Benjamin Radcliffe

[Adrian Hilton @Adrian_Hilton]

So.. a known Hamas operative named Mohammed Naim applied for asylum in the UK, was granted indefinite leave to remain, gained British citizenship, changed his name numerous times, proceeded to orchestrate acts of terrorism, and was then granted 100 years of anonymity. And we don't know the name of any minister, caseworker, lawyer, special unit, or tribunal judge who advanced his case, carried out vetting, or made any of these decisions. And we only know about him now because of the determination of an intrepid journalist and newspaper. Why hasn't he been stripped of his British citizenship and deported? Why are we giving sanctuary to known terrorists? Why are we protecting their identities for a century? Are we mad? This is not a conspiracy with no names, so who exactly is responsible?

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

Because the BBC is captured. This is an extraordinary piece of editing. It's as if the BBC is trying to memory-hole the October 7 atrocities. Uncle Stalin would be proud of them.

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

👏 @Eve_Barlow

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The Church of England and its pathetic Archbishop now so useless it can’t even manage to do due diligence BEFORE it hands out its award to a bin Laden supporter.
Which it did on the very anniversary of 9/11 as part of its efforts to turn its back on liberal western values and cosy up to medieval reactionaries.
I expect Hamas will be invited to Lambeth Palace for tea and cucumber sandwiches on Oct 7.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

🚨 The US Government has responded to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s consultation on its new media green paper, Watch This Space.

Under proposals in the green paper, social media companies would be forced to prioritise the promotion of what the UK Government deems to be “trustworthy” news sources, namely public service broadcasters like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. In turn, this could see alternative media outlets like GB News, The Telegraph and The Guardian demoted.

It is deeply chilling that the UK Government is even considering plans that could influence what content its citizens can and cannot see. What self-respecting democracy thinks it should decide what constitutes a “trustworthy” news source?

The US Government has raised a number of concerns about the impact these proposals could have on US-headquartered businesses operating in the UK, but, most importantly, it has raised many of the same free speech concerns that the Free Speech Union has voiced.

This is an attack on free speech and independent journalism. It also risks allowing future governments — both left and right — to impose greater censorship and regulation on online platforms and news outlets.

The US Government has called on the British Government to withdraw these plans. The Free Speech Union shares this plea and urges the Government to abandon these Orwellian proposals.

[Kirstie Allsopp @KirstieMAllsopp]

The idea that we now have a government that is actively discouraging people from improving their homes blows my mind. It seems care for your home, your street & your community is no longer regarded as a positive. You cannot tax people for improving their environment, it is wrong.

[Alastair Hilton @London_W4]

In 1922 the British Empire was larger than at any point in history. It extended to 24 percent of the total landmass of the whole world. At this time, the government had 300-350,000 civil servants. They had no computers, no electric typewriters, no calculators. Calculations that would take seconds today would take minutes or hours. Research that would take seconds today would take days and yet those 300-350,000 were able to do everything necessary to run a quarter of the planet. Today the British government employs 557,000 civil servants with computers and modern technology to run only Britain. I can’t help thinking that maybe we’re employing too many civil servants.

[Handre @Handre]

Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow.

No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it.

This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in.

Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again.

What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive.

The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn't weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.

[Russell Quirk @russellquirk]

£280m is the estimated cost to set this tax up and to administer it, physically value a sample of properties, fight appeals, deal with litigation etc.

Against a projected income to HMRC of £400m, assuming a 100% collection rate. For what will be just two remaining years of this government.

What a stupid idea.

Perhaps this is more of a political, ideological tax than a practical one?

https://t.co/Qc0qVSvRFg

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

What do graduates earn - by uni and by subject?

HMG knows, but only publishes a redacted and unreadable LEO database.

FWIW here's my attempts at a grad-salary reader (which I used for my Times column today): https://t.co/mF9fPCVUZE

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

A business owner wants to buy some sunglasses for £120…

Step 1. Make a £1,320 sale

Step 2. Pay the £1,056 of operating costs

Step 3. You have £264 of pre-tax profit (20% margin)

Step 4. Pay £66 corporation tax

Step 5. Pay the £198 dividend

Step 6. Now pay £78 dividend tax

Step 7. £120 in your bank account to buy sunglasses of which
£20 is VAT and £100 is the actual goods

So for a business owner with 20% margins to buy £100 of goods they had to deliver £1320 of value and pay £164 of tax.

… And then they call you greedy for not wanting to be taxed more.

[kira 👾 @kirawontmiss]

Argentina not even here to play the game they just wanna commit WWE style tackles

[kira 👾 @kirawontmiss]

How the Argentina team plays and somehow gets away with it

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

How am I just learning that chipotle is a dried jalapeño

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

🇬🇧 THEY TOLD YOU A STORY. 🇬🇧

Colonisers. Slavers. Oppressors. And you were supposed to feel ashamed.

Not for what you done... But for WHO YOU ARE. 🇬🇧

So we tested it. Britain wrote everything down, so we opened the books. 📖

Turns out fewer than 1 man in 10 could vote in the year Britain banned the slave trade. No woman could. Your ancestors could hang for stealing a sheep, get shipped across the world for petty theft, or go down a mine at 8 years old. In Manchester, the average age of death in a labouring family was 17.

They weren't running the slave trade. They were underneath it too.

Which is what makes what happened next worth knowing.

In 1772 an enslaved man named James Somerset walked free from an English court, because English law couldn't hold a slave.

In 1791, 300,000 families just stopped buying slave sugar. No march, no riot, just a decision made at 300,000 kitchen tables.

In 1792, 519 petitions carrying 390,000 names hit Parliament, most signed by people who couldn't vote themselves.

In 1807, Britain banned the trade.

Then the slave owners sent Britain a bill for the 800,000 people they still held. 💷 £20 million. About 40% of the entire government budget at the time.

The Treasury says it wasn't paid off until 2015. So if your family paid British tax before then, they helped buy 800,000 people their freedom.

From 1808 the Royal Navy spent 60 years hunting slave ships at sea: 1,600 stopped, 150,000 people freed, and 1,600 British sailors dead, mostly of disease, buried thousands of miles from home. ⚓

In 1816 they ended two centuries of Barbary corsairs enslaving Europeans.

In 1896 a war that lasted 38 minutes ended slavery in Zanzibar. 🇹🇿

Almost every country on Earth outlaws slavery today.

That fight was paid for largely at British expense, by British hands.🇬🇧

So why haven't you heard any of this?

Because within living memory, someone rewrote the story. You got taught the crime. Not the cure.

The powerful exploited the world. They exploited their own people first. It was those people who ended slavery. 🇬🇧

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

History got rewritten once, in living memory, by no one who was ever named or held to account.

We are ordinary people doing what ordinary people have always done. Opening the books. Refusing to look away.

This is how we fight back. Fact by fact. Story by story. Name by name.

We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you in it.

If you can afford to support what we do: https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[ElBuni @therealbuni]

Noruega elimino a brasil y el ejercito subió un video haciendo el festejo vikingo

[David Davis MP @DavidDavisMP]

This is a total disgrace.

It is absolutely not the role of the police to intimidate members of the public - especially while openly admitting no law has been broken.

An affront to free speech and a massive overstep of authority.

The public expects the police to focus on real crime, like stopping burglaries, not squandering taxpayer funded time and abusing their powers by actively undermining free speech.

https://t.co/gzBXywJy3m

[voided @voided]

The moment you realize what life looks like for people who don't know anything about AI, Politics or the Economy.

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

Age 11 - feel free to block puberty.

But whatever you do, don’t go on social media until you are 16.

We have lost our bloody minds. 🤯😵‍💫

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

I can understand the UK's various nations having their own teams for the World Cup. But what really gets me is that there's absolutely zero rhyme or reason to what happens for any particular sport: