Rod Whiting

Broadcaster (@BoomRadioUK) | Comms coach | Military roots
🎙️ Fault Lines (Substack) – geopolitics & UK resilience | Member RUSI |
Not angry, just disappointed

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@daveedwards10 I did wonder. Glad you’re back in control.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

I have no idea what’s going on inside Trump’s head, not sure anyone does. But when a political leader spends more time fighting perceived enemies than advancing a coherent agenda, it’s usually a sign that something isn’t right. One wonders how much longer this can go on.

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

Trump has been having a hypomanic episode the past 24 hours. Post after post after post. All his trademark pathologies: Narcissism. Sociopathy. Paranoia. Sadism. All his trademark themes: Malice. Grievance. Division. Entitlement.
His gut is a simmering stew of agitation, rage, and desperation. His disordered brain is filled with paranoid fantasies of revenge alongside fantastical visions of regaining his grandiosity.
He hates being told his name needs to come off a building. He hates that musical artists are canceling from his show. He hates being trapped and stuck in Iran. He hates that Epstein won't go away. And he especially hates his own mortality.
Neither you nor I can EVER feel the kind of frenzied fear and fanaticism that Trump feels now. This is a man who knows he's in his final chapter.
He's confounded that he, all that he is, all that he ever said he was, his lifetime of secrets and lies and false constructs - is vulnerable to exposure.
How can he possibly sleep?
This is a malignant narcissist in decline. They always get worse, it's always messy, and they never want to go down alone.

[Sir Escanor (𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘚𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳) @EscanorReloaded]

CEOs are quietly realizing the AI replacement plan has a problem.
Two problems, actually.

One: the token costs for running AI agents are now exceeding what they were paying the employees they fired.

Two: when the tokens run out, the AI stops. Just stops. No continuity. No workaround. Just a spinning wheel where your workforce used to be.

You fired humans to save money and bought a subscription that bills you into a corner.

The employees you let go knew what to do when things broke.
The AI just invoices you for the outage.

And then there’s the permission problem nobody wants to talk about.

To do its job, the AI agent needs access. Full access. Your systems, your patents, your contracts, your future plans. Everything you spent years building, handed over to a process that has no loyalty, no discretion, and no skin in the game.

You didn’t hire a replacement.
You gave a stranger with no soul the keys to everything you own.

Enjoy.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Quite so. Every generation has its challenges. The 70’s made way for Thatcher - who will these times bring to the fore?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

You missed out three-day work weeks because of power blackouts, rubbish piling up in the streets, the dead unburied, six-month wait for a (nationalised) phone, 98% marginal tax rate, filthy trains, bloated, state-owned inefficient industries with the worst productivity in Western Europe, antediluvian technology, controlled by hard-left shop stewards, and constantly bailed out by taxpayers.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@LabourBerry @pambizbuster You can disagree with Blair on plenty - although he’s on point with much of his summary - but a comparatively junior figure so casually dismissing the views of the only Labour leader ever to win three consecutive elections feels more like swagger than than the substance we need.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Fascinating insight into White House sycophancy. One suspects Marco Rubio will also prove among the most agile when the day comes to rediscover his independence.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

This is amazing.

The New York Times put together a graphic of how much time cabinet members spend kissing up to Trump in meetings.

"On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents."

North Korea.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@FUDdaily Excellent point, Pete. As always the bean-counters see cost not value. There is also the operational factor, as evidenced with my local Waddington airshow. Our military is so stretched, that resourcing long term planning, administration and security around shows isn’t viable.

[John Wills @johndotwills]

A lot of time housebuilders get stick for failing to build 'the right number' of social houses as part of a development plan. It may help to get a little insight into how development economics works. You may find the below linked tweet interesting as well- it ties into what I am talking about here neatly: https://t.co/yCokc96TBP

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Encouraging and necessary words but ‘strong signalling’ butters no parsnips.

[Deborah Haynes @haynesdeborah]

BREAKING: Foreign Secretary @YvetteCooperMP has strongly signalled that the UK will increase defence spending even further, saying “any lingering cosy assumptions about our defence and security are gone. So too is the post-Cold War peace dividend”.
She said the UK must "face up to the need to do much more so we properly protect our citizens".
Speaking after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Ms Cooper said: “We discussed in the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting how Russia’s weakening on the battlefield against Ukraine is also making them more reckless and dangerous.
“In the face of that threat and the ongoing global instability, the NATO Alliance is vital and enduring, but within it Europe and the UK must do more. We have already been stepping up with significantly increased defence investment. But we have to face up to the need to do much more so we properly protect our citizens.
“Russia is now under huge pressure from Ukraine’s military response and from economic challenges, but that is making them more unpredictable with escalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians, increasing hybrid threats across the continent, and reports of drone incursions. The threat from Russia is increasing on air, land, sea, space, cyber and information warfare.
“Any lingering cosy assumptions about our defence and security are gone. So too is the post-Cold War peace dividend.
“That’s why we need to keep increasing our defence and security capabilities and maintain our support for Ukraine. NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history and now we need to keep building a stronger Europe within NATO. The safety, stability and prosperity of our citizens depends upon it.”

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@TimesRadio @StigAbell @KateEMcCann The plain truth is that successive governments have allowed our refining capacity to decline, relying on a global import/export model that has left us badly exposed. The government clearly sees growing pressure in energy supply chains. Reality bites.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

One can imagine the heated conversations inside Number 10 as public anger erupted over suggestions Britain was quietly easing Russian oil sanctions.

Muddled comms, yes, but reality bites.

My latest Fault Lines piece: 👇https://t.co/dQEwgW1mb1...?

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

APPLEBAUM: The war in Ukraine is really fault line between democratic and autocratic worlds. Russians are trying to destroy Ukraine as a nation, they want it to disappear.

As an empire, they want Ukraine to be their colony. And they understood perfectly well that by invading Ukraine, they were defying this liberal world order.

They were defying the rules of post-war Europe, because in post-war Europe decision was made after 1945: we are not going to invade each other anymore, we are not going to have wars.

Instead, we are going to decide everything by diplomacy, and borders will not be changed by force. And Russians understood they were breaking that norm when they invaded Ukraine.

They also invaded Ukraine because Ukrainians were using that powerful democratic language we take for granted. Putin said, “If they can do it in Ukraine, then people could do it in Russia. So, I need to crush this Ukrainian democracy movement.”

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Scaramucci has a point: Trump is more symptom than cause. The conditions that created him haven’t gone away. Expecting politics to “return to normal” after Trump is likely wishful thinking. An economic reset is overdue. It’s unlikely to be painless.

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

If it wasn’t him it would be someone else with the same narcissistic, populist impulses — because the underlying conditions that created him haven’t changed.

The median home in the US is $430,000.

You need about $150,000 in income to cover the mortgage and have any discretionary money left.

The median salary is $84,000. That’s a $50,000 gap.

Fifty years ago 80% of Americans could afford the dream.

Today it’s out of reach for at least half the country.

When people feel the system is rigged against them and nobody in power is fixing it, they check out.

When they check out long enough, someone like Trump comes along and becomes the avatar for all that anger.

They adhere to him even when he’s doing the exact opposite of what he promised.

The idea that when Trump loses power in 2028 things revert to normal — that’s not going to happen.

The conditions that created him will still be there.

Until we fix those, we’re just waiting for the next one.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Where are the comms advisers? Or should a politician really need one to explain that making comments like “Greenland was not on the map until Donald Trump put it on the map,”… while standing in Greenland… is at best crass, and at worst, pig ignorant?

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Greenland has been on the map since roughly the year 982, when a Norwegian called Erik the Red sailed there and named it. The Vikings. Not Donald Trump. Vikings with axes and no central heating.

It is the largest island on Earth. It appears on every atlas ever printed, every globe ever made, every satellite image ever taken. NASA photographs it from space on a daily basis. It has its own government, its own flag, its own capital city and its own deeply held opinion about not being owned by anyone in a red baseball cap.

The United States Air Force has had a base at Thule since 1951. Which means American military personnel have been eating terrible food and freezing their bits off on Greenland for 74 years, apparently without telling Governor Landry.

And yet here stands Jeff Landry, Governor of Louisiana, a man elected by actual human beings to run an actual American state, explaining to a Danish television crew that Greenland did not exist until 2025.

This is the intellectual foundation of the most aggressive territorial land grab attempted by a Western democracy since the Second World War. Not strategic doctrine. Not legal argument. Not geopolitical necessity. A governor who apparently believes the world’s largest island was invented by a property developer from Queens.

They want to take Greenland. They cannot find Greenland.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

Polls shift, but if this holds, Streeting will face serious questions about his judgement in stepping away from a senior cabinet role while raising trust issues ahead of any future appointment.

[Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky]

NEW - YouGov Labour members polling

If there is a leadership contest, your first preference:
Burnham 47%
Starmer 31%
Rayner 8%
Streeting 4%
Miliband 3%
Cooper 3%
Mahmood 1%
Carns 0%

Head to heads:
Burnham 59% v Starmer 37%
Burnham 80% v Streeting 10%
Miliband 58% v Streeting 28%
Rayner 70% v Streeting 19%

On Keir Starmer, should he:
Take party into next election 28%
Remain as leader until closer to GE 33%
Step down no / in months 33%

YouGov polled 706 Labour members, May 14-18

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

*Sighs*

[Jack Prandelli @jackprandelli]

Norway and the UK drilled the same North Sea.

🇳🇴Norway got $2 trillion.
🇬🇧The UK got tax cuts.

Same basin,Same era.... Completely different outcomes.

Norway captured $30 per barrel in government revenue. The UK captured $11.

That gap, compounded over 50 years of production, is the entire difference.

Norway's model was simple: tax heavily (78% marginal rate), take direct equity stakes in fields via the SDFI, own part of Equinor, and put everything surplus into a fund invested abroad.

The Government Pension Fund Global now holds over $2 trillion in assets.
That's $390,000 per Norwegian citizen about 1.5% of all listed equities on earth.

The fiscal rule: only spend the 3% annual real return. Never touch the principal.

The UK started producing earlier, at lower prices, with a lower tax rate (40%) and no saving mechanism.

North Sea revenues flowed straight into the general budget.

Economists estimate the UK missed out on roughly £400 billion compared to a Norwegian style regime.

The windfall largely financed tax cuts in the 1980s rather than a fund.

Where things stand in 2026?

Norway's petroleum sector will generate $63 bn in net cash flow this year alone feeding a fund already large enough to cover 10-15% of the national budget from returns alone.

The UK is a net energy importer.
Since 2021 it has paid countries like Norway more than £100 billion for gas.

One country treated oil as a finite resource to convert into permanent financial wealth.

The other treated it as income.

image source:eia

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@Microinteracti1 I believe that comes from a fake post. We don't need to use fake stuff. There's enough genuine evidence of his detachment from reality out there.

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

FUN FACTS!

• Mar 21: “48 hours or we obliterate them.”
• Mar 23: Extended deadline 5 days.
• Mar 26: Extended deadline another 10 days.
• Apr 4: “All Hell will reign down.”
• Apr 5: “We’re blowing up the whole country.”
• Apr 6: “The entire country can be taken out in one night.”
• Apr 7: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”
• Apr 7: Paused attack less than 2 hours before his own deadline.
• Apr 8: Announced ceasefire/talks.
• Apr 19: Threatened every bridge and power plant in Iran.
• Apr 21: Extended talks again.
• May 6: Claimed “great progress” toward a final agreement.
• May 15: Backed a 20-year enrichment pause.
• May 17: “There won’t be anything left of them.”

U.S. foreign policy should probably involve something more coherent than rotating apocalypse countdowns.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

@gregbagwell Genuine question, Greg, is there a case for selling one carrier to free up resources for more urgent capabilities? It would mean swallowing some pride, but might deliver a more balanced force.

[Rod Whiting @rodwhiting]

They knew exactly what Trump was.

[Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 watch this