Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Reform's disastrous vetting process
The news site says that the key member, who does not wish to be named, said they took part in Reform’s “full candidate assessment and training process” for the upcoming Welsh election, and has accused the party of a “lack of transparency” and criticised the “calibre of some of the people now being placed in winnable positions”:
The insider told us: “What I witnessed was not a merit-based system designed to find the best local representatives – but a centrally controlled process that favours insiders, parachuted candidates and personal connections over local knowledge and competence.
“Several high-placed candidates have been moved into top spots despite having no real connection to the areas they are supposed to represent.
This description in mirrored by Will Hayward's special report on Reform's Senedd candidates on his Substack.
Hayward points out that there are a lot of former Tories amongst the 96 candidates being put forward by Nigel Farage. He says that of the 16 seats, 11 have a former Conservative in at least first or second place on the list, adding that if former Tories are standing, they are almost always high up the list.
The party's vetting process had a number of flaws, including a failure to take account of historic social media posts by candidates.
Hayward refers to the Facebook page of Caerdydd Penarth candidate Paul Campbell, which features pictures showing a man posting a letter into the eyes of a Muslim woman wearing a burka (likely in reference to Boris Johnson saying that Muslim women look like letter boxes) and obscene fake/edited images showing Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot.
In addition, he says that Senedd candidate for Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, Martin Roberts, who is an organiser for the party, had pictures of himself alongside known members of Welsh Far Right organisations proudly displayed on his public Facebook page.
Finally, he publishes a whistlestop tour of some of Reform's other candidates:
* Mark Reckless. (2nd Caerdydd Penarth). Mr Reckless spent five years as an MS between 2016 and 2021. During that time he represented four different parties and was also an independent. Throughout that time he employed his wife as a senior advisor on up to £41k a year at the taxpayers expense.
* Dan Thomas. (1st Casnewydd Islwyn). Reform’s leader in Wales led Barnet Council and embarked on a huge outsourcing of public services. We published a special report on that here. He also said that the media was “weaponising my housing portfolio against me”.
* Laura Anne Jones. (1st Sir Fynwy Torfaen). Was suspended from the Senedd for using a racist slur. She has failed to turn up for key votes but did vote against stopping politicians from lying. Ms Jones has previously agreed to interviews with this newsletter but has then repeatedly ignored requests.
* James Evans (1st Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd). One of Reform’s two MSs previously called Reform “dangerous” for their rhetoric against minorities and that they “didn’t have a plan for Wales” and were “total hypocrites”. After his defection he attacked the media for apparently twisting his words.
Cristiana Emsley. (1st, Fflint Wrecsam). She was head of Cleveland Police’s standards and ethics department and was suspended for over two years following an investigation into allegations of misconduct. When we approached Reform UK they indicated that the suspension was as a result of her activities as a whistleblower within the organisation and that she had been awarded a six-figure out of court settlement following her suspension.
Llyr Powell. (1st Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni). Known as “Welsh Dave” by Nigel Farage, he was Reform’s unsuccessful candidate in the Caerphilly by-election. He previously worked for Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill who is currently in jail for taking Russian bribes (there is no suggestion Mr Powell did anything wrong).
History can be pretty damning.
In addition, he says that Senedd candidate for Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, Martin Roberts, who is an organiser for the party, had pictures of himself alongside known members of Welsh Far Right organisations proudly displayed on his public Facebook page.
Finally, he publishes a whistlestop tour of some of Reform's other candidates:
* Mark Reckless. (2nd Caerdydd Penarth). Mr Reckless spent five years as an MS between 2016 and 2021. During that time he represented four different parties and was also an independent. Throughout that time he employed his wife as a senior advisor on up to £41k a year at the taxpayers expense.
* Dan Thomas. (1st Casnewydd Islwyn). Reform’s leader in Wales led Barnet Council and embarked on a huge outsourcing of public services. We published a special report on that here. He also said that the media was “weaponising my housing portfolio against me”.
* Laura Anne Jones. (1st Sir Fynwy Torfaen). Was suspended from the Senedd for using a racist slur. She has failed to turn up for key votes but did vote against stopping politicians from lying. Ms Jones has previously agreed to interviews with this newsletter but has then repeatedly ignored requests.
* James Evans (1st Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd). One of Reform’s two MSs previously called Reform “dangerous” for their rhetoric against minorities and that they “didn’t have a plan for Wales” and were “total hypocrites”. After his defection he attacked the media for apparently twisting his words.
Cristiana Emsley. (1st, Fflint Wrecsam). She was head of Cleveland Police’s standards and ethics department and was suspended for over two years following an investigation into allegations of misconduct. When we approached Reform UK they indicated that the suspension was as a result of her activities as a whistleblower within the organisation and that she had been awarded a six-figure out of court settlement following her suspension.
Llyr Powell. (1st Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni). Known as “Welsh Dave” by Nigel Farage, he was Reform’s unsuccessful candidate in the Caerphilly by-election. He previously worked for Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill who is currently in jail for taking Russian bribes (there is no suggestion Mr Powell did anything wrong).
History can be pretty damning.
Monday, March 30, 2026
Are the Tories seeking to undermine the UK's energy security?
The paper says that the Tory leader was ridiculed ahead of launching a “Get Britain Drilling” campaign calling for the UK to maximise the use of its oil and gas reserves:
It follows a spike in energy prices caused by the war in the Middle East, something Ms Badenoch had supported joining only to U-turn a week later. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has led to a drastic rise in oil prices across the globe.
On Sunday Ms Badenoch will launch a three-point plan to “get Britain drilling” which includes an end to the moratorium on new oil and gas licences, ditching the windfall tax on energy profits, and more financial support for the fossil fuels industry. However, the plans were roundly mocked, with Michael Shanks MP, Labour ’s Energy Minister, branding the North West Essex “unfit for high office”.
He said: “Kemi Badenoch wanted to plunge Britain head first into war without a seconds thought about the consequences. She has proven herself completely unfit for high office throughout this crisis. Badenoch's Conservative Party left families with rocketing energy bills - and they completely failed to deliver energy security across 14 years in power. Her own shadow energy secretary admitted that new licenses in the North Sea would not take a penny off bills.
"The Conservatives and Reform want to outsource Britain's energy security to fossil fuel markets over which we have no control. Meanwhile Labour is bringing down bills next week and investing in clean, homegrown power to bring bills down for good."
There was also criticism from Tessa Khan, executive director of campaign group Uplift, who warned the Conservatives’ plan would do nothing to lower bills. Pointing to research suggesting hundreds of North Sea licences granted under the previous government had produced just 36 days’ worth of gas, Ms Khan said Mrs Badenoch was “peddling a dangerous fantasy”.
She said: “Politicians who refuse to acknowledge the reality of the declining North Sea are endangering our security and economy. Not only that, they are betraying workers who need long-term, secure jobs – which will only now come from renewables, not some pipedream. This is vapid, political game playing at the expense of ordinary people.”
If the Iran war has shown us anything, it is that we cannot be dependent on other countries for our energy supply, nor can we hitch ourselves to a declining source of fossil fuel in contravention of our climate change obligations.
The Tories are living in the past and if they get their way then it will undermine our energy security.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Our version of Trump's ICE under fire
Earlier this week, the Guardian carried a detailed feature on how the Home Office enforces its policies. They said that officers have searched thousand of businesses in search of illegal workers, reporting on one raid at Mandira's Kitchen in Guildford last year:
The raid is one of more than 17,400 on businesses carried out since Labour came to power in July 2024 – a 77% increase on the year before and almost as many as in the entire previous parliament. The government says the drive has led to the highest number of arrests for illegal working since records began, but critics say the crackdown goes far beyond the party’s manifesto pledge of a “fair and properly managed immigration system”.
While the UK’s Ice teams were set up in 2013 as part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” policy, Labour has been using the increased number of raids to front much of the Home Office’s media output. In January, the Home Office set up a TikTok account, @SecureBordersUK, to show Ice officers raiding a market, a car wash and a nail bar. One video, which appears to show people struggling in open water during small-boat crossings, contains a stark message: “To the migrants who come to the UK illegally: you will face deportation or removal.”
Most businesses raided by Ice don’t know why they were targeted. Anonymous tipoffs, which can be made online, appear to be behind many of the raids (including the one on Mandira’s Kitchen). Kevin Barker, a former Ice officer and the director of the paralegal firm Immigration Compliance Ltd, says that while raids are always “intelligence-led”, a tipoff can be enough to trigger one.
There are steps between a tipoff being filed and a raid being carried out, Barker says. Surveillance is sometimes used, including “discreet drive-by surveillance”. Barker says Ice will also “see if there’s any other allegations or previous immigration raids to the business” and investigate if a name is given. But more often than not, he says, “there are no names mentioned – they just have a suspicion of illegal workers”. The nature of anonymity means a tipoff can relate to a personal or commercial grievance. Often, it’s “competitors within the local area” filling out the forms, he says.
Moitra Sarkar holds a sponsor licence, which allows her to employ students or workers who might not normally have the right to work in the UK. “It was all very intimidating. Oh, you’re brown and you’re running a food business? Of course you’ve got illegal immigrants. It’s guilty until proven innocent,” she says.
Racial profiling is a factor, says Seema Syeda, the advocacy and communications director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which provides legal advice for those targeted by raids. She says the high number of arrests doesn’t paint the full picture. In 2025, Ice officers carried out 12,791 illegal-working raids and made 8,971 arrests. However, the Home Office’s figures show that only a quarter of those arrested (2,251) were detained and 12% (1,087) left the UK, either by force or voluntarily. Syeda says she has seen “many cases where people are raided, arrested and then released”. It is, she says, “very clear to us that this is a performative act”.
The article includes claims that the UK ICE often exceed their powers but also that the force has far fewer powers than ICE in the US, but that this may not remain the case:
Reform UK and the Conservatives have announced plans to create agencies modelled on ICE, should they win power. However, the increase in raids hasn’t come without opposition on the ground. Anti-raid groups are “springing up”, says Syeda. In January, a group in Lewisham, south London, alerted people to a car wash raid. When protesters told those being approached by Ice officers of their rights, no one was arrested.
Whereas the work carried out by this agency is ncessary, I do think that there needs to be greater public scrutiny of their work to ensure that things don't get out of hand.
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Swansea's Albert Hall
The website Save Britain's Heritage featured the Albert Hall as their building of the month in January 2021. They point out that the building opened in in 1864 as a music hall which hosted speeches by some of the big names in Victorian society including Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and David Lloyd George.
They say that after it ceased use as a music hall in 1922, it served as a cinema and a bingo hall, before finally closing in 2007. It even hosted a showing of Jaws in 1975. At that time, having stood standing empty and deteriorating since 2007, they argued that the hall (pictured below as it was) was in desperate need of restoration and new use.
A good example of repurposing a listed building for modern life.
Labels: lochist
Friday, March 27, 2026
Reform's Senedd campaign in chaos
Farage's party has just announced all its candidates for the election on 7th May, but the process appears to have thrown up the usual problems of insufficient vetting and infighting, a problem that also haunted the UKIP group in the 2016-2021 Welsh Assembly:
One senior Reform UK source said: “The selections have been disastrous from the moment they began – all of the promises Zia Yusuf made when Farage put him in as ‘Chairman’ to democratise were lies pure and simple.
“Members of the branches are just told to handover money and to turn up to deliver leaflets – they have no rights over who they will be working with when elected to the Senedd.
“Councillor David Thomas joined at the end of 2024 and brought a group of chancers from Torfaen over.
“They’d tried being Tory – anything to get access to the salaries and expenses they can get in the Senedd.
“They wanted all their mates in the winnable positions and the Tory defectors have done the same.
“Welsh leader Dan Thomas isn’t a newbie to politics in Wales, he goes years back with Senedd Member Laura Anne Jones.
“They have as well just used the candidacy process to poach places for their pals.
“It’s gross but this is what Reform has become – jobs for careerists like Councillor Jason O’ Connell.”
A Reform activist also sent Nation.Cymru a series of messages on Tuesday (March 23) warning that the party had “stopped supporting candidates who have been working in their constituencies for months and years” and had instead “shipped in new candidates from outside those constituencies” to support new Welsh leader, Dan Thomas.
The source said: “Many of those original candidates have been pushed out of the selection process and people from local branches are really upset as they do not recognise these new candidates and have noted they have not been in the local branches supporting those original candidates who have been out in all weathers expecting to be fairly elected to represent their constituencies.
“Community links are so important where constituents know the candidate and they know the constituency and its people. I have witnessed members saying this is the last straw and are leaving the party because the members are not being listened to at branch level.
“It is thought that these new candidates have been members of a think tank which has been run by David Thomas and others. Chairmen and members have been sacked for challenging what has been going on behind the scenes.
“Apparently Farage and Thomas are not bothered as they can do what they want with this new system of election. Many ex Labour members have said they will go back to Labour as its turning out to be the Conservative two – party.
“A lot of angry people upset at this chopping of local candidates and parachuting in of new candidates who have no affinity with the constituencies.
“I think Reform have played right into the hands of Plaid and Labour which is their own arrogant fault ignoring local people.”
And it doesnt end there. The BBC reports that Reform candidate, Andrew Barry has quit less that twenty four hours since the party's lists were published:
O'Connell is a councillor in Torfaen and has been a high-profile media performer for Reform in Wales.
Barry said: "I thought this was what I had been waiting for – a party that could break the cartel of Labour and Plaid Cymru alliances, only to find over the past few months that things have not quite added up."
He added: "We finally thought someone was there for people at the heart of the valleys and it's left me bereft of belief."
He described O'Connell as an "ex-Tory" and said: "This will not go down well. There are too many Tories now in the party.
"If Reform believes that putting a former Conservative into the heart of the valleys will go well, then they are wrong."
"It has left a bitter taste that no one cares about Merthyr."
And just to put the icing on the Reform cake, Nation Cymru reports that a photograph has now emerged of a prominent Reform UK Senedd election candidate performing a Nazi salute:
They add that there has been knowledge within Conservative circles for at least six years of an image of Edwards holding a finger to his top lip with his other arm raised in the air in a Nazi style salute.
At the time of writing, Edwards remains a Reform candidate.
At the time of writing, Edwards remains a Reform candidate.
Update: Corey Edwards has now quit as a candidate, quoting his mental health as the reason.
Meanwhile, Patrick Benham-Crosswell, number five on the Swansea and Gower list for Reform, has also quit, after taking offence at being overlooked in favour of 'an ex-Tory and four novices' and claiming that the party has 'sunk deeper into the sewer' and betrayed its early members.
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Overseas political funding to be capped and crypo banned at last
They add that the new representation of the people bill will also include a temporary ban on donations in cryptocurrency:
Steve Reed, the communities secretary, said the legislation would be applied retrospectively from Wednesday subject to parliamentary approval, as the move was urgently needed to protect UK democracy.
He said he was “not prepared to allow any window of opportunity for malign actors” to interfere in the UK’s electoral system.
The decision will be a big blow to Reform UK, which has received about £12m in the past year from Harborne and other funding from a number of donors based in Monaco. Reform is also the only major political party to accept donations in cryptocurrency. It previously said it had accepted donations in cryptocurrency, but so far none have been declared above the £11,180 threshold.
The emergency measures are being brought in on the recommendation of Philip Rycroft, a former leading civil servant. He said the actions were needed to prevent the risk of foreign interference in British politics, saying donations from abroad were more difficult to trace and regulate.
He also said there was a question of fairness when overseas donors were not subject to the same tax requirements as UK residents, recommending an annual cap between £100,000 and £300,000.
He cited the threat of influence from hostile foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran, saying divisive internet commentary about Scottish independence had dropped by about a quarter when Iran’s internet blackout took place.
The senior former official also highlighted the risk of influence by actors from allies such as the US, where the billionaire Elon Musk has floated the idea of trying to put money into British politics.
Rycroft’s review was ordered by the government after the conviction of the former Reform UK politician Nathan Gill for accepting bribes from Russia-linked sources. In a foreword to his report, he said he was “not pressing the panic button but I am ringing the alarm bell” about the risk of foreign interference in the UK political system.
Some of his advice is likely to be debated and enacted in the government’s new elections bill.
His other recommendations include:
* Requiring third-party campaigners to declare donations all year round, not just election periods, and allowing funding only from permissible donors.
* More stringent checks on the source of funds from political donors, bringing it more into line with know-your-customer checks in the financial services industry.
* Preventing donations from shell companies by ensuring funding is from post-tax profits rather than revenue.
* Requiring foreign consultant lobbyists to join the official register, from which they are currently exempt because they do not charge VAT.
*Banning foreign-funded political adverts outright.
Rycroft also suggested parliament should consider lowering the threshold for requiring parties to declare donations, which is set at £11,180, meaning sums below this level are kept private.
This is a major step-forward in securing better transparency in politics and in preventing abuse by foreign interests. It is long overdue.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Was the cones hotline an innovation before its time?
He quotes a recent speech by Major in which the former Prime Minister argued that recent General Elections have thrown into doubt the continuing validity of the “first past the post” system of voting, and that as voting preferences spread more widely it provides distorted results. Major argued, quite correctly that the democratic case for examining this is growing. Bush says:
The last political campaign I was involved in, before I realised I didn’t have the necessary qualities to be an effective political activist, was the doomed “Yes to AV” campaign. I still really like the alternative vote, because I think it captures how most of us vote — we don’t have a clear and fixed preference for any one party, we have preferences that we are willing to compromise on and red lines that we won’t cross. I continue to think that ranked choice voting is also a more psychologically healthy way of thinking about who you support and why, and I think that preferential systems encourage candidates to converge on the common ground, though this isn’t quite the same thing as the political centre.
But the case for changing our electoral system has I think grown much stronger since that alternative vote referendum in 2011. As Major sets out, our voting preferences have spread yet further in the past 15 years, and the first past the post system has become even more of a lottery. One reason why voting has become more diffuse, I think, is that people have grown used to a more bespoke and personally tailored set of choices.
That similar impulse is precisely what Major’s “cones hotline” was designed to address. See some roadworks? Want to know what they’re for? Call the cones hotline! And what is one of the most frequent uses of social media today? It is to find out what is causing some kind of roadworks, or to use the estate’s WhatsApp group to find out if anyone else has reported the broken lift to the council. That direct ability to see something and find out what is going on is what we now all take for granted, 34 years after the cones hotline was so mocked.
And that desire for a more personal service is, in my view, why people will continue to vote for smaller parties and why our electoral system is going to become more and more of a lottery without change.
Stephen Bush is absolutely right in this. Old party loyalties have broken down, people like to pick and choose from election to election from a wide range of options and that means that first past the post is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. Now is the time to change that.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
An over-reliance on US technology firms?
The paper says that the Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years’ worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime.
They add that the Liberal Democrats on Monday called for a government investigation into the contract, which the party said could be “a huge error of judgment”:
Questioned on whether the UK was becoming “dangerously overreliant” on US tech companies including Palantir, Keir Starmer told parliament he would prefer to have more domestic capability but added: “I don’t think we’re overreliant.”
Palantir was founded by the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel and it supports the US and Israeli militaries and the ICE immigration crackdown. In the UK it has built up more than £500m in contracts including with the NHS, police and Ministry of Defence.
Insiders at the FCA, where security-cleared Palantir staff are to gain access to FCA data in a 12-week trial, have questioned if there are sufficient safeguards to prevent its “data lake” from being exploited in unintended ways.
There are concerns about the potential for data about sensitive FCA investigations into high-profile figures to be accessed during Palantir’s work. These have recently included the banker Jes Staley, who was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and the hedge fund boss Crispin Odey. The FCA has insisted Palantir will be a “data processor”, not a “data controller”, meaning it could only act on instruction from the regulator.
The FCA said it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data would be hosted and stored solely in the UK. Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data trawling should be retained by the FCA, it said.
One insider told the Guardian that the information so far available was “very lacking in details about how the obvious risks would be controlled or limited”.
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesperson, called for a investigation into the FCA’s Palantir contract and said: “Palantir has spent years embedding itself within the Maga machine. Awarding a contract for sensitive UK financial data to a Trump-aligned tech giant seems like a huge error of judgment.”
If there is one thing that Trump and Maga have established, it is that we have become far too dependent on American technology companies. This is a case in point and the FCA need to reconsider.
Monday, March 23, 2026
Reform's in-house cheerleader
He says these are the only conclusions one can reasonably draw from the first-ever exercise in commissioning experienced professional journalists to watch multiple hours of output from GB News:
Most of our 20 reviewers had never watched GB News before. Most of them came away appalled – not by the political views that dominate the station’s output, but by the way the channel is driving a coach and horses through the laws that were put in place to define broadcasting in the UK.
The UK news ecosystem is both special and unique. Newspapers have, for 200 years, often been wildly opinionated in their approach to journalism. But parliament decided that broadcasting would be different: in return for a licence, there’s an obligation to be accurate and impartial. Broadcasters are required to offer appropriate challenge and context, and are supposed to promote a range of viewpoints.
GB News routinely – you might almost say systematically – disregards these requirements. Asked to score the programmes on a scale of 0-5 (0 being not at all compliant with Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code and 5 being wholly compliant), the overall score from our reviewers was just 1.5. Each reviewer came up with detailed reasoning.
Ofcom’s log of complaints, by contrast, shows a tiny trickle of concern. Of the 15 programmes we reviewed, nine had triggered no complaints, two sparked two complaints, while a kid-glove interview with Donald Trump led to 32. Two more programmes are “under assessment”.
So far, there has been no action in regard to any of these complaints. The Trump interview, which both our reviewers scored zero for compliance, was waved through on the grounds that some of Trump’s lies and inaccuracies were later challenged by guests during the evening show, in the early hours of the morning in the UK.
The virtual absence of complaints about the flagship evening shows suggests that the GB News audience is comfortable with what it’s getting and unlikely to raise concerns. In one poll run by Reform UK candidate and GB News presenter Matt Goodwin, a remarkable 97% of viewers agreed with Donald Trump’s statement that Europe had become “unrecognisable”. Even in Pyongyang, such a poll would raise eyebrows.
Rusbridger points out that since becoming an MP in July 2024, NIgel Farage has declared a remarkable £585,000 in fees from GB News, up to December 2025. In addition, his company holds nearly half a million GB News shares, which could amount to a 2% holding.
The article goes into some detail on the number of ways that GB News breaks OFCOM guidelines, so why are they not doing anything about it?
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Crypto billionaire’s political base hosting ‘anti-woke’ and rightwing activists in Westminster
The paper says that Ben Delo, 42, who was pardoned by Donald Trump last year, has given support in kind to Rupert Lowe, the anti-migration MP challenging Nigel Farage from the right – while also connecting with mainstream figures including the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and former cabinet minister Michael Gove:
Delo, an Oxford graduate who moved to Hong Kong in 2012 and appears to still be based there, says he is a champion of “free speech” and has vowed to tackle the “nuisance” of political correctness. He supports more than 50 organisations ranging across the political spectrum and public life, as well as non-affiliated groups and individuals.
Now a joint investigation by the Guardian and Hope Not Hate reveals some of the people and projects that have benefited from Delo’s largesse.
Among them are those who have expressed hardline positions on immigration, nationalism and abortion.
Delo, who says he has poured more than £100m into philanthropy, is providing funding, networking opportunities and help in kind via a suite of rooms in a building overlooking Westminster Abbey, known as the Sanctuary. Those given access can use the facility free of charge for events, office space and podcasting.
Restore Britain, the party founded by Lowe, a former Reform UK MP who now sits as an independent, launched its campaign for the mass deportation of millions of migrants from a room at the Sanctuary last year.
The Triggernometry podcast, which describes itself as a free speech and open inquiry platform, has used the facilities to broadcast to its 1.7 million subscribers.
Its co-host Konstantin Kisin has questioned whether the British-born former prime minister Rishi Sunak could be considered English because of his ethnicity, saying during a show recorded at the Sanctuary: “He’s a brown Hindu, how is he English?”
A spokesperson for Triggernometry said Kisin had “repeatedly explained that he is not rightwing and not only that, he never said Rishi Sunak was not English”. They added: “He said that, in his view, like his own son, who was born to two first-generation Brits in Britain, he was British and not ethnically English.”
Delo says he doesn’t necessarily endorse the views of those he supports. But he facilitates events where those with hardline views mix with more mainstream politicians. Guests at his summer party last year included the former cabinet minister Michael Gove, Reform UK’s head of policy – the Cambridge academic and anti-abortionist James Orr – and Ben Habib, the founder of Advance UK, the political party supported by Tommy Robinson.
Delo has also connected with Badenoch. The leader of the Conservative party sat at a table with him at the Spectator magazine awards dinner in 2023.
Later, Badenoch sent Delo a handwritten note on a card featuring parliament’s portcullis logo, saying: “Was great to party with you last month. We should do so more often”.
The sort of money being put into these right-wing causes is quite substantial and once more raises questions about the way that politics is funded.
Saturday, March 21, 2026
The tragic link between Mumbles and Chile
On December 8th, 1863, over 3,000 worshippers packed into the church of La Compañía de Jesús in Santiago, Chile, for a religious festival. The church was filled with thousands of candles, oil lamps, and other flammable decorations.
When a ceremonial candles accidentally ignited the church’s ornate decorations, the resulting inferno claimed more than 2,500 lives - mostly women and children. Their escape was hampered by narrow exits whose doors only opened inwards, and priests who fled through a vestry door, locking it behind them.
The New York Times reported on the fire as “a scene impossible to exaggerate, it cannot even be described... It is absolutely impossible to convey in words any idea of the harrowing spectacle of Tuesday night.”
It remains, reports say, the deadliest accidental building fire ever recorded. Eyewitnesses described how "the church was a furnace above and below" as the dome crashed down, followed by the spire.
The church’s bells - thought to be of Spanish origin and dating back to 1753 - fell with the collapsing tower, but at least four survived the flames. They were elaborately cast and beautifully inscribed - the largest measuring over 32 inches in diameter and weighing several hundred kilograms.
After the tragedy, four of the bells were sold as scrap copper to renowned Swansea industrialist Graham Vivan of Clyne Castle, and shipped 7,000 miles to Swansea - then the world's "Copperopolis", nicknamed so due to the region’s dominance in copper smelting.
The bells likely travelled aboard ships called Cape Horners - vessels named for their perilous route around South America's southern tip that regularly sailed between Swansea and Chilean ports.
Three of the bells were donated to All Saints Church in Mumbles in exchange for the church’s medieval bells, during restoration work in the 1860s. The fourth bell went to St Thomas’ Church in Neath.
For nearly 100 years, the Santiago bells called local parishioners to worship at All Saints Church, until structural issues in the bell tower made it necessary to remove them in 1964. They were later mounted in a metal brace and placed in the church porch.
Then, in the 1970s, a tragic opera called "The Bells of Santiago" was performed at Oystermouth Castle, bringing new awareness of the story and sparking wider interest in the bells' remarkable history.
Canon Keith Evans of All Saints Church later began detective work, piecing together the full story from historical records - including a photograph of the of the bells taken in the church ruins just days after the disaster. He even wrote a book about the event, The Bells of Santiago.
In 2009, the Chilean government formally requested the bells' return to form part of a memorial for the fire victims, to mark the 150th anniversary of the fire.
The response from All Saints Church - and the local community - was unanimous - the bells should go home. As Canon Keith Evans described it, returning them was about "one community's generosity to another and the renewing of historic links between Swansea and Chile."
After removing the bells from All Saints Church with the help of “small fork lift trucks and some strong men”, HMS Portland carried them on a five-month voyage back to Chile in April 2010. A ceremony to mark their departure from Mumbles was attended by Chilean Ambassador, Tomás Müller Sproat.
In September of that same year, an emotional gathering in Santiago saw Chilean and Welsh officials unite as the bells were incorporated into a memorial for those who died. The event was held at the site of the original disaster, in front of Chile's Presidential Palace, as part of the country's bicentennial celebrations.
A few years later in Wales, All Saints Church installed digital bells that faithfully recreated the sound of those from Santiago - you can listen to them ring here.
Labels: lochist
Friday, March 20, 2026
Facial recognition cameras showing racial bias
The paper says that the move to suspend use of the AI-enabled systems was revealed by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which regulates the use of the technology deployed so far by at least 13 police forces in London, south and north Wales, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Surrey and Sussex:
The ICO said Essex police had paused LFR deployments “after identifying potential accuracy and bias risks” and warned other forces to have mitigations in place. LFR systems are either mounted to fixed locations or deployed in vans. In January, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced the number of LFR vans would increase five-fold, with 50 available to every police force in England and Wales.
Essex commissioned University of Cambridge academics to conduct a study, which involved 188 actors walking past cameras being actively deployed from marked police vans in Chelmsford. The results were published last week and showed about half of the people on a watchlist were correctly identified and incorrect identifications were extremely rare, but the system was more likely to correctly identify men than women and it was “statistically significantly more likely to correctly identify black participants than participants from other ethnic groups”.
This “raises questions about fairness that require continued monitoring”, the report concluded. One of its authors, Dr Matt Bland, a criminologist, told the Guardian and Liberty Investigates: “If you’re an offender passing facial recognition cameras which are set up as they have been in Essex, the chances of being identified as being on a police watchlist are greater if you’re black. To me, that warrants further investigation.”
The problem differs from the more common public concern about the technology which is that it identifies innocent people. Last month it emerged that police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited 100 miles away after retrospective face scanning software confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.
Possible reasons for the latest issue with LFR include overtraining of the algorithm on the faces of black people. Experts believe it could be rectified by adjusting system settings. A separate study of the same technology by the government’s National Physical Laboratory found black men were most likely to be correctly matched by the system and white men least likely, but the effect was not statistically significant.
In the light of this study I would expect other police forces to also suspend use of these cameras and for the rollout of more LFR vans to be put on hold. After all, we did tell them this might happen.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Labour MPs revolt on international aid cuts
The paper says that the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is expected to make an announcement to parliament on Thursday over reduced allocations for aid, more than a year after the prime minister announced plans to reduce the funds from 0.5 per cent of GDP to 0.3 per cent by 2027:
Keir Starmer is set to face the wrath of Labour MPs over confirmation of significant cuts to overseas development aid (ODA).
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is expected to make an announcement to parliament on Thursday over reduced allocations for aid, more than a year after the prime minister announced plans to reduce the funds from 0.5 per cent of GDP to 0.3 per cent by 2027.
The ODA budget was reduced to 0.48 per cent in 2025/26, then will drop to 0.37 per cent in 2026/27, and will be a mere 0.3 per cent in 2027/28.
Ahead of the statement, former international development minister Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, issued a warning to the government that it was leaving the door open for malign foreign powers such as China to fill the space left by the UK.
He said: “In an already unsafe world, cutting aid risks alienating key allies and will make improving children’s health and education in Commonwealth countries more difficult.
“We risk creating more opportunities for regimes who don’t share our values.
“Our security depends not just on a stronger military but also on building soft power so that our soldiers aren’t needed.”
Mr Thomas’s intervention reflects growing unease on the Labour backbenches about the policy which only leaves guaranteed funding for Ukraine, Gaza, the UK’s Overseas Territories and Sudan. It is believed that protections for women and girls will also be maintained.
The cuts are the latest issue to spark discontent among Labour MPs in a week where a speech by former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner describing draconian plans to control immigration as “un-British” have ignited another civil war within the party.
With Labour losing the crucial Gorton and Denton by-election to the Greens and coming third behind Reform in what had been the party’s seventh safest seat, Labour MPs are actively discussing replacing the prime minister in a bid to move left.
One senior backbencher said: “The issue on overseas aid is just another example of the way this government has moved away from Labour values.”
Labour really have lost their way.
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
So, what does Nigel actually believe?
The paper says that some of the videos the Reform leader has sold include ones in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi event, repeated extremist slogans and supported a man convicted over his involvement in a far-right riot.
They add that the haul includes videos in which Farage repeats a motto associated with the UK far right, references antisemitic conspiracy theories and makes misogynistic remarks about leftwing politicians – including a comment about the US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s breasts:
The unearthing of the videos could prove damaging to Farage, whose party is leading in the polls in the UK. They raise questions about his relationship with the far right and who he is willing to take money from.
Farage charged £155 for one video he made in 2025 for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. The Reform leader told the man to “keep acting in the right way”.
He was paid £141 for another video in which he promoted an event by a Canadian neo-Nazi group, which used the clip in propaganda alongside fascist salutes and antisemitic imagery. Farage called the event “the best thing that ever happened”.
The Guardian has also identified a series of “outtake” Cameo clips in which Farage appears quick to anger when his recording is interrupted, showing a side to him that contrasts with his amiable public persona.
The Guardian analysed 4,366 clips Farage has produced on Cameo since he joined the platform in 2021. He has become a prolific user of the service, which allows celebrities and high-profile figures to sell short videos to members of the public.
Buyers of Cameo videos are required to write a prompt, which describes who the video is for and what the user wants their chosen celebrity to say.
Farage has charged a total of at least £374,893 for his videos since he joined the platform five years ago and often makes several videos a day. Most are innocuous clips in which he is paid about £85 to send his supporters personalised messages to celebrate birthdays, Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
However, there are dozens of instances in which he has made videos for people who expressed far-right or offensive views. They include clips Farage made for one Cameo user who expressed support for the National Front, a defunct fascist party, and another who asked for a video for a former Ukip supporter who dislikes “the gypsies”.
The paper suggests that Farage's relentless use of the platform raises questions about his focus as an MP and leader of a major political party but surely the real issue here are the causes he associates himself with.
Reform say that the videos “should not be treated as political statements or campaign activity”, but that is not the point. Here is the leader of a political party publicly making outrageous statements. At best it suggests poor political judgement, at worst it raises questions as to what Farage really believes.
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Another Reform tax scandal
The paper says that Richard Tice reportedly avoided paying corporation tax on his property company Quidnet Reit Ltd over a three-year period after gaining a rare legal status for his firm:
The Reform MP is accused of avoiding hundreds of thousands in corporation tax by listing his firm on the Guernsey stock exchange and applying for it to become a real estate investment trust (REIT), according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Tice’s firm reportedly did not meet the technical tests for REIT status however a legal quirk meant it gained the status from 2018 to 2021. REITs are exempt from paying corporation tax during a grace period.
Firms with the status instead issue a portion of a company's earnings to shareholders, who are then taxed individually.
But Mr Tice’s ownership structure reportedly saw portions of his company’s earnings channelled into an offshore trust and dormant businesses. Quidnet no longer has REIT status.
Labour’s chair Anna Turley said: “Richard Tice urgently needs to explain himself - to the British public and to HMRC. Why has he gone to such extreme lengths to avoid paying his taxes, and has all the tax he owes been paid?
“If these claims are true, it looks like Reform’s Deputy Leader is just in it for himself - not for working people who couldn’t even dream of earning the kind of money he appears to have hidden from the taxman. Nigel Farage needs to decide whether that’s what he wants Reform to stand for.”
Mr Tice said Quidnet was a “UK company paying UK tax operating in accordance with UK laws” and that it was “not unusual for property companies to seek REIT status”.
He said there was “nothing complex or unusual about a UK company having a range of shareholders, some of whom are directors".
He added: “Voters should be reassured to have a successful businessman who knows how to make money for shareholders running a business, trade and energy department, making money and growth for taxpayers.
"If the country had had this before maybe we would not be in the current dire economic pickle.”
Once more we see that anybody who believes Reform stand up for working people is seriously deluded.
Monday, March 16, 2026
Welsh NHS and schools underperforming despite funding increase
The broadcaster says that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded that Wales' health and education systems are underperforming compared with England despite significant increases in spending.
The IFS report concludes that despite recent falls waiting lists remain far higher than before Covid struck, and school absences remain 50% higher than in 2019:
David Phillips of the IFS said the causes of poor performance in Welsh public services were "not fully clear", and more work was needed to diagnose the reasons.
He said funding levels "seem unlikely to be a major factor given spending in Wales is higher than comparable areas of England" and high levels of deprivation "can likely only explain part of it too".
"Instead, policies and the way services are delivered are likely to play a role. Average hospital stays are 40% longer in Wales than England, reducing the number of patients that can be admitted and treated," he said.
The IFS cited average waiting times for elective treatments in Wales of 19 weeks in December 2025, double the pre-pandemic level of 10.7 weeks and higher than the equivalent figure of 13.4 weeks.
A&E waiting times had worsened over the last two years, with 53% of patients waiting less than four hours in December 2025, compared to a target of 95%.
But it said health spending had increased by 17% per person in real terms since 2019-20, and spending per pupil had increased by 14% - similar to or higher than those seen in England over the same period of time.
The think tank says the causes of poor performance in Welsh public services are "not fully clear" and more work is needed to diagnose the reasons.
Phillips said that when it came to schools, "accountability for poor performance may be weaker – with less data available to both teachers and parents"
.
Overall and persistent absences from school remain far higher than before the pandemic, the IFS said, citing figures from 2024-25 when 9% of pupils in Wales were absent on any given day, up from less than 6% in 2019.
Performance in the internationally comparable PISA tests for 15 year olds fell by more in Wales than England post-pandemic - with the last figures published in 2023.
Clearly, May's elections are a crunch point for devolution. With a new system and an expanded Senedd, whoever takes power needs to deliver if confidence in the devolution is to be restored.
Their first action must be a very quick, but thorough review of what is going wrong before using what resources they have in a way that can really make a difference to services.
It could be a very short honeymoon period for the new government.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
The financial challenges faced by the next Welsh Government
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its own analysis that suggests that the next Senedd is not going to be an easy ride for whoever forms the next government.
The IFS say that increases in resource funding are set to slow significantly and capital funding is set to fall over the next few years, which will mean tough choices over tax and spending allocation for the next government. Their press release says that:
After increasing by an average of 2.5% a year in real terms so far in the 2020s, the Welsh Government’s funding for day-to-day (resource) spending is set to increase by an average of just 1.1% a year over the next three years. Funding for investment (capital) spending has increased by even more over the last few years but is now set to fall by an average of 1.3% a year.
In both cases, this more challenging funding outlook is driven by the UK government’s decision to have lower growth in overall spending across the UK in coming years as it seeks to reduce a large budget deficit and stabilise debt levels. In the context of spending pressures in areas such as health, social care and special educational needs provision, it will mean whoever is in government in the next Senedd term will face difficult decisions on tax and spending. Indeed, without increases in revenues – whether through a boost to Welsh economic growth or increases in tax rates – and/or major improvements to public sector productivity, cuts to some services are highly likely to channel money to other services with growing spending needs. This is important context for any promises made during the election campaign.
It has been suggested that a move to a needs-based funding formula for allocating funding to the Welsh Government could help address these challenges. At least on the basis of currently available assessments of Wales’s relative spending needs, such a move could in fact exacerbate the challenges. The 2010 Holtham Commission estimated Wales’s spending needs per person were around 14% to 17% higher than those of England. We estimate that UK government funding for the Welsh Government was 25% higher per person in 2024–25 than the amount spent on comparable services per person in England. That is the equivalent of around £1.5 billion a year more than would be received if funding was instead 17% higher than in England.
This assessment means that scrutiny of those manifestos must be much more thorough than usual.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
When Gladstone visited Swansea
His inauguaral lecture, 'Mr Gladstone and Swansea 1887' delivered at the College on 18 November 1980, does not appear to be any longer in print. However, I have found this account of the visit:
Gladstone visited south Wales in 1887 to draw attention to the support given for Irish Home Rule in Wales in an effort to rally similar feeling in England and Scotland. Along his route from Hawarden to Swansea he was greeted by huge crowds and probably the biggest demonstration in Welsh history at Swansea. Welsh Liberals hoped to gain his support for Church disestablishment from the visit.
The events brought much press attention to Wales and many in Wales were proud of the display that was made. While it has been argued that Welsh national identity had informed electoral politics since the middle of the century, Gladstone's visit demonstrates how this political national identity took on a more vocal, ritual form after the Third Reform Act. What is more, the proximity of Gladstone's visit to the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee resulted in comparisons between the events.
His visit was also a civic occasion, to open the new public library in the town, so it was difficult for his political opponents to muster total opposition to it, while his role as both a politician and a man of letters meant that many opponents had divided feelings about him.
The events had little real impact on either Home Rule or disestablishment but they provide insights into the political culture of Wales and its sense of nationality in the late Victorian period, while the occasion also illustrates the importance of ritual and symbol in the era.
Apparently, the visit inspired a song eighty-three years later by musician John Howes, which recalled the visit to Swansea and how the grand old man tried ‘the famous oysters’. It can be listened to here.
Labels: lochist
Friday, March 13, 2026
BBC World Service under threat
The paper says that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has issued a scathing report into the state of the World Service, warning that Britain’s soft power on the international stage is being put at risk over “poor decision making”:
While the service, which is funded jointly by the BBC licence fee and the Foreign Office (FCDO), provided in 43 languages across the world has an average weekly audience of 313 million, MPs on the committee said there is a serious risk of it losing ground to its rivals, in part because of increased spending on international media by states such as Russia and China.
The two countries invested a combined total of about £6 billion to £8 billion a year in global media operations, at a time when the World Service has experienced spending cuts.
The committee also highlighted that trust scores have also "increased markedly" for Russian and Chinese state broadcasters in recent years, while the BBC's ratings have remained stable.
The World Service's total budget fell by 21 per cent in real terms between 2021 and 2026, mainly driven by reductions in contributions from the licence fee.
The report comes as the BBC prepares to negotiate the renewal of its charter with the government, with the size of the licence fee up for discussion. The last charter renewal in 2012 saw the BBC agree to pay for the World Service.
MPs said they were "deeply troubled" to learn that the BBC has not been told how much the government will provide in funding for the World Service in the coming year.
The corporation could also not provide the committee with "a single, transparent suite of value for money measures across the service's TV, radio and digital offerings".
The report added weaknesses in BBC governance had "led to poorly evidenced decisions and unclear lines of responsibility within the organisation".
The corporation's management of the World Service's digital upgrade was found to have had weaknesses that contributed to a fall in overall digital audiences of 11% since 2021.
MPs also raised concerns about the BBC's failure to "clearly document its rationale for key decisions made as part of savings programmes", alongside a lack of metrics to effectively track performance and impact on its audiences.
The World Service has been important in helping the UK maintain its influence in many key areas of foreign policy. It must not be allowed to wither in the vine.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Reform in chaos over Iran war
The Mirror reports that Farage has shifted his stance on the Iran war as fears mount over the hit to energy bills:
The Reform UK leader initially hit out at the Government for failing to join the initial wave of US-Israeli strikes. But today, he performed a screeching U-turn, telling journalists: "Let’s not get involved in another foreign war:"
It comes after wider confusion about Reform's stance on military action against Tehran. Deputy leader Richard Tice and Reform member Nadhim Zahawi previously backed British involvement - while Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick has opposed it.
A Labour source said: "Nigel Farage and Reform spent the past week saying they would bomb Iran. Now they're backtracking as petrol prices rise, leaving their foreign policy in chaos. That's not serious leadership, that's panic."
Grilled on his position while visiting a petrol station in Derbyshire, Mr Farage said: "Given that we can't even send a Royal Navy vessel to defend British sovereign territory and an RAF base, we certainly don't have the capability to offer anything of any value to the Americans or the Israelis.
"There are differing opinions as to whether we should physically join the attacks. I, as leader, am saying to you, if we can't even defend Cyprus, let's not get ourselves involved in another foreign war."
Asked how he would respond to a potential US request for help from UK troops, Mr Farage said: "We don't have the soldiers anyway. Even if we did, I would say it's no to boots on the ground."
But his party's mayor in Greater Lincolnshire, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has previously declined to rule out putting troops on the ground in the Middle East.
Kemi Badenoch has also toned down her bullish rhetoric, after blasting Mr Starmer for holding back. At PMQs last week, she said: "We are in this war whether they like it or not. What is the PM waiting for?”
But today, the Conservative leader said: "I said that we support their actions. I never said we should join. I did say that where British bases are being attacked, we should do more than catch the arrows. We should stop the people who are attacking us. Stop the archer."
Labour Party chair Anna Turley said: "Going to war is the most serious decision a prime minister can make. Nigel Farage spent the past week calling for escalation that would make cost-of-living pressures even worse.
"If he had been prime minister he would have already dragged our country into this war, and wouldn't be able to U-turn like he has done today. While Keir Starmer offers serious, level-headed leadership in the national interest, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have shown themselves to be unfit for office."
Is the real reason for Farage's change of heart that an overwhelming majority of UK voters are opposed to the country getting involved in this war? God forbid that the so-called man of the people might go up against public opinion.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Lawyers call for rethink on plans to cut jury trials
The paper says that the letter to Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, from 3,200 lawyers, including 300 senior barristers, comes as his government faces the prospect of one of its most serious backbench revolts since coming to power:
Efforts by David Lammy, the justice secretary, to change the mind of one of the leading Labour figures opposed to the plans, the backbencher Karl Turner, failed after the men met on Monday night.
Turner, who had previously coordinated a letter from 38 Labour MPs urging the prime minister to reverse the plans, said he had “absolutely not” been convinced.
The Conservatives are expected to force a vote to try to block the second reading in parliament on Tuesday. However, the true scale of the Labour rebellion may not yet be evident.
More than 65 Labour MPs are thought to be considering voting against the bill, but it is understood that many may abstain and instead vote against it at a later stage of the legislative process, such as report stage.
Sarah Sackman, the courts minister, could not confirm in interviews on Tuesday morning whether Labour MPs who rebel against the vote would lose the whip.
“Nothing difficult or worth doing was ever easy and I don’t shy away from that debate. And indeed, some of those voices will be helping us to scrutinise and improve the bill as it goes through parliament,” she told Times Radio.
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, accused the government of mounting “an unacceptable attack on an ancient right”.
“Juries provide a safeguard between the citizen and the state. But Labour want to weaken it because Keir Starmer and David Lammy are putting what is politically expedient ahead of the hard yards of court reform,” he said.
It is quite clear that this outrageous proposal to remove juries from many court proceedings has no support amongst the legal profession and is losing support amongst Labour MPs as well.
If the government wants to reduce the backlog in the courts then they need to invest in them, not undermine the legaL system in this way.
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Labour target pensioners
The paper says that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecast, published for chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spring statement on Tuesday, indicated that 600,000 more pensioners than previously estimated will face income tax by 2026-27. That figure is due to increase to 1 million by 2030-31:
While the state pension is subject to income tax, individuals whose sole income derives from it have historically avoided payments.
This is because the full state pension, currently £230.25 per week, falls below the annual personal tax allowance of £12,570.
In her November 2025 Budget, Ms Reeves extended a freeze on the personal allowance until 2031.
For the first time since its introduction, the full new state pension is set to exceed the personal allowance in the 2027-28 tax year under the triple-lock policy, which guarantees increases in line with inflation, earnings, or 2.5 per cent.
HM Revenue and Customs has updated its modelling of the impact of the threshold freezes on those whose main source of income is the state pension, the OBR said.
Some pensioners with additional income streams will already be paying tax ahead of 2027-28, according to the watchdog.
“The updated modelling of this population across all personal tax threshold freezes since April 2021 increases the estimate of the number of people brought into paying tax by 600,000 in 2026-27 and one million in 2030-31,” the OBR wrote.
“However, much of this population is projected to pay only very small additional amounts of tax due to the freezes, so this only increases the yield of the November 2025 Budget measures by £0.1bn in 2030-31.”
The OBR also said that the government has pledged to exempt those whose only income is the state pension from paying income tax on it in this parliament, but has yet to set out details.
The government confirmed its aim to exempt those relying on the state pension and to detail that policy well before the April 2027 change.
The Liberal Democrats said Ms Reeves must set out how pensioners will be protected from these stealth taxes immediately.
The party’s Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper said: “Buried in the small print of today’s spring statement is a shock stealth grab hitting another 1 million pensioners.
“For poorer pensioners, every penny counts, and these unfair tax hikes could be the final straw.
“Rachel Reeves must urgently explain how she will protect older, poorer pensioners from this stealth tax squeeze.
“Pensioners have worked hard all their lives, paid into the system and played by the rules. Poorer pensioners should not be made to pay the price for this Labour government’s economic failure.”
Labour may have come to power pledging not to increase income tax, but the way they have handled the personal allowance is a clear breach of that pledge. Many people will be worse off because of this stealth tax, one that proportionatley hits the poorest paid workers more than the rich.
Monday, March 09, 2026
A period of silence is called for
The paper says that the former prime minister told a private Jewish News event on Friday that Sir Keir should have let the Trump administration use British airbases to strike Iran:
He reportedly added: “If they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security ... you had better show up”.
Sir Tony’s comments were made in private on the understanding that he would not be quoted, but they have since appeared in the Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times.
Asked about the former Labour prime minister’s comments on Sky News on Sunday morning, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said: “I just disagree.”
She added: “We learn the lessons from some of the things that went wrong in Iraq, and I think that is exactly what Keir Starmer has done.”
The intervention came as Mr Trump again criticised Sir Keir over the UK’s approach to the Middle East conflict, saying that the US does not need anyone to “join wars after we’ve already won”.
Mr Trump was referring to reports that the UK is preparing an aircraft carrier for deployment to the Middle East.
The US president posted on his Truth Social platform: “The United Kingdom, our once great Ally, maybe the greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East.
“That’s OK, prime minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember. We don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won!”
Sir Keir has defended his decision not to allow US forces to use British bases to support initial strikes on Iran, saying he needed to be satisfied that any military action was legal and well planned.
However Sir Tony told the Jewish News event: “I am not saying anything that I haven’t already said to the government ... I think we should have backed America from the very beginning.
“We have got to be very clear about this as a country. We’re depending on the American alliance for our country. They are not just an ally, they are an indispensable ally, right?”
He continued: “The American relationship matters. It matters particularly today. It’s not a question of whether it’s this president or that president. If they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security...you had better show up.”
I am not sure that Blair has the measure of public opinion here. Having once taken the UK into an illegal war, he seems keen for us to do it again. Thank goodness that the present government are learning from his mistakes.
Sunday, March 08, 2026
Major Cardiff tourist attraction to be dismantled
I first blogged on this phenomenon on 20 August 2009 just before I went on holiday. Over the next eight days my blog received 5,422 hits, most of them looking for that post. I revisited the issue a couple of times over the next two years and then moved on.
I was in Cardiff bay a few months ago and made a point of visiting the 'shrine', noting that not only is it still there but it has grown exponentially.
Now. the BBC report that the shrine is set to be taken down after nearly two decades:
The tribute was built by fans of the series to commemorate queer character Ianto Jones 17 years ago, near where the series was filmed in Mermaid Quay, Cardiff.
However, self-proclaimed shrine-keeper Carol-Anne Hillman said she was "devastated" to learn that the shrine would be taken down due to health and safety.
A spokesperson for Mermaid Quay confirmed it was exploring the possibility of a new plaque for Ianto once maintenance work had been completed.
Carol-Anne Hillman has been looking after the shrine since 2017 and is "devastated" that the tribute will be taken down.
She said: "It became part of my life in Cardiff.
"I've got a back bedroom that's got about 11 or 12 bags of decorations now that I can't use.
"I've spent hundreds buying all these decorations.
"There's loads of people now that won't get even the first look at the shrine."
More than 860 miles (1,384 km) from the shrine in Cardiff Bay, Claudia from Germany was sad to learn that the attraction would be taken down.
"I love Doctor Who, but Torchwood was something else. It was quirky, it was campy, it was just a lot of fun," she said.
"[But] let's face it, the area is dodgy.
"The metal is rusted, the wood is decaying, it's in desperate need of some refurbishing and renovation."
Having last visited the shrine in 2018, Claudia plans to spend her 60th birthday in the city this year but will not get the chance to see the shrine again before it is taken down.
It isn't just the fans who will lose out by this decision of course. The 'shrine' attracts a lot of people to Cardiff Bay, many of whom will be disappointed.
Labels: lochist
