Karl

Son of an Eastern European immigrant. Proud to be British. Anti EU before it was EU. #StandwithUkraine #StopRussia #PutinisaWarCriminal

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

He's not my "great hero". Sounds like your issue with Musk is his political views, not his wealth. You don't seem to be quite so bothered about the other multi-billionaire "tech bro's" who share your views. Just be honest and say you only approve of super-rich tech chiefs who agree with you.

[Liz Churchill @liz_churchill10]

The thing they say never happens…keeps on happening…

A 17-year old has been randomly stabbed in Britain…If you share this video, you’ll be called a racist…

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Someone’s guilt being judged by a group of normal people is our protection from an authoritarian state.

No wonder Labour hates juries.

[HIN News🇬🇧🇺🇸 @HerdImmunity12]

Watch as at least ELEVEN highly trained tooled up police officers struggle to handle ONE migrant with a knife.

Tens of millions of innocent untrained British men women and children are expected to deal with these monsters alone.

Please take all and every measure to protect yourselves and your loved ones. 🙏

[Brigitte Gabriel @ACTBrigitte]

🚨 SHAME!! Dutch police admitted they hid the identity of the Iraqi man who killed 14-year-old Tamar Boes because they didn't want it to help Geert Wilders politically.

A child is dead. A family suffered for 6 years. And the government's first instinct was to protect the narrative

[Teddy - PolyBackTest.com @Bitcoin_Teddy]

Elon Musk: There are no lords and peasants at Tesla. Everyone eats at the same table.

“I actually know the people on the line, because I worked on the line, I walked the line, I slept in the factory, and I worked beside them. So, I'm no stranger to them.

There are many people at Tesla who have gone from working on the line to being in senior management. There are no lords and peasants. Everyone eats at the same table. Everyone parks in the same parking lot.

At GM, there's a special elevator only for senior executives. We have no such thing at Tesla.

We give everyone stock options. Many people who are just working the line, who didn't even know what stocks were, we've made them millionaires.

And I just want to say that I'm incredibly appreciative of those who build the cars, and they know it.”

New York Times DealBook Summit, 2023

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

I’ve referred Lord Hermer to the Bar Standards Board.

He went after British soldiers despite warnings murder allegations were false.

He knew what he was doing: he sought "wriggle room if the killings did not happen."

It says everything that Starmer made him Attorney General.

[Sierra @Sierra_rak]

Why is there so much hate for Elon Musk right now?

He just became the world’s first trillionaire…

And suddenly everyone’s furious.

But this is the same guy creating thousands of jobs, building electric cars, reusable rockets, and pushing technology forward.

What exactly is the crime?

Succeeding? Innovating? Creating value?

I genuinely don’t understand the level of hate.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

This is an important post, worth reading in full. The BBC would seem to have a death wish when it comes to impartiality.

[Karl @karbier8]

But the BBC has started to thank viewers for paying the licence fee so that’s OK then!

Too little too late!

When the BBC abandoned impartiality and balance, and even saw fit to tamper with truth, it became the architect of its own downfall!

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The BBC Has Ruled. Brexit Damaged The Economy. No Further Debate Required.

The BBC's editorial complaints unit has decided that the negative economic impact of Brexit is now a settled fact. Not a contested judgement. Not one side of a live debate. A fact, in the same category as man-made climate change, requiring no balancing view.

The ruling followed a Radio 4 Today programme segment featuring Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, alongside Liam Byrne and Sir John Gieve, both long-standing advocates of closer EU alignment. All three agreed Brexit had damaged growth. The presenter, Katya Adler, did not challenge the premise or introduce a dissenting voice. A complaint followed.

The ECU's response is the revealing part. It acknowledged the segment failed to "acknowledge the alternative case" for pursuing opportunities outside the EU rather than realignment with it. That part of the complaint was upheld. But the central complaint, that three pro-EU voices agreeing with each other on air is not balance, was dismissed. The reasoning given was that this reflected "the consensus among economists" and there was no "significant body of economic opinion" on the other side.

This is worth pausing on. The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist. The institution that is legally required to be impartial has ruled itself the arbiter of which questions are still open and which are closed, and Brexit has just been moved into the closed file.

The economics itself does not support the certainty on display. The headline figure driving much of this narrative, an 8 per cent hit to GDP since 2016, comes from an NBER paper built on a "synthetic control" model that constructs a hypothetical non-Brexit Britain from a basket of comparator countries. The largest weighting in that basket, over 60 per cent, is the United States, a country currently riding an AI investment boom and a separate fiscal stimulus. The model also weights Estonia and Greece more heavily than France or Germany. On a straightforward per capita basis against France and Germany, the actual comparators, Britain's performance since 2016 sits roughly in line with both. An 8 per cent gap simply isn't visible. This is a model producing a number that then gets reported as "the consensus," which the BBC then cites as the reason no alternative view is required.

That loop, model produces number, number becomes consensus, consensus becomes fact, fact requires no balance, is the mechanism. It does not require a conspiracy. It requires an institution that has decided which conclusions are respectable and which are not, and which then treats its own prior decision as evidence.

The same posture has been on display all week. A government department can decide its diversity targets are lawful without seeking legal advice to check. A police force can decide a book about dismantling "inner white supremacy" is leadership training. A broadcaster can decide an economic question is closed and that deciding so does not breach its own impartiality rules. In each case, the institution marks its own homework, and the mark is always a pass.

None of this requires Brexit to have been a triumph. Britain's economy has genuine problems, most of them unrelated to single market membership. But a state broadcaster, funded by compulsory licence fee under threat of prosecution, has now formally placed one of the most consequential political decisions in modern British history beyond the reach of its own impartiality obligations. Reform's Lee Anderson called it being "blinkered by groupthink." The more precise description is an institution that has stopped being able to tell the difference between its own assumptions and the facts.

"The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist."

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The BBC Has Ruled. Brexit Damaged The Economy. No Further Debate Required.

The BBC's editorial complaints unit has decided that the negative economic impact of Brexit is now a settled fact. Not a contested judgement. Not one side of a live debate. A fact, in the same category as man-made climate change, requiring no balancing view.

The ruling followed a Radio 4 Today programme segment featuring Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, alongside Liam Byrne and Sir John Gieve, both long-standing advocates of closer EU alignment. All three agreed Brexit had damaged growth. The presenter, Katya Adler, did not challenge the premise or introduce a dissenting voice. A complaint followed.

The ECU's response is the revealing part. It acknowledged the segment failed to "acknowledge the alternative case" for pursuing opportunities outside the EU rather than realignment with it. That part of the complaint was upheld. But the central complaint, that three pro-EU voices agreeing with each other on air is not balance, was dismissed. The reasoning given was that this reflected "the consensus among economists" and there was no "significant body of economic opinion" on the other side.

This is worth pausing on. The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist. The institution that is legally required to be impartial has ruled itself the arbiter of which questions are still open and which are closed, and Brexit has just been moved into the closed file.

The economics itself does not support the certainty on display. The headline figure driving much of this narrative, an 8 per cent hit to GDP since 2016, comes from an NBER paper built on a "synthetic control" model that constructs a hypothetical non-Brexit Britain from a basket of comparator countries. The largest weighting in that basket, over 60 per cent, is the United States, a country currently riding an AI investment boom and a separate fiscal stimulus. The model also weights Estonia and Greece more heavily than France or Germany. On a straightforward per capita basis against France and Germany, the actual comparators, Britain's performance since 2016 sits roughly in line with both. An 8 per cent gap simply isn't visible. This is a model producing a number that then gets reported as "the consensus," which the BBC then cites as the reason no alternative view is required.

That loop, model produces number, number becomes consensus, consensus becomes fact, fact requires no balance, is the mechanism. It does not require a conspiracy. It requires an institution that has decided which conclusions are respectable and which are not, and which then treats its own prior decision as evidence.

The same posture has been on display all week. A government department can decide its diversity targets are lawful without seeking legal advice to check. A police force can decide a book about dismantling "inner white supremacy" is leadership training. A broadcaster can decide an economic question is closed and that deciding so does not breach its own impartiality rules. In each case, the institution marks its own homework, and the mark is always a pass.

None of this requires Brexit to have been a triumph. Britain's economy has genuine problems, most of them unrelated to single market membership. But a state broadcaster, funded by compulsory licence fee under threat of prosecution, has now formally placed one of the most consequential political decisions in modern British history beyond the reach of its own impartiality obligations. Reform's Lee Anderson called it being "blinkered by groupthink." The more precise description is an institution that has stopped being able to tell the difference between its own assumptions and the facts.

"The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist."

[joe lincs @lincslincs]

The full UK State Pension is now worth around £12,548 a year. That's less than half the earnings of someone working full-time on the National Minimum Wage, despite many pensioners paying taxes and National Insurance for 40, 50 or even 60 years.

Yet every time the Treasury needs money, the same voices appear demanding the Triple Lock be scrapped.

Why?

State pension spending is forecast at around £154 billion this year, but that supports over 13 million pensioners, many of whom rely on it as their primary income. Meanwhile, billions continue to disappear into failed projects, government waste, bureaucracy, consultants, quangos and policies that deliver little value to ordinary taxpayers.

The Triple Lock isn't some gold-plated luxury. It exists because politicians allowed the State Pension to fall behind for decades. Even today, a full State Pension is barely above the poverty line and is nowhere near a typical working wage.

If politicians want to save money, start with waste, inefficiency and failed spending programmes.

Leave pensioners alone.

They worked, they paid in, they built this country and they deserve dignity in retirement, not another raid on their income.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

A fiery question from Tim Loughton to Keir Starmer. He is in no position to teach about respect for women when he doesn’t even know what a woman is, fails to defend Rosie Duffield & “failed to prosecute rapists when he was in charge as DPP”. 🔥

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Bill Clinton: “I killed myself trying to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza and 97% of the West Bank. You name it. They turned it down.”

The Palestinians never wanted peace.

This must be shared every single day.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

This year the Home Office moved to stop expert sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand coming to shear British sheep.

The people who keep the animals comfortable were declared surplus to requirements.

For over a decade, around 75 of the best shearers on earth have flown in each spring on a simple visa concession. In a few brutal weeks they take the wool off up to two million sheep.

A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes. Hundreds a day. Calm hands, no panic in the animal. It is a global trade and a young body's game, and Britain has never grown enough of its own.

The official line? Fourteen years to train Britons, so the door is closing.

Here is what that tidy sentence ignores. A sheep must be shorn every year or she overheats, cannot move properly, and gets eaten alive by flies and maggots. Shearing on time is welfare, plain and simple, written into law and into the animal's own skin.

So a government that lectures farmers without pause about welfare has quietly made the most basic welfare task harder to carry out. After the outcry they allowed one "final" year. Then the experts are gone for good.

A sector already losing money on every fleece, already burning wool it cannot sell, now told it cannot even get the people in to take the wool off.

You could be forgiven for thinking somebody wants the British sheep gone.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

Trump: “I'm not a fan of your mayor [Sadiq Khan], a nasty person…He's done a terrible job, the mayor of London."

Starmer: “He's actually a friend of mine.”

Trump: "I think he's done a terrible job."

So awkward and yet so right and hilarious!

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

The Orwellian Online Safety Act is about to become even more censorious.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has announced that next week she will lay an update to the Online Safety Act in Parliament requiring services to take “quicker action” to remove content during “times of crisis”.

The Free Speech Union will be keeping a very close eye on it.

Who will decide what constitutes a “time of crisis”?

Could that include a climate crisis, meaning providers would be pressured to remove criticism of Ed Miliband’s Net Zero policies?

Given how damaging the Online Safety Act has already been to free speech, we have little faith that either this Government or Ofcom will exercise any new powers impartially.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

This is still the greatest video of all time.

Iranian state media: “No bomb can reach us because Allah protects us…”

*Moments later*

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

This government is clueless. From top to bottom.

To help Stephen out in his new role as food security minister - here is a photo of something that produces food and something that does not.

But does he know which is which?

[Alex Armstrong @Alexarmstrong]

This is beyond desperate. Keir Starmer has brought back a man he sacked for wrecking his government.

Then Boris Johnson days never got this bad. The government is literally a joke that’s gone on for too long.