Mike

Kindness, Honour, Common Sense, Unity.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

The past few days, I got my hands on thousands of new transcripts and hundreds of recordings, thanks to leads from @SKDoubleDub33 and @iamlisalogan .

You've heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits.

What you not have heard is - there is an operational plan to put it all into action. If the Democratic Party sweeps 2026, then DSA will become "foot soldiers" in constant clashes with the administration to cross a "red line" or invoke a "doomsday scenario" - meaning, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, probably sometime in 2027.

Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors. 2028 then becomes a vote on whether to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a "young and brown" demographic.

The mysterious group who's been coordinating 50501, Indivisible, and coordinating the NoKings protests is called "United Democracy Alliance" and their intellectual leader is Erica Chenoweth who came up with the 3.5% rule of nonviolent regime change.

Patience. I know I've hyped this more than anything else. It's genuinely the biggest discovery I've had. This is an enormous archive. This is only the beginning.

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

Every morning the mother photographed the twins while they slept.

[André GAP 🇧🇷 @AndreGAP]

O polvo percebe que está sendo acompanhado e usa seu talento que é a camuflagem.
Que perfeição Pai!

[𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 @Old_But_Gold50s]

Some melodies aren’t just meant to be heard, they can be experienced visually, too. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” offers a captivating blend of music and visual beauty.

[funny_kante @funny_kante]

Damn, this is beautiful to watch

[The Nowhere Photographer @thenowherephoto]

A child left behind, injured in the water, while his father gets onto the boat and leaves French lifeguards to save him.

What kind of father does that?

Crashing waves. Chaos. A child struggling in the water, while his own father boards the boat rather than staying to protect him.

I believe scenes like this expose the failures surrounding these crossings, from the charities involved, to the actions of the French authorities, to the decisions being made by the British Government.

People are becoming increasingly angry about what they are seeing.

I genuinely fear that if confidence in the authorities continues to collapse, some people will eventually try to take matters into their own hands.

To be absolutely clear, I am not condoning, encouraging or supporting violence in any way, shape or form.

Adrian

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@shadowcanman Thanks for all your amazing work.

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@LauraLoomer He is probably getting the Dolly the Sheep treatment now.

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@PeterMcCormack Exactly, when your spending is on the credit card, and you don’t own half your assets, you are not a rich country anymore.

[Jordan Crowder @digijordan]

Elon has shared this video multiple times.

There seems to be some urgency here…

What are they trying to tell us?

I’ve transcribed the full lyrics below 👇

Sweet land, sweet land of the weary and wild.

Oh where, oh where are you, my sweet?

The garden’s either dying or about to come alive.

The river’s either drying or it’s deep enough to dive.

Can’t tell if it’s the dusk or if it’s breaking into dawn.

Are we going on or are we going, going, gone?

Somebody said a storm is coming, but it’s been a long, long time.

I don’t know what’s up ahead, but please baby, don’t you look behind.

So tell me, is it going to be free energy forever, or just the same… damn… old… grind?

Singing, (sweet land) sweet land of the weary and the wild.

Are we one year from the grave, or is this just the beginning, my sweet child?

Oh, you’re my star-spangled fever dream, half a savior, half a liar.

250 summers and we’re going higher, higher, higher.

Singing, (sweet land, sweet land) going, going, gone?

The neighbors might be coming with a casserole or a gun.

The kids are either screaming or they’re laughing in the sun.

Is the timeline coming undone, or is it coming in clear?

The fireworks are blinding, but I’ll keep on dancing here.

And nobody can promise me that we’re going to make it to the light.

So is it an awakening, or is this a knife in the night?

So come on brother, sister, stand up tall, because guess what?

Where we go one, we go all!

If you can hear this
from the other side,
across this great quantum divide,
don’t get me wrong,
now is the time to stay strong.

So with all of that I’ll say,
God bless the USA.
God bless the USA.

Singing, sweet land, going on, soaring on.
250 years and it’s going on, on and on.
On the edge of a forever or the edge of being gone.

Is it midnight? Is it morning? Is it ruin?
Is it time to rise?

250 summers gone by,
so just go on and tell me those sweet lies.
The kind as sweet as these Julys.

(Sweet land, sweet land) Going on and going on,
(Sweet land, sweet land) I got to fight like FIRE.
(Fire) Fire.

(Sweet land, sweet land) going on, going on.
(Sweet land, sweet land) going, going, gone.

So please, just know that we can still rebuild.

We can still make something… Better.

👀

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@officialsammyuk @BGatesIsaPyscho Well done Sammy for shining a light on this horror, the stain shames our nation. Thank you for your bravery.

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@EssexPR Great fight, you can be very proud. Well done and enjoy retirement 🥊

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Labour risks being forced to seek emergency help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Britain lurches toward a debt crisis, leading economists are now warning.

Former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff says, in a new interview, that there is “more than 50:50 chance” of a major UK debt crisis before the end of this decade.

He is joined by Sir Charlie Bean, a former senior official at both the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who says the need for an IMF bail-out is now a “material risk” for the British economy.

I not only firmly agree with Ken Rogoff and Sir Charlie Bean – but have been repeatedly issuing the very same warnings for a very long time.

Because the grave risk of a major fiscal meltdown has been apparent for at least the last two years – to anyone who combines serious knowledge of UK economics and politics and global debt markets with an open mind.

The UK's public finances were already fragile when Labour took office back in July 2024.

But this government's misguided, ideologically-driven statist policies have made a bad situation much worse, seriously increasing the danger of a deep fiscal crisis - which would cause a disastrous state funding shortfall and a very nasty inflation spike.

That would result in Downing Street being forced to follow the orders of unelected technocrats flown in from Washington and elsewhere.

It would be a very major national humiliation combined with a deep economic slump and an even more intense cost-of-living crisis – in which low-income households, as ever, would suffer the most.

Yet those of us that have shown the brains and courage to point out these inconvenient truths over recent months and years have long been dismissed and derided for our trouble - not only by ignorant politicians and approval-seeking journalists but also the overwhelming majority of "leading economists".

Ahead of the general election in mid-2024, with Labour on course to win, the conventional wisdom among the great sages of broadsheet journalism and the economics establishment was that "the adults would soon be back in charge" ... Labour would "get lucky with the economy" ... and "Britain would now enjoy an extended period of political and fiscal stability".

I thought that was total nonsense – not least as I was well aware Labour's plans irresponsibly to increase borrowing and spending would be met with deep scepticism by the global pensions funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors that lend governments serious money.

My weekly @Telegraph "Economic Agenda" column of 23rd June 2024, a fortnight ahead of the general election, was a total outlier. I recounted the disaster of 1976 – when Britain was forced to go "cap in hand" to the IMF for a bailout – and warned that "The Ghosts of the 1970s" would haunt Labour's (so-called) economic resurrection".

Six months later, after the October 2024 "Hallowen" budget in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves did indeed sharply hike borrowing and spending, I assessed the market reaction then doubled-down – warning more assertively in my column of 12th January 2025 that "The UK risks a return to 1976 unless Reeves changes course".

And then again on 20th July 2025, as Labour's policies raised the costs of doing business, translating into price pressures which pushed up government borrowing costs even more, I again cautioned that "Inflation risks are taking Britain to the debt-crisis cliff edge".

"It’s now screamingly obvious that Labour’s crude Keynesianism – “pump priming” the economy by upping state borrowing and spending – isn’t working," I wrote in that column last July.

"Worse than that, this Government’s actions are pushing Britain towards a budgetary crisis every bit as serious as that in 1976 – when the UK was forced to go “cap in hand” to the IMF for a bail-out".

It's been a lonely task issuing these warnings. I've been hounded in public debates, slagged off by senior civil servants and often dismissed by "leading economists" as "alarmist".

So what do these same "leading economists" now say to Rogoff (Harvard Professor, Former IMF Chief Economist) and Bean (LSE Professor and Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England)?

The "economics establishment" – with very few honourable exceptions, the brilliant @jagjit_chadha among them – has been and remains extremely reluctant to point out the deeply unsustainable nature of this government's addiction to ever more borrowing.

The systemic fiscal dangers of evermore "tax and spend" – and the prospect of a serious spike in gilt yields and related fiscal meltdown – are now so real and present as to be completely undeniable.

Yet the UK government is about to shift even further to the left, pushing up borrowing and spending even more under a new leader, in a bid to appease the massed ranks of economic illiterates among Labour's Parliamentary party and activist base – making those dangers even more acute.

Yet, still, the silence among "public intellectual" economists is deafening.

I'm glad the likes of Ken Rogoff and Charlie Bean are now issuing clear warnings. So where is the rest of the "economics establishment" - those who purport to understand fiscal management and financial markets, and often funded by taxpayers' money?

Britain is now clearly in the crosshairs of a very serious danger. The government's creditors are increasingly fickle and based overseas – with no regulatory or cultural obligations to lend money to the UK government.

Those holding UK gilts are increasingly "speculative" rather than "strategic" long-term investors – looking for quick returns, financing their government bond purchases with "leverage" (money borrowed from elsewhere), which will quickly be withdrawn when senitment decisively shifts, causing a plunge in gilt prices and a sharp additional surge in government borrowing costs, setting up a vicious circle.

The UK government is very heavily indebted – and the global investors we rely on to bankroll a huge slice of our state spending are alarmed that of the £132bn the government borrowed last year, no less than £110bn was spent on debt interest – as I wrote in a column on 17th May 2026, "As Labour lurches further left, the markets are calling time".

Global investors are alarmed the UK has consistently had the highest inflation in the G7 (which pushes up borrowing costs) and has easily the highest share of index-linked debt (which magnifies the burden of inflation on the state's balance sheet).

And they are deeply, deeply alarmed that when Labour came to power in mid-2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting additional state borrowing of £323bn by 2029, the scheduled end of this Parliament.

But Labour’s runaway spending and growth-crushing tax rises mean that the same five-year borrowing forecast is now £583bn – 80pc higher. And still, the trade unions, MPs and Labour activists who will choose Starmer’s successor now want even more.

It is not too late to pull the UK back from the fiscal brink, to avoid the extremely painful and deep, lingering damage of being forced to go to the IMF and perhaps other multi-lateral creditors for a bailout.

It is not too late to avoid the inflation surge, the currency crash, the shocking blow to consumer and business confidence alongside the sky-high interest rates that will seriously whack our economy – or the perhaps even deeper damage of yet more of the British electorate losing faith in the ability of our establishment to manage the country in a manner that avoids imposing serious hardship on so many hard-working people simply trying to make their way.

But our political and media class needs to start acknowledging the economic and financial truth – that the UK government is borrowing and spending too much, taxation is now so high that it's hammering growth and employment, and that trying to finally get the economy moving by "moving further left", borrowing and spending even more, will result in a fiscal collapse.

Smart, experienced, high-profile economists need to start speaking out – as Rogoff and Bean just have – raising the alarm in a bid to force the broader establishment to face reality. Before it's too late.

If you've read this far, you clearly think this analysis is worthwhile and important. So please like and share.

And for more, read my "Economic Agenda" column in The Sunday Telegraph each week – and subscribe to "When The Facts Change: Economics and Politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@CEO4TAG Thank you Steve for running the club so brilliantly

[Neil McCoy-Ward @NeilMcCoyWard]

🚨Your pension is about to be raided and HMRC just confirmed how....

From April 2027, pension schemes will be allowed to withhold up to half of your retirement savings to cover inheritance tax. They can hold onto that money for up to 15 months while they work out what is owed

Pensions used to sit outside inheritance tax entirely. From April 2027 they get hit with the standard 40% rate like everything else

So your family loses up to 40% of what you spent a lifetime saving. The pension company sits on the other half for over a year before anyone sees a penny. Funeral costs, mortgage payments, school fees, none of it can be covered while the money is locked up

The policy was announced by Rachel Reeves in the 2024 Budget. The operational detail confirming the 50% withholding rule was quietly published by HMRC this week, with final guidance not due until spring 2027, weeks before the deadline

10,500 estates will be dragged into inheritance tax for the first time. Another 38,500 will pay more. Average extra bill, £34,000

And this is how these things always work. The threshold starts high, the public is told it only affects the wealthy, and the numbers stay frozen while everything else rises

The inheritance tax threshold has been stuck at £325,000 since 2009. House prices have nearly doubled in that time

Every year, more ordinary families get pulled in without a single rule changing

The government calls this closing a loophole. What it actually does is treat your pension like another revenue stream for the Treasury. Money you saved out of taxed income gets taxed again on the way out

If you have a pension, this affects you. Check what your scheme is planning before April 2027 arrives

Follow me to stay informed

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@MenInBlazers This is pretty awesome 👏

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@HJJ92_ This is fantastic.

[Wholesome Side of 𝕏 @itsme_urstruly]

This video never gets old... she was pure genius!

[Mike @shadowsanddust2]

@toadmeister @FedUpYorkshire Superb , well done 👏

[Joanna Hardy-Susskind @Joanna__Hardy]

This from @Geoffrey_Cox was titanic - a truly beautiful speech.

He outshone those sat opposite. They could only watch. And nervously laugh.

This should be seen by every new MP to understand what they do, & every new barrister to understand what we do.