Kepler-186

The most militant cunts in the country.

Maybe he has left instructions for one of the family firm’s to sort out the bill out before one penny goes to the proles. https://www.rothschildandco.com/en/newsroom/insights/2023/12/wm-minimising-the-effect-of-inheritance-tax/ This is Money Rothemere media. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-13128157/amp/Rothschild-death-sparks-succession-talk-sprawling-property-investment-empire.html From 2012, a tax write off for one of the other. Again, Mail link. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175017/amp/Rothschild-family-tax-The-Byzantine-bowl-helped-reduce-inheritance-bill.html

Oliver Dowden fluffed for Eton CCF.

A lad I worked with in dat der London was from MK and he used to call it the “milk and beans” so I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Prior to that I passed through MK once and thought it was bright and clean and people can commute to good jobs in London. If someone from MK came to see round where I am now they’d see shuttered shops waiting to be turned into bedsits for the DWP, illiterate gang grafitti, bookies, vape shops, fly tipping, shite takeaways, 4 or 5 convenience stores almost facing each other, and down the road a huge 60s office block empty after they decamped to town next to a failing shopping centre the council bought for 30 odd million and is now worth half of that. I watched one of those “Britain’s worst” voyeuristic YouTube vids and they keep suggesting more of them. Luton and Plymouth both looked rough. There’s this scouse one too Billy Moore All or Nothing podcast. You’re right about the mentality thing. Narrow minded parochialism morphing into a national Thatcherite banter culture.

Tories in one rule for me shocker. Behind the UK’s effort to blacklist critics By Jem Bartholomew Last April, Dan Kaszeta was sitting at his desk when he got an ominous email. Kaszeta is an American chemical-weapons expert who has worked for the White House and the Secret Service. Now based in London, he was scheduled to speak at the Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference, run by the UK government, in May. He planned to talk about the risks posed by such weapons in Ukraine, Egypt, and North Korea. But then he received the email, sent by one of the organizers: “Rules introduced by the Cabinet Office in 2022 specify that the social media accounts of potential speakers must be vetted,” the message read, to check if they had “ever criticized government officials or government policy.” The email went on: “It is for this reason, and not because we do not value your technical insight, that I am afraid that we have no choice and must cancel your invitation to the CWD conference.” Kaszeta was confused. He had taken to Twitter to register his disapproval of the UK’s increasingly draconian immigration and asylum policy, but that seemed irrelevant to his work on chemical weapons. He told a friend, the British journalist Edward Lucas, that he’d been disinvited over his past tweets. Lucas was shocked. “This is bad on every level,” Lucas told him. Worried that secretive blacklisting rules were being deployed across the British government, Kaszeta went public in May and launched a legal challenge. “I basically came around to the conclusion that the government was doing bad stuff, but they had effectively pulled the pin on a hand grenade and handed it to me,” he told me. “So I can either hold on to it, or throw it right back.” It was a big domestic story; Kaszeta was soon on the front page of the London Times. “My mother, bless her, in Mesa, Arizona, practically fell out of her chair,” he said. His decision to challenge the murky rules would help expose a practice of snooping and blacklisting that stretched across at least fifteen state agencies. It was directed right from the top, the Cabinet Office, which is the center of power and rulemaking in the British government. The revelations from the Kaszeta affair exposed practices that were criticized as resembling “the plot of a dystopian novel.” The story also revealed the administration’s hypocrisy, given that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had made attacks on cancel culture and “woke nonsense” a central part of his public message. The blacklisting seemed to be particularly fervid in Britain’s education department. Reporting from The Observer revealed that at least nine child-development experts had been surveilled and had their invitations to speak at conferences challenged or rescinded. Carmel O’Hagan, an expert on modern languages, requested the data collected on her, and discovered that officials had compiled an Excel spreadsheet of her Twitter interactions and accused her in internal emails of having “an axe to grind.” Kaszeta hired lawyers from the Leigh Day firm to press for a judicial review of the snooping rules. Tessa Gregory, the partner who took on the case, believed the practice was dangerous, and was certain that a judge would find a slew of legal and human rights violations in it. “This kind of vetting, where people are disinvited just because they have different political views than the executive of the day—that absolutely has to be got rid of,” Gregory told me. "It was all operating secretly, without any of us as members of the public knowing about its existence, which is why it was particularly pernicious.” Initially, the case seemed to be progressing well; Kaszeta got an official apology in July. But before a judge could scrutinize the lawfulness of the secret file-keeping and blacklisting, the government ordered the policy withdrawn. Without an active policy to challenge, the judicial review was dead. The Cabinet Office did not reply to a request for comment from CJR. In November, a spokesman for the office told The Observer: “The government is committed to protecting free speech. We are reviewing the guidance and have temporarily withdrawn it to prevent any misinterpretation of the rules

They know things will get a bit tasty soon hence the new draconian anti strike, anti protest and harsh surveillance laws.

It’s a bit mad but the Brazilians were/are linked to the Universal church which in turn has been part of the Bolsonaro right. Fabinho’s missus deffo was putting stuff up in support of him, don’t know about the players.

Yeah the social and health cost of people living increasingly chaotic and precarious lives is a ticking time bomb.

Another piece in The Guardian, this time a bit closer to home. “I don’t want anyone to feel the despair I felt’: the woman feeding Liverpool from an ice-cream van When Michelle Roach’s son was seven months old, she found herself unemployed and diagnosed with cancer. She couldn’t afford food. Now, she is determined that no one should ever have to face that same agony https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/27/i-dont-want-anyone-to-feel-the-despair-i-felt-the-woman-feeding-liverpool-from-an-ice-cream-van Of course there’s the bit in The Wire when Bubs is with the journo at a church run food kitchen and the journo asks if all of the people there are homeless and Bubs replies they’re mostly working poor. That would’ve been 2006/7 maybe? And now look at us. And they want to make it even harder.

Mic Wright is an excellent read and neatly critiques the British media. Here, it’s more on the owner of GB News’ online activities and the reaction to the News Agents’ report ahead of his potential purchase of the Torygraph and Spectator. https://open.substack.com/pub/brokenbottleboy/p/the-paul-marshall-plan?r=7i95q&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Unfortunately not mate. No sign of any change in approach either.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal….. https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-benefits-claimants-fail-whistleblowers/

Ha ha that’s quality. I’ll look them up now.

I’ll have a look for that mate nice one.

Well worth a watch on iPlayer about China’s state surveillance. Very long read article contrasting and comparing the West and China’s authoritarianism. https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/the-china-convergence?r=7i95q&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Thatcher’s last private secretary and dark money ultra right grifter who loves the UK so much he lives in D.C.

“More powerful than you can possibly imagine.”