Mark

@thinkdefence Osborne. Of course.

PS, I mentioned pipelines The Oil and Pipelines Agency (OPA) used to own something called the Government Pipeline and Storage System (GPSS) This was the UK's largest government owned fuel pipeline network (around 2,000 km of pipelines and multiple storage depots), built largely during WWII for supplying airfields and military sites. The MoD sold it in 2015 to Spanish operator CLH (now rebranded as Exolum) for approximately £82 million. It was renamed to the CLH Pipeline System (later Exolum Pipeline System The MoD contracts with Exolum to operate the network. Not a single shareholder of Exolum is British, a bit of private equity here, and a Canadian pension fund there.

Good chat earlier about Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and the RAF, costs, risks and resilience. A few thoughts...

@WestHamJoshV He's set the club up as a lower championship/ upper league one organisation

Winning the Euorpa Conference League to relegation three years later. Welcome to the ownership of David Sullivan. It’s a disgrace how much West Ham has been allowed to decline.

@JacobSteinberg Correct

Nothing more than David Sullivan deserves. Where is Karren Brady’s world class team? Where’s the world class stadium? Utter incompetence has led West Ham to this point

Shaping up to be the biggest and most embarrassing geopolitical defeat in U.S. history. By a large margin.

Wait, what? I didn’t have the German LGBTQ community voting for the AfD on my bingo card. What am I missing here?

Stock up everyone!

@FTusa284 @DefenceHQ We should buy some more F-35s

So, anyone inside UK @DefenceHQ who might be saying, "now would be a really good time to buy INSERT US WEAPON NAME HERE", tell them that they are catastrophically stupid - you'd have to pay 100% up front, yet have no delivery date.

UK Restricts Intra-Day Power Trading with Europe to Mitigate Blackout Risks The global energy crisis is straining European market dynamics to the point that a pivotal actor—the UK—has capped the volume of electricity traded with continental markets to safeguard its grid. 🧵

The big story of the Makerfield by-election isn’t going to be Andy Burnham or Reform UK, but Rupert Lowe’s start-up party, Restore Britain. It is extraordinary that they are polling at 7%. 7%! They’ve only been in existence for three months. Lowe is a familiar figure in politics and media, but he is not a household name like Nigel Farage. There is a sense that their activist base has something of the work ethic and single-mindedness of Italy’s Five Star Movement. This is not something that can be casually dismissed as a Jimmy Goldsmith-style vanity project. Of course, Restore Britain will not win the seat, and no one in the party is under any illusions about that. But a respectable third place would feel like a victory. If anything, they may quietly be kicking themselves for not launching earlier. They began as a quasi-think tank and campaign movement. Had they struck while the iron was hot, they might well be sitting on more than 7% now. Who knows.

The price of a myopia. Europe and the US let our rare earth industry - a global market of ~$16bn plus $ 30bn for permanent magnets - die to wring a few efficiency gains out. Giving China a button to destroy 1.5 trillion in economic activity in Europe alone. Forest and trees

@DonMiami3 My god, what a battering. Fgs don't let him start any other fights

I can smell the 5D chess

@thesundaysport The ultimate date night movie

Got Downfall on now. In the mood for a weepie

Oof

@John_ForemanCBE Up to no good as usual

‘Anglo-Saxon masters’ 💪 🇬🇧 🤝 🇺🇸

@holland_tom Game's gone

Appalling x.com/MCCOfficial/st…

@FennellJW Finally a platform that really could be scaled 'at pace'. The military SME sector is very much alive

Looks like Rhino will be deployed to UKraine for testing.

@Mij_Europe Nothing has been learned, and nothing can be learned. The UK political and media elites remain fundamentally ignorant of the EU at the most basic level. We are still exactly we were in 2016.

The EU wasn't impressed. Their response: What about capital, services and labour? Bigger question is why Starmer would present an idea (free movement for industrial goods) he should have known EU would knock down (We've seen this movie before)

BREAKING: Foreign Secretary @YvetteCooperMP has strongly signalled that the UK will increase defence spending even further, saying “any lingering cosy assumptions about our defence and security are gone. So too is the post-Cold War peace dividend”. She said the UK must "face up to the need to do much more so we properly protect our citizens". Speaking after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Ms Cooper said: “We discussed in the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting how Russia’s weakening on the battlefield against Ukraine is also making them more reckless and dangerous. “In the face of that threat and the ongoing global instability, the NATO Alliance is vital and enduring, but within it Europe and the UK must do more. We have already been stepping up with significantly increased defence investment. But we have to face up to the need to do much more so we properly protect our citizens. “Russia is now under huge pressure from Ukraine’s military response and from economic challenges, but that is making them more unpredictable with escalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians, increasing hybrid threats across the continent, and reports of drone incursions. The threat from Russia is increasing on air, land, sea, space, cyber and information warfare. “Any lingering cosy assumptions about our defence and security are gone. So too is the post-Cold War peace dividend. “That’s why we need to keep increasing our defence and security capabilities and maintain our support for Ukraine. NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history and now we need to keep building a stronger Europe within NATO. The safety, stability and prosperity of our citizens depends upon it.”

@zerohedge "You lost guy, walk away"

UAE JOINS SAUDI ARABIA, AND QATAR IN URGING TRUMP AGAINST REINITIATING WAR WITH IRAN