David White

hahahahahaha!!!

The facade is cracking

I hope Hull History Centre won't mind me sharing this lovely letter from Roy Hattersley's papers, on the sad news of his passing aged 93. RIP.

We have an incompetent, demented, buffoon for an American president. He is an endless embarrassment.

We can either drift back towards the flawed but functioning rules-based order a short ferry ride away, or else vanish down a grotesque far-right plughole in isolation. I've always found a little swallowed pride preferable to terror and bestiality, but each to their own.

For the unpatriotic, those are: Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, Rupert and Sooty. WE SHALL REMEMBER THEM.

President Obama: “We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out. There’s no dispute that it worked and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”

This is encouraging. UK third in the G7 for cumulative growth

"You boy - are the media still pretending it's OK that someone who wants to be Prime Minister covered up a £5 million gift?"

Nigel Farage faces questions over failure to declare use of donor’s helicopter. What will he blame this time? He didn't declare £5m gift from Thailand-based billionaire. His participation in in the House of Commons is low. May be he has memory lapses.

Design legend Margaret Calvert is 90 today. Look at that cake! If you've ever admired a road, rail or metro sign in Britain it's likely she had something to do with it. One of Britain's design heroes - happy birthday to her. Photo by: @oshgallerylondon (IG) Cake by: mybaker.co

Keir Starmer is well within his rights to stand firm and resist calls for him to go.

Keir Starmer says Nigel Farage is a “grifter and a chancer” who “took us for a ride” on Brexit and then walked away 👏

Yeats updated

Cathy Newman "Thailand-based Chris Harborne has given you and your party £17 million.. Interfering in democracy" Nigel Farage runs away

While Boris Johnson was mayor of London there were 72,000 knife attacks, 16,000 gun crime offences, and at least 62,000 racially motivated violent crimes. But apparently, those didn't count.

The dumbest headline I’ve seen this year

🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 (I'm NOT deleting my post below 👇)

"Mentally unstable President given huge powers by cowardly party threatens to blow up the world" is the headline you're looking for.

A good reason why Trump shouldn’t put boots on the ground.

(sucks on pipe) Nay, yer not wrong lad...

I still think about this a lot.

Badenoch said if she was prime minister HMS Dragon would have left a week ago. Presumably with its doors hanging off and with no weapons onboard.

I wrote this piece just five days ago - predicting Trump would walk away and leave everyone else to clear up his mess ….and here we are - concluding extract below:

Why is it right for a Middle East country with a nuclear weapon of its own to attack another Middle East country because it might build one?

I may have my frustrations and disappointments about Starmer as a domestic politician, but internationally, I think he’s serious, responsible and trying to do his best for U.K. in unbelievably complex int’l environment, despite treasonous ghouls like Farage doing their best to undermine him.

"One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjurer fine apparatus, nor A rifle to a melancholic bore." WH Auden Not to mention the biggest arsenal in the world to a narcissistic attention-seeker.

Now you know why we are where we are today. Last year, he said we destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities. That was another lie.

Quite something that the fact 70% of voters seem to have rejected insular nationalism, out and out racism and the removal of workers rights doesn’t even seem to have occurred to Reform. Long way to go, but still think I’m right in thinking the chances of Farage in No 10 remain non-existent.

Remember when Congress authorized the use of force against Iran? Me neither. Any U.S. attack on Iran would violate U.S. and international law.

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

The tragic awfulness of this government is that it has extended a factional war against the left of the Labour Party into a war against almost all the good things we might have expected of it. It cannot respond to the crisis it faces, because its hatred of the Labour left is definitional.

Council Tax has become increasingly regressive. It now takes nearly 5% of income from the poorest families but barely 1% from the richest. For many, it's become a grinding monthly obligation to rival the Poll Tax.

Likely-historic photo by NBC News of all the Epstein victims asked to raise their hands if they've not yet been asked to meet with the DOJ as Bondi testifies in foreground

How an infamous front page of the soaraway Sun of yesterday might be re-fashioned today

Two-thirds of UK voters wrongly think immigration is rising, poll finds. Net migration to the UK fell by more than two-thirds to a post-pandemic low in the year ending June 2025, but 67% of the people polled thought it had increased www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

City and guilds was a wonderful institution, now it will be run into the ground by vampire capitalism, just when we need tec training most

🚨Breaking: The charity regulator has launched a statutory inquiry into the recent sale of City & Guilds to a private company, including reports of executive bonuses and trustees’ “decision making” feweek.co.uk/watchdog-ope...

Free, Free South America.

The winter solstice celebrated by John Donne

Wonderfully funny man who brought joy to millions of people. How many human beings can claim that? RIP #stanleybaxter

Today's the feast of St Lucy, 'the year's midnight' according to John Donne's 'A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day', which was written before the Gregorian Calendar moved the feast away from the Winter Solstice. it begins:

‘Reforming’ or leaving the ECHR…A raising of false expectations, based on populist dishonesty. A demonisation of immigrants to mask the failures of government. Lies about sovereignty. A cynical refusal by politicians and media to tell us the truth. So very Brexit. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

I for one will definitely be ignoring pesky health professionals & turning instead to newspaper columnists who backed Brexit, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump & Liz Truss for all my expert health advice during this very serious flu outbreak.