Senior Researcher @csjthinktank. Writer and columnist. Previously @JSMilbank
London
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Apologies for long Twitter absence. My previous account - JSMilbank - has been hacked and I'm locked out for the foreseeable future. If you've received a message from that account its a scam. Would deeply appreciate if previous followers would follow me here at @SebMilbank
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There's a scandal here alright. It's how a high level inquiry has been so badly stupid as to allow a kitchen worker on a military base repeating off-colour jokes as "evidence". She may be forgiven for not realising her leg was being pulled, but nobody else should
EXCLUSIVE: Special forces soldiers believe they are “untouchable” and not all of them are the heroes they think they are, according to a former female civil servant who worked alongside them.
Monica Grenfell, who was employed at the Special Air Service (SAS) headquarters in Credenhill, near Hereford, for three years, said some of the elite troops were “feral” and it was “the nasty characters who really ruled the roost”.
She has given evidence under oath to the Afghan Inquiry and has now been interviewed by @thetimes
thetimes.com/article/5706a8a…
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We should just buy Mauritius, forget a hundred million here, a hundred million there, just offer them 30 billion to be annexed, problem solved
Need to get rid of a base? Give Mauritius money. Need to keep a base? Give Mauritius money. Need to keep the African Union happy? Give Mauritius money. Need to keep the US happy? Give Mauritius money. There is nothing that cannot be achieved by giving Mauritius money
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Sebastian Milbank retweeted
"Mr Powell, we've lost the News Agents podcast"
"There'll be no act of treason then, I'll tell the Chinese"
“If you do this Chagos deal you piss off Donald Trump, and, even more importantly, it’s got such little support in Britain.”
“Andy Burnham has come in and thought; ‘There’s one simple solution here… Bin it’.”
Is the Burnham right to rethink plans for the Chagos Islands?
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It's happening
🇬🇧 £85 MILLION UK MANUFACTURING INVESTMENT!
British manufacturer Numatic International, best known for its Henry and Hetty vacuum cleaners, is investing more than £85 million in Somerset to expand production and develop new products.
The investment in the Chard manufacturing hub includes its ongoing 24,500m² expansion, which incorporates a newly opened research and development centre of excellence, a state-of-the-art 8,000-pallet global distribution centre due to be completed in spring 2027, and significant investment in self-generated renewable energy.
Designed, engineered and made in Britain, Henry is the UK’s best-selling domestic vacuum by volume, with over one million units produced every year, and one in four households owning the friendly face of cleaning. Since its launch in 1981, more than 20 million Henrys have been produced.
Founded in 1969 by Chris Duncan, Numatic International employs over 1,200 people and exports its products to more than 100 countries across the world. #UKmfg
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If the BBC is to be effectively tax-funded, it will have to fundamentally change and prove its value in much more profound ways. I'm sceptical to say the least - I've no desire to be made to fork out for braindead nonsense like "Celebrity Traitors"
🚨 NEW: The Government is reportedly considering replacing the BBC licence fee with a £11 monthly “internet charge”
It would be added to the bill of anyone who pays for internet broadband
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The BBC counts on its "popularity" because it acts as a state backed monopoly that is no different from commercial rivals in any real sense. But if its just a state broadcaster it really can't be pushing out reality tv shows or inane brainrot, it will have to demonstrate value
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This quote is very funny for anyone who has actually read Martin's rambling, incoherent books which at no stage whatsoever engage seriously with any questions of political economy and are in fact a crude pastiche and mishmash of eras, cultures and attitudes.
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I'm astonished that anyone could look at the last decade of British politics and opine with certainty about what is coming next. I have no idea, nobody does, we're in uncharted waters.
Going to say it again. After the next election either Andy Burnham or Kemi Badenoch will be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. People can scream and shout and complain about establishment stitch-ups all they like. That's the political reality.
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It's a great novel I deeply enjoyed, but greatest of the 20th century? I don't think there's any plausible case for it other than sentimentality, it's not even incontrovertibly the greatest English Catholic novel of the 1940s - which also saw Greene's The Power and the Glory
“What is left at the end are vanished illusions, characters shattered by their collision with one another, the house in ruins, and England in ruins also. But this is to remain in the world of three dimensions. For all its bitterness, Brideshead still proclaims the good news.”
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Being a materialist seems stressful
i don't think nearly anyone, myself included, has truly internalized there'll soon be a machine better than us in every single intellectual & physical capacity
deep down we all share a feeling that our 'entrepreneurship' or 'taste' or... is special & safe. it isn't. it's over
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This is more superstitious than anything you could torture out of a medieval peasant. These people are hysterics and charlatans
and whether it’s 5 or 50 years, we are approaching alien minds that will understand and express our human condition in ways that we cannot
other than the existence of god, everything we know tells us that Everything Is Algorithms, even “beauty”
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About that “Soviet tank strength”
Goebbels says the same in his diaries. The Third Reich leadership were completely blown away (understatement!) by the Soviet Union’s industrial capacity (which had been moved into the country’s interior).
We aren’t really allowed to acknowledge that in West, not least because it showed extraordinary success of state-led coordination (in some contexts anyway!)
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You know that modern Greece is no longer the rightful heir to Homeric civilisation because they can’t pull off a Trojan horse strategy without bottling it
lol, all the Greeks had to do was not be completely belligerent and maximalist, just for the brief period until the marbles were physically in Greece. But no, they couldn’t manage that, and now talks have collapsed.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Hilarious people.
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