Mark

Trump is being offered trillions of dollars of deals from Putin to walk away from Ukraine, and he will

The OBR is not the arbiter here, it will be Gilt markets. If Rayner wants to expand capital spending (for social housing) she will need to show a simultaneous liberation of the supply side of the economy to avoid bond markets pricing in a higher UK inflation premium (notwithstanding the lower clearing price for more Gilt issuance) as it runs into capacity constraints. The problem she has is she is associated with policies that have made the supply side less flexible (Employee Rights Act, Renters Rights Act) - albeit her approach to migration looks more liberal. OBR scoring only holds if creditors believe it.

Iran does, in fact, get the cash. That’s why the oil is at sea.

@MalcontentmentT @Pin__Terest Also the Panavia Tornado

Correct - and it kind of sucked in its first iterations. And I love me the F-111 Aardvark. Fun fact: Originally meant for the Navy, the landing gear door/speed break combo, size, and forward visibility were issues. Some of the first production USAF planes were delivered with functional arresting hooks.

TFR was developed in the 70s before every square inch of the planet had been scanned by Airbus for Google Maps and before GPS existed.

@SkyNews Oh another ban, of course

Crossbows to be banned after series of violent attacks news.sky.com/story/crossbow…

Looks like it's going to be a great weekend

I’m convinced most officials & specialists are too immersed in the moment to realize a certain basic fact about why Iran is striking the Gulf. When Iran was fighting in Syria & Iraq, its field commanders & their proxies (and their ecosystems in countries of Iranian influence) always promised that the next battle would be in the Gulf. This was conveyed, explicitly or otherwise, by Qassem Soleimani and allies like Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, Hassan Nasrallah and the Assad regime. It was part of a doctrine guiding Iran’s regional strategy, not mere passing comments. (The same language that Israel began using against regional countries only recently. “Qatar is next” or “Turkey is the new Iran” etc. Iran has used that language for many years.) Now, Gulf countries look at Iran and wonder: Why is Iran hitting us when we tried to talk Trump out of striking it? Iran knows we tried our best. Iran’s action is understandable if it targeted the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but why mediators like Qatar? Yes we have US bases, yes we can scream at the US, but it still makes little sense, even from a basic divide-and-conquer strategy. But Iran sees this war as having begun at least a decade or so ago, and the Gulf states played a vital role in getting Iran to where it is today. The Gulf is the problem, not just Israel or the US. Strategically reckless, but that is the plain IRGC logic. This is clear if those officials had followed the rhetoric over the last 1-2 decades and the nitty-gritty behavior of Iran on a ground level outside Iran.

A study in class vs classless

Update: Ilya Remeslo is now in a psychiatric ward.

@sigourneybeaver Simple HP Streamer

Any recs for a laptop for The Boy for uni? Don't need anything fancy etc.

@unusual_whales Hahahahaha genuinely funny moment in history

US detects drones over base where Rubio, Hegseth live, per Washington Post

"The UK may be uniquely embarrassed by the timing of this conflict. It spent decades maintaining a naval presence in the Gulf, which until recently included a frigate, four mine-countermeasures vessels that were considered a ‘crown jewel’ capability, and an auxiliary mother ship. None of these remain" iiss.org/online-analysi…

Rheinmetall CEO confirms my reporting. All stockpiles in Europe, the Mideast, and US are basically empty. Cannibalization of INDOPACOM Arsenal, which began a little bit last week, will begin in earnest. It will take years, if ever, to recover. Moscow and Beijing know this.

@FennellJW This is a useful wake up call to Whitehall and Westminster

Predictable but also can go to hell.

What would leave a Type-45 destroyer as a “sitting duck” would be if it, for example, had engines that didn’t work. It was Geoff Hoon who in 2000 under the last Labour Government took the decision to equip them with the ill-fated WR21 engines. Labour then halved the number of ships from 12 to 6, so we had fewer ships, all with unreliable engines. The £160 million Power Improvement Project is still rectifying that decision today. HMS Duncan still hasn’t had her engines replaced. The HMS Dragon farrago can be traced all the way back to Hoon.

@APHClarkson I'm starting a one-man campaign to resurrect the WEU

The "we'd stomp you Euros" jingoism on this from the same MAGA accounts that only 5 minutes earlier demand that Euros provide more bases and ships that Trump needs for his war on Iran is a further datapoint for how NATO is not sustainable in its current form

I’m not convinced Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square is an act of dominance. Islam is hardly unique in considering itself the one true religion.. But the fact the PM thinks Nick Timothy should be sacked undermines the claim we are all free to criticise Islam despite the new anti-Muslim hostility definition.

Brent crude rises to $118 a barrel and European gas futures surge as much as 35%, as the war escalates and Trump suggests he’s at odds with Israel over strikes on Iranian energy

@FTusa284 WEU: your time is here at last

Well, the last one was going down the Swannee well before Iran, and unlikely to return...

@LapGong From a kids tv show called UFO

@Rubble2012 Looks sexy.

UK Space Command (in my head)