Tristan Cummings

Palestine Action ban under terrorism laws ruled unlawful by UK's High Court but remains in place for now bbc.in/4rSVT9q

Our statement on Grok ⬇️

I'm a PhD student at @UniofOxford and I think I'm living in a fairytale :-) Foxes playing around in the snow at Magdalen College this morning — absolutely magical!

🚨 NEW: Channel 4 is planning to air a special Dispatches documentary on Saturday titled ‘The King, The Prince and Their Secret Millions’ The title is now known after several delays by Channel 4 "Documents not seen in public before reveal who's paying them, and for what."

Are you ready? “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” will air from Sunday 10th November at 9pm on BBC1. You aren't going to want to miss this phenomenal finale! #WolfHall #ThomasCromwell #HilaryMantel #HenryVIII

Joan of Arc’s signature ! ‘The new exhibition ⁦@britishlibrary⁩ on Medieval Women is full of wonders

What the government *actually* spends our money on (MPs’ expenses & staffing costs isn’t even on the list) 👇🏼

Reader, he did not pay his own air fare

Councils have essentially become social and children's care funding agencies, which, as most people don't use those services, means they don't really understand where all their council tax is going...

Two big detached houses are being replaced with 93 apartments on the famous Bishop's Avenue in London. An example of how attractive densification can be, and also of a new style emerging in London apartment architecture, notable for abundant decorative tiling and brickwork.

This is brilliant news. "All prosecutions of people accused of wrongfully using a 16-25 Railcard to obtain a discount at the wrong time of day are being withdrawn and thousands of previous cases are being reviewed, the company said on Monday." telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/1…

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Euston has (immediately, as of right now) on the orders of @LouHaigh turned off its annoying giant advertising board that replaced the departure board. But the thing is… it was purposely designed to be annoying, to cover up for lack of investment.

There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius. Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election. The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington. I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election. For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”. Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.” It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it. And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet. As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM. If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.

Another scale busting map! September rainfall for the UK. Huge variation but parts of southern England seeing over three & a half times their average rainfall. Incredibly Bedfordshire & Oxfordshire saw their wettest month (of any month) in at least 188 years.

Just so we’re clear: It is currently a golf club. Part is becoming a tennis club, the rest is becoming a new public park. There is no park being lost forever.

Median disposable household income was £34,500 in 2023, according to the ONS. It was £34,700 in 2020. And is only 0.8% higher than 2013.

This is interesting. According to the International Federation of Robotics, UK businesses are investing in industrial robots at an unprecedented rate. A big deal, given the UK dramatically lags most other developed economies in robotics uptake. Biggest increase was in car sector

This is the story everyone is talking about at Labour conference today… Whispers that Reeves could change fiscal rules to allow more capital spending, including moving National Wealth Fund and GB Energy off the government’s balance sheet.. theguardian.com/politics/2024/…