The Lentil

Imagine if you could reduce your debt by dividing it onto three credit cards! Well Mark Carney says today you can.

I haven't been on this site for a bit. But I haven't seen anyone share the photo the New Statesman staff staged in 2013 of Russell Brand as Christ, and themselves as his disciples. It seems to have been scrubbed from the web. It made me angry then and it makes me angry now.

The early 2010s, when Russell Brand’s reputation was at its peak, were an unlovely period in recent British history, especially media culture. The worst aspects of Brand’s conduct had already manifested themselves in the preceding decade, but this did not prevent his subsequent elevation into something approaching a public intellectual. Narcissistic kidults were celebrated as insightful truth-tellers; performative, self-righteous indignation was mistaken for intellectual seriousness, loudness for courage, certainty for knowledge, and self-dramatisation for independence of mind. More established forms of informed, measured and thoughtful judgment, refined through experience and reflection, were increasingly dismissed as dull or reactionary. The prominence, in different ways, of figures such as Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Katie Hopkins and Milo Yiannopoulos, followed later in the decade by Charlotte Church as a political activist, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar, reflected a wider celebration of adolescent modes of behaviour in adults. These figures exhibited different combinations of impulsiveness, ostentatious defiance and attention-seeking, too often mistaken for intellectual and moral courage. In Brand's case, the narcissism cultivated and indulged by much of the media was that of a man seemingly so in love with himself, so convinced of his own irresistible appeal, that he could scarcely comprehend the possibility that anyone might say ‘no’ to him. This is not to associate any of these other figures with Brand’s criminal conduct, but to identify the wider media culture in which his celebrity flourished. There are connections here with a wider political culture of knee-jerk responses, impatience with complexity and a need for emotionally satisfying certainties and slogans, which found expression in aspects of both Corbynism and the Brexit campaign, and which persists today in different populist forms around the Greens and Reform.

Porridgey Worridgey.

The EU has added over 25,000 Regulations and Directives since we left. The Draghi report is not fictional, but no one in the UK has bothered to read it.

Britain has a reverse lobbying problem. Businesses struggle to have any useful influence or input on policy, leading to growth killing jobs and energy taxes. But the big NGO sector is *paid* by the state to lobby the state.

EXCLUSIVE: Charities that called for Mahmood's immigration U-turn received more than £1billion in taxpayers' cash dailymail.com/news/article-1…

Lots of immigrants are experiencing the treacherous nature of our recent British governments and are outraged by it. Try being a citizen. Mass immigration was itself the first betrayal, after citizens voted against it time and again. Not one person angry about this appears to care about all the opportunities ripped away from British citizens over the past 20+ years, nor how their home has been radically altered by extremist immigration policy. Not one of you seems to care about the growing threat of civil unrest and what that will do to our country. I genuinely do feel sad that people have upended their lives on the idea they could come here for just five years then be ushered onto a path to citizenship. Successive govts have made it seem like our country is nought but an economic zone where self-interest is all you need to take part. It was utterly ridiculous. But I'm afraid the citizens and the nation must now come first. This country is a home. We cannot allow it to burn to the ground because indifferent Tory govts treated it like an airport.

Even small local bakeries that never trade with the EU will have to follow EU rules on ingredients, packaging, and nutritional information. Industry compliance costs are estimated at £2 to £3 billion. They will also face additional compliance costs every time the EU changes its rules. UK taxpayers will also have to pay the EU for its policy work to create and enforce these rules on UK firms. This could be up to £3 billion a year, every year.

Can't believe a company called Poundland is struggling in an environment of high inflation

Changes we will announce tomorrow will mean the 20 million private sector workers now saving for a pension will be given the option of an income that lasts throughout retirement, something public sector workers take for granted

We are delighted to reveal Urinoflux as our new front of shirt main sponsor for the 2026/27 season. #SRFC