Joe Lynch

The number of commentators/journalists salivating at blaming Starmer for ruining the “special relationship” is genuinely pathetic

If anyone ruined it- if it even really exists- here’s a reminder of who did it.

I've said for many years that the alternate timeline where the AV referendum passed would be extremely different. The 2017 GE would've been totally different under ranked choice.

If GDP per capita is the only thing Reeves and those around her are focussing on then it's going to lead to another massive backlash. No government can afford the perception of "pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining".

One of the reasons Brexit happened was the disconnect between the political class saying "the economy is going just great" vs lived experience of most people after 2008.
The remain campaign boiled down to "don't do this, it'll damage the economy": "fuck the economy" wasn't entirely unreasonable

Fare dodgers targeted as train ticket refund rules are tightened In a bid to clamp down on ticket fraud that costs the railways millions each year, the government has quietly changed the rules on claiming refunds for unused train tickets.

DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE!
On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules.
Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel.
If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets.
www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...

Per the Grauniad: “US says Iran’s ‘reckless’ attacks threaten regional stability”

We are at the absolute apex/nadir of “when it comes to the far right, every accusation is a confession”

Danny Kruger is one of the many far right ghouls whose takeaway from The Handmaid's Tale was "Gilead sounds like a great idea"
If you value your freedom, Reform need to be kept away from the levers of power

It almost certainly is. One only needs to spend a couple of hours on r/ukpolitics to get a glimpse of how much he's funding an astroturf campaign.

And before anyone jumps in to my replies with examples of the British state doing just this, I'm talking about this in terms of the perception of the British people. It's why the Windrush scandal caused such grassroots outrage when the scale was revealed.

The value which most underpins the sense of Britishness is, in my opinion, fairness.
Whatever position one holds on the paths to British residency and citizenship, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that retroactively changing the rules is as un-British as it's possible to get.

I like the idea of an IE or DE type presidency where we elect someone just to host visiting heads of state, protect the constitution, but also act as an anti-corruption champion. Non-partisan and squeaky clean (Gary Lineker, @martinlewis.moneysavingexpert.com, @countbinface.bsky.social)

I'd wager that the palace was informed of the strength of the case against Andrew shortly before the process of sidelining him and stripping him of his titles began. If they'd arrested him as HRH they'd have been stuck as stripping him of rank might be prejudicial, so it's all choreographed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: an actual Online Safety Act needs to ban algorithmic content and recommendations unless one explicitly asks the site/app in question to please provide me with that content.
Banning X's "for you", FB recommendations, and YouTube/TikTok autoplay is essential.

Problem is high earning graduates from non-wealthy backgrounds pay a much higher effective tax rate than their peers w/ inherited wealth. The student financing regime has become a barrier to social mobility: it makes it harder to move from home rental to ownership at a key time in the life journey.

Build the Rail! Save the Snails! How to speed up the planning system without trashing the environment

This is very convincing on why British planning is such a mess samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

I've theorised for many years that a big dividing line in society is between people whose opinions are shaped based on the content of what's being said, and those whose opinions are shaped entirely on whether or not the content looks professionally produced.
This, plus GenAI/deepfakes, terrifies me.

Some of the journey time savings were staggering. Over an hour faster in many cases.
Naturally the Tory-run DfT took one look at it and said no.
If anyone out there has a copy, now would be a brilliant time to send it to Heidi Alexander with a note saying "this is what GBR needs to do".

Some time between 2008-2013 Network Rail released a proposal to completely rip up the Anglia route timetable and start from scratch, optimising everything for Swiss style connectivity. They identified every infrastructure change needed. It was a work of art and genius.

It was only from watching The Expanse when I realised just how much I'd taken it for granted. And I grew up about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK.

I can't speak for others, but based on McDonald's history with these sorts of interventions he's demonstrated credibility and integrity. If he's publicly issuing a warning then that warning needs to be taken seriously, not dismissed in that Trumpian manner by an anonymous gov "source".

If you watch the C4 News inteview with KGM, he's very clear that he's been attempting to do this in private but has been ignored or rebuffed.

Last time he made an intervention like this it brought down the Johnson gov’t, I think he’s trying to prevent the Starmer one falling right now. My guess is that DM story is either a tip of the iceberg or there’s something cataclysmic, potentially Mandelson or even Epstein related.

He’s got a job for life in the HoL. He’s also the guy who brought down the Johnson gov’t by publicly contradicting their denial that the horny honey monster had never heard a bad word about Chris Pincher…

Something compelled me to make this

To do this once is evidence of dysfunction, but that can be explained in the hurry of a short by-election campaign.
To have done it, been called out on it, apologise, but then immediately do it again is disqualifying and unforgivable.

The belief that porn is a bigger threat to society than weaponised misinformation is asinine, and the refusal to take on the bad faith actors is both cowardly and self-sabotaging for any gov't left of Reform

I've said for some time: if the gov't was serious about "online safety" they'd ban:
algorithmic content in the default UI of all social media (excl clearly marked ads)
recommendations of "groups to join"
the use of "autoplay next vid" outside of user-curated playlists

Democracy dies in oligarchness

The unbelievable volume of Epstein file emails documenting crimes and other heinous acts is such a tell that the wealthy and powerful never even thought for a moment that there would ever be any consequences.

Wes Streeting saying on Today that Mandelson is ‘not the man we thought he was’ but the trouble is, he is exactly the man we thought, just on a much worse scale than almost anyone thought. And there is an alternative world where none of this is this govt’s problem, because they never gave him a job