dfmalan

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

I don’t have any sympathy for Keir Starmer whatsoever, after as Director of Public Prosecutions he allegedly personally intervened to prosecute someone for tweeting a completely innocuous joke. I hope he spends his life in misery over what an abject failure he has been.

[Cut My Tax @CutMyTaxUK]

There are two worrying aspects to this New Statesman article:
1. Andy Burnham apparently doesn't have many brains.
2. Miatta Fahnbulleh is filling the gap.

Quasi-Marxist Miatta Fahnbulleh, who wants a wealth tax, widespread nationalisation inc. banks, land, transport & energy & the forced sale of existing firms to employees, is one of the worst people to put in charge of economic policy.

She's a high tax fanatic tax who wants there to be 'free basic energy' & for state owned companies to flood the energy market.
1/3

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

FIFA World Cup. One tournament. Endless connections.

[📹 ingvild_writes]

[Death Squad Commander @DeathSquadCdr]

Belfast Police: "You're under arrest"

Belfast Lad: "I don't think I am mate."

Chariot of Belfast

[Sam Ashworth-Hayes @SAshworthHayes]

The story in four parts

[Community Notes & Violations @CNviolations]

Holy! This is the coolest thing I've seen today!

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

https://t.co/j58CYkil13
Man attempts to behead another man in the street.

"No evidence of terror at this stage, say police"

If that isn’t terror, what is? How much more terrifying does it need to be to qualify as terror?

[Made In England @BuyEnglishMade]

HP Sauce: Parliament on the label, star of the full English, as British as it gets.

American-owned since 2005, and production shifted from its home in Birmingham to the Netherlands.

The English-made swap? Stokes brown sauce, made in Suffolk by a family firm. By all accounts, a cracker.

[Javier Blas @JavierBlas]

Energy factoid of the day:

The entire annual global LNG market equals to about six weeks of coal demand in China and India.

[Tomos Doran 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 @portraitinflesh]

Still one of the funniest things I've ever seen:

[Rt. Hon. Alan B’Stard MP @NoWayWoke]

This is going to run until the next election, isn’t it 😁

[Ian Leslie @mrianleslie]

Hard agree

[Scott Wortley @Scott_Wortley]

Via https://t.co/ZzfdxVOAW8

[Queen Bee @KingBobIIV]

The middle classes trying to “help the poor” by imagining them as a sort of wandering Mediterranean peasant tribe living entirely on quinoa, olives and preserved tropical fruit, is hilarious.

It reminds me of Orwells, The road to Wigan Pier where the "socialist, sandle-wearing nudists" couldn't understand why a bloke 3000 ft down a mine for 16 hours a day wouldn't just eat "carrots and brown bread".

You can almost picture the meeting in Islington now: Twelve Guardian readers in novelty glasses sat around a "rustic" reclaimed scaffold-board table discussing “food insecurity” while eating houmous made by a transman called Luca. Somewhere in the distance a Labrador named Atticus is having its pronouns inscribed on its collar, looking pittifuly at the bowl of vegan kibble in its bowl.

“Right comrades,” says Arabella, Senior Inclusion Consultant for the Department of Sustainable Snack Equity, “what do the working classes need most in this difficult economic climate?”

A silence falls.

Then Tarquin, who once saw a roofer buying a Monster Energy in Camden, whispers:

“Fonio.”

And suddenly the room erupts.

“Yes!”

“Brilliant!”

“That’s what poor people eat!”

“Can we get some ethically sourced candied fruit in there too?”

Before long the electronic whiteboard resembles the following:

AUBERGINES
QUINOA
PRESERVED TROPICAL FRUIT
PLANTAINS
BUCKWHEAT
GHERKINS
MIXED PRESERVED FRUIT AND NUTS
OLIVES FOR OIL PRODUCTION

Olives FOR "OIL PRODUCTION."? What the actual fk does that even mean?

When Dave from Doncaster is staring at his electric meter wondering whether to heat the house or eat, what he’s really crying out for is "easier access to industrial olive inputs."

No potatoes though - not proper ones. No.

“Processed potatoes”, which sounds less like food and more like something served in a prison during a chemical spill.

Who exactly are these people imagining when they write this stuff?

It certainly isn’t normal British people.

Working class mums aren’t wandering around Farmfoods muttering, “Ooh Sharon, thank Christ the tariffs are down on preserved citrus fruits, the kids were devastated.”

Nobody in a council estate has ever burst into tears with relief over the availability of “mixed fats and oils.”

No bloke has ever staggered into Greggs after a twelve hour shift fitting kitchens thinking, “I could murder some fucking fonio.”

It reads less like an essentials list and more like the contents of Mockney wanker, Jamie Oliver's dream.

The sheer detached insanity of the categories themselves:

“Plant based drinks.”

What happened to milk?

Is milk is now too "problematic"? We know cow farts cause concern but is milk now too "colonial", or "too bovine-adjacent"?

Instead the poor shall drink warm oat sludge made in a converted warehouse by a trustifarian and sociology graduate named Finbar.

Meanwhile actual British essentials are nowhere to be seen:
No tea bags, butter, sausages, bacon, chicken nuggets, fish fingers, frozen chips, cider, fags, painkillers, loo roll, pet food, Yorkie bars, Angel Delight or multipack crisps from Home Bargains .

Nothing remotely recognisable to the people this policy is supposedly for.

This isn’t about "helping poor people" , it’s about the middle classes fantasising about what they imagine poor people SHOULD be.

Ethical little vegetable consumers nibbling dried papaya while discussing decolonising air fryers.

The modern British political class genuinely believes poverty means not having enough avocados.

And somewhere in Whitehall there is probably a civil servant earning £84,000 a year who sincerely thinks a bloke from Barnsley is only three tariff reductions away from embracing quinoa.

The whole thing feels like it was written by someone whose only exposure to poverty came from watching Femi buying kids t-shirts.

https://t.co/htTRPS9Xri

[Nicholas Dawes @NicDawes]

Anyone who has travelled on a weak passport will celebrate investigative reporting into VFS global, the near monopoly intermediary that handles visa applications for 71 countries. https://t.co/ALB7KQM9e3

[Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence]

If you buy the new Ferrari Luce as a company car you can deduct 100% of the purchase price from your taxable profits…. So if your profits exceed £250k, buying a Luce would save you £125k in corporation tax. This ludicrous tax loophole is why so many new EV’s are sold. According to gov figures 78% of all EV’s are bought through a busienss. If this tax loophole didn’t exist the number of new EV’s being sold in the UK would be staggeringly lower.

[Paintings of London @PaintingsLondon]

'The Southwark Tavern in Borough Market' (2025) by Liam O'Farrell
https://t.co/wMy71EHYGU

[James Clark 📈📉¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @mr_james_c]

"But wind is free".

So much winning.

[Dux @DuxVul]

All Labour did was make private schools elite again

They cancelled scholarships, bursaries and summer holiday use of facilities for the community

Rich kids still go to private school, middle class kids don’t