave us contradictory stories as to why dividends were not taxed. a) He said they were tax-exempt. (They were not in this case.) b) He said the parent group suffered losses allowing tax bills to be offset. (This is not the case.) He did not respond to further inquiries which we sent yesterday morning.

Overall, the evidence indicates Tice used unusual measures to avoid £600k, and failed to pay up to £220k on tax owed. Per @DanNeidle the underpayments mean the firms are vulnerable to HMRC investigation which could lead to required repayment plus interest and fines.

[Patriotic 🇬🇧 Nation @HoodedClaw1974]

Amazing scene from Yes Prime Minister where PM Jim Hacker unknowingly lied in parliament due to the civil service.

Sir Humphrey as usual tries to blind him with big words.🤣🤣

You can just picture this sort of thing going on with Starmer behind the scenes about Mandelson.

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

The 'Rhodesia Solution': How to use word tricks to 'disclose' a scandal to a Prime Minister while allowing him not to act. And to say, later on, that he wasn't really told...