Jude O’Kane

What not many people realise about UK student loans is that earners in the middle of the salary range end up paying back far more than either lower or higher earners, as they earn enough to pay the loan and interest back before the 30 year cut off, but not enough to pay it off early before the interest balloons. Someone earning £70k ends up paying almost double someone on £150k.

Mark Carney, "On Artic sovereignty we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark" "When we negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what's offered" "We compete with each other to be the most accommodating" "this is not sovereignty, it's the performance of sovereignty which accepting subordination" "We are in the midst of a rupture" "Great powers have begun using economic economic integration as weapons" "The architecture of collective problem solving are under threat: WTO, UN, COP" "The old order is not coming back, nostalgia is not a strategy"

Investing in European stocks should be tax free until a certain amount, across the union. This would free up capital for European companies to be able to invest more!

This by John Collison should be required reading. He eviscerates the timidity of politicians in dealing with our infrastructure problems and also the state agencies, quangos and NGOs which now exist to stymie development and not to assist them. irishtimes.com/life-style/peo…

Can Keir Starmer survive? Inside the plot to bring down the prime minister. “The conversation has moved on from ‘if’. Now it’s about ‘who’ and ‘how’.” The @guardian Saturday long read by me & @jessicaelgot theguardian.com/news/ng-intera…

Strong piece by Alison O’Connor in the Sunday Times.

Letter in the IT today.

The UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe. Total fleecing.

11 GAA clubs (100+ teams) made bookings with Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council in 2024. There are 0 dedicated GAA pitches in the Borough. 2 Cricket clubs made bookings in the same time period. There are 2 dedicated Cricket pitches. Fairness and equality?

Minimum unit pricing is "one of the dumbest policies I can remember", according to an economist. #HardShoulder newstalk.com/news/should-mi…

The GAA has received less than 10% of the funding that football has received from Westminster since 2022, according to new figures. belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/gaa/gaa-…

The process aimed at disbanding loyalist paramilitary groups has failed, a former security watchdog has told BBC Northern Ireland's @BBCSpotlightNI programme. bbc.in/45ssGdo

🚨🚨💣 EXCLUSIVE: Florian Wirtz to Liverpool, HERE WE GO! Liverpool verbally agree deal in principle with Bayer Leverkusen for package reaching €150m add-ons included. Player side already agreed two weeks ago with move now imminent. Wirtz set for medical and contract signing.

Such a disappointing stance. We cannot allow others have a veto over where we send Irish peacekeepers. What would the opposition propose we do if the UN didn’t renew mandate for our peacekeepers in Lebanon? Shortsighted & not even waiting until legislation is published to engage

Tony Blair Institute estimates that introducing digital ID could save £2 billion a year, with £1.25 billion from cutting benefit fraud alone. It’s a no-brainer. Time to get it done

Casement Park in west Belfast, once home of @AontroimGAA now just rubble + still no sign of promised rebuild. "Build Casement Now" rally this morning organised by @Gaels4Casement before Antrim play All Ireland champions @Armagh_GAA at Corrigan Park with just 4,000 fans @rtenews

Imaging how much we could fix in this country for £31bn extra every year. Imagine we even kept the increase for the bottom half of pensioners by income. That's an extra £15.5bn each year to connect this country up with road and rail. To produce cheap energy. To lower your taxes.

Brussels is watching amazed, as Trump destroys the US economy. "Nobody in the Commission thought that the US government would be this stupid and self-destructive," an EU official tells me. "That they would blow up their own country by letting ChatGPT make their trade policy." 🧵

Train passengers from the Republic are forced to queue separately and have their tickets scanned manually in a “ridiculous” system upon arrival at Belfast Grand Central Station irishnews.com/news/northern-…