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"In 2015, fresh from the coalition pact, the Liberal Democrats were punished by the electorate for helping the Conservatives push through sweeping public spending cuts. Come the next general election, the accusation will not be that Starmer’s Labour cosied up to the Tories for power, but that they embodied them: their cruelty, their austerity and, ultimately, their failure.
In the event the rebel amendment wins or Downing Street is forced to pull the vote or water down plans to save face, it cannot undo the fact that the government wished to enact these cuts in the first place. If the bill does go ahead, the division lobby will shine a light not simply on the chasms in the Labour party, but between compassion and careerism, bravery and betrayal.
Forget the MPs who rebel over cutting disabled people’s benefits – remember those who don’t. This is Labour’s poll tax. Its tuition fees. Its Partygate. Just as the Iraq war was for Tony Blair, disability cuts is the moral stain that will mark Starmer’s government and the party for years to come. Severely disabled and ill people are going to be starved, isolated and degraded as a result of this policy. No Labour MP who backs it should be forgiven."
We appear to be rushing headlong into AI without really knowing whether it is wise or whether there are adequate safeguards in place. We also seem to be cavalier about its impact on things like jobs. And we seem completely dismissive of concerns about the vast amounts of energy and land needed for data centres.
With the Lib Dem defence spokesman predicting war with Russia within 10 years, and Starmer saying "Every part of society, every citizen of this country, has a role to play because we have to recognise that things have changed.", I'm aiming for the Private Godfrey role.
Channel 4 describes it as an Oscar-winning documentary offering a powerful view of destruction in the West Bank and the unlikely friendship between a Palestinian filmmaker and an Israeli journalist
The film could not find a U.S. distributor after being picked up for distribution in 24 countries and winning the Oscar, a situation that has been compared to soft censorship.
After its release, two of the Palestinian directors were attacked by Israeli settlers. And one was arrested by the IDF after being attacked.
Over 800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences signed an open letter criticizing the Academy for not publicly supporting Ballal after his arrest. The letter reads, "The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker—it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths."[
I was alerted to this by a Democratic senator on the World Service saying there was very little economic benefit to the US in the agreement because the minerals would have been exploited before now if that were the case.
Of course, Trump will sell it as a triumph, and the good thing is that it may make him more sympathetic to Ukraine. But maybe Ukraine has pulled the wool over Trump's eyes because it was them that originally suggested such a deal.
Digging a a bit further I came across the following.
"A narrative has emerged that Ukraine’s mineral wealth is a prize that can drastically change the energy security and global power balance for whichever great power possess it. This is mostly fantasy and, for any power other than Europe, Ukraine’s mineral wealth is pretty much insignificant.
There is nothing that Ukraine has, that can’t be obtained in greater quantities and quality elsewhere on Earth.
Before delving into what Ukraine does and doesn’t have, it is important to distinguish between resources and reserves. Resources are what is present in the ground, while reserves are deposits for which there is confidence that commercially viable quantities of a mineral can be extracted. Given that on average it takes sixteen years for a deposit to go from exploration to extraction, twelve of which are devoted to determining deposit viability, the difference between resources and reserves is critical. Taken together, in the short to mid-term of five to fifteen years, Ukraine’s minerals will not fundamentally alter the global critical minerals landscape."
"Ukraine Doesn’t Actually Have Minable Rare Earths
To begin with, the contentious 28 February Oval Office meeting can’t be understood without a crucial piece of context: there are no deposits of rare-earth ore in Ukraine known to be minable in an economically viable way. And that would be true even if full-scale warfare were not raging in the country’s east, where a great deal of its mineral resources are concentrated.
Ukraine is believed to have four areas with substantial deposits of rare earth ores, according to Erik Jonsson, senior geologist with the Geological Survey of Sweden. “There are four slightly bigger deposits: Yastrubetske, Novopoltavske, Azovske, and Mazurivske. All but one of them seem to be now within or near the zone that the Russians control, as far as I can tell,” says Jonsson. “And when it comes to resources in those deposits, I mean, we have numbers; yes, that’s nice. But we have no real, detailed, outline of how those numbers were arrived at.” The numbers are believed to come from Soviet surveys dating as far back as the 1960s.
“The rare-earth deposits don’t look that relevant,” Jonsson concludes. “I mean, I wouldn’t go for them.” Two of the deposits are dominated by a mineral called britholite, he notes, which is not desirable because it has not been processed for rare earths, which means that almost nothing exists in the way of process chemistry and equipment.
“If you want critical minerals, Ukraine ain’t the place to look for them,” declares Jack Lifton, executive chairman of the Critical Minerals Institute. “It’s a fantasy. There’s no point to any of this. There’s some other agenda going on here. I can’t believe that anybody in Washington actually believes that it makes sense to get rare earths in Ukraine.”
Even without a war to contend with, it would take at least 15 years to build a mine to begin extracting rare-earth ore on a large scale, Lifton notes. And according to the terms of the draft critical materials deal, private companies would have to invest huge sums, likely a billion dollars or more, to develop rare-earths mines in Ukraine. It’s a possibility that Lifton, an IEEE member and former metals trader, dismisses as absurd. He notes that a multinational mining company, Rio Tinto Group, has spent close to US $3 billion on potential mine sites in Arizona and Alaska and still does not have the necessary licenses and permits from the U.S. Government to begin building a mine in either place.
EDIT: given the previous article, this from the BBC website could be said to be rather misleading.
"The US has announced an economic partnership with Ukraine following negotiations over a deal that would give Washington access to Kyiv's rare earth minerals."
It states that no defender has made more key passes than Davis (54) in the Premier League this season which is some going in a team often on the defensive and with limited possession.
For those who didn't know (and I was one of them), a key pass is the final pass from a player to their teammate who then attempts a shot on goal without scoring.
This is where the stats appear, and interesting to note that he is 10th out of all players in the Premier League and ahead of Trent-Alexander who is on 51.
Whilst we've clearly been badly impacted by injuries, one thing that has been really disappointing has been our home form, especially in the second half and since Christmas.
Since Christmas, we should have won at Fulham and could have won at Chelsea and Man Utd. We also did credibly at Palace and Villa, and in the cup at Forest. But we have been poor at home.
Indeed, having been at them all, the contrast in the last four games between Bournemouth and Chelsea away and Arsenal and Wolves at home couldn't be greater.
Having spoken to my neighbour, I have it on good authority that Keir Starmer will be imposing martial law to prevent any more general elections and thwart Reform.
And if you are hoping to pass on any thing to your children, you won't be able to because the World Economic Forum will ensure your assets are seized.
There was more in the same vein, but it is par for the course, given the conspiracy theory nonsense he spoke of during Covid.
He and his wife have clearly gone down a rabbit hole, and it is frightening just what people are exposed to, and believe, on the internet.
I might add that he owned his own travel insurance broking company, so at face value he ought to be a bit more savvy than this.
Interesting to hear McKenna interviewed on BBC Suffolk who said something that I had thought, namely, that they had hoped for Enciso to make a real difference when he signed but that his impact had been lessened by injuries/absences.
Despite that he is now second behind Clarke with three assists, as well as a goal to his name.
Sad news. The group formed in Leeds and emerged in the late 70s when I was studying there. They didn't have much commercial success but influenced artists like R.E.M, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kurt Cobain and Franz Ferdinand..
Sadly, with the UK cutting aid, I rather doubt it will be able to step up to the plate, and many programmes funded by the UK in the World will also be forced to shut.
I heard this on the World Service overnight but it doesn't seem to have been widely reported.
"White House envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Vladimir Putin in glowing terms as trustworthy and said the Russian leader told him he had prayed for his "friend" US President Donald Trump when he was shot.
Witkoff met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks – which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia's war in Ukraine – were constructive and "solution-based."
In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to regard Putin as not a "bad guy," and that the Russian president was a "great" leader seeking to end Moscow's deadly three-year conflict with Kyiv.
"I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me," Witkoff said in the interview aired Friday.
"I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it."
He also described a "personal" element of the discussion in which Putin recalled his reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024 as the Republican held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Putin "told me a story... about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president," Witkoff said.
"Not because... he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend."
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a false country" and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.
Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.
He said: "The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others."
The five regions - or oblasts - are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:
He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine's government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held "referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule". There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.
Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia's full-scale invasion. He said it was "correct" that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: "The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?"
He added: "There's a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that's what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that's something nobody wants to talk about."
Putin has repeatedly said that the "root causes" of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.
But pity poor Isabel Oakeshot (married to pauper Richard Tice) who had to move to Dubai because of VAT on private school fees. And no doubt the right wing media will continue to bang on about this.
We were on the back row and the seats were described as restricted view but I have never come across a view like that with a TV gantry (with what looked like very few cameras) blocking the view of the entire far side of the pitch.
Of course, people in front standing didn't help, but even at half time with people missing it was only possible sitting to see the far touchline, and certainly not much more than would have been the feet of anyone taking a throw.
We ended up moving slightly down the entrance stairs, with half-hearted efforts by the security guards to keep a gap there.
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