mittfh

Reform have an odd set of priorities - their Walsall branch attempted to introduce a dress code that would require permission to wear any religious clothing, political attire or even remembrance poppies (!) N.B. Ad blockers needed to make link site usable. www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-countr...

Whenever there's a prominent celebrity death, you can probably bet there'll be a company seeking to make the most unhinged memorial souvenir... 🙄 Who the heck in their right minds would want to buy a Dolly Parton rubber duck?!

It's been a bright, sunny day - perfect to (safely!) observe a 91% partial eclipse. What could possibly go wrong?!

Ho hum - US gov finally admits what everyone knew all along... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I wonder how many UK schoolchildren will be very tired on Monday or even skive off school, given the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ⚽ next match is apparently scheduled for 1am BST on that date (versus the co-hosts 🇲🇽)...

The wonders of office kitchens... 😁

9/ Data centres currently consume 2.5% of UK electricity. Government projects that figure will rise four-fold by 2030. The Climate Change Committee was not asked to model this. The Seventh Carbon Budget does not name data centres. The question has been avoided with some care.

8/mWales has 2 freeports, 8 SEZs, and now 2 AI Growth Zones. The North Wales zone inherits the Anglesey Freeport architecture. Shanker Singham - adviser to the Anglesey Freeport, to Próspera in Honduras, to Liz Truss's Growth Commission, was at the signing. Not in any official announcement.

7/ The freeport promised 20,000 jobs. The data centre expected to replace it will support around 200 operational roles. This is not a coincidence. It is the consistent arithmetic of the zone model, documented across every iteration.

6/ Teeside. Sunak's flagship Brexit freeport. £560m of public money spent. Land valued at £100m sold to private developers for £110.35. Inquiry declined NAO referral. Houchen awarded a peerage mid-investigation. The freeport is now an AI Growth Zone. Same governance structure/accountability vacuum.

5/ This is the AI Growth Zone model, which is the freeport model, which is the SEZ model. The zone grammar is consistent: designate territory as strategically significant, remove democratic oversight, underwrite private investment with public infrastructure, repeat.

4/ Once something is CNI, arguing against it from below becomes structurally impossible. That's the point. Angela Rayner set the precedent in Dec 2024: overturning a local council's refusal of a 140MW development. The message to every planning authority in the country: refuse, and be overruled.

3/ Planning decisions now go to the Secretary of State, not local authorities. Communities can object. The objections don't have to be heard. This followed the September 2024 designation of data centres as Critical National Infrastructure, the same status as water and emergency services.

2/ The UK's data centre boom is the largest peacetime seizure of community land and energy resources in modern British history. In January 2026, data centres were quietly brought into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime.

1/ Most people living in its path don't know it's happening. Please read, share and subscribe to my Substack. Zone Fever is spreading across England, Scotland, and Wales, initiated by the Tories, signed off, and now expanded under Keir Starmer's changed Labour Party.

⚠️WARNING - Twins of Evil: Free Zones and Data Centres. The devastating components of 'second empire building in post-Brexit UK. The UK's data centre boom is the largest peacetime seizure of community land and energy resources in modern British history. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/european...

Make Algae Great Again? 😈

Well played, whoever runs the "Denmark" account on FB (albeit given the content, almost certainly not official):

XLIX 😉

Birmingham: taking No Overall Control to the extreme... With 101 seats in total, no two parties combined have enough seats to get over the 51 vote threshold to pass motions, so ensuring not just cross-party but cross-ideology support is needed. Oh, and we still have Commissioners until Oct 2028.

NHS vampires fed! 😁

Another Reform defector returns to the Conservatives, claiming "the vast majority of candidates are indeed racist, misogynistic, and bigoted", while the leadership have "failed to tackle this issue in any meaningful way." 🤦 Politics is indeed beyond parody... 🤷 www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

Amid the chaos of the news stories of dubious veracity today, a former legal professional has released his annual double-entendre-laden video.. youtu.be/vY8azAWTiYM

International diplomacy at its finest.

Donald's got another made-up award to add to his collection: the "America First" award, courtesy of the Republican National Congress... www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Spotted on 🐘 - this is a genuine position being advertised... ...what could possibly go right?! www.stepstone.de/stellenangeb...

Reform's candidate vetting is as strict as ever... ...sorry, I meant to say as hopeless as ever... www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Hmm. SSMS 22 asks to update itself (22.3 > 22.4)... Involving 373 Visual Studio packages (!) GitHub integration as standard, mercifully GitHub Copilot Integration is an optional extra rather than default (unlike every other frigging part of W11 with built-in Automatic Idiocy integration)

Brum News: Unite the Union have been fined £265,000 by the High Court for breaching the waste depot blockade injunction (+£170,000 towards the council's legal costs, with a possible further £90,000 under consideration). www.birmingham.gov.uk/news/article...

Nigel's latest gambit (when he's not flying half way across the world to avoid being anywhere near Clacton...): investing in a Bitcoin reserve company run by Kwasi Kwarteng (of Liz Truss mini-budget fame)... www.standard.co.uk/business/bus...

Spotted on FB: The Iranian religious leadership could seriously confuse the Americans by electing Donald Trump as honorary supreme leader (with a deputy providing day to day great leadership).

NEWS! America utterly bemused by nation where politicians who break the law are arrested newsthump.com/2026/02/23/a...

The Marsh Family's take on Randy Andy's birthday surprise: youtube.com/shorts/DHLi8...

I see that Donnie's taken his court loss well... 🙄 He really doesn't like being told "No"...

Oh the Grand Old Duke Of York He Had Ten Thousand ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ He ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ them up to the ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ of the ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ Then he ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ them ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ again! And when they were ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ they were ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ And when they were ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ they were ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ And when they were only ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ / ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ / ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ They were neither ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ or ⬛ ⬛ ⬛!

Ho hum - The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince has received a very unwelcome present on his 66th birthday. Given Charles previously stated the police have his full support and cooperation, does this count as taking sibling rivalry to the (legal!) extreme? www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...

Ho hum - it turns out a popular vibe coding platform can be easily hacked - who'd've thought it?! 🤦‍♂️😈 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Guess who's just been given an award for being “The Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal"? 🤦 (Hint: he's been having trouble fundraising $400bn for a pet project).

Can we have an no-prize Caption Competition for the photo in this article? 😀 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Meet the New Tories, same as the Old Tories (apart from perhaps a stronger desire to idolise Nigel and Donald)...

Pots and kettles, or trying to pull up the drawbridge behind her?

Spotted in my YouTube recommendations... youtu.be/KOpymCZ0PAU

The Reform pitch is increasingly “the last government was terrible, so we’ve hired everyone who was in it”.

So in the least surprising news of the day, Robbie has officially joined The Loony Bin. But his new boss hasn't always been so welcoming... www.politico.eu/article/7-ti...

My suspicion is that the Trans community and allies left Twitter and arrived here early but it’s still worth re-upping this for those who left it a little longer: go.bsky.app/N6Qai5F

Just rename it The Reject Party and be done with it.

Happy New Year!

Interesting analysis of the volume of redations in the Epstein release, spotted on a Reddit Out of the Loop thread: