Monday, August 03, 2026
The funding fog surrounding Nigel Farage and Reform UK
The paper says that Farage negotiated the pact with Richard Tice, then the leader, in March and April 2024. George Cottrell, the convicted fraudster who had been secretly bankrolling Farage, supervised the discussions.
They add that under the terms of the deal, once Farage became leader Reform would repay or write off more than £1 million in outstanding loans it had received from Tice’s company:
The deal was first presented by Farage and Cottrell to the party’s treasurer in mid-May. Its existence undermines the Reform leader’s claim that he had no intention until June 2024 of returning to politics. Farage has used this to defend his failure to declare donations made to him in the year before he was elected as an MP, which triggered two parliamentary investigations.
On Saturday, Reform sources acknowledged the existence of the deal but insisted it had been drafted for if, not when, Farage became leader. Asked why he would have signed such an agreement if he had no intention of returning as leader, they said it kept his options open. They said Farage had assumed he would focus his energies on campaigning for Donald Trump in that year’s US presidential election.
Farage has claimed repeatedly that he did not need to declare a £5 million gift from the cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne or in-kind benefits from Cottrell, as he was a media personality at the time. MPs must declare any benefit in any way connected to their “political activities” received in the 12 months before their election.
He told the Triggernometry podcast last month: “At that period of my life, from 2021 to the third of June 2024, I was a broadcaster, I was someone that appeared on celebrity TV programmes, I was somebody that promoted some financial market products, but I was an influencer, I wasn’t in politics.”
Mehrtash A’Zami, the party treasurer at the time, said: “I was told about the agreement before the election was called. It commenced when Nigel came back. The essence was the schedule of repayments. I was told to implement it and acted to fulfil it in line with my responsibilities.”
As the paper points out the disclosures also raise more questions about Reform UK’s compliance with electoral law. They add that the party is already at the centre of a Metropolitan Police investigation into whether the source of its donations was disguised.
This latest informaton also fills in some details about the chain of events leading to Farage resuming his party's leadership and standing for election, as well as the complicated web of donations assocaiated with that, though as yet the actual source of those funds is still unclear.
Sunday, August 02, 2026
Westminister needs to tackle its drinking culture
The paper says that drinking is commonplace and some MPs have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital, one disclosed:
The IAS report also found that:
* 42% of the MPs interviewed had been offered an alcoholic drink at a work meeting or event on a weekly basis during the previous six months; 13% said that occurred daily.
* 22% had concerns about a colleague’s drinking.
Parliament’s long and unusual working hours, the loneliness many MPs experience being away from home, the pressures of the job and socialising in order to advance their careers can all act as catalysts for drinking.
The report added: “The availability of alcohol was seen to encourage unhealthy behaviour in general, from affecting colleagues’ sleep and stress levels to potentially normalising high-risk drinking, with one MP referring to colleagues having had their stomachs pumped in hospital and going back into Westminster the following day.”
Some MPs said the findings should prompt Westminster to rethink its attitude to alcohol. The Labour MP Cat Smith said: “We wouldn’t accept a surgeon operating after a drink or a driver getting behind the wheel – so why should we accept legislators voting on the laws of the land after one?
“If we’re serious about being a professional workplace, we have to ask hard questions about practices like late night votes that sit alongside on-tap bars.”
Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before entering parliament as a Labour MP in 2024, said the report was a wake-up call. In a foreword to the report, she suggested that parliament should draw up its first formal workplace policy on alcohol.
She added: “Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in 10 respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work and 70% either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking.
“That combination – real, measurable harm and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address.”
This is no way to run a country. Alcohol would not be available in any other workplace during working hours, so how can the position in Parliament be justified? It is a culture that needs to be urgently tackled.
Saturday, August 01, 2026
Historic toll house up for sale
The news site says that the Gate House in Llannon, near Llanelli in Carmarthenshire, was the former money collecting building for the tolls, but was later turned into a two-bedroom detached cottage.
Like others in Carmarthenshire, it was a target during the Rebecca Riots, a series of protests against conditions in the rural areas of Wales between 1839 and 1843 led by men with blackened faces disguised as women:
The property was built in the 19th Century by the Three Commotts Turnpike Trust, a prominent toll road operator in Carmarthenshire.
Along with many others in the country, the toll house was constructed to collect money for the upkeep of local roads, and became the target of the Rebecca protest movement.
Properties like this one were targeted across the country due to severe agricultural depression, poor harvests and poverty.
Hard-pressed farmers and labourers would darken their faces and dress in traditional women's clothes of the time to attack various toll gates in protest against "unreasonable" charges.
They went by the name of Merched Beca, which translates from Welsh as Rebecca's Daughters.
The riots were mainly confined to the old counties of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, with only one incident in north Wales.
The riots ceased prior to 1844 due to several factors, including increased troop levels, a desire by the protestors to avoid violence, and the appearance of criminal groups using the guise of the biblical character Rebecca for their own purposes.
In 1844 an Act of Parliament to consolidate and amend the laws relating to turnpike trusts in Wales, external was passed.
The property is being sold online by Paul Fosh Auctions and has a guide price of £69,000.
The property was built in the 19th Century by the Three Commotts Turnpike Trust, a prominent toll road operator in Carmarthenshire.
Along with many others in the country, the toll house was constructed to collect money for the upkeep of local roads, and became the target of the Rebecca protest movement.
Properties like this one were targeted across the country due to severe agricultural depression, poor harvests and poverty.
Hard-pressed farmers and labourers would darken their faces and dress in traditional women's clothes of the time to attack various toll gates in protest against "unreasonable" charges.
They went by the name of Merched Beca, which translates from Welsh as Rebecca's Daughters.
The riots were mainly confined to the old counties of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, with only one incident in north Wales.
The riots ceased prior to 1844 due to several factors, including increased troop levels, a desire by the protestors to avoid violence, and the appearance of criminal groups using the guise of the biblical character Rebecca for their own purposes.
In 1844 an Act of Parliament to consolidate and amend the laws relating to turnpike trusts in Wales, external was passed.
The property is being sold online by Paul Fosh Auctions and has a guide price of £69,000.
Labels: lochist
Friday, July 31, 2026
Is this progress on social care or a false dawn?
The new Labour prime minister held a summit in Downing Street on Wednesday with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and Lib Dem leader Ed Davey to begin the process of thrashing out a way to deliver social care before it collapses the NHS.
As John Crace writes in the Guardian, this issue is personal for Burnham, as it is for Davey and for a lot of us too. Crace says that at last we have a prime minister who is emotionally intelligent, who understands the country and can connect with it, and who is prepared to expend political capital to get the things done that other politicians were too weak to go near:
This was Andy Burnham’s first big set piece since taking office. And he went straight for social care. An issue that previous governments over the past 30 years have done their utmost to avoid. A royal commission, 22 reviews and absolutely nothing has changed. Too difficult, too many hard choices. Far simpler to keep on with a system that’s failing. Let the next government deal with it. They can take the hits. Just concentrate on trying to win the next election.
“This is personal to me,” said Andy, as he addressed a small audience of care workers and the media at Jewish Care in north London. Personal because his father has dementia and needs daily care.
It’s personal for a lot of us. It’s personal for me. My mother had Alzheimer’s and needed to be in a care home for seven years before she died last year. My sisters and I had to sell her home to pay for the care she got. We didn’t resent it. It was just what needed to happen and the care she got from a mostly overseas staff was superb. We couldn’t have asked for more. But my mother would have been bitterly upset had she been aware of what we had done. Before she got dementia she had always been so proud she would be able to leave her house to us children. It was to have been her last gift to us.
But there is a reason why social care has proven to be so difficult to fix. As Crace points out no one wants to pay for social care until the point when you find you have no choice. And that applies to the country as a whole when it comes to raising the money to pay for what needs to be done.
Already, Reform UK are trying to reawaken the outcry against a so-called 'death tax' even though there are no actual proposals on the table as yet. And there will be hard choices if we are to fix this problem.
I am confident that solutions can be found, they need to be if we are to support our aging population and take pressure off the NHS. The question is whether those solutions can survive a cross-party approach, or will one or another break off from the consensus in favour of making political capital on the price we will have to pay to get it right?
It is at that point that the real test of Burnham's resolve comes into play, and whether he has the support to take the issue to a conclusion in the face of damaging headlines from the right wing press and poorer opinion poll ratings.
The prime minister has raised expectations, he now needs to deliver on them. This cannot be another false dawn.
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Is there a magic money tree?
The paper says that economists at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) caution the prime minister and new chancellor John Healey that “there is no capacity to borrow any more” and that inflation will push up the cost of living much higher than the Bank of England (BoE) is forecasting:
The warning comes amid questions over how Mr Burnham plans to pay for giveaways he announced last week, including a £2 bus fare cap, cutting VAT from energy bills and slashing pub business rates by 20 per cent – all amounting to around £2bn.
At a briefing in Westminster, NIESR director David Aikman said: “It's a tough, tough job being chancellor and I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
According to NIESR’s findings, inflation is set to rise to 3.8 per cent next year, which could see the BoE forced to hike interest rates again to push it down to the government’s 2 per cent target.
In further bad news, economic growth, which was 0.6 per cent for the first quarter of the financial year and 0.4 per cent for the second, is set to plummet to 0.1 per cent in the third quarter.
Mr Aikman added: “Borrowing is at capacity so spending commitments will have to be found through tax rises or spending cuts.”
The findings come after Mr Burnham made around £2bn of new commitments in his first week and alongside widespread speculation that Mr Healey, who quit as defence secretary over a £13bn shortfall in defence spending, wants to find that cash through selling war bonds – an option his predecessor Ms Reeves warned was “just another form of borrowing”.
On top of that, the Treasury needs to find another £4.7bn to fill a black hole in the current defence spending plans, as well as cash to fund Mr Burnham’s reforms to social care and plans to end rough sleeping.
Mr Aikman told the briefing that more borrowing risks the UK “suffering an economic shock” because of uncertainty created by the international environment, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
The NIESR warned that Mr Healey faces a 4 per cent real spending squeeze by the end of the decade – equating to approximately £24bn in 2023 prices – because of higher and more persistent inflation, which will create very difficult trade-offs in the autumn Budget.
The annual NIESR economic outlook underscored that the government has inherited the highest borrowing costs in the G7, heavily backloaded toward an election year, and eroding real purchasing power across public spending.
With public debt stabilising at a high level, but no path to bringing it down, NIESR stressed that any new commitments on defence funding and improving living standards must be funded through taxation or spending reallocations rather than additional borrowing.
Theresa May famously said that there is no magic money tree, can Andy Burnham prove her wrong?
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Burnham disses the Blair vision of a nation of graduates
The paper says that the changes are part of a new drive to tackle “a lost generation” with 1 million young people unemployed or trapped outside education:
It comes after he revealed to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that he plans to bring down the welfare bill by making benefits conditional on people finding work, especially ones linked to mental health issues such as anxiety and stress.
But the move to value “the hard hat as much as the graduation cap” is another break with former Labour prime minister Sir Tony Blair’s legacy, which saw vocational qualifications downgraded in favour of getting 50 per cent of school leavers to university.
Ahead of the announcement, Mr Burnham said: “For too long in this country, students have been told that you must take the academic path to do well and to be respected. The whole school system has been built around it and that has let down young people seeking technical qualifications.
“I want an education system based on parity between academic and technical which gives all young people a clear path in life. From today, Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap.”
He added: “Fixing the youth unemployment crisis in Britain will require a major shake-up in how we do things – and that’s what this government will do. I want to ensure that our education system leaves no dead ends for our young people. The changes we’re announcing today will just be the start of our work to restore opportunity and hope across the country.”
It represents the biggest shift in education since Michael Gove rolled out the school academies and free school reforms in 2011.
But the focus on vocational qualifications also comes at a time when graduates are being hit with massive levels of debt from paying for tuition fees while many are struggling to find employment.
The new pathways of prestigious technical routes will provide 14-year-olds with early access to technical skills, work experience and connections with local employers.
Mr Burnham believes that funding for the changes will come the existing £570m investment to create additional college places across the country, alongside the wider Department for Education settlement agreed at the 2025 Spending Review, which increased schools funding by £4.7bn by 2028-29.
The prime minister has made it clear that he is determined to put technical education on an equal footing with the traditional academic path and to ensure there are “no dead ends” for young people coming out of the education system.
This will mean providing high-quality technical education routes that are valued and respected by students, parents and employers. In a message directly to students, he will say “whether you choose construction, coding or classics, you’ll get the skills you need and be given the respect you deserve”.
Let's hope that Wales follows suit.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Jodrell Bank funding crisis is an important test for Burnham
It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers, and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of Soviet and US spacecraft of the Space Race. However, it is now under threat.
The Guardian reports that the observatory, which runs a world-leading network of radio telescopes, is facing closure after its major funder cut support for the facility.
The paper says the observatory’s funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has said it will withdraw funding for the e-Merlin network that constitutes the UK’s national radio astronomy facility at Jodrell Bank when the current agreement lapses in March 2028:
Scientists said the decision was a blow to UK astronomy, with observations at Jodrell Bank due to end completely unless other funding is found. “Jodrell has been delivering spectacular discovery science for decades,” said Prof Catherine Heymans, Scotland’s astronomer royal. “To see this world-leading facility cut is just devastating.”
The UKRI has an annual budget of nearly £10bn, but the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which it funds, needs to makes severe cuts to meet cost overruns and rising projected costs.
Prof Simon Garrington, an associate director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, told BBC News that staff were “devastated” by the decision. The move threatens 28 jobs at the observatory and will affect nearly 3,000 researchers who work with the facility.
A spokesperson for the STFC said the body had “undertaken a rigorous prioritisation process to focus investment on the areas that will deliver the greatest long-term scientific capability, impact and value for the UK”.
“The decision to withdraw funding from e-MERLIN at the end of its current funding agreement is the result of a comprehensive, evidence-based prioritisation process. As part of this, STFC is focusing investment on the areas that will deliver the greatest long-term scientific capability and value, including the next generation of world-leading radio astronomy facilities,” the spokesperson added.
Jodrell Bank is, of course, in the north, Burnham's fiefdom. It employs local people and is a major tourist attraction and educational facility. In fact, it isn't that far from the Prime Minister's constituency. More importantly, this facility is of national importance and needs to be saved.
This is an opportunity for Burnham to deliver on his claim that science and academic research are key elements in setting the country back on its feet. Will he step up?
Monday, July 27, 2026
Reform UK had bank account frozen during general election
The paper says that the party was unable to make or receive payments through its account with Arbuthnot Latham, a London private and merchant bank, for a two-week period that included polling day on July 4, 2024:
The Reform treasurer at the time repeatedly asked the bank for an explanation, urging it to unfreeze the account. However, Arbuthnot Latham refused. It said it could not unfreeze the account on demand and declined to provide information beyond saying it was performing “compliance checks”.
Days earlier, bankers had made suspicious activity reports to the National Crime Agency concerning more than £1 million in payments received by the party. They related to Fiona Cottrell, a self-styled “retired stylist” whose son paid for Farage’s staff, security, accommodation and social media output before the campaign in a series of undisclosed benefits.
In May 2024, Cottrell’s mother gave £500,000 to the party in her own name. The next month, she gave a further £1 million to a company owned by Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy, who then donated half of that sum to Reform.
In February last year the Metropolitan Police began a criminal investigation into payments she made, on the basis that she may have “disguised” the source of the donations. On Saturday the BBC reported that the ongoing inquiry was specifically examining the transactions involving Tice’s company. Cottrell and his mother have been interviewed under caution by detectives, according to The Guardian.
Taking into account money she donated directly or via Tice’s company, Fiona Cottrell provided 35 per cent of all payments received by Reform during the campaign. She has never commented on the source of her wealth or the subsequent inquiries by the National Crime Agency or Scotland Yard.
Farage, a vocal campaigner against the “banking establishment”, has never mentioned the freeze. The decision to freeze the account of a political party has no known precedent in modern times.
Things are getting interesting in the sage of Reform UK's finances.
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Reality hits the Burnham agenda
The paper says Raynor has denied she was abandoning the commitment, but compared achieving it to her chances of “running the London Marathon”:
Ms Rayner was reappointed housing minister – a job she had resigned from in 2025 after a row over whether she dodged stamp duty – when Andy Burnham became prime minister on Monday.
Ms Rayner said the housebuilding commitment was “very challenging” when it was made two years ago – and was even “more challenging” now as a result of increased construction costs and other factors which had had “a real negative impact”.
However, Ms Rayner was defiant after it was pointed out to her that in its first two years the government had built fewer than 300,000 homes – well short of the number needed to meet the 1.5 million target over five years.
She said: “I’m a straight-talking person, 1.5 million homes is a difficult target… but I’m going to keep it, I’m not going to be defeated.
”People have underestimated me all my life. If you tell me I cannot do something I will fight like hell to get it done.”
England saw 208,600 new homes built in 2024/25, a 6 per cent fall from the previous year and the lowest annual total since 2015/16, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Labour.
Since Labour entered government in July 2024, around 392,400 net additional homes have been delivered, leaving ministers running at roughly two-thirds of the rate required to hit their goal by 2029.
The housebuilding industry has warned that without stronger consumer confidence, lower mortgage costs and healthier balance sheets across the construction sector, delivering the scale of housebuilding needed to meet Labour’s targets will remain an uphill battle.
Torrin Wilkins, director of Centre Think Tank, said the government should abolish stamp duty and impose binding housebuilding targets on councils to boost growth in the sector.
“The 1.5 million target comes up again and again. It’s almost turning into the tens of thousands immigration target in the Cameron era in that we never seem to be able to meet it and yet it’s constantly brought up,” he said, adding it was “unlikely” the government will meet its target if it does not change direction.
Mr Wilkins said the government should replace stamp duty with a proportional property tax to “unlock” housing sales and give developers incentive to build.
“Developers will look at who can afford homes in this local area and stamp duty is a real block,” he said.
“If Andy Burnham’s aim is breathing space, then abolishing stamp duty is probably the number one on that list because it allows people to upsize and downsize more easily and create that extra space.”
He also recommended councils and local authorities are handed binding targets with consequences for not meeting them.
“I think it would be a good step forward as well, just to really push that this isn’t an optional housing target. This is a national situation and a national emergency that needs to be taken seriously.”
This is an issue I highlighted back in October 2024, when the new Labour government was first embarking on this programme.
To be effective a significant proportion of these new homes need to be social housing, which means that the government must put up the money and work with local councils and housing associations to find the land, get the planning permissions through, with all the complications around that process on environmental sustainability and diversity, infrastructure etc, and then get the houses built.
The infrastructure, even on brown field sites, will be expensive enough without factoring in the build-cost. It is likely to be a two to three year process from start to completion for each site.
They also need to get a skilled workforce in place to undertake the construction, and where they are relying on planning gain for social homes, incentivise builders to bring forward their own plans. And of course for non-social and non-affordable homes they need house builders to see that they are getting sufficient profit on their investment.
This is the reality of just setting targets and hoping that they can be delivered. It means that even in 2024 building 1.5m homes by 2029 was not really possible. Where we are now, it just isn't going to happen.
They also need to get a skilled workforce in place to undertake the construction, and where they are relying on planning gain for social homes, incentivise builders to bring forward their own plans. And of course for non-social and non-affordable homes they need house builders to see that they are getting sufficient profit on their investment.
This is the reality of just setting targets and hoping that they can be delivered. It means that even in 2024 building 1.5m homes by 2029 was not really possible. Where we are now, it just isn't going to happen.
Saturday, July 25, 2026
How Oswald Mosley met his match in Swansea
Wales-on-line reports that he started his Welsh odyssey in Cardiff where his rally was peaceful, but the reaction was vry different in Swansea’s Plaza Cinema that summer when Mosley took written questions from the audience:
The crucial one was, “I work for a Jew. Should I change my employer?” Mosley replied: “I am disgusted that anyone should work for a Jew. You should be certain to find a more reliable gentile.”
Up stood the questioner – to reveal his dog collar. The Rev Leon Atkins’ “employer” was Jesus Christ. At that the huge audience erupted, attacking the Blackshirts as Mosley was rushed away shouting “Blasphemy.” The 19-year-old Dylan Thomas wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson telling her “I was there and was thrown down the stairs,” adding, “No harm done, however.”
The website explains that Mosley and his blackshirts were well-prepared for fights to break out at their meetings:
Mosley had warned when forming his New Party that “the only methods we shall use will be English ones. We shall rely on the good old English fist.” So at his HQ in the Kings Road, Chelsea he trained a team of enforcers known as the Biff Boys. They would bring the beginning of his downfall.
In June 1934, they acted like Hitler’s brutal Brownshirts during a massive, Nuremberg-style rally at London’s Olympia. MPs from all parties watching the ferocity of their attacks on hecklers were appalled. Not so Lloyd George. He wrote: “I feel that men who enter meetings with the deliberate intention of suppressing free speech have no right to complain if an exasperated audience handles them rudely.”
The following month Lord Rothermere withdrew his support for the Blackshirts, claiming that Jewish businesses had threatened to take their advertising to rival papers. He told Hitler later that year that the Jews compelled him to “toe the line.” It had an effect. In 1934 the BUF had up to 40,000 members. In 1935 it was down to 5,000.
The Blackshirts’ last act in Wales came in 1936 when Tommy Moran [an ex-light heavyweight champion of the Royal Navy and a former miner] took speakers to Tonypandy for a final rally. Annie Powell, Britain’s first Communist mayor, recalled years later “we swore not even one Welsh sheep would hear the Mosley message.”
They didn’t. Hundreds of miners attacked the speakers and even Annie was impressed by Moran. “He kept knocking ‘em out one by one,” she remembered, “but we won.” Tommy Moran was moved from Wales after what went down in our history as the Battle of De Winton Fields and during the war was interned with his leader.
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