Right Sided ↘️

I loathe Russel Brand, always have. Never seen the appeal. When I heard about the charges I wasn’t surprised at all. It’s what I expected of him. But During the trial I’ve been following the podcast and, against my natural instinct, I’d have probably found him not guilty of the rape had I been on the jury. I just don’t think the evidence was there to establish rape as opposed to regret after the fact. Not a conclusion that I expected to come to.

Freddie Laker was flying people from London to New York for £59 when British Airways, Pan Am and TWA cut their fares on his routes, and in February 1982 his airline went under owing about £270 million. He sued them and 9 other airlines. By 1985 they had paid $50 million to settle, and BA paid Laker himself £8 million. In the video below, Laker remembers the phone call from the transport minister, who told him he was going to approve Pan Am's new fares. "I said to him, minister, I will be out of business in three months." Roy Watts, chief executive of British Airways from 1979 to 1983, gives the other side in one line: "Competition is about eliminating competitors." Skytrain started in September 1977 with no booking at all. You queued at Victoria station, bought a ticket and flew. In October 1981 Pan Am cut its cheapest fares by up to 66%, only on the routes where it met Laker, and BA and TWA followed. The film says BA had a name for it, jugular marketing. Laker's passenger loads and cash coming in halved in 4 months. His plane maker, McDonnell Douglas, offered to put in £4 million to keep him flying. British Caledonian, Lufthansa, KLM and Sabena then warned it they would stop doing business with it if the deal went ahead. Laker says he was told the rescue now depended on him dropping his plan for cheap flights across Europe. "I said, that's blackmail. They said, probably." He agreed anyway. He flew back from New York and went straight to the bank to sign. The manager of the Midland came in, closed the door, stood with his back against it and said, "We want you to call in the receivers." Skytrain stopped flying the next morning, and thousands of his passengers had to fly home on the airlines that had cut their fares to beat him. In America, Laker said the airlines had worked together to put him out of business. The case stood in the way of selling British Airways to the public, so ministers wanted it settled first. On top of the $50 million from all of them, BA put another $35 million towards his debts. BA was sold off in 1987. For me BA carries most of this. It belonged to the taxpayer at the time, and the BBC film says hundreds of millions of public pounds went into the fight against a private airline. If a much bigger rival suddenly matches your price only where it competes with you, write down every fare, date and call from the first week. Laker's case paid out 3 years after his last flight. Watts calls that business. Laker had also borrowed heavily in 1981 for 10 new Airbus jets, just before the price war started, so the debt was his own choice. Did his rivals sink Skytrain, or did Laker sink it himself with the money he owed on those planes? I post one story like this every day: a famous name, the money they made, and who ended up with it.

🚨 NEW: Shabana Mahmood has announced small boat migrants will have to wait 20 years to settle in the UK or 30 years if they don't work or study

Two years since Kemi Badenoch became Leader of the Conservatives. She's given us back clarity, purpose, and a clear sense of direction that is authentically conservative and right wing. Turned me from doubter to believer. And oh boy did we dodge a bullet by not getting Jenrick!

Newbies to the Polish political drama need to understand how language is being misused (by both sides) to further their respective crusades. To the uninitiated, “restoring the rule of law” probably sounds like a noble objective. The framing makes it sound as though the previous government (despite being called the Law and Justice party) ruled without any regard for law and justice. Perhaps, even, that it abused its power by oppressing dissidents or confiscating assets. Who knows. Tusk’s accusation of “lawlessness” is even more sensational and misleading. In ordinary language, the term conjures up images of a mafia state, or worse, a failed state where it’s every man for himself. But no reasonable person assessing the period during which PiS was in power could honestly suggest that this was the case. Poland was not lawless in any ordinary understanding of the word. The sleight of hand lies in taking a specific legal and constitutional dispute and repackaging it as a sweeping indictment of an entire government. The accusation derives its legitimacy from genuine controversies over the rule of law, but its political force comes from the much broader and more sinister meaning that the phrase carries in everyday language. At the heart of the dispute is the question of whether Polish constitutional law can take precedence over EU law in areas where the EU maintains that its law has primacy, alongside controversies surrounding judicial independence. These are major legal questions, but they are a far cry from the impression of generalised lawlessness that Tusk’s rhetoric invites. “Restoring the rule of law” is an exceptionally effective piece of political messaging. It allows Tusk to present his government as the force restoring legality, while casting his opponents as people who governed outside the law. Yet, powerful states such as the US and China have long asserted their sovereignty against international legal constraints they consider unacceptable. The EU may be a distinct legal order whose treaties Poland voluntarily accepted, but the broader question of where national sovereignty ends and supranational authority begins is hardly unique to Poland. Of course, the ultimate source of the consternation lies in PiS’ judicial reforms during its time in power. Yes, breaking established procedures to pack supposedly independent courts with your own appointees is not a good look. But it becomes a little more understandable when you consider the historical context that Western media so often leave out when reporting on the story. Poland never underwent a comprehensive “lustration” of its judiciary after the fall of communism. The transition involved compromises that allowed considerable institutional continuity, with elements of the old judicial establishment, its professional networks and institutional culture surviving into the new democratic order. This is crucial because PiS did not regard itself as politicising an otherwise independent judiciary. Its contention was precisely the opposite: that the judiciary was already politicised, having never been sufficiently disentangled from the structures and networks inherited from the communist era. From that perspective, its reforms were intended to dismantle an entrenched establishment rather than create one. The opposition and the EU regarded those same interventions as an assault on judicial independence. Tusk and his allies have often challenged the relevance of the judiciary’s communist-era legacy by pointing out that most judges from that period are no longer serving. But this misses the substance of the argument. The concern is not necessarily about the survival of individual communist-era judges, but about the professional networks, institutional culture and entrenched structures that may have outlived them. The continuum.

Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson is reportedly about to leave the newspaper amid significant job cuts to the newsroom theguardian.com/media/2026/o…

This was pretty much all AI build out The rest of the economy is knackered Oh and by the way the AI bubble is popping so I'll let you guess what happens next

I think that one of the things that people liked about Mrs Thatcher (remember when we used to call her that?) was that she was the last prime minister who seemed to understand power. She was the last one who pulled the sometimes reluctant state and society in her direction. It provided a feeling, for good or ill, that the country really was being led. Subsequent prime ministers have felt incapable of that, except for Tony Blair, who benefitted from having a state that matched his views almost exactly, given his election coincided almost exactly with the completion of the long march through the institutions. Since then, prime ministers have resembled not so much the captain of a ship as a person on a white water raft, paddling hysterically as they're bounced and buffetted down the river. I, too, have grave reservations about Margaret Thatcher, whose right of centre liberalism is not an ideology to which I adhere. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a prime minister who had a clear idea of what they wanted, an achievable plan to get there, and the skill to discharge it somewhat successfully.

🚰 The "Sold Reservoirs" Megathread 🚰 "Since privatisation they've sold off 35 reservoirs!" You'll have seen it. It comes out every dry summer. So I've gone through every one I can find. Here's what was actually sold 🧵

The last Tory parliament was the worst on record for stagnant living standards. Hold my beer, says this Labour Parliament. We’re on track to be even worse. Source: OBR

Wow. Just wow. 💥 Listening to Liz Truss on @TalkTV where she says Boris Johnson was so afraid that, after Brexit, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans would go home, leaving the UK with a massive skills shortage. So he thought he'd fill the shortage in skills with Middle Easterners and Africans, hence the Boris Wave. Further, the top dogs at the Bank of England are full of socialists. They thought Liz and Kwasi were too right wing so threatened the whips to get rid of them or they'd do damage to the economy by, inter alia, hefting interest rates up. And finally Liz Truss says despite Kemi's tough stance, the Conservative Party is still full of MPs who are more concerned with their standing on the liberal London dinner party circuit than they are about the Tory members. They still are Conservative in name only, I'm afraid.