Some people REALLY hate Democracy, and REALLY hate freedom of speech 😳

The Most Extreme Objects in the Universe (With Real Physics)

In 2025 Britain lost two of its oil refineries in a matter of months. Grangemouth, Scotland's only refinery, stopped refining, with 450 jobs gone. In Lincolnshire the Lindsey refinery, which made around a tenth of the fuel produced in this country, went bust and stopped production in August, taking about 625 jobs with it. A buyer was found for the site. It decided refining there was not viable. So we import. In the 12 months to August this year Britain bought £13.1 billion of refined oil from abroad. And on Wednesday, so the story goes, John Healey means to tax it. The plan is a "carbon charge" on imported petrol, diesel and other refined products, an extension of the carbon border tax that begins in January. The Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is said to be keen. The reasoning offered is that British refineries carry millions of pounds in net-zero costs that their foreign competitors do not, so imported fuel undercuts them, and the fair thing is to charge the imports the same. In other words, the government accepts that the costs it imposes on British refineries make them - and, by extension, us - uncompetitive. It accepts that they are losing to foreign fuel because of those costs. And its answer is to leave every one of those costs exactly where it is, and tie the same weight to every tanker coming into the Humber. No British refinery becomes one penny more competitive by this. As part of Labour's longest-standing design, first put into immortal practice by that laconic colossus Clement Attlee, dooming one British arm of state capacity after another to scrofula and irrelevance, that is precisely the point. These people don't want Grangemouth to reopen, nor for Lindsey to restart. They're certainly not bothered about the money in your pocket, either, given the only thing this new step will channge is the price at the pump, for a country that already pays tax on more than half of every litre, and for a motorist who was promised a fuel duty freeze until the end of December and has no idea what comes after it. The TaxPayers' Alliance called it "a shameless tax raid disguised as environmental policy", which is about as generous as it deserves. This is the Metropolitan class's idea of industrial policy. When a British industry is crippled by the costs the state loads onto it, the state's remedy is to load the same costs onto everyone else, and call the result a level playing field. It is levelling, certainly. Everybody ends up lower. Call it The Labour Way. If you understood that energy is the economy, not merely part of it or the engine under it, you might design a programme like ours that takes the weight off instead. Progress would abolish the Carbon Price Support on day one and strips every environmental and social levy off energy bills within 21 days, with a statutory guarantee bringing industrial electricity from 18 to 20 pence a kilowatt-hour down below 8, so that a refinery, a steelworks or a chemicals plant can compete on price. Then we resume licensing in the North Sea, so that the oil under our own sea is ours to use. And we cut fuel duty permanently to 45 pence a litre, cancel the planned rises, and require a vote in both Houses of Parliament before any Chancellor can raise it again. Healey's refinery workers have already been paid off. His tax will be passed onto the working man, like it always is; the loser in this scheme is the van driver in Grimsby, filling up with imported diesel because the refinery up the road is shut.

>be Lula >get convicted of corruption >get sentenced to 12 years >get released by the STF on procedural errors >never actually acquitted lmao >beat Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 >Jair gets thrown into jail over an alleged coup attempt >Congress votes to cut his sentence >Lula vetoes it >four years later, face his son >during a debate, threaten to also lock him up if he loses the election >election day >former private lawyer, now STF judge, extends voting by 2 hours nationwide >request came from Lula's own coalition >win by 4 million votes in a runoff with no paper trail >next day, Moraes orders the losing candidate to surrender his passports >victory speech: "we're going to regulate social media" >"democracy" lmao >RIP Brazil

The UK averages 159 rainy days a year and ranks fourth in Europe for rainfall volume. The last major reservoir was finished in 1992. Since 2017, the privatised water companies have sold off at least 35 reservoirs and bulk storage sites. The government have now been warned that “Day Zero” – empty reservoirs – could arrive before Christmas. We are a damp island that somehow managed to privatise the rain, sell off the storage and then act surprised when the taps run dry. The corporations took the infrastructures, paid the dividends and left us with a hosepipe ban and a warning about water rationing at Christmas. And meanwhile, successive governments let this happen while enabling enormous data centres to guzzle up huge amounts of water and energy Yet another example of the UK being turned into a corporation asset grab at the public’s expense. This is not just government negligence. It was a choice.

Given the personal allowance will have been frozen for a decade at £12,570 - it's interesting to see what it would be when it's treated with the largesse of the minimum wage.

The key question of Brexit in 2 sentences 'The fundamental question was then, and remains now, whether Britain is an independent democratic country which can make its own laws and sack those who govern us. When we were members, that was not possible; now it is.' I am utterly baffled by those who want us to pay money to the EU for to take those rights away from us Lose lose! @MossyMosbacher telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/ne…

The Prime Minister seems very conflicted on Brexit. Ahead of the budget tomorrow, he's announced the removal of import tariffs on over 100 products like baked beans, chocolates and fertilizer. This is a freedom you don't have as an EU member at all. gov.uk/government/news/every…

Climate policies have consequences EU pays 1.9x US prices and 3x China and India UK has the costliest electricity in the world iea.org/data-and-statistics/…

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Keep in mind that one can cause "harassment, alarm, or distress" in England and Wales by uttering a true statement of fact to someone who doesn't want to hear it, or by offering an honestly-held opinion or belief, spoken or written, which also offends.

What a difference a year makes! prestonbyrne.com/2026/10/20/…

FYI, talking about Brexit yesterday, Angela Rayner claimed that... “The evidence is really clear in terms of 20% down in exports to the EU, 16,000 businesses no longer exporting to the EU, it has been the red tape on the EU deal we got, has been damaging to the economy”. But if this is indeed the evidence, it really is not clear! Let's unpick it... 🧵

Some very good points being made by the readers of the Scottish Daily Mail, on the idea of Abu Dhabi Andy reversing Brexit.

Thank you Britain 🇬🇧 for heroically sacrificing your economy to save the planet 💪 _

Oil and gas companies are profitable because they have eager customers for their products. This isn't rocket science to understand. Renewables companies are NOT profitable and have to bribed with real cash even to stay in business Their only eager customer is government. Eager to hose them down with OUR money

The cheap green lie You are told that solar and wind are cheap But you need near-100% backup when no sun or wind, paying for two systems Data for 2025 shows that cramming in more solar and wind makes electricity overall more and more costly Sources: Electricity prices, households and industry, 2025 iea.org/data-and-statistics/… Solar and wind generation, electricity use and consumption weights iea.org/data-and-statistics/… Solar and wind for countries without IEA 2025 data ember-energy.org/data Electricity trade partners, plus industry prices for Norway, Albania, Iceland and Kosovo ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/en… US industry price eia.gov/electricity/annual Australia, IEA 2021 prices updated with official price indices abs.gov.au/statistics/econom… South Africa industry price eskom.co.za/wp-content/uploa… Taiwan industry tariff taipower.com.tw Egypt industry tariff egyptera.org/en/TarrifAug202… Tunisia tariffs (archived copy, the STEG site is unreachable) web.archive.org/web/20250614… Azerbaijan industry tariff regulator.gov.az/en/istehlak… 2025 tariff changes applied to IEA 2024 prices Pakistan: nepra.org.pk Thailand: erc.or.th Ghana: purc.com.gh Paraguay: ande.gov.py Kazakhstan: stat.gov.kz/en/industries/ec… GlobalPetrolPrices 2025 averages for 18 countries, read from archived 2025 pages globalpetrolprices.com/elect… web.archive.org Sri Lanka 2025 tariff changes pucsl.gov.lk/end-user-tariff… Indonesia solar and wind estimated from official 2025 capacity esdm.go.id/id/media-center/a… Statista 2025 averages for China, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Singapore, Peru, Argentina and South Africa (data from GlobalPetrolPrices) statista.com/statistics/1369… (business prices worldwide) statista.com/statistics/1461… (household prices worldwide) statista.com/statistics/1173… (Latin America business) statista.com/statistics/1123… (Latin America households) statista.com/statistics/1373… (China business) statista.com/statistics/1372… (Mexico business) statista.com/statistics/1372… (Mexico households) statista.com/statistics/1617… (South Africa households)

Your based and redpilled youth, sir

You want an honest discussion Andy? Try this 17.4 million people voted to stop this freedom of movement shambles and now a PM with fewer than 25,000 votes from a constituency which voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU … arrogantly thinks he has a mandate to take the rest of us back in. He doesn’t 💣

This is a supertrawler. One of 26 that operate in British waters. Together with the EU they scrape over 500,000 TONNES of fish from our sea a year. Leaving our fishermen on their knees and supermarkets importing the fish we eat from … China. Brexit allowed us to fix this devastating mess but we didn’t. Both Labour and Tories say they have no definition of a supertrawler, so they can ban them. How’s that sustainability goal working out? x.com/Artemisfornow/status/1…

Er … NO this isn’t an “EU green tax”. It is a BRITISH green tax. We left the EU. We are not legally required by Brussels to impose CBAM on our imports. Britain has CHOSEN to screw its own economy by this Net Zero tax from January 2027 including on fertiliser by up to 40%