Best Of

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/mar/23/funding-for-populist-right-media-political-complex-exceeded-170m-in-five-years-research-finds

A useful reminder that right wing populism is less an organic outburst of popular discontent and more a well funded political project created by a few very rich men.

What would really shock you is if that exactly the same is true of the left. Except they expect the taxpayer to fork out for their predilictions too.

Interesting claim. Do you have evidence for the left-wing equivalent of this:

He said more than £130m can be traced to just four entities: Harborne, the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum and the financier Jeremy Hosking.

..

Against the narrative.

The French left wins all three metropolitan cities

Paris, Lyon, Marseille

https://x.com/nassreddin2002/status/2035806273891954946?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

Utter moron

Lol, getting a Trump and fellow cretins may have fucked new world order fantasies vibe.

Somebody actually "liked" your dismally stupid comment about these election victories in hugely migrant impacted French cities. Encouragingly for you, that means there is someone on here who is even fucking stupider than you. Because at least you had the basic nervous system needed to write your vastly imbecilic comment, the other person just numbly, dumbly pressed "like", like some fucking dwarf toad fiercely pooing a tiny pebble

I'm not going to name names, because that's not my style, and I don't like to laugh at the intellectually inadequate, but it was @kinabalu

"obliterated" ... chuckle

Anyway zzzzzz

Goodnight hackneyed reactionary tripe merchant.

That's an offal thing to say.

Oh, I dunno - lites up my morning...

Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/22/palantir-extends-reach-into-british-state-as-it-gets-access-to-sensitive-fca-data

More confidential British data handed over to foreigners.

Not if you read the article. Palantir is processing the data but doesn’t own it

The question do you trust Palantir enough that it won't sneak some of the data or the results and use it elsewhere...

That’s the question with any commercial contract. But they are probably the best (at present) in analysing data lakes so give us the best ability to identify fraudsters and insider trading.

I suspect Palantir is actually very careful with intellectual property because a bad reputation would completely undermine their business. They will absolutely take any mechanical learnings on how to do it, but won’t retain the data itself.

NAE but is not the government gaining a big tax windfall right now on fuel taxes? Why then not cut the tax rate and reduce pump costs as has happened already in Spain for example?

For every 6 penny increase the Gov't gains 1p. So on diesel the gov't is pretty much getting the full tax hike pencilled in already

Yes, that's right.

But for anyone who doesn't know, the Govt only gains VAT. Fuel duty is a fixed number of pence per litre so no gain in Fuel duty.

So if net price up 5p, VAT up 1p (ie 20% of 5p) - so total price up 6p.

However the point is if the public is spending more on petrol they will be spending less on other things, so the VAT take on everything else will go down.

Now some things are zero rated but big picture is Govt may actually gain very little overall.

Increase in taxes may not actually result in as significant (or any) increase in revenue?

Oh what a Laffer that is.

Though given fuel is an essential, and an inelastic one at that, and that other essentials are normally zero rated as fuel should be too, that's not actually true in this instance.