petermbenglish.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

It looks like nearly half of Russia's gold reserves have been misappropriated to fund their illegal war on Ukraine. www.money.pl/gospodarka/s...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Wordle 1,347 3/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Witnessing Labour trying to mimic Reform with migrant raid videos is sickening & will simply reinforce Reform’s messages. Just months after race riots, it also risks encouraging further animosity. We need safe & legal routes for asylum seekers, not boasts about which party can be cruellest

submitted 16 days ago • 56 comments

"Have the wrong set-up for your staff because office owners and city centre outlets don't like the changing nature of work" is not compelling. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

WHO'S A NAUGHTY BOY THEN???!!! During his tenure Thames Water paid £195.8 million in dividends putting it in breach of its operating licence for which incompetent regulator @Ofwat fined them £18 million. Wanna guess how much of that £18m they've paid? Yep, none, nada, nothing, not a penny. Ho hum.

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

In 2021 Charlie Falconer visited Starmer and asked : “Are you left? Are you right? Are you middle? Why should we be in power?” No answers seemed to be forthcoming. A reminder that a team good at winning elections might not be good at governing.

submitted 16 days ago • 7 comments

"So let me get this straight right, the government fines the water companies for gross mismanagement and the consumer foots the bill." @jonathanpienews.bsky.social nails it. As always. Bravo sir. 👏👏👏 www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj-g...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

The Gov’s climate change adviser is in a bind. New science is clear that UK carbon capture plans will be disastrous for warming. As Gov has already given the green light, a frank assessment from @thecccuk.bsky.social will cause embarrassment. But shouldn’t an independent adviser put facts first?

submitted 16 days ago • 2 comments

"Nearly 1,000 residents of Devon beauty spot sue water company over sewage." Is this going to be the first of many? I do hope so... inews.co.uk/news/residen...

submitted 16 days ago • 2 comments

When is a fine not a fine? When it is levied on England's water companies. Aug 2024: OFWAT announced £168m fine on 3 companies. ZERO Paid. Dec 2024: £18m fine on Thames Water for paying unjustified dividends. ZERO Paid. Regulatory indulgence emboldens companies, encourages more abuses.

submitted 17 days ago • 15 comments

fWIW I do think WFH is changing socialising (tho so is property prices/rents/commuting) but I am sick of it being framed as a civic duty to return to offices. What about creating community near home etc? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 16 days ago • 21 comments

Nigel Farage says he would not recognise the UK-Chagos deal if Reform UK wins the next election, cease all deal payments, ban Brits from visiting Mauritius & ban Mauritians visiting the UK. This would be a blatant breach of international law. Reform are following Trump's lawless authoritarianism.

submitted 17 days ago • 31 comments

Further outrageous evidence that opposing genocide is considered incompatible with being in public office. open.substack.com/pub/rozenber...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

🚨NEW RESEARCH🚨 Closer ties with the EU could deliver growth of up to 2.2%. Clawing back up to half of the damage caused by Brexit. Delivering double the impact of a UK-US trade deal, according to the govt's own analysis. And all within Starmer's red lines. www.thetimes.com/article/8423...

submitted 18 days ago • 33 comments

Good to see him challenged. Six times he's asked how he'd improve a deal he admits needs improving. All he can say is "we can be friendly". Finally, his response to majority who want closer relations with EU is: "Let's do a deal with the US." A deal that's not on the table. More magical cake. ~AA

submitted 22 days ago • 29 comments

Reminder - there is a once in a generation opportunity to recruit the best US brains fleeing Trump

submitted 22 days ago • 8 comments

Trump's vandalism continues - scientific papers pulled. open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

🎉 IT’S HERE! 🎉 📔 Our major new report ‘The Brexit Files: from referendum to reset’ ✍️ Written by leading academic experts for the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU, it covers three key areas of the Brexit story 🧵

submitted 29 days ago • 6 comments

Will Trump's vandalism mean Ebola spreads outside Uganda and to the rest of the world? open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

My father-in-law grew up in the picturesque town of Meersburg, overlooking Lake Constance. Until the Nazis threw them out. His father's crime? He was headteacher of the school for deaf children. In his election campaign Trump mocked disabled people. Today he blamed them for the tragic air crash.

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

Most leave voters now think Brexit was wrong. People are capable of changing their opinions and won't vote the same way twice for something that doesn't work for them. Pay attention, Labour. The same can happen to you if you don't sort this mess out quickly.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

🚨🚨 Major news: Italian prosecutors are investigating Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and two government ministers for repatriating a Libyan general wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/ital...

submitted 29 days ago • 5 comments

I love @pkrugman.bsky.social 's quote from Keynes "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking."

submitted 28 days ago • 3 comments

Vandalism in the USA open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Cardiff University in Crisis I worked at Cardiff University for many years, and am in regular touch with a number of friends and former colleagues still there, so this news is very distressing. All I can do is offer a message of solidarity and encourage everyone who is not in a Union to join…

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

The PROBLEM with #QuietRiot is you pop a podcast on at 6am in the hope of being lulled back to sleep, and they are so interesting you lie there for an hour with your ears pricked up, LEARNING THINGS. @sturdyalex.bsky.social talks geopolitics with the always fascinating @snellarthur.bsky.social ...

submitted 28 days ago • 3 comments

NEW EPISODE: Is this craziest libel case ever? @petergeoghegan.bsky.social shares the story of the sanctioned Russian warlord who took @eliothiggins.bsky.social @bellingcat.com to court. With @goldbergradio.bsky.social - from @bylinetimes.bsky.social podfollow.com/1747192337/e...

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Such an annoying critique of big infrastructure plans - 'but it'll take years for it to be built/make a difference'. Yes! That's why stuff needs to get started & why governments need to look beyond one political cycle. Otherwise we just end up 20 years later in the same position.

submitted 28 days ago • 22 comments

⚡️ Zelensky orders report on Ukrainian programmes affected by Trump's foreign aid freeze. U.S. President Donald Trump suspended all foreign aid programs for 90 days in an executive order signed on his day of inauguration.

submitted 28 days ago • 3 comments

“open warfare” between UK govt depts during pandemic, former vaccines tsar Kate Bingham said, adding failure to prioritise needs of clinically vulnerable, immunocompromised individuals was ethically & morally wrong The one bit that went well under the Tories www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

submitted 36 days ago • 8 comments

The US FDA is proposing limiting the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. I see this might make cigarettes less addictive, reducing recruitment of new smokers. But won't existing smokers just compensate by inhaling more harmful smoke ("products of combustion")? www.bmj.com/content/388/...

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Is Amazon Alexa playing up for everybody, or just me? The routines work, the app on my phone doesn't.

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock left the government meeting, refusing to be photographed with Chancellor Olaf Scholz after his decision to block the allocation of a new aid package for Ukraine, - Bild. Instead of a thousand words.

submitted 39 days ago • 154 comments

Remember all these headlines describing a brief rise in government borrowing costs as being "market mayhem", followed by a week of demands for Rachel Reeves to quit? Well one week later and it turns out UK gilts are now outperforming every other G7 country this year, aside from the US

submitted 39 days ago • 139 comments

The UK has some of the highest energy prices in the world. Why? Because our wholesale electricity price is set by the most expensive source. So even if 99% of energy used was wind or solar, and 1% was gas, we’d still pay the gas price for all of it. Graph from the Times.

submitted 40 days ago • 42 comments

It is beyond doubt that the Overton Window has shifted significantly to the right over recent years, across the world. Labour has the opportunity to claw back some space though for more progressive thinking, yet seem determined to push ever further rightwards. 1/

submitted 39 days ago • 4 comments

1. Now, on top of all the other things we can't have, we learn we can't have new hospitals. Why? Because Starmer's government is committed to a higher principle than saving lives: saving money. Never mind that trying to keep old hospitals running costs a fortune: a classic false economy. ... 🧵

submitted 39 days ago • 59 comments

It's interesting to see 'Brexit' rising in political salience today - thanks to the interventions of Ed Davey and Kemi Badenoch. Two points stand out. First, there is, and has been for some time, widespread, almost universal, acceptance that Brexit, in the form implemented, has failed. 1/4

submitted 41 days ago • 5 comments

🚨🚨 Lib Dems are rightly pushing now more openly for more concrete rapprochment with the European Union. @eddavey.libdems.org.uk has just announced that his party wishes for the UK to strike a customs (union) deal with the bloc. 🧵 www.bbc.com/news/article...

submitted 41 days ago • 23 comments

Too many UK MPs take second jobs, serve corporations, get rich. Claim it helps to serve people. Oh ... Hardly any volunteer to work for charities, hospices, food banks, housing associations ... there is no money in it. Must ban second jobs for MPs. leftfootforward.org/2025/01/mps-...

submitted 42 days ago • 29 comments

Keir Starmer’s Government says it "shares the sense of urgency" about stopping foreign billionaires like Elon Musk from bankrolling UK political parties. Minister says they're now urgently reviewing the law to prevent proxy donations by "malign actors" bylinetimes.com/2025/01/15/k...

submitted 42 days ago • 35 comments