Best Of

Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder
BREAKING: A Russian scientist who opposed Putin’s war, fled Russia & found work at Harvard was detained at Logan Airport returning from a French academic conference and has been sent to an immigration detention center in Louisiana for deportation to Russia

https://theins.press/en/news/280037

I have to say that our plans of celebrating our ruby wedding with an extended trip to the US later this year are somewhat under review. Do we know if they read PB?

They do.

I'd just like to say what an excellent job Donald Trump is doing and what a clever and articulate man JD Vance is. Any suggestion I may have made to the contrary has clearly been taken out of context.

Can I second that. I only wish that they would annex the UK so I could vote for them.

Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder
BREAKING: A Russian scientist who opposed Putin’s war, fled Russia & found work at Harvard was detained at Logan Airport returning from a French academic conference and has been sent to an immigration detention center in Louisiana for deportation to Russia

https://theins.press/en/news/280037

No one in the right mind would visit the US now.

Nor seek asylum there.

I’ve cancelled my trip to Vegas in November for the Grand Prix.

Choosing Vegas for your Grand Prix getaway was a mistake anyway.

My other half has never been to Vegas and plus my 10 year ban from the Nevada Gaming Commission has expired.

You offended them with your subtle puns and understated dress style ?
10 years seems harsh.

Apparently they take great exception when you tell them

‘Las Vegas is just like Glasgow, in both places you can pay for sex with chips.’

Robert Jenrick has taken another swing at the Sentencing Council but his tweet is too long to reproduce here.
https://x.com/robertjenrick/status/1904973535791272341

Mahmoud emboldened this toxic quango by backing down when she had challenged them. Absolute amateur hour.

It's all very well to call a quango 'toxic' but quangos are the creation of government and parliament. If parliament wanted the council's guidance to only go into effect upon the approval of the government or parliament, they are uniquely and powerfully in a position to have said so or to say so now.

If you don't like a quango or its powers or what it actually does, then the place to put it right is parliament, where the Lord Chancellor's government has a three trillion majority.

I really think someone, maybe Elon Musk, should sit down with Trump and explain that Europeans (including us) and Japanese people don't buy American cars not because they are priced out due to a tariff, but because they're shite and completely unsuitable for our road system. If America made more products the rest of the world wanted then people would buy them, as it stands they don't do we don't. On the flip side the rest of the world makes a whole stack of products Americans absolutely love from the Mini Cooper to the PS5.

Trump would be better placed spending the time to get American domestic industry to be less isolationist if he wants to resolve the deficit issue. We don't want their additive infested food, we don't want their gigantic road hogging cars and we don't want their shite whiskey.

Trump now appears to be demanding reparations from Ukraine.

Trump now wants entire Ukrainian resource revenue in updated minerals pact offer

The new deal requires Ukraine to repay all free US aid since 2022, plus pay 4% interest per year before it can access any profits. Zelenskyy says the terms keep changing.
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1905547409091871176

What remains remarkable, unless I’ve missed it, is the silence from Democrats on most of the Trump administration’s foreign policy twatteries.

Have they said anything reassuring towards: Canada, Greenland, the entire continent of Europe, or even Ukraine? Anything to suggest they would reverse unfair extortion on minerals or power stations?

Yes, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jan/08/trump-congress-biden-pardons-politics-latest-updates "Blinken and top Democrats push back against Trump bid for US to take over Greenland – as it happened"

Good.

I disagree. I have to say tims and Bonde, I started out in your place thinking this was wild and wrong, but after investigation and analysis, it’s another of those things I have changed my mind about. These things in the earth are important to the technology and security future, a lot of its in China, who are trying to get even more around the world under contract even Greenland. I don’t think it’s such a bad thing the West and US sign a deal with Greenland, and put other places on contract too.

I’ll go as far as to say, those out of Sleepy Joe’s administration reacting by publicly saying US shouldn’t get this under contract, are being a bit stupid and handing the “ahead of the game” initiative to the MAGA.

You’re making the category error of thinking this is about “the West and US” signing a deal with Greenland.

First, Greenland is the West. It’s an autonomous nation under the foreign policy control of Denmark, and within NATO.

Second, any annexation of Greenland would be by and for the USA - a borderline hostile power - not for “The West”.