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  — ‘UK Finance, which represents banks including Lloyds, JP Morgan and Revolut, commissions an annual report tallying up all the taxes shouldered by a large bank, including corporation tax, social security, VAT and bank-specific levies. The report, put together by PwC, lists London as the most tax-intensive city, charging a “total tax rate” of 46.2%, compared with 42.2% in Amsterdam, 39.1% in Frankfurt, 29% in Dublin and 27.9% in New York. … However, questions are now being raised about the lobb...

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  — ‘Andy Burnham says he wants an “honest discussion” with the British public about the possibility of a return to free movement between the UK and the EU as part of his plans for a new relationship with the bloc. The prime minister has been open about his desire to revisit the relationship between Britain and Brussels. He has said a new deal could mean the UK goes “all the way” and rejoins the EU. Other options discussed by Burnham include joining the single market, which would require signing...

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  — ‘The US military has given Elon Musk’s SpaceX access to restricted space tracking data, raising a new round of questions about whether the Trump administration is attempting to hand over traffic control in Earth’s orbit to a controversial donor. The access also raises new national security questions, industry observers say. The move comes after Musk’s Doge in 2025 fired many of the federal government’s nascent space traffic control program’s staff, and the administration has twice attempted...

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  As much as I enjoy the podcast, Trump finally being gone is worth losing any number of smart, funny podcasts. — ‘With the midterm elections fast approaching, the tone and focus of the podcast is inevitably shifting towards Lame Duck Trump. Aren’t they worried that we are nearing the end of this extraordinary epoch, of the “government of one” as they like to frame it, and the journalistic riches it brings?’ https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2026/oct/25/inside-trumps-head-podcast

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  — ‘Jack Ross is facing an investigation by the Tories after he was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter: “What do you want done?” and apparently offering to “broker” the services of an alleged far-right paramilitary group. Police in Scotland say they will be reviewing an Al Jazeera documentary in which Ross was filmed making a range comments about what a contract killer could be employed to do, and talked about using far-right groups to create disruption on the streets. It has now e...

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  — ‘The children’s laureates for Ireland and Wales are donating royalties from their works to Sally Rooney in a show of solidarity after she was forced to stop selling books in the UK because of her support for Palestine Action. Chris Haughton, Ireland’s children’s literature laureate, said he also wanted to demonstrate the “absurdity” of the bestselling author being unable to receive royalties from her own UK sales because of her public support for the direct action group. Haughton, whose book...

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  That first round loss for Lula really seems to have shocked people into voting in the second. — ‘Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has staged a dramatic election fightback, defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power. With 100% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 4.4m votes more than Bolsonaro, with a 51.79% share to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.21%. However, soon after Brazil’s electoral authority confirmed Lula’s...

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  — ‘Brexit has not “played out” like it was promised to the public, has weakened the economy and the current deal is not good enough, Andy Burnham has said, while ruling out any major changes in the current parliament. The prime minister said Britain had ended up with a “harder Brexit than was proposed in the referendum campaign” and it had not helped to control the small boats crisis. Backing the home secretary’s tougher immigration rules, he said Brexit had weakened the UK’s ability to control...

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  — ‘Andy Burnham is to double spending on ending rough sleeping to almost £900m by the end of the current parliament, as he steps up efforts to get people off the streets by Christmas. The prime minister has pledged to offer every rough sleeper in England a safe route off the streets or wider support as a central part of his premiership. As he prepared for a Downing Street summit on ending rough sleeping on Monday, Burnham said the budget would bring a further £432m commitment to helping to tac...

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  Where have these people been?! — ‘The fallout stems from the White House quickly posting video and photos of the prayer on social media, captioned as Catholic archbishops and bishops praying with the US president, less than two weeks before the midterm elections on 3 November. Archbishop Grob issued a statement headlined A Public Apology, in which he said he felt “a heavy sadness” over the pain the images had caused, and that he had heard from people alarmed that he had unwittingly joined a po...

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  A sociopath desperate to stay in power (and out of prison). — Netanyahu ‘posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear mushroom cloud destroying Tel Aviv, telling Israeli voters to choose him or risk nuclear annihilation. … Israel’s Channel 12 news reported that the prime minister and the armed forces chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, clashed in recent days over a directive to the military which could “potentially spark an immediate conflagration with Iran at a very sensitive juncture”, by provoki...

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  — ‘Officially the bank bailout cost the public £23bn, after some asset sales. But that’s trivial compared with the colossal lasting damage right across the economy. Official estimates cite a loss of up to 7.5% of GDP; others suggest double that amount. Bankers hiss at any hint of plucking a few feathers off them, but we wait to know how much John Healey dares take. Dimon visited No 10 last month to warn them off a tax raise, but Burnham only “dropped into the meeting briefly”. So, how much? Re...

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  I’ve been hoping that the stick Labour gets for approving Jackdaw – which already has a licence and can readily supply gas we’d import otherwise – will mean Rosebank doesn’t get the go-ahead. — ‘Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, said: “The Burnham government is facing a series of big decisions over the next few months that could define its legacy on climate. This administration seems to get the urgency of cutting the emissions causing deadly heatwaves and droughts, but there’s a real ri...

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  Capturing at source to store within empty gas fields is promising, at least. But £24bn on this is just gross. The polluters should pay for their own cleanup / capture of pollutants. — ‘Campaigners are calling on the chancellor to cut the government’s £24bn spending plans for “fairytale” carbon capture technologies in favour of funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills. The environmentalist Chris Packham is leading an 11th-hour appeal for the Treasury to use...

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  — ‘The news network CNN Brasil reported that Bolsonaro had fled to the US with his wife and two daughters in the early hours of this morning. Bolsonaro had not been seen since Monday and missed a Tuesday-morning deadline to hand his passport to the federal police, fuelling rumours that he may have fled Brazil after losing on Sunday. … Bolsonaro was told to surrender his passport over a criminal case in which the federal police are investigating him for possible involvement in a money-laundering...

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  — ‘The £5m gift to Nigel Farage by a cryptocurrency billionaire was reported to the National Crime Agency by bankers who were concerned it may have been laundered money, the Guardian can reveal. … Farage was given a deadline of 1pm on Tuesday to respond to the Guardian about this article. He gave a video address at 2pm announcing he would force a byelection in his seat of Clacton-on-Sea. That attempt to shake off the deepening scandal over his finances appeared to have backfired on Tuesday nigh...

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  — ‘In packed cinemas across Italy some people in the audience held the Palestinian flag and there was applause at the end of the film. But at the Tibur, a small cinema in the San Lorenzo area of Rome where NAZA is being screened in both of its auditoriums, the audience watched in complete silence. “In general, the public was in shock as they watched,” said Marco, a member of staff at the cinema. “There was silence throughout the whole film. Even at the end, nobody spoke.” The film’s run at the T...

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  — ‘My family left Russia in 1917. My relatives left Germany in 1933. In both generations, leaving was called excessive; staying was the reasonable position. But an alarm that was right both times it sounded is not overcaution. On Thursday, it sounded a third time. … This notice is filed in the knowledge that pronouncements can be premature. It is filed in the fear that this one is not.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/22/stephen-miller-marco-rubio-trump-speeches

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  What definition of ‘sustainable’ could he possibly mean? A higher but arbitrary share of GDP, that the country can’t afford, vs. the insane spending of the US on its overpowered but ultimately futile military (while its citizens go without basic healthcare etc.) is not sustainable. — ‘On Sunday night, Matt Whitaker, the US ambassador to Nato, said certain Nato members were not moving fast enough: “Some allies are doing more than others. Poland, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries lead t...

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  Trump sounds delusional. Not about reaching an agreement, but about the terms: Iran always claimed not to want a nuclear weapon; Hormuz had already been open to all; and how is this relationship, managed by threat of violence, going to be better? (though Iran hawks might prefer that, I guess) Iran and the US will both claim victory, but the whole world has lost out over this massively expensive war that has extracted terms no better than was already on offer. — ‘In a Truth Social post, Trump...

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  — ‘In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget … All three developments are classed as having a “minor adverse” impact on the UK’s overall climate goals. However, the Thurrock datacentre will produce more emissions than an international airport, and Elsham Tech Park’s peak emissions will [be] just short of the 1.2m tonnes of carbon emissions of all the UK’s domestic flights.’ https://www.theguardian.c...

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  Perhaps Starmer will listen – this is a lobby group after all (Starmer must be needing some new glasses or something 🤷🏻‍♂️). — ‘As transatlantic tensions rise, the British Chambers of Commerce said the UK’s “inadequate economic security” was putting growth and jobs at risk. The lobby group, which represents thousands of firms, urged Keir Starmer to take the lead in protecting Britain from external crises, saying there had been “years of neglect by successive governments”.’ https://www.theguardian...

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  I still think it’s a terrible time to change PM – worse still, would be to keep him and lose to Reform. Since before the election, it’s been clear Starmer only cares about his narrow, corporate, ‘Blue Labour’ faction. Now, even those not actively wanting to bring Starmer down are unwilling to defend him. 😣 — ‘One MP said there was now near-universal concern across the PLP. “We need an orderly transition,” they said, adding: “Most people think it’s over for Starmer.”‘ https://www.theguardian....

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  And USAID. 🪦 — ‘There is a close relationship between the Trump era and violence … the violence his administration has unleashed on the world, the violence his ICE and border patrol agents have caused inside America, the violence he has incited among his followers. … The violence of the Trump administration has resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. That is no justification for Saturday night’s attack, of course, but it is part of what he has wrought in America.’ https://www.theguardian...

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  — ‘The 60 Minutes interview got confrontational when O’Donnell read some of the manifesto on air that appeared to refer to Trump as a “rapist” and a “pedophile” and asked Trump to react. “I was waiting for you to read that, because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people,” Trump said. “Yeah he did write that, I’m not a rapist … I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes, you’re a disgrace, …”’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202...

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  In the event this is more Maga fifth column bullshit, any undeclared agents of the US should be treated like any other adversary – and sent home. — ‘A US state department post recruiting Americans to be its “eyes and ears” abroad – and featuring a picture of London – suggests “unease” in ties, say US and UK diplomats. … Kristofer Harrison … said: “We need diplomats to be lines of communications …, not our eyes and ears. My gut is that this is just Maga incompetence.”’ https://www.theguardian.c...

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  The next best thing to no visit, is to be pictured with Trump parading the King around as little as possible. Though, this doesn’t sound like that. — ‘King Charles will be spared the potential humiliation of being upbraided in public by Donald Trump this week after the White House agreed that any meeting between the two men should be held off camera. … The king will attend several other events with Trump … accompanied by palace officials as well as … Yvette Cooper …’ https://www.theguardian.c...

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  Damn… 😣 — ‘The threat actor gained access to the developers’ account by exploiting a vulnerability in a GitHub action they created. By posting malicious code to a pull request, the attackers were able to run a bash script that ran inside the developer’s account. The bash script retrieved the sensitive data. With the account tokens and signing keys, the attacker went on to publish a malicious element-data package that was nearly indistinguishable from a legitimate one.’ https://arstechnica.com/...

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  Trump extended the ceasefire for nothing, despite being stood up. He’s desperate for a deal but somehow couldn’t figure out that continuing to blockade Iranian shipping will not keep the strait free of Iranian attacks. — “The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result … An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, …” https://www.theguardian...

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  A trillion dollar dunce. 🤦🏻‍♂️ (It gives Trump far too much credit to imagine he did this on purpose to boost oil profits.) — ‘Even if the strait of Hormuz swiftly returns to normal operations, the burden … will reach about $600bn, … Should the supply disruption continue, the economic hit to households, businesses and governments could surge above $1tn … This is likely to be an underestimate because it does not include the substantial knock-on effects of inflation, …’ https://www.theguardian.com...