Burnham's Dead Cat Distraction Turns Into Damp Squid

 

Andy Burnham’s Brexit Blunder: When Your Own Minister Undermines Your Russia Claims

Andy Burnham wanted to make headlines with his claims about Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. Instead, he has landed himself in an embarrassing political mess — because one of his own ministers has gone on television and appeared to pull the rug from under his argument.

Burnham, in a failed attempt to distract attention from the Manchester City funding scandal says Russia influenced Brexit. His own minister says Russia tried to interfere but failed. So who, exactly, are we supposed to believe?

That is not a minor difference in wording. It is the difference between claiming that a foreign power attempted to meddle in a democratic process and suggesting that it actually influenced the outcome. One is a claim about hostile activity; the other raises serious questions about the integrity of a historic referendum.

If Burnham is suggesting that Russia helped shape the result, the obvious question is where the evidence is. And if his own minister is saying that Russian interference was unsuccessful, Burnham needs to explain precisely what he means by claiming that the referendum was influenced.

He cannot have it both ways.

You cannot make a dramatic allegation about foreign interference, bask in the headlines it generates, and then expect the public to overlook the fact that your own side appears to be drawing a crucial distinction between attempted interference and actual impact.

The contradiction is the story. Burnham is making the politically explosive claim; his own minister is apparently narrowing it. Either Burnham has evidence that goes beyond the minister's account, in which case he should publish it and explain the discrepancy, or his language is running ahead of what has actually been established.

And if the minister's position is that Russia tried but failed, that hardly amounts to confirmation that Moscow influenced the referendum result.

This is precisely why politicians should choose their words carefully when discussing democratic legitimacy. Accusing a foreign power of attempting to interfere is serious enough. Suggesting that it influenced the outcome of a referendum is a much bigger claim, and it demands evidence to match.

Burnham now has some explaining to do. What exactly is he alleging? What evidence supports it? And why does the account offered by his own minister appear to stop short of the conclusion Burnham wants people to draw?

Until those questions are answered, the episode looks less like a devastating revelation and more like a political own goal.

If Andy Burnham wants to cast doubt on the Brexit referendum by invoking Russia, he needs to do more than make headlines. He needs to explain why his own minister appears to be telling a different story.

MIA!

 

You’ll Need ID to Enter the Net, But Not the Country

 

There is something deeply backwards about a world in which you can cross a national border without handing over your identity, but may soon need to prove exactly who you are just to go online.

Walk into a country and, depending on where you are coming from, you may be waved through with little more than a passport check.

Open a website, however, and increasingly the message is becoming:

Prove who you are.

Upload your ID. Verify your age. Confirm your identity. Authenticate yourself. Hand over another piece of the digital version of your life.

Welcome to the new internet.

It is being sold as safety. As protection. As responsibility. As a way to keep children away from harmful content, stop criminals, tackle fraud and make the internet a more trustworthy place.

Those are all worthy goals.

But there is a question nobody should be allowed to dodge:

How much of your identity should you have to surrender simply to participate in public life online?

Because the internet isn't some niche entertainment platform anymore. It is where we work, learn, shop, communicate, organise, publish, protest, research, debate and increasingly access essential services.

It is infrastructure.

And we are quietly turning that infrastructure into an identity checkpoint.

The internet is becoming a border crossing

For decades, one of the defining characteristics of the internet was that you could participate without necessarily revealing your real-world identity.

You could read an article.

Browse a forum.

Ask a question.

Research a sensitive subject.

Talk to strangers.

Publish an opinion.

You might use a username. You might remain anonymous. You might reveal your identity when you wanted to.

That wasn't a bug.

For many people, anonymity is protection.

It protects whistleblowers. Victims of abuse. Political dissidents. People exploring their sexuality. People asking embarrassing medical questions. Employees speaking about their employers. Citizens criticising powerful institutions.

It also allows ordinary people to separate their public identity from every single thing they have ever searched, watched, read or said.

That separation is disappearing.

The emerging model is brutally simple:

Before you get access, prove who you are.

And once identity becomes the price of admission, anonymity stops being a normal feature of the internet and becomes a privilege.

But we're doing this in the name of safety

And this is where the debate gets difficult.

Nobody seriously believes the internet should be a lawless playground.

Children should be protected.

Fraud should be tackled.

Sexual exploitation should be aggressively pursued.

Criminal networks should not be able to hide behind technology.

The problem isn't the objective.

The problem is the assumption that the answer to every online problem is to make every ordinary person more identifiable.

That's a remarkably blunt instrument.

It's the digital equivalent of saying that because some people drive drunk, everyone should have to surrender their fingerprints before getting into a car.

Security matters.

But so does proportionality.

Your identity is not just another password

The defenders of mandatory digital identification often talk about ID verification as though it were a harmless administrative step.

It isn't.

A password can be changed.

A credit card can be cancelled.

Your identity cannot.

Once an organisation knows who you are, that information can potentially be linked to what you do.

What you read.

What you watch.

Where you go.

What you buy.

Who you communicate with.

What you believe.

What you search for.

Maybe that information is never misused.

Maybe it is securely stored forever.

Maybe every organisation involved is perfectly competent.

Maybe nobody ever gets hacked.

Maybe no future government decides that information should be used for a different purpose.

Maybe.

History is not particularly reassuring about the word "maybe".

The dangerous part isn't today's policy

The most important question isn't necessarily what a digital ID system does today.

It's what it makes possible tomorrow.

Infrastructure has a habit of expanding.

A system created to verify someone's age can eventually become a system used to verify someone's identity.

A system designed for pornography can be extended to social media.

A system introduced to protect children can become a prerequisite for accessing other categories of content.

A database created for one purpose can become extraordinarily attractive to institutions with entirely different purposes.

The phrase "mission creep" sounds boring.

Until it happens to you.

And then there's the chilling effect

Imagine knowing that your identity is attached to everything you read.

Would you research certain subjects?

Would you visit controversial websites?

Would you read political material you disagree with?

Would you ask a question about mental health, sexuality, religion or addiction?

Would you participate in a protest movement?

Would you criticise your employer?

Would you publish an unpopular opinion?

Perhaps you would.

But perhaps you'd hesitate.

And that hesitation matters.

Freedom doesn't disappear only when someone kicks down your door.

Sometimes it disappears because people become afraid to open it.

We should be building privacy-preserving systems, not identity traps

There is a huge difference between proving something about yourself and handing over your entire identity.

You should be able to prove that you are over 18 without necessarily revealing your name, address, date of birth, passport number and entire digital identity.

You should be able to establish eligibility without creating a permanent record of everywhere you used that eligibility.

Technology can do this.

Privacy-preserving credentials, cryptographic proofs and other forms of selective verification offer a fundamentally different model.

The choice isn't simply:

No regulation or everyone shows their ID.

That's a false choice.

We can protect children without building a universal identity checkpoint.

We can fight fraud without making anonymity impossible.

We can enforce the law without turning every citizen into a pre-emptively identifiable suspect.

We can make the internet safer without making it less free.

The irony is almost impossible to miss

You can walk into a country as a stranger.

You can sit in a public space without first proving your identity.

You can buy a newspaper without presenting a government credential.

You can enter a library without uploading your passport.

But increasingly, the internet—the place where much of modern public life now happens—is being redesigned around the assumption that you should identify yourself before participating.

Think about how strange that is.

The physical world has spent centuries developing concepts like privacy, anonymity and freedom of expression.

The digital world is now being told to forget them.

We should be asking a much harder question

Not:

"Can digital ID make the internet safer?"

Of course it can.

Almost any surveillance system can make something safer.

The harder question is:

"What kind of internet are we willing to build in exchange for that safety?"

An internet where identity is the default?

An internet where anonymous speech is treated as suspicious?

An internet where access to information depends on passing an identity check?

An internet where private companies become gatekeepers to your digital identity?

An internet where governments can gradually connect the dots between who you are and what you do online?

That isn't a minor technical adjustment.

It's a fundamental redesign of the relationship between citizens, technology and the state.

And we should be arguing about it like one.

Because once the infrastructure is built, removing it will be infinitely harder than objecting to it now.

So yes, protect children.

Yes, fight criminals.

Yes, tackle fraud.

But don't sleepwalk into a world where the price of using the internet is proving who you are.

You may not need a passport to enter the country.

But if we're not careful, you might need one to enter the internet.

THE BUS CONDUCTOR IN CHIEF DISCOVERS THE GREAT INJUSTICE OF FLYING — WHILE GOVERNMENT TAXES MAKE IT MORE EXPENSIVE.

 

 

 

You really couldn’t make it up.

Andy Burnham wants airlines to let children under 14 sit beside their parents for free and stop charging passengers for simple booking changes. Fine. Nobody sensible thinks families should be fleeced by ridiculous add-on fees.

But apparently we’re supposed to applaud this as some grand act of consumer liberation while the government turns the screws on the cost of flying through higher Air Passenger Duty.

The Treasury’s own assessment of the tax increases factors in people taking fewer flights. So the government is increasing the tax burden while explicitly accounting for the prospect that people will fly less.

And then along comes the political class, ready to pose as the champion of the hard-pressed holidaymaker because it wants airlines to stop charging parents extra to sit next to their own children.

Congratulations. You’ve made the booking process slightly less infuriating while making the actual holiday more expensive. What a triumph of joined-up thinking.

It’s the political equivalent of setting fire to someone’s wallet and then demanding a round of applause for finding them a fire extinguisher.

And let’s not pretend the wider drive towards net zero has nothing to do with the direction of travel. Aviation is being pushed towards decarbonisation through measures including the Sustainable Aviation Fuel mandate, while Air Passenger Duty adds another cost to flying.

If ministers want people to fly less for environmental reasons, have the honesty to defend that policy openly.

If they want ordinary families to enjoy an affordable holiday, visit relatives abroad or take their children somewhere beyond a wet fortnight in Britain, explain why government policy keeps adding to the bill.

What we don’t need is another politician posing for the cameras over airline admin charges while the bigger question of affordability gets buried beneath the publicity.

A few pounds saved on a seat-selection fee do not magically cancel out higher taxes on the flight itself.

This is modern political theatre in a nutshell: make the big costs harder to ignore, then announce a small concession as if you’ve personally rescued the nation.

Burnham can demand fairer treatment for passengers. That’s a perfectly legitimate argument.

But spare us the self-congratulation.

You don’t make flying affordable by celebrating cheaper seat selection while the taxman takes a bigger bite out of the ticket. That isn’t consumer protection. It’s political window-dressing at 35,000 feet.

The Burnham Bounce - 30yr Gilts Hit 6% For First Time Since 1998

 

Like it or not, you can't buck the market!

The Government's Little List

 

Think you can criticise government policy online without anyone taking notice? Think again.

A disturbing new report suggests that social media posts criticising the Government’s Prevent policy have been actively monitored, logged and investigated by officials.

According to documents obtained by the Metro, nearly 80 critical posts from X and Reddit were recorded by the Standards and Compliance Unit (StaCU), the body responsible for overseeing Prevent, between March 2024 and February 2025.

And these weren't allegations of terrorism or criminal activity. Some were simply people expressing criticism of Prevent — including complaints about how the programme operates and claims that its training is biased.

That raises a fundamental question:

When did criticising government policy become something the government needed to keep tabs on?

There is an enormous difference between investigating a genuine threat and building a database of citizens who have publicly disagreed with a government programme.

People should be able to say that a policy is wrong. They should be able to call it ineffective, biased, misguided or even complete bullshit, without wondering whether their comment has been copied into an official file.

This isn't about whether Prevent should be above criticism. Quite the opposite.

A democratic government should expect scrutiny.

It should welcome challenge.

And it should be able to defend its policies in public without quietly keeping records of the people who object to them.

The Government may have legitimate reasons for monitoring publicly available information in some circumstances. But monitoring criticism itself is a very different proposition.

If officials are systematically collecting and investigating posts simply because they challenge government policy, the public deserves answers.

Who is being monitored? Why? What information is being recorded? How long is it kept? Who can access it? And what happens to the people whose names appear in these databases?

Those aren't unreasonable questions.

They're the questions a free society should be asking.

Because the right to disagree with the Government isn't a privilege handed out by officials.

It's part of what democracy is supposed to mean.

Black Labradors and Country Pubs Are Far Right

 

According to some cretinous Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, warm ale, country pubs and black labradors are far right!

Yet, the internet never forgets, here is a tweet of her being far right a few years ago.

 

Cretin!

 

The name of this cretin is Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow.

The Archbishop's Grotesque Failure of Judgement

 

You really couldn't make this up. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Archbishop of Canterbury handed a prestigious Church of England award to a Muslim cleric whose past comments about Osama bin Laden were already a matter of public record. Then, when someone finally noticed, she took the award back.

This is not a minor PR embarrassment. It is an astonishing failure of judgement and due diligence at the very top of the Church of England.

Dame Sarah Mullally presented the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation to Pakistani cleric Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi on 11 September — the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The award was supposedly recognition of his “outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan”.

There was just one rather significant problem.

In 2007, Ashrafi publicly said that Osama bin Laden should be given the Islamic title Saifullah — “Sword of God” — describing him in the context of fighting for Islam. The remarks were reported internationally at the time by Reuters and AFP.

So how on earth did the Church of England not know?

This was not some obscure comment whispered in a mosque 20 years ago and uncovered by an internet sleuth. The remarks were public, reported by major international news agencies and concerned one of the most notorious terrorists in modern history.

Yet somehow nobody at Lambeth Palace appears to have thought: perhaps we should Google the bloke before giving him an award.

That is not a minor administrative error.

It is a colossal failure of due diligence.

And the timing makes an already extraordinary decision almost surreal.

This wasn't an award presented on some forgotten Tuesday in February. It was presented on 11 September, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 British citizens.

Of all the days in the calendar, this was the day the Church of England chose to celebrate a man whose past comments about bin Laden subsequently forced it to withdraw the honour.

The symbolism could hardly have been more glaring.

The Church of England then compounded the humiliation by initially defending the award. Lambeth Palace said it recognised Ashrafi's “longstanding support for religious minorities in Pakistan, particularly the Christian community” and stressed the importance of interfaith engagement.

Fine.

Interfaith engagement matters.

Supporting persecuted Christians matters.

But neither requires the Church of England to hand out honours without first checking the public record of the person receiving them.

The Palace eventually folded after the controversy erupted, saying that “previous comments” had come to light and confirming that the award had been withdrawn.

That raises the obvious question:

Why did those comments have to “come to light” after the award had been presented?

They were hardly buried.

The National Secular Society has described the episode as evidence of “appallingly poor judgement and inadequate due diligence”. That criticism goes to the heart of the matter.

And this is not simply about whether Ashrafi's 2007 remarks should ultimately be characterised as an endorsement of bin Laden. His representatives dispute that interpretation. The Church itself clearly decided that the remarks were sufficiently serious to withdraw the award.

So why weren't they considered before the award was given?

That is the failure for which Dame Sarah Mullally must answer.

An Archbishop of Canterbury is not some junior administrator who accidentally put the wrong name on a certificate. The Church of England describes the Archbishop as its most senior bishop and as the figure who leads the Church's vision and direction across much of England.

With that office comes responsibility.

And when an organisation gives a prestigious award to someone, it is not merely honouring the recipient. It is putting its own name and reputation behind that person.

The Church of England did precisely that.

Then, once the embarrassing facts became impossible to ignore, it took the award back.

That is not accountability. It is damage limitation.

The most charitable interpretation is that Lambeth Palace was spectacularly careless.

The less charitable interpretation is that it was so desperate to demonstrate its commitment to interfaith dialogue that it forgot the most basic rule of institutional responsibility: know who you are honouring.

Either way, the Archbishop has a problem.

The Church of England cannot demand trust from the public while displaying such extraordinary carelessness over one of its own honours.

And it cannot credibly preach responsibility, discernment and moral leadership while expecting everyone to forget that it had to discover the recipient's record after putting a medal in his hand.

Dame Sarah Mullally should therefore resign.

Not because every controversial judgement requires resignation. Not because interfaith dialogue is wrong. And not because a person's past remarks can never be understood in context.

She should resign because the buck has to stop somewhere.

The Archbishop presented the award. The award was made in her name. Her institution failed to conduct — or at least failed to act upon — the most basic due diligence. The controversy became public. Only then was the award withdrawn.

If the Archbishop is ultimately responsible for the Church's most senior decisions, she should be prepared to accept responsibility for this one.

The Church of England has spent years telling everyone else about accountability. It is time for the Archbishop of Canterbury to practise it.

Resign.

Bus Conductor in Chief and Nosferatu Plead Ignorance Over Labour’s Financial Shambles

 

🚨NEW: Chancellor John Healey's team claims that he and Andy Burnham didn't realise how bad Britain's fiscal position was before they got inside the Treasury

[@FT]

— GB Politics (@GBPolitcs) September 15, 2026

Which party was running the country before them then? 

Burnham and Healey are Fucking Useless!

 

Even if they did not have Treasury briefings before taking on their roles, they surely would have been aware of what the markets and finance professionals have been saying about the UK economy!

Or did they simply ignore the warnings?

Tourist Tax: Another Rip-Off That Will Drive Visitors Away

 

Ministers call it a 5% levy. Tourists will see it as yet another tax on an already sky-high hotel bill — and the Treasury will even take VAT on the tax.

Britain has a tourism problem.

So naturally, the Government's answer is to make holidays more expensive.

Ministers want to hand local mayors the power to impose a new tax on overnight stays — dressed up in the soothing language of an “Overnight Visitor Levy”.

Don't be fooled by the jargon.

It is a tourist tax.

And the consequences could be disastrous for the very towns and cities it is supposed to help.

The great 5% con

We're told the charge could be around 5%.

Five per cent.

Sounds harmless, doesn't it?

It isn't.

Take a hotel room costing £100 before VAT.

Add a 5% tourist tax and the bill becomes £105.

Then comes the sting.

VAT is charged on the higher amount.

At Britain's standard 20% VAT rate, that means £21 VAT rather than £20.

The visitor therefore pays £126 instead of £120.

That's a 6% increase, not 5%.

So the Government takes a tax.

Then it takes VAT on the tax.

Tax on tax.

And somehow this is supposed to make Britain's tourism industry more competitive.

You couldn't make it up.

Britain's hotels are already taxed heavily

Here's the real scandal.

Britain already charges 20% VAT on hotel accommodation.

Across Europe, many countries recognise that tourism is highly price-sensitive and apply reduced VAT rates to hotels and accommodation.

Britain doesn't.

So a hotel in Britain can already face a 20% VAT burden while a rival hotel elsewhere in Europe may operate with a much lower rate.

Now politicians want to pile another percentage charge on top.

What happens next?

The hotel room gets more expensive.

The visitor thinks twice.

And the money that doesn't get spent in Britain gets spent somewhere else.

The tourist doesn't just buy a hotel room

This is where the Government's thinking falls apart.

A tourist isn't a walking hotel bill.

They spend money everywhere.

Breakfast in the café.

Lunch in the pub.

Dinner in the restaurant.

A taxi to the theatre.

A ticket to the attraction.

A few drinks.

A bit of shopping.

Maybe another night in the hotel.

That spending supports thousands of local businesses.

So when you make the hotel room more expensive, you aren't simply taxing hotels.

You're putting a tax on the entire visitor economy.

And visitors have choices.

If Britain becomes too expensive, they'll go elsewhere.

If one British town adds a 5% levy and the town down the road doesn't, why wouldn't the visitor compare prices?

Mayors get a new tax lever

And here's another nasty little detail.

There is no national cap on the proposed levy.

The Government may talk about 5%, but today's 5% could become tomorrow's 6%, 7% or more.

Once councils and mayors become dependent on the money, do we really believe they will voluntarily give it up?

Of course not.

A new tax has a remarkable habit of becoming a permanent tax.

And once the spending commitments are made, removing it becomes politically almost impossible.

“But other countries have tourist taxes!”

Yes.

And many of them have something Britain doesn't:

much lower VAT rates on hotels.

This is the bit supporters of a British tourist tax conveniently leave out.

You cannot compare one tax in isolation.

You have to compare the total price paid by the visitor.

A country can charge a tourist tax and still offer cheaper accommodation because its underlying VAT rate is lower.

Britain already starts with a 20% VAT rate.

Adding another tax and then charging VAT on that tax is hardly a recipe for attracting international visitors.

Who pays?

The Government will say the levy is paid by visitors.

But businesses know better.

The cost will either be passed on to customers or absorbed by hotels and guest houses.

If it is passed on, the room becomes more expensive.

If it is absorbed, margins get squeezed.

Either way, someone pays.

And when margins are already under pressure from wages, energy, food, insurance, business rates and other costs, telling hospitality businesses to absorb another hit is simply unrealistic.

The great economic irony

The Government says the money will be used to support local economies.

But what if the tax damages those economies?

What if visitors stay one night instead of two?

What if they choose a different town?

What if a family decides to holiday abroad instead?

What if a conference organiser chooses a cheaper destination?

What if a restaurant loses the customers who never made the trip?

The Treasury may collect a few pounds from every taxed room.

But the local economy could lose hundreds of pounds in spending that never happens.

You cannot tax your way to prosperity.

There is a much simpler answer

Want more money flowing into local economies?

Get more visitors.

Want more visitors?

Make Britain competitive.

Want Britain to be competitive?

Stop piling taxes onto the cost of visiting.

A lower rate of VAT on accommodation and hospitality would be a far more sensible starting point.

It would allow businesses to cut prices, improve facilities, invest and employ more people.

It would encourage visitors to stay longer.

And longer stays mean more spending across the local economy.

That is how you grow tourism.

Not by putting a “5%” sign on the hotel bill and pretending it doesn't matter.

Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg

Britain's tourism industry is an enormous economic asset.

Hotels, guest houses, restaurants, pubs, attractions, theatres, shops, taxi firms and countless other businesses depend on visitors.

They don't need politicians to find another way of taking money from their customers.

They need politicians to get out of the way and let t

Advice To The Bus Conductor in Chief

 

Without effective national security, you won't have social security!

Moronic Powell Posts Moronic Tweet

 

The Education Secretary’s latest tweet is pure sloganeering dressed up as wisdom.

Lucy Powell, the UK Education Secretary, posted the other day: “I think education should be about what you can do, and not what you can’t do.” It was tied to her Observer piece pushing reforms that soften the focus on exams, expand practical elements in GCSEs, and shift away from what she and allies call a “one-size-fits-all straitjacket” or “exam factory.”

It sounds warm and inclusive. It is also utterly moronic as a guiding principle for education policy.

Education has always been about both. You cannot meaningfully expand what someone can do without rigorously identifying, confronting, and closing the gaps in what they cannot do yet. Reading, writing, arithmetic, scientific knowledge, historical understanding, and the ability to construct a coherent argument are not optional extras or elitist impositions. They are the foundations that make genuine agency possible. Pretending otherwise is how you get systems that celebrate “potential” while leaving large numbers of children unable to access proper further study, skilled work, or independent adult life.

The soft framing,“what you can do, not what you can’t”, is a classic progressive rhetorical move. It reframes high standards and honest assessment as negativity or exclusion. In practice it risks lowering the bar so that fewer people feel like failures, rather than equipping more people to clear a high bar. Countries and systems that actually deliver strong outcomes for broad groups of pupils do not pretend knowledge and skills are in conflict, or that rigorous testing is the enemy of talent. They insist on mastery of core knowledge and practical application. England’s relative strength in international comparisons did not appear by accident; it came from a sustained (if imperfect) push toward knowledge-rich curricula and higher expectations after years of drift.

Powell’s version risks the opposite: diluting academic content in the name of “relevance,” “belonging,” and “pathways for all,” while talking up vocational routes as if they magically solve the problem of weak foundational skills. Vocational and technical education is valuable. It is not a substitute for literacy, numeracy, and disciplined thinking. Students who leave school without those basics are not liberated by “what they can do”; they are constrained by what they still cannot.

A serious education secretary would say: we will relentlessly raise what every child can do by refusing to lower expectations about what they must master. That means honest diagnosis of weaknesses, high-quality teaching of the knowledge that unlocks everything else, and assessments that measure real competence rather than participation. Feel-good tweets that treat standards as the problem are not bold vision. They are an abdication of the hard part of the job.

Children do not need more slogans about potential. They need adults in charge who understand that the point of school is to close the gap between what is and what could be—through knowledge, practice, and accountability, not by redefining success downward.

The Army’s New Training Regime: Staring Sternly at Russia While Polishing the Barracks Floor

 

In a bold display of strategic genius, the British Army has been ordered to pause “non-essential” training exercises to save a bit of cash. Live-fire drills, tank manoeuvres with Challenger 2s, exercises involving Apache helicopters—all the messy, noisy stuff that actually prepares soldiers for fighting—can largely wait. Units not immediately heading overseas or on standby get to sit tight. The pause is expected to last most of the year. Priority, we’re told, goes to the truly essential: lessons from Ukraine on drones and modernisation. Everything else is a “nice to have.”

This arrives at roughly the same moment the government continues to warn about the threat from Russia. The Kremlin has issued its usual dark mutterings about British targets. Defence chiefs have long flagged the need for readiness against a peer adversary. Yet the response is to mothball large-scale collective training for the Army’s main fighting formations so the books balance a little better this financial year. One source called it “absolutely devastating.” Former senior officers have used stronger language: short-sighted, scandalous, a national dereliction.

Picture the scene. Somewhere in Whitehall a spreadsheet is looking healthier by a reported £30 million or so. Meanwhile, the Iron Division—the unit you’d actually want if things got serious with Moscow—practises the ancient martial art of remaining in camp. Soldiers can still do individual skills, desktop exercises, and selected modernisation work. Just not the expensive business of operating together at scale with live ammunition and heavy metal. Nothing says “we are taking the Russian threat seriously” quite like cancelling the war games.

The official line is prioritisation and efficiency. Training informed by Ukraine continues. Deploying units keep training. The rest can wait until the money situation improves. It is the administrative equivalent of telling the fire brigade that, due to budgetary pressures, they should only practise with the hose when a building is already on fire. In the meantime, polish the engines and read the manual again.

This is not abstract. Armies that do not train collectively lose the ability to fight collectively. Crews get rusty. Commanders stop rehearsing the hard, chaotic parts. Muscle memory fades. When the government simultaneously talks up the threat and trims the preparation, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes the real story. Russia does not pause its exercises because fuel or ammunition is pricey this quarter. It does not rebrand large-scale training as optional extras.

The political context makes it richer. The government is inching defence spending upward but faces relentless pressure to go further and faster toward 3 per cent. Past rows over the Defence Investment Plan, resignations, and warnings from the Chief of the Defence Staff about dialling back activity if day-to-day funding stays tight all form the backdrop. Cutting training now is the predictable result of treating readiness as a residual after other priorities have been met.

One can almost admire the consistency. If the threat is real, the training should be non-negotiable. If the training is negotiable, perhaps the threat rhetoric should be dialled down to match. Doing both at once—warning of danger while quietly parking the tanks—invites exactly the ridicule it is receiving. Soldiers did not join up to sit in camp for six or seven months practising frugality. Taxpayers did not fund an army so it could discover innovative ways to avoid using the training areas.

In the end, the decision is a masterclass in short-term accounting dressed up as prioritisation. Save the money this year. Hope the threat remains theoretical. And if it does not, explain later that the exercises were only “nice to have.” History is littered with armies that discovered, too late, that readiness is not a luxury item you can switch on when the invoice arrives. Britain appears determined to test the theory again, one cancelled live-fire exercise at a time.

Healey U Turns on Defence Spending

 

 

Healey has u turned on his 3% defence spending pledge (made when he resigned as Defence Secretary under Starmer).

It is clear that resignation was done to bring down Starmer, in exchange for being given the role of Chancellor.

Healey's spineless u turn whilst certainly not benefitting the country, may also not benefit him. There is a possibility that Burnham calls a general election before the Budget. In the event Labour win, Burnham will sack Healey and put Miliband in the role. 

Little shitweasel! 

Home Orifice Wankers Fear The English Flag

 

It seems that staff at the Home Orifice are afraid of the English flag.

Such is their fear, that the wankers running the Home Orifice have offered them 11 different mental health support services to help them cope with their fears.

Useless, pathetic wankers!

Brash, Cretinous Moron!

 

Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash has deleted an X post which read:

“Public sector workers use their income to pay FOR the private sector. The state is one of the biggest procurers of the private sector. It wouldn’t exist without tax payers. People creating the divide between public and private genuinely don’t understand how an economy works.”

We are governed by retards! 

On The Buses With Burnham

 

Andy Burnham: The Bus King of Toytown Who Can’t See Past the Yellow Paint

Andy Burnham has spent years treating Britain’s buses as if they were the answer to every national crisis. As Mayor of Greater Manchester he turned the Bee Network into a personal brand, complete with bright yellow liveries, worker-bee logos, and endless photo opportunities standing next to shiny new vehicles. Now, having somehow ascended to higher office, the fixation continues unabated. £2 fare caps, 24/7 free travel for disabled pass holders, more franchising, more “blueprint for Britain” rhetoric. Buses, buses, and more buses.

Meanwhile he has discovered TikTok. Vertical videos, influencer collabs, casual chats into a phone, meme-friendly clips of the Prime Minister in the driver’s seat announcing the next stop is cheaper fares. It is politics as content creation: low-stakes, shareable, and carefully curated to look like a man of the people who “gets it.” The effect is less statesman and more mayor of Toytown, endlessly polishing the model railway while the real country burns.

This is not harmless localism. It is a form of political displacement activity. The issues that actually determine whether Britain remains a high-trust, prosperous, coherent country receive far less of Burnham’s visible energy.

Illegal migration continues to place heavy pressure on housing, public services, and social cohesion. Small-boat arrivals, asylum backlogs, and the downstream costs of failed integration do not disappear because a bus fare has been capped at £2. Yet the public messaging from Burnham has often been muted, managerial, or focused on dispersal rather than deterrence and control.

The costs of Net Zero policies remain largely unexamined in the same breathless tones reserved for bus franchising. Household energy bills, industrial competitiveness, and the reliability of the grid are treated as secondary concerns while the political class congratulates itself on climate targets. Approving or rejecting new oil and gas licences is a serious trade-off between security of supply, jobs, and emissions. It deserves more than the occasional side-note in a transport-heavy agenda.

Rising crime, particularly knife crime and the erosion of street safety in many towns and cities, does not yield to better bus routes. Bond markets are not calmed by yellow buses. Unemployment and the stubbornly high number of people outside the labour force will not be solved by cheaper single fares. Inflation and the cost-of-living pressures that genuinely hurt working households require harder choices on tax, spending, regulation, and energy policy than another round of transport gimmicks.

None of this is to say public transport is irrelevant. Reliable, affordable buses matter for people who rely on them. Greater Manchester’s experiment produced measurable increases in patronage and satisfaction for some users. Expanding successful local models can be legitimate. The problem is proportion and priority. Burnham’s political identity has become so tightly bound to the Bee Network that it crowds out the larger, harder, less photogenic questions.

A serious national leader would treat buses as one tool among many, not the centrepiece of a governing philosophy. Instead we get the spectacle of a politician who appears most comfortable when the cameras are rolling on a yellow double-decker or a vertical video. The country faces structural challenges that cannot be solved by franchising schedules and TikTok algorithms. Continuing to prioritise the former while largely performing the latter is not pragmatic northern pragmatism. It is avoidance dressed up as delivery.

Britain does not need a mayor of Toytown with a national platform. It needs adults willing to confront the awkward, expensive, and politically difficult realities that actually determine the country’s trajectory. So far, the buses keep rolling and the hard issues keep waiting.

Farming Minister Faints 'at Sight of Meat'

 

Stephen Morgan, the farming minister, fainted 'at sight of meat' while touring cold storage unit.

Convicted Fraudster Signed Off Chaotic Government BBQ Warning

 

It turns out that it was the convicted fraudster Louise Haigh who signed off the chaotic and absurd government BBQ phone warning the other day.

Aside from scaring the Bejesus out of many people, and almost causing a number of car crashes, it has succeeded in encouraging many people to mute future warnings on their phones.

It did of course help her to find all her "missing" phones! 

Passport To Piddington

On 4 July 2026 (chosen to coincide with US Independence Day), the residents of Piddington voted overwhelmingly (reports of 175–7 or 96%) to hold a referendum on seceding from the UK / declaring independence (sometimes framed as the “Principality of Piddington”). 

A formal independence referendum is planned for September 2026. 

Piddington is currently protesting Home Office plans to house 1,250 single adult male illegal asylum seekers at a nearby former military site (MoD Bicester / Bicester barracks storage depot), which would more than triple or quadruple the village’s population of roughly 350–370 people (around 250–350 adults plus children.

Burnham claims that this part of the "fair" distribution of illegals to wealthier areas (even though it will cost the taxpayer more).

It should be noted, with a degree of irony, that the local council is a Green/LibDem coalition, and the MP is a LibDem. Both these parties support mass migration to the UK.

Burnham To Block Out The Sun

 

 

🚨 BREAKING: Andy Burnham will chair a meeting of COBRA this afternoon about the extreme heat

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) August 12, 2026

Phillips Pulled a Fake Sickie!

 

Jess Phillips has disclosed that she pretended to be ill to avoid defending Lord Mandelson. 

The former minister admitted she refused to appear for Home Office questions because she could not honestly claim that the then-ambassador was “good at his job”.

Anyone else in any other job would have been fired for doing this! 

Labour Really is Shit!

 

Convicted Fraudster To Mind The Shop

 

Two weeks into his premiership, and Andy Burnham is going on holiday.

During his absence convicted fraudster Louise Haigh will be minding the shop! 

Convicted Fraudster Haigh Denies Invasion, Then States That It Is

 

She said it wasn't an invasion, then went on to explain it, giving the exact dictionary definition of a invasion.

Louise Haigh is going to get found out very quickly with this much spotlight on her every word. pic.twitter.com/izQKGviEIy

— Ben Graham (@BenGrahamUK) July 31, 2026

Airmiles Andy Jets Off To an Office Block in The North

 

Burnham has flown to his office block in the North on an Airbus A321, to do a few hours work.

Aside from the absurd cost of the virtue signalling stunt, the office block is no way near as secure as Number 10. It is absurd that the Prime Minster thinks he can do this on a regular basis. 

Convicted Fraudster Louise Haigh Deletes Her Twitter Account

 

By way of celebrating her birthday, convicted fraudster Louise Haigh has deleted her twitter account.

https://x.com/LouHaigh 

Loose Lips Sink Sips - Burnham U Turns on a U Turn

 

In an interview over the weekend, Burnham suggested he was considering raising personal allowances.

He continued with this theme on Monday.

However, on Tuesday allies suggested he wouldn’t proceed with what would be a multi-billion pound policy, stressing he’d made no commitment.

However, today Burnham U turned on his U turn saying he’d “look at that at the budget.

This loose lipped approach to finance and policies won't do at all, he will spook the markets and undermine his chancellor. 

Jones Knifes Burnham Squarely In The Front

 

Good news that VAT will be cut on electricity bills. It’s a simple way for families to save a few quid, and to mechanically help to keep inflation that little bit lower.

But the DigitalID program was unfunded.

The government will have to set out how it will pay for its new… https://t.co/3iqrTFf1Nv

— Darren Jones MP (@darrenpjones) July 21, 2026

 

Given that it was in the public domain yesterday that digital id wasn't funded, it is noteworthy that "journalists" such as Rigby didn't mention it when trumpeting the £45 per annum saving in VAT on fuel bills.

Only when Jones blasted it out on twitter, did they bother to mention it! 

Burnham's Quality Picks

 

Bye!

 

It's The Lie That Gets You - Burnham Denies Role In Ousting Starmer

 

Burnham says "it wasn't me" who brought down Sir Keir Starmer - it was the Parliamentary Labour Party.

 

 

 

🚨 WATCH: Andy Burnham says he wasn’t involved in ousting Keir Starmer pic.twitter.com/TtRopB0F84

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 17, 2026

Marxist Coup Continues Apace

 

The entrenchment of radical networks inside the heart of British government took another significant step forward with Andy Burnham’s latest appointments.

Burnham has brought in Matthew McGregor, former Director of Hope Not Hate and current CEO of 38 Degrees (which funds the Good Law Project), as Director of Political Strategy in 10 Downing Street. He has also appointed Alison Phillips, a current board member of Hope Not Hate, as Director of Transition.

Starmer, meanwhile, has appointed former Hope Not Hate trustee Baroness Ruth Anderson (née Smeeth) as Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office. Smeeth previously worked alongside McGregor at the same organisation.

This is not mere coincidence. Hope Not Hate — an outfit that has employed a convicted paedophile Labour councillor, Liron Velleman, and the violent communist Matthew Collins — continues to be lavishly rewarded by the state.

Key Figures and Their Records

Matthew McGregor cut his teeth on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign before returning to Britain to spearhead Hope Not Hate’s efforts against the Brexit Party in 2019. He also sits on the board of the charity Reprieve, which campaigns to prevent the stripping of British citizenship from individuals such as Rochdale grooming gang leader Shabir Ahmed and ISIS returnee Shamima Begum. His leadership of 38 Degrees further links him to high-profile legal activism through its funding of the Good Law Project.

Alison Phillips served as editor of the Daily Mirror from 2018 to 2024 and previously headed ThinkLabour.

Burnham has also recruited Hayden Munro, former campaign director for New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern during her heavy-handed COVID era, and Sarah Brown, who spent the last five years as Sadiq Khan’s communications director.

Rounding out the inner circle, Burnham’s chief of staff will be his friend and ally James Purnell — former Labour minister, ex-chair of Tony Blair’s Institute for Public Policy Research, and one-time BBC Director of Strategy and Digital.

What This Means

These appointments reveal a coherent pattern: the fusion of state power with activist organisations, progressive media, international campaign machinery, and metropolitan political operators. Patriotism, national borders, and traditional British liberties are increasingly treated as threats rather than foundations.

Every dissenting voice, every concern about mass immigration, grooming gangs, free speech, or cultural replacement now carries a target. Expect Burnham to outpace even Keir Starmer on both open-border policies and the tightening of censorship.

The coup is not coming. It is already here — and it is consolidating its grip at pace.

Governed By Convicted Criminals

 

 

Every time she is mentioned in the media, her name must be preceded by "convicted fraudster"

Governed By HR - Burnham's Vision of Rule by Lanyard

 

Full text of (long) Burnham email to Labour MPs on the new regime

- Cabinet expected to “prioritise PLP engagement”
- Whips office as “HR department”
- No more legislation presented as “fait accomplit” by ministers and officials

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/4jH8RUrW0e

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) July 8, 2026

Burnham, a man with zero vision, has decided that the best way to govern is for every Labour MP to put his/her idea to a committee of lanyard wearing HR types.

This will end in disaster for Burnham, the Labour Party and the country. 

Burnham To Restrict VPNs

 

Farage To Force By-election

 

If I lose, they win. If they win, you lose.

If you lose, Britain will forever be broken and nothing will change. We will prevail.

My message to the people of Clacton. 👇 pic.twitter.com/j9LCX2v0Dw

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) July 7, 2026

Reform state that they will cover the cost of this. 

Labour's Fake Nurse

 

Labour MP Sureena Brackenridge completely fabricated a story about a fake nurse, accompanied by an AI image (see above) and posted it to her social media 

The original post about Maya which was faked has now been deleted. Brackenridge now claims she wasn't trying to deceive anyone!

Is it not ironic that Labour keep claiming it is the far right that post lies and misinformation, yet it seems to be it is their own people who do it? 

Manchesterism Morphs To Mauritiusism - Chagos Surrender Continues

For reasons best known to himself, or rather because Jonathan Powell (a man with questionable links to China) told him so, Burnham will continue with the Chagos surrender.

This will costs taxpayers £47BN, anger Trump and blow up his spending plans.

 

Nandy Flounces Off Twitter In a Huff

 

 Lisa Nandy is flouncing off Twitter and taking her Department of "Culture" with her.

I've decided to leave this platform and my Department will too.

A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate.

It isn't healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.

— Lisa Nandy MP (@lisanandy) July 2, 2026

Even Cadwalladr thinks this is bollocks! 

1) It’s *literally* your job to regulate this platform.

2) If you can’t, what does that mean? Tell us.

3) The Dept of Culture is not ‘your’ department, it’s ours. You’re its temporary custodian

5) But Facebook is ok? Really? https://t.co/0tBJm3IfW6

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) July 2, 2026

Nandy had no problem using Twitter when it helped Labour get elected. She's posted on it over 10'000 times in total since 2009. 

Now that she is facing scrutiny, she's suddenly decided the platform is the problem. 

It goes without saying that her post announcing her flounce, has of course had the comments turned off!

This is stage one of the government's plans to try to shut Twitter down. 

Rayner's Nice Little Earner

 

Starmer and Reeves Leave Britain Defenceless

 

STARMER AND REEVES SCRAPE TOGETHER A PATHETIC £15BN FOR DEFENCE WHILE LEAVING BRITAIN COMPLETELY DEFENCELESS — BORDERING ON TREASON!

What a pathetic, spineless shower.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have just announced a whopping £15 billion increase for defence over the next four years. Ooh, get them! The great saviours of the realm!

Except it's well short of the £28 billion the military actually said it needs. There's already a £4 billion unfunded black hole in the plan, and £10 billion of this pathetic package is made up of fantasy cuts to road projects, energy schemes and other initiatives that will magically "never happen" — the usual Labour smoke and mirrors bollocks.

And guess what? Not one single penny has been cut from the bloated welfare budget. Priorities, eh? Keep paying millions not to work, but beg, borrow and rob Peter to pay Paul when it comes to protecting the country.

This isn't a defence boost — it's a surrender document. Our armed forces are hollowed out, recruitment is in the toilet, equipment is obsolete, and these clowns are still prioritising net zero virtue-signalling and unlimited migration over keeping Britain safe.

Their criminal mismanagement of national security borders on treason. While the world gets more dangerous by the day, Starmer and Reeves are busy gutting real projects to pretend they're serious about defence. Absolute frauds.

And poor old Andy Capp Burnham — the man being lined up as the next Saviour of the Red Wall — has been dropped right in the shit. Starmer's left him a stinking £4-5 billion black hole and a half-arsed plan that satisfies nobody. Good luck sorting that mess out, Andy. Maybe you can fund it by appointing more My Little Ponies to the Treasury.

Britain is weaker, poorer and more vulnerable because of this shower. They talk tough on the world stage while leaving our forces naked and our borders wide open.

Disgraceful. Treacherous. Utterly hopeless.

Place-Based Cooperation - The Meaningless Phrase From The Working From Home PM In Waiting

 

"Place-based cooperation – the latest buzzphrase from yesterday’s speech by Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham – is simply the new meaningless slogan of the lanyard-wearing Westminster class.

Burnham promises a grand devolution of power across the UK. Yet Scotland and Wales already stand as cautionary tales of where this path can lead: bloated bureaucracies, poor economic performance and governance failures that England would be unwise to emulate.

Even as senior civil servants work from home, Burnham glossed over the reality. Whitehall will retain control of the issues that matter most to voters. Apart from AI, mass migration, the soaring costs of Net Zero, and defence, central government will continue to dictate:

• Where asylum seekers are housed and dispersed (“dumped”) in communities
• Where pylons and wind turbines are imposed on the landscape
• Where housing for asylum seekers and refugees will be built
• Taxation policy and overall spending
• The direction and funding of the NHS
• National defence and security priorities

In short, the big strategic decisions stay in London. What gets devolved are the messy local consequences and the blame when things go wrong."

Andy's Frit - Refuses To Take Questions

 

Master Communicator Burnham refuses to take any questions at his first press conference.