After a humiliating bilateral meeting for Starmer with President Trump yesterday – where the President called Sadiq Khan “nasty” and lashed out at “ugly” UK wind turbines – Trump has now taken to Truth Social to attack Starmer over North Sea oil. He posted:
Trump also offered some sound campaign advice for Starmer yesterday: lower taxes and cut immigration. Special relationship…
Zia Yusuf has responded to Peter Kyle’s comments this morning saying Nigel Farage is on the side of Jimmy Savile:
“To use that allegation against Nigel is one of the most appalling and disgusting things I have seen in the political arena in my lifetime and I think it is upon him to apologise.”
Yusuf went on to attack Kyle as a ‘dinosaur’ with no experience in tech:
“And whatever horrors you think your child is already looking at, I promise you as a parent, once they go into that rabbit hole, it is your worst nightmare as a parent. And if you have, for example, BT or Sky, one of the child safety locks that you have, if you’re a parent, those VPNs defeat them because it basically hides the metadata. So it defeats all your existing child safety locks. The person in question who’s using these slurs, I just want to make this point, has never worked in tech. From what I can tell, he’s never even worked in the private sector. And this is the problem. You have MPs and politicians who are frankly dinosaurs do not understand the world that they’re trying to legislate. And the kids whom they are trying to protect running rings around them.”
Kyle has doubled down. Heat on the Science Secretary here – Starmer will have to defend the comments…
Science Secretary Peter Kyle has said Nigel Farage is ‘on the side of Jimmy Saville’ this morning while defending the Online Safety Act. Even host Wilfred Frost was incredulous…
On Sky News Kyle gave an extended rant in favour of the law, which has so far led to a massive surge in VPN use and banned footage of protests from X, claiming he has not yet seen one single misapplication of the legislation so far. He launched unprompted into an attack on the Reform leader, saying:
“If Jimmy Savile were alive today he’d be perpetrating his crimes online, and Nigel Farage is saying he’s on their side.”
Kyle said Farage was siding with “extreme pornographers peddling hate, peddling violence.” Frost replied: “Do you honestly think to say Nigel Farage is on Jimmy Savile’s side… this is a major leap.” Kyle responded that he was protecting children by telling people to age verify online and Farage wants to “turn the clock back.” This will cause huge fireworks today…
UPDATE: Farage says Kyle should “do the right thing and apologise” for his “disgusting” comments.
UPDATE II: Peter Kyle doubles down in response: “If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.“
YouGov has polled civil servants on their views of working from home. The results are exactly as you’d expect…
A whopping 78% of civil servants ranked Higher Executive Officer or above said working from home had “a positive impact” on productivity. No surprise considering all the taxpayer cash splashed on home-working tools to make it make it comfortable enough. And the consistent complaining about being forced to grace the desk a mere three days a week…
Despite the ‘productivity’ working from home two days a week brings, a measly 59% said the civil service is performing well, while 53% say mandarins do not “face appropriate repercussions for failing to perform.” Time to ‘trim the fat’…
President Trump is in Scotland right now. Before rinsing Keir Starmer to his face at a press conference earlier, POTUS slammed the ugly wind farm visible from his golf course in Aberdeenshire…
Guido has been looking into the wind farm, known as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre. It only has 11 turbines and was intended as a ‘demonstration’ facility – e.g. a proof-of-concept wind farm designed to be shown off to developers. 2023 is the most recent year for which its financial accounts are published. According to these, the wind farm generated 270,562 MWh, and received £45.2 million in subsidies, and £24.3 million in income from electricity sales. In other words, 65% of its income is from government subsidies, that is, from ordinary payers in their energy bills…
We also know that it received an average price of £256.8/MWh, which compares to average wholesale electricity prices in 2023 of £94.17/MWh. So the hated wind farm slammed by the President is receiving an insane 2.73 times the market price for its output. Trump called the wind farm a “con job.” By Guido’s maths, he’s absolutely right…
UPDATE: Commenting, Harry Wilkinson from GWPF said:
“We’ve been locked into appallingly expensive deals with offshore wind. These are correctly described a ‘con job’, but Miliband is threatening to make things worse with his 2030 clean power plan. Decades ago we were promised that renewable subsidies would not be needed for long and would eventually get prices down. The plan hasn’t worked and we’re still paying through the nose.”
Angela Rayner was on The Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast this morning to chat about what she’s been up to. Rayner’s team have just finished lugging their boxes into her new, windowless office. The official launch of the ODPM still to come…
Asked if she could imagine herself as “Prime Minister, Angela Rayner,” she pointedly dodged the chance to rule it out – instead rattling off her CV:
“That question that comes up all the time. I am absolutely honored to do the job. As you say, my job is really, really big. And you know what, one of the things that I’ve wanted to prove, and hopefully I’ve done that, you might not agree with my policy agenda, but you can’t fault my delivery and you can’t fault the performance of me being able to work a department, work with my colleagues and to drive change.”
A change of tune from earlier this month, when she told Loose Women: “I always say not a chance” and when she told Sky News in May she had “no desire” to be PM. Number 10 won’t be thrilled to hear fresh fuel poured on the rumours that the Red Queen has her eye on the crown…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”
