Michelle Hazell

Tech editor, designer and knitter.

[caio temer @canalCCore2]

Essa é a buzina de nevoeiro de Sumburgh Head, um dos alarmes mecânicos mais potentes já construídos. Movida por motores a diesel de 44 cavalos que comprimem ar em tanques gigantescos, ela projeta o som a 32 quilômetros de distância para alertar navios no Atlântico.

[Michelle Hazell @knitstixnstring]

@canalCCore2 Beautiful!

[The Professionals @CI5BDC]

Mr Collins born 80 years ago today. #theprofessionals

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

“Let me be clear…I broke numerous promises. I invented a £22 billion black hole to punish pensioners, farmers, the disabled, small businesses and students. I tried to give away Chagos and pay £35 billion to do so. I increased unemployment. I increased the government deficit. I appointed Peter Mandelson despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein having already been published in various media outlets. I promised to cut energy bills and council tax, but instead, the opposite happened. I did absolutely nothing to resolve the cost of living crisis and made it worse by increasing the tax burden to record levels. I prioritised hanging out with the Davos / BlackRock clique rather than genuinely ‘fixing the foundations’. I promised a ‘transparency revolution’, but instead, operated under smoke and mirrors and sacked colleagues and threatened suspending Labour MPs who voted against me. I spaffed £30 billion away on carbon capture machines. I failed to sort out the small boats / hotels for illegal immigrants. £3 billion a year to Ukraine and big hugs from Volodymyr. I smeared anyone who dared to criticise me a ‘far-right’. I sanctimoniously lectured everyone like they were naughty children. And I have absolutely no intention of resigning after disastrous local election results because I am right and everyone else is wrong. Me first. Country second.”

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

They Still Don't Get It. And They Never Will.

The local election results are barely counted and the Labour messaging machine has already told you what to think. Chris Bryant says Labour must deliver the change the country desperately wants. Heidi Alexander says people voted for change in 2024 and want it delivered faster. David Lammy says the last thing Britain needs is Labour turning inward. They have misread the results so completely that the misreading itself is the story.

Sunderland fell to Reform after fifty years. Gateshead fell. Blackburn fell. Tameside fell after forty seven years. Wales, governed by Labour since devolution began in 1999, now has a Plaid Cymru administration for the first time. These communities and this nation did not vote the way they did because Labour was delivering its agenda too slowly. They rejected that agenda entirely. The small boats still coming. The dispersal of unvetted men into communities that were never consulted. The energy bills driven up by net zero dogma. The two-tier policing that jailed people for expressing views on immigration while sectarian marches went unchallenged. The grooming gang inquiry that victims say has been managed to minimise accountability rather than deliver it. The taxation of working people and family farms while billions flow in foreign aid to Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, regimes that stone women, ban girls from education and sentence apostates to death. The country that funds gender apartheid abroad while failing to protect its own women and girls at home has now delivered its verdict at the ballot box.

These are not policies the country wants faster. These are policies the country has rejected. The distinction is fundamental and Labour's entire leadership class has missed it. Starmer's response to the worst local election result in Labour's history is to bring back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman.

Gordon Brown was Chancellor when he sold 395 tonnes of Britain's gold reserves between 1999 and 2002 at near a twenty year low, a decision that cost the Treasury an estimated £7 billion at subsequent prices. He became Prime Minister and presided over the worst financial crisis since the 1930s before losing the 2010 general election. He is now being brought back as Special Envoy on Global Finance to advise a government that has just suffered its worst ever local election defeat. Nigel Farage's assessment was characteristically blunt. An unpopular Prime Minister who lost a general election is now seen by Starmer as the saviour. He meant Labour are doomed.

Harriet Harman has been appointed adviser on violence against women and girls. Between 1978 and 1982 Harman served as legal officer of the National Council for Civil Liberties at a time when the Paedophile Information Exchange held affiliated status within the organisation. In 2014 Harman expressed regret after this connection was reported. She denied supporting PIE or campaigning to lower the age of consent below sixteen. Those denials are on the record. What is also on the record is that a Prime Minister whose government lost the local elections in part because of failures to protect vulnerable girls from organised sexual exploitation has chosen as his safeguarding adviser someone whose name has been permanently associated with that controversy. The optics alone represent a judgment so poor it defies explanation.

This is the reset. Two figures from Labour's past, one associated with one of the most costly financial decisions in modern British history, one with one of the most toxic controversies in the party's recent record, brought back the morning after the worst local election result in the party's history.

The ministers and the Prime Minister are operating in the same closed loop. Same assumptions. Same conclusions. More of the same, delivered faster, by older faces with worse records. The country was clear on Thursday. This government cannot hear it.

[Jamais Vu 🏉 @boot15_vu]

Gordon Brown’s economic legacy is one of staggering incompetence, and two decisions stand out as particularly catastrophic.

First, the infamous sale of Britain’s gold reserves at rock-bottom prices — announced in advance to the markets, ensuring the worst possible return. It was amateurism on a grand scale.

But far worse was his assault on Britain’s pension funds. As Chancellor, Brown abolished the substantial dividend tax relief that pension schemes had long enjoyed. This stealth tax raid directly stripped tens of billions from the retirement savings of millions of Britons. By 2014, the cumulative loss to pension funds exceeded £118 billion. Had that money remained in the funds and been invested with even modest returns, the shortfall would have ballooned to over £500 billion. That is not a mere policy error — it is a generational theft from ordinary workers and retirees.

This was only the beginning of the damage. Under Brown’s “light touch” regulatory philosophy, banks were given free rein to pursue reckless casino banking. They gorged on securitised subprime debt and complex derivatives built on sand. When the inevitable collapse came, Brown’s response was classic: print money on an unprecedented scale through quantitative easing and slash interest rates to near zero. The result was a ballooning of public debt, distorted asset prices, and a decade of anaemic growth that punished savers while bailing out the very institutions his policies had encouraged to behave irresponsibly.

Brown’s decisions combined ideological hubris with economic illiteracy. He weakened the foundations of retirement security, undermined prudent regulation, and then papered over the cracks with borrowed billions and monetary manipulation.

The verdict is clear: this was not statesmanship — it was fiscal vandalism. Gordon Brown should never have been trusted with the nation’s finances. He couldn’t even be trusted with a school tuck shop.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Get him in the fkn bin. 🚮

Cc. @GordonBrown - I’ve posted this before and tagged you—anything to say this time?

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

History made. We won ten out of ten seats, with overwhelming majorities in every single one.

Great Yarmouth First, then we Restore Britain.

A very special day.

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

A bear’s cute reaction when it thinks the vet measuring its body is actually hugging it.

[Kate Shemirani @KateShemirani]

Just remember, in 2021, June 21 Matt Hancock stated that we were going to be the biggest organ donors in the world… Yes little old 🇬🇧!

Did you forget to opt out? You’ve all been opted in and are automatically organ donors unless you opt out. Remember, you cannot take an organ from a cadaver, from a dead body. You are very much alive and they prioritise your organs. You are paralysed but often Awake ! You just don’t live to tell the story.

You do however move but they try to tell you these are just spinal reflexes. Total nonsense … take a read and then opt out. This is the stuff of horror movies and many have refused to participate after witnessing this.

https://t.co/cbuSzJ3JkU

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Imagine being a family where both parents work full time, pay tax, pay their own full council tax bill, and still can’t afford a trip to the Tower of London or a day at the zoo.

Next door, a family on benefits can take the kids to the same attractions for £1 or a few pounds a ticket – the Easter “treats” that are a major financial stretch for working households become “remarkably affordable” if you happen to be on Universal Credit.

Ticketing platforms now openly advertise “Universal Credit days out” with massive discounts and special offers, while websites compile lists of the “top outings” for benefit recipients – the welfare state has mutated from basic support into a lifestyle loyalty scheme with its own privileges, perks and VIP access.

Politicians claim this is compassion, but there’s nothing compassionate about telling low‑paid workers they must pay full price while funding other people’s beach huts, bargain spa days and cut‑price leisure memberships.

That’s not social justice.

That’s a state‑sanctioned insult to the people who keep the system running.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The Undeclared Meeting. The Shared Client. The £750 Million Contract

There is a moment in this affair when the accumulating details stop looking like coincidence and start looking like something else entirely. Sunday's revelation about the Palantir meeting may be that moment.

On February 27 2025, Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson visited Palantir's headquarters in Washington. Eleven defence personnel attended alongside Britain's defence attaché to the United States. A presentation was given. A tour followed. The Ministry of Defence described it as a meeting. Downing Street says it was not a meeting and therefore required no declaration under the ministerial code. Both positions are on the public record and only one of them can be accurate.

The meeting was not logged in Starmer's transparency returns, while other engagements from the same trip were. Breaking the ministerial code is widely regarded as a resignation offence.

Set aside the semantic argument about what constitutes a meeting. Focus on what was present in that room. Starmer. Mandelson. Defence officials. And the executives of a technology company that was, at the time, a registered client of Global Counsel, the lobbying firm Mandelson co-founded and in which he held a 24 percent stake while serving as Britain's ambassador to the United States.

Global Counsel had been hired by Palantir in 2018 specifically to help procure UK government contracts. Mandelson retained his shareholding when appointed ambassador. The connection between Global Counsel and Palantir was reportedly absent from his vetting. Later in 2025, Palantir won a five year £750 million contract with the Ministry of Defence. Its MoD contract had already tripled in size without due process or competition. Palantir also holds a £330 million NHS contract and a total of 34 contracts with public sector bodies.

The question Alex Burghart has put publicly is the right one. Who arranged the meeting, what was discussed, and what did Global Counsel's client stand to gain? A third question deserves equal prominence. Did Starmer know, when he visited Palantir's headquarters with Mandelson at his side, that Palantir was a registered client of the firm in which his ambassador held a substantial financial interest?

Downing Street has declined to confirm whether Mandelson was directly involved in arranging the visit. The government says there are robust processes in place to ensure contracts are awarded fairly. Palantir says its latest MoD contract was first discussed before Mandelson became ambassador and signed more than three months after he was sacked. Both statements may be technically accurate. Neither addresses the central problem.

A British ambassador with a direct financial interest in a lobbying firm facilitated a meeting between the Prime Minister and that firm's defence contractor client. The meeting was not declared. No minutes were taken. The contractor subsequently won a contract worth three quarters of a billion pounds.

Each element of that sequence has an innocent explanation available to it. The combination does not. A man whose financial interests were supposed to be held in a blind trust while he served as the Crown's representative in Washington was present at an undeclared meeting between his Prime Minister and his lobbying firm's most significant defence client. Whether that constitutes a conflict of interest is not a complicated question. Whether it constitutes something worse is now a matter for Scotland Yard, which has been asked to widen its investigation into Mandelson to include the Palantir meeting.

Starmer is already facing a privileges committee referral for misleading Parliament. His own Cabinet Office chief has contradicted his account of the vetting process. A senior government source says the wheels have stopped turning.

The Palantir meeting was not declared. The contract was awarded. The question of who benefited and who knew is not going away.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

As someone who can’t stand the Tories and many of their former prime ministers, I never thought I would say this, but it’s a Labour prime minister that I can’t stand the most. Keir Starmer has betrayed the electorate with snake oil salesmanship and his love of freebies. He has punished farmers, small businesses, pensioners, WASPI women, child abuse victims and students. He focuses more on the corporate class of Davos, BlackRock and Bill Gates rather than serving the people. He’s failed to fix the cost of living crisis and instead deepened it. He’s the diametric opposite of what Labour used to stand for. And all wrapped around that bloody awful po-faced, sanctimonious manner of his. He’s totally disconnected from the mood of the nation. He’s the worst prime minister at exactly the worst time.

[🇬🇧📺 Classic British TV 📺🇬🇧 @Classicbritcom]

Nobody could pout like Bodie could 😎

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

Why Socialism Doesn't Work, Explained for a 10-Year-Old.

You're in a class of 30 students. One kid works like crazy and gets an 18 average. Another does nothing and gets a 4. The teacher decides it's unfair and gives everyone the class average: 11.

The one who had 18 stops working. Why bother if it changes nothing? The one who had 4 keeps doing nothing. Why work if you're handed 11 for free?

The next year the class average is 7. Then 5. Then 3.

The teacher doesn't get it. He thinks the problem is that the students aren't supportive enough of each other. So he starts punishing those who don't put in enough effort. He monitors everyone. He decides who studies what. He bans switching classes.

That's exactly what happened. Every time. In every country. No exceptions.

USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, Ethiopia, East Germany. 40 attempts. Same result. Every time.

Socialism punishes those who produce and rewards those who don't. Everyone ends up producing nothing. And when no one's producing anymore, the government uses force to make people work.

It's not an accident. It's the design.

- @brivael

[Simon Roberts @simon__roberts]

Found some BBC Transcription Discs - these are quite rare and were never issued, and usually destroyed - in a charity shop. 6 for £3.99

This is the classic TV Test Card type music or BBC Radio intermission 'and now for some light music' that you'd hear. These ones are from 1980.

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

For centuries, Florence has lit up Easter morning with literal fire

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Good Friday offers an important chance for quiet reflection - that applies whether you’re a regular churchgoer or not. For many millions, it holds deep religious meaning. For others, it is simply a reminder of the Christian values that have long shaped our country for the better.

Fairness, humility, compassion, responsibility, duty.

Sacrifice.

Vital recognition that not everything needs to be rushed, or argued over, or endlessly debated.

Some moments are better approached with a bit of much-needed perspective and thought.

Good Friday reminds us of doing what is right when it is difficult, and even when it is not the most straightforward path to take.

Because something worth doing is often not easy.

In today’s Britain, with all of the many challenges we face as a people, that feels more valuable than ever.

Wishing everyone a peaceful and reflective Good Friday.

[Norman Brennan @NormanBrennan]

BREAKING NEWS; @Keir_Starmer is to hold a Press Conference this morning at 10am outside No 10 Downing St where he’s expected to Apologise to the Nation for the lies & deceptions he told that got him elected & for the hurt & pain he has caused the nation since & is to call a General Election🤷‍♂️👍

[BruceUnfiltered @BruceUnfiltered]

This image says it all.
Top image: what you actually pay.
Bottom image: what fuel could cost without tax and VAT.
Unleaded shown at 143.9p becomes 67.0p.
Diesel shown at 166.8p becomes 86.1p.

That tells you exactly how much of the pain at the pump is government-loaded cost.
And then they wonder why people feel like they’re being robbed.