crypttext.bsky.social

crypttext.bsky.social

@crypttext.bsky.social

Semi-retired civil engineer. Itinerant observer. Happy Curmudgeon. Reader of books. Lover of animals and grandchildren (in that order) Knob with a job… (wife’s words, not mine) 🇺🇦603,628sq.km🇺🇦 🇵🇸 📎 🚫DMs

2.5K followers1.3K following7.4K posts

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Britons with savings of £16,000 are disqualified or severely restricted from receiving Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support. No means-testing for the King. Royal family may be worth £21bn? It has 21 officially categorized royal residences, alongside 13 additional properties.

leftfootforward.orgRoyal financial privileges show that we are not in it togetherThis week, after perfunctory scrutiny, the UK parliament approved a core Sovereign Grant of £99.9m (from 2027/28) for the King, a 93% increase from the £51.8m for 2024/25 and 65% higher in real terms ...

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UK Chancellor rejects calls to raise Capital Gains Tax. UK wages taxed at 20%-45% + NIC. CGT 18%-24%, no NIC. Subject to ifs and buts: Denmark 27%-42% Norway 37.84% Netherlands 36% Ireland 33% Finland 30%-34% France 30%-34% Sweden 30% Spain 30% UK hits workers, showers gifts on the rich.

bbc.co.ukChancellor rejects calls to raise Capital Gains Tax in BudgetInfluential Labour figures had been pushing for equalising CGT and income tax, but critics have said this could drive wealthy people out of Britain.

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UK govt can get information about your bank accounts if you get universal credit, pension credit, employment support allowance. Court order not needed. You won't be told, can't appeal. Same won't apply to enablers of illicit financial flows. No financial privacy for old, poor, sick, unfortunate.

independent.co.ukDWP reveals exact information banks have to share about benefit claimantsMore details have been shared on how the new powers work

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Nigel Farage’s Scottish breakthrough has taken an awkward hit after Amanda Bland quit the Reform whip and announced she will now sit as an independent Her departure leaves Reform on 16 MSPs, one behind Labour on 17, meaning Labour is now Holyrood’s official opposition for the first time since 2016.

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The apparent eagerness in the media for this to spread elsewhere and especially here is strange and noticeable

Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social

Paris riots are just the start of war on the West The Times has lost its mind www.thetimes.com/article/63f2...

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The undercover reporter suggested people did not mind if Farage “makes a few bob [from politics]” Jukes replied: “Well it’s a bit priced in with our Nige, isn’t it, no one’s voting for him to be the pope” But a racist, corrupt, security-risk PM is fine, is it? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.comFarage claim that £5m was reward for Brexit was ‘not press office line’, close aide saysExclusive: Undercover footage of Dan Jukes raises fresh questions about Reform leader’s statement that £5m gift was for security

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Earlier in the year, @josimarfootball.bsky.social ran a detailed investigation into ADI Predictstreet, which appeared from nowhere only weeks before it signed a $150m deal with Fifa. Sixth months on, per the WSJ, it seems almost no real betting takes place on the site. www.wsj.com/finance/near...

wsj.comExclusive | Nearly All Volume on FIFA-Linked Prediction Market Is Circular TradingADI Predictstreet, backed by Abu Dhabi’s royal family, paid close to $150 million for advertising rights during the World Cup.

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People will mock this as small beer politics but predatory behaviour by parking companies has been a major source of frustration and financial cost for millions, and for many years.

Politics UK@politicsuk.com

🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham has announced changes to car parking fines - Drivers will have a 5-minute grace period to decide whether to park and 10 minutes to leave after a parking session ends - A £20 maximum charge on appeal for minor mistakes, such as entering the wrong number plate

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🚨🚨🚨 @cweatherspoon.bsky.social's deep dive into FIFA's development model is the most significant piece of research on FIFA in a very long time. FIFA redistributed $4.6billion in the last decade, this work proves a systematic lack of oversight in how it is spent. www.nytimes.com/athletic/767...

nytimes.comThe BookKeeper investigates FIFA’s ‘Forward’ fund: How it’s managed and who gets what (Gift Article)The Athletic found more than half of FIFA member nations appear to fail to meet its basic transparency requirements to receive funding

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Prime Minister Andy Burnham has asked officials to examine more radical options for bringing Thames Water under public control, including potentially converting unpaid regulatory fines into a government stake in the troubled company.

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Burnham urges officials to come up with more radical options for Thames Water. Here are some suggestions. Enforce laws. Prosecute execs for harming health, environment. Cancel licence to operate. Put TW into special administration. Nationalise at knockdown price. Apply to all water companies.

theguardian.comBurnham urges officials to come up with more radical options for Thames WaterExclusive: Utility seen as ‘litmus test’ of PM’s promise to bring ‘essentials of life’ under public control

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Deloitte in Cyprus helped in falsifying documents to hide Roman Abramovich's wealth and evade tax, Leaked documents show transactions backdated and tailored. Assets spirited away to BVI. Big four accounting firms advise UK govts, get public contracts, routinely implicated in scandals.

bbc.co.ukDeloitte helped in falsifying documents to evade tax on Abramovich’s wealthBackdated paperwork also made the Russian oligarch’s yachts and mansions disappear from accounts, BBC finds.

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Brexit is forever tainted with disinformation, foreign interference, murky vested interests, ugly prejudice, unforgivable costs and now deep unpopularity. If you really cared about our country and wanted to fix its problems, you’d admit this… Good that Burnham is finally doing so…

Farrukh@implausibleblog.bsky.social

Andy Burnham confirms what previous PM's - May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer - failed to, that Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum.

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Ridiculous person Ridiculous party Ridiculous people Watch

B heard media 💚🇵🇸@bheardmedia.bsky.social

🔵 Reform UK treat the British public with absolute contempt & clear their 2 highest ranking officials of any wrong doing despite the evidence in front of our eyes! Shameless! 🤡 Reform councillor Jaymey McIvor desperately tries to defend the indefensible! 👮‍♂️The Met police investigations is on going

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The first Russian diesel cargo heading for the US left St Petersburg on September 22, two weeks *before* Trump announced the deal with Putin, Windward reports. The Greek-flagged tanker Minerva Zen carrying 275,000 barrels of diesel/gasoil is due at the US East Coast around 11–12 October.

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Trump announces deal to import Russian diesel. Yet he imposed tariffs on China and India for importing fuel from Russia. 3 weeks ago signed law threatening 500% tariffs on India and China. Now facing midterm election defeat ... and Utter bankruptcy of Trump foreign, economic and other policies.

bbc.co.ukTrump announces deal for Russian diesel as Zelensky calls it a 'gift to Putin'Ukraine's president sharply criticised the move, calling it an "investment in war that must be ended, not prolonged".

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Aren’t they all repulsive… These corrupt, evil, traitorous men… Farage is particularly pathetic, in his little cap, selling us out to his monstrous sugar-daddy.

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The horrors of Gaza Genocide 300,000+ Israelis participated in the Genocide, they were all IDF 1 in every 30 Gazans were murdered in the genocide Imagine. Free Palestine. 🇵🇸

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I try to avoid this language, but what a fucking piece of 💩

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

“Zelenskyy could’ve stopped this war many times, and he chose not to … he better damn well stop” — Trump is no longer trying to conceal that he’s fully on Putin’s side

crypttext.bsky.social reposted

Schools forced to shut amid burst Thames Water pipe ‘leaking 750 litres a second. TW infrastructure has average age of 79 years. Industry average is 56 years. 40% of TW assets are over 100 years old. Profits siphoned-off, investment neglected, execs rewarded, customers fleeced

theguardian.comSchools forced to shut amid burst Thames Water pipe ‘leaking 750 litres a second’Leak causes outages and low pressure in parts of London and Surrey, affecting 6,000 properties and leaving some without water

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as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind

crypttext.bsky.social reposted

The number of times Nigel Farage has fallen over himself to get a racist xenophobic slant on some breaking news SHOULD be a wake up call to anyone who thinks he isn’t just a hate monger, trying to distract from his crypto millions with some new scapegoat

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"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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The new film "Britain's Gaza Secrets Exposed" documents how the U.K. government downplayed evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. "It's quite extraordinary, the level of duplicity that was going on, in order for us to keep selling Israel arms," says executive producer @bendepear.bsky.social.

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We still don't know what's happened but Farage making a serious twit of himself here.

Roland Smith@rolandmcs.bsky.social

Farage posted this at 12.38 today. It has been hopelessly overtaken by events and shown to be entirely wrong (British nationals involved and they've been released on bail - not very terrorist-like). And if you believe anything Trump says, you are a credulous moron.