AS Performance

A major change in policy from France, all French gold now withdrawn from the USA for the first time in over 150 years.

Streeting is entirely wrong here - McSweeney must have known that his messages would be needed because it is the law to retain them. The Commons vote to publish them now (ahead of the usual 20 year rule) may have been unprecedented, but the need to retain such messages is not. >

BANK OF LONDON DISCOVERS CAPITAL IS EASIER TO RAISE WHEN YOU JUST MAKE IT UP The Bank of London and its parent, Oplyse Holdings, have been fined £2 million after the PRA found they misled the regulator over their capital position, handed over fabricated documents, stayed less than candid about their worsening solvency, and failed to keep adequate financial resources in place. The really inspiring part is that the watchdog said the misconduct was bad enough for a £12 million penalty, then cut it to £2 million because paying the full amount would cause financial hardship. Which is a marvellous advert for a bank, really. Trust us with your money, we just can’t survive the bill for lying about having enough of our own. Source: Bank of England, March 24, 2026 –

A former Conservative justice minister has just pleaded guilty to possessing crystal meth, GBL and cannabis at Westminster Magistrates' Court. Crispin Blunt. MP for Reigate 1997–2024. The man who helped make the laws.

Privatisation going well is it

🚨 Fun Fact: Birmingham City Council has spent around £33 million dealing with the bin strike. The strike started because the council wanted to save £1.2m in staff costs. £33m… to save £1.2m. This is how badly our councils are run.

I agree with everything in this article. The cuts to particle, nuclear and astro physics research in the UK will be devastating, not only to the fields themselves but also to universities more widely and, in the longer term, to industry and therefore the economy as a whole. They were not thought through, there was little or no consultation, and I do not believe they have the support of parliament. The SI&T select committee has been ignored, indeed pretty much everyone who knows anything about the successful but delicate research ecosystem in the UK has been ignored.

I’m sick of this “we can’t feed the whole world we should be looking after our own” argument from the same people who want benefits slashed

Are we barking mad? Krill are essential food for penguins, seals, whales and albatross. Now, we've introduced two new species to the Antarctic food chain to compete with these creatures by catching krill to feed to our cats and dogs. qrillpet.com/product @NatGeo

Fabulous museum @bletchleypark - unbeatable!

No one bets $1.5 billion unless they are sure and have insider information. This isn’t the first time either. There should be an outcry in the USA about this. Also unnoticed by many, SEC Enforcement Division Director Margaret Ryan resigned last Monday after just over six months on the job, after clashing with her bosses over investigating Trump family trades.

If you want to understand why extreme wealth concentration is a failure, just look at the oligarchs it produces. Watching multibillionaires actively try to dismantle the societies that enriched them is the only argument you need against their influence

Meta Must Pay $375 Million Over Allegedly Enabling Child Exploitation go.forbes.com/UGqkiT

Today is the feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, 'Lady Day'. In England it was once the spring quarter-day, when contracts would begin and servants took new jobs, and until 1752 it was also the start of the New Year. A day for new beginnings, new life of many kinds.

The diplomat at the center of the Rothschild raid worked at the UN from 2006 to 2013. During that time, he sent UN Security Council briefings to Jeffrey Epstein. After leaving the UN, he went to work at Rothschild bank. The bank that was just raided.

After spending 16 months pretending she was investigated for a non crime hate incident, in order to sue for libel, she now has to fess up that she was actually investigated for the criminal offence of inciting racial hatred. Putting the Twitter in a Twitter.

Massive reality check. Tech oligarchs did not suddenly become conservative. Biden tried to regulate Amazon and Meta so they simply switched sides and bought Trump instead. It is not about ideology it is about raw capitalist control over the government.

Dorothy Thompson had a gift that made powerful men uneasy: she paid attention when others dismissed.... In 1931, when she interviewed Adolf Hitler, she didn’t walk away dazzled—she walked away alarmed. She described him as oddly unimpressive, almost forgettable. But beneath that, she recognized something far more dangerous: a man who could weaponize grievance, manipulate fear, and turn ordinary frustrations into something explosive. At a time when many foreign correspondents treated fascism as political theater—or worse, a passing phase—Thompson was already writing with urgency. She had spent years moving through post–World War I Europe, watching instability harden into extremism. She understood something others didn’t yet want to admit: this wasn’t chaos—it was momentum. From her post in Berlin, she wrote bluntly about the Nazi rise, refusing to sanitize what she was seeing. It didn’t take long for the regime to notice. In 1934, she became one of the first American journalists expelled from Nazi Germany. Not quietly reassigned. Expelled. Labeled a threat. Back in the United States, she didn’t retreat—she amplified. Her column, On the Record, reached millions. Her voice carried across radios into living rooms. And while much of the world debated whether Hitler could be “managed” or “contained,” Thompson kept saying the part people didn’t want to hear: this would not stay contained. She warned against appeasement when it was still politically convenient. She spoke with a clarity that made people uncomfortable, because clarity often does. And she did it as a woman in a profession that still expected her to soften, to defer, to step back. She didn’t. Dorothy Thompson wasn’t just reporting history as it unfolded—she was trying to interrupt it. Trying to force people to see what was already forming in plain sight. And for a time, she stood almost alone in saying it out loud. The tragedy isn’t that she was wrong. It’s that she was right—and the world hesitated anyway. © Women In World History #archaeohistories

#OnThisDay 1807 the Abolition of Slave Trade act gains Royal assent making trade of African slaves illegal in the Empire. In the decades that followed the Royal Navy captured over 1600 ships, freeing over 150,000 slaves. The cost was 2% of Government spending or half of RN budget

The insider trading scandal just got worse. It wasn't just oil. Someone also made a massive unexplained trade on the S&P 500 exactly 15 minutes before Trump's Iran war tweet. Hundreds of millions of dollars made in minutes. They knew exactly what he was going to say.