max blunt @maxblunt

Long read. Many other details most of you haven't seen yet are here. "The untold story of Reform's George Cottrell: details never shown before about Farage's closest and most important aide, donor" 🔗 thestateofuk.bearblog.dev

Wild video shows British cops in an unmarked car detaining a jogger with a Palestine flag because he “flagged up in [their] live facial recognition” system. “We stop a lot of people that have done nothing wrong whatsoever,” he explains.

This is brilliant and should be studied by central bankers everywhere! Peoples Bank of China was the first to deflate a massive, leveraged housing bubble without a single quarter of economic contraction or loss of growth momentum in the real economy. A success for the history books.

Hedgeye @Hedgeye

19 hours ago

China's Real Estate Market has erased all gains from the last 20 years

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@KenZeroHarm @HistoryExtra I remember too, particularly going to the dentist as a kid and my folks not having to pay for it...

Mandelson, McSweeney and Simmons helped get Starmer into power and, when he lost it, they give us Andy Burnham. The arms industry is on Burnham's side, Blackstone will buy him, and Streeting and Powell will back him all the way. With Purnell in charge, the lobby's got control.

@Iwontcalmdown @aliciakearns Relax, it's called corporate welfare, or socialism for the corporates, and poverty for the people👍

'If we allow the red cross to visit Palestinian prisoners, it will be a PR disaster' - Member of the Israeli Knesset admits. They clearly are worried people will see the torture dungeons.

@bbcnickrobinson @BBCSounds That is not an interview and does not uphold the BBC charter. No more money for the BBC from me.

This a deeply disappointing, borderline irresponsible interview of Morgan McSweeney from @bbcnickrobinson. It looks like impunity in action. Has the media not learnt any lessons from Mandelson and of the need to properly scrutinise political actors? It is the BBC's job to hold political actors to account, to pose them real questions, and to get them to put a proper version of events on the record. That is all the more important for a figure like McSweeney, who has wielded extraordinary power and has led or participated in attacks on legitimate, factual journalism, but who has never spoken about his role in these scandals on the record. The interview doesn't touch, once, on the rock-solid evidence of McSweeney's serious unlawful misconduct or the Labour Together/APCO scandal. This stuff is widely available and easy to verify. Here is a reminder of what we know about McSweeney, about which he wasn't asked a single thing: 1. McSweeney was Company Secretary of Labour Together from July 2017 to April 2020. During this period he failed to report over £700,000 in donations to the Electoral Commission. This was plainly unlawful. LT was found guilty and fined for this offence, but said in public it was an 'administrative oversight.' 2. McSweeney failed to report donations after he had unsuccessfully attempted to convince the Electoral Commission he didn't need to report them in late 2017. 3. McSweeney failed to report donations after the Electoral Commission told him, explicitly, that Labour Together had a legal duty to report donations. 4. McSweeney engaged in a two-month correspondence with the Electoral Commission in early 2018, in which it was clear he knew he had to report donations. Yet he failed to do so for over two years thereafter. 5. McSweeney failed to report donations even though he was telling MPs he was reporting donations, and even though Labour Together's website also stated that it was declaring donations to the Electoral Commission. 6. McSweeney failed to report donations even after Shabana Mahmood, on Labour Together's behalf, wrote an article for LabourList in February 2020 stating that Labour Together was reporting its donations. At the very time Mahmood wrote the donations, LT was taking in donations it was failing to declare. 7. McSweeney used this undeclared money, to fight an undeclared, covert war on the Labour Party leadership between 2017 and 2020. He also used it to pay for polling which was then fed into Starmer's leadership bid. Materials produced by McSweeney during his time at LT was fed, word-for-word, into Starmer's campaigning material. According to Rachel Wearmouth, McSweeney spent 'every spare moment' during the last six weeks of 2019 to prepare Starmer's leadership bid, during which time McSweeney was drawing a salary from LT. 8. When Labour Together was put under investigation by the Electoral Commission for McSweeney's failure to report donations, McSweeney was consulted by LT's lawyer Gerald Shamash. The email recording this consultation and its contents were published by the Tory Chairman Kevin Hollinrake and have been available in public for a year. The email raises serious questions about whether LT was candid in its responses to the Electoral Commission and, in particular, McSweeney's correspondence with the Commission in 2017/2018 that shows he was aware of the need to report donations. Early correspondence between LT and the Electoral Commission shows that, despite being asked to provide all information of relevance to the Commission's inquiries, LT failed to even mention McSweeney's name, let alone the phone call. 9. In early 2019 McSweeney launched an astroturf campaign called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) , with his friend and factional ally Imran Ahmed. It was supported by @SteveReedMP and operated out of the same office as Labour Together. SFFN purposefully set out to 'eviscerate' the economic viability of @TheCanaryUK and to destroy the livelihoods of its journalists, many of whom were long-time members of the National Union of Journalists. At no stage in its first year operation did SFFN declare its controlling minds. Instead it presented itself as a 'grassroots' campaign of well-meaning activists. McSweeney and Ahmed tried to take out proper journalism because they saw it as a threat to their political objectives. "Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us," is what McSweeney told Labour Together insiders according to Anushka Asthana. SFFN made promiscuous allegations of antisemitism against The Canary - the antisemitism that McSweeney claims is what drove his factional war on the left - which were found to have no substance when reviewed by a panel of media lawyers and practitioners at media regulator Impress. SFFN repeatedly inferred that The Canary was antisemitic because it run articles quoting left-wing and anti-Zionist Jews disturbed by aspects of the "antisemitism crisis." 10. SFFN also targeted well-known US media sites, which led to McSweeney being directly called out by the US State Department. His colleague, Imran Ahmed, is now sanctioned by the US because the US accuses the company he and McSweeney set up, CCDH, of being part of a global censorship complex. 11. When I started reporting on McSweeney's undeclared money and his secret campaigns, including by taking damning primary documents to the Sunday Times, Labour Together appointed APCO Worldwide to produce a 'package' that would 'proactively undermine' my factually accurate, public interest reporting. To be clear: APCO were hired to 'proactively undermine' my reporting on McSweeney and his role in Starmer's rise. The intention, as shown in internal docs, was to protect both Starmer and McSweeney's reputations ahead of an imminent general election, while I was trying to warn people about the true nature of this project and it's unlawful origins. 12. APCO produced an insane, ludicrous, highly defamatory report that accused me, my family and my colleagues of being part of a pro-Kremlin network of journalists and speculating that I received hacked documents from Russia. APCO also investigated @Gabriel_Pogrund, with whom I'd collaborated with on the Sunday Times story, making a series of offensive comments about him and his ethnicity. APCO identified a range of other journalists in the UK and US as "persons of interest" to be investigated. This highly invasive, despicable investigation targeted my work colleagues and my family, including by finding my home address and mapping my personal relationships. Labour Together and its Managing Director, Josh Simons, reported me to the National Cyber Security Centre on the basis of this mad, insane report. 13. Less than a month ago, it was revealed that McSweeney and his buddy Paul Ovenden (later Chief of Strategy at Number 10, who would resign following revelations from my book) were copied into emails about the investigation. McSweeney plainly knew about APCO's investigation. Simons, in one mail, wrote to set up a meeting with McSweeney, Ovenden and APCO's Tom Harper in 'HQ' to discuss the 'Paul Holden report.' Three days after this meeting I was reported to the NCSC, along with my colleagues and family members. Emails show Simons was coached in how to make a 'crime report' about me to the NCSC. 14. The APCO/Labour Together scandal was so ugly and so damning that Labour Together has been forced to change its name. It also led to the resignation of Josh Simons as a Junior Minister. The Speaker of the House has supported calls for a Parliamentary inquiry into Labour Together. 15. Josh Simons thereafter stepped aside as the MP for Makerfield in order to make way for Andy Burnham, the incoming PM who has displaced McSweeney's man, Starmer. There is a straight and clear line between attempts to protect McSweeney from scrutiny in 2024 and Starmer's resignation in 2026. So, to make this clear: there was a massive scandal because plans were put in motion to stop questions being asked about McSweeney's unlawful failure to declare money... and now the public broadcaster is failing to ask McSweeney questions about the money. Has the media learnt nothing from the Mandelson scandal about what happens when you don't properly scrutinise political actors? And here's some things McSweeney and Robinson did talk about, but which doesn't bear scrutiny: 1. Starmer didn't just take some suits and glasses as 'freebies' during the election campaign. He took over £100k in freebies between 2021 and 2024, more than every Labour leader since Tony Blair combined. In addition to free clothes, Starmer took football tickets, tickets to watch the horse racing, and free holiday accommodation for his family from a billionaire. One of his football freebies was donated by a company that had only just been forced to pay a £11m settlement because the installed faulty and potentially flammable cladding on tower blocks in Gosport. Taking these donations means that Starmer had conflicted himself on key areas of policy even before he was elected. 2. Both McSweeney and Robinson quickly collude in claiming that Sir Keir Starmer didn't say that Israel 'has that right' to shut off water, fuel, food and electricity to Gaza. But we've all seen the video, where what Starmer has said is utterly plain. Multiple Ministers went on air to defend the statement thereafter. Does the BBC really think that huge numbers of Muslim councillors immediately left the Party by mistake, because they can't understand plain English? 3. McSweeney has said that Labour Together was 'neutral' during the 2020 leadership election. But Labour Together, and its key associates, have said repeatedly since 2022/2023 that LT backed Starmer's leadership bid. You can find these comments on the Wayback Machine in about two minutes. 4. McSweeney says he never intended to rid the Party of Corbynism. There are now multiple accounts, including from the country's leading political editors and journalists, about how McSweeney crafted and distributed strategy documents, including a plan called 'Operation Red Shield' and a 2017 SWOT analysis, that set out plans to undermine Corbyn's leadership and install a new leader who would 'renew' the Party. 5. This is not the first time that McSweeney has spoken to the media. Instead, it is the first time he has let his comments be attributed to him in public. Multiple journalists have spoken about how he was the source of stories damaging to his opponents. While he was Chief of Staff at Number 10, he was meeting with the editors of the major UK newspapers more regularly than Number 10's own head of comms. We know this because transparency regulations means that these meetings are recorded and can easily found on the gov website. This man has shaped our media discourse, and our political epistemology, in profound and disturbing ways. It is utterly disingenuous to claim that this is the first time he's spoken to the media.

Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson

4 days ago

Morgan McSweeney - the “most powerful unelected official in the country” & “a latter-day Thomas Cromwell” - has never given an interview. He has now. Coming up on Political Thinking on @BBCSounds the man credited with securing Labour’s landslide & blamed for the failures of

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@pauleholden @bbcnickrobinson @bbcnickrobinson is nothing more than an establishment stenographer…

I would urge Nick Robinson to read this & respond as to why none of this was effectively addressed by him in the interview he undertook with Morgan McSweeney. The right thing for him to do now would be to interview in depth Paul Holden. @bbcnickrobinson

Paul Holden @pauleholden

3 days ago

This a deeply disappointing, borderline irresponsible interview of Morgan McSweeney from @bbcnickrobinson. It looks like impunity in action. Has the media not learnt any lessons from Mandelson and of the need to properly scrutinise political actors? It is the BBC's job to hold

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I thought that this must be an exaggeration but have now read the judgement and it is true, To repost any item from Russia Today - even it if is completely true, or a World Cup feature - is a crime in the EU.

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

2 days ago

This is properly insane: quite literally the worst example of censorship I've ever heard of anywhere. I checked the actual ruling (which you can see here: courthousenews.com/wp-content/upl…) and, to be clear, it isn't just censorship in the conventional sense - blocking access to a website

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This is properly insane: quite literally the worst example of censorship I've ever heard of anywhere. I checked the actual ruling (which you can see here: courthousenews.com/wp-content/upl…) and, to be clear, it isn't just censorship in the conventional sense - blocking access to a website or removing content from platforms - this is the criminalization of information relayed by private citizens, with prison sentences attached. And the most insane aspect if that it does NOT matter if the information relayed is accurate or not. It just matters that it originates from RT or other media outlets banned in the EU. In other words, truth isn't a defense anymore in the EU, it literally doesn't matter. It's purely based on the identity of the speaker. The ruling is actually explicit about this: the regulation, quoted by the Court says that the prohibition applies to "any content," and they draw no distinction based on what the content actually says. If it originates from banned outlets, it's banned. It is, quite simply, a complete unraveling of the entire post-Enlightenment legal and philosophical project where entire generations of Europeans fought to move from "who says it" to "is it true" as the operative question. Think about the absurdity of it: if RT publishes a video saying the sky is blue and you share it on a publicly accessible website in the EU, you'd fall within the scope of this ruling, making you liable to criminal prosecution. Completely and utterly absurd. But that's the EU today for you 🤷

CGTN Español @cgtnenespanol

4 days ago

El Tribunal de Justicia de la UE ha autorizado el enjuiciamiento penal en los países de la UE de las personas que publiquen vídeos de Russia Today en canales y sitios web abiertos.

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Trump: Every time my kids invest in a stock, anything they do, they have inside information. (This is a wild thing to admit)

@electriBird @Rainmaker1973 Lol

@IndiaWilloughby @DominicPenna Dominic writes for the torygraph, so only utterly ridiculous nonsense and spin will spew from his mouth…

Has Tommy Robinson said anything about his mate Ben Cullen, who's on trial for making indecent images of children?

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El entrenador en jefe de Egipto, Hossam Hassan, llevó una bandera de Palestina al campo después de la histórica victoria de Egipto sobre Australia. En la cara de Trump y Netanyahu, el mundo repudia el Gnocidio…

@NeilDotObrien Grow up son.

Corbyn was branded a conspiracy theorist for warning a US trade deal would push up NHS drug costs and put patients at risk. The latest BMJ's study claims the deal Starmer signed will divert £45bn from the NHS and cause 229,000 excess deaths by 2036. Corbyn was right

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