Sad news...

The UK’s tax authority is assigning dedicated “customer compliance managers” to more than 200 billionaires as part of a crackdown meant to raise £500m for the public purse.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said it had for the first time compiled a list of billionaires who are required to pay tax in the UK, regardless of whether they formally live in the country, to tackle a “wealthy tax gap” caused by those who do not pay what they ought.

Reminder that apart from being a moronic brown-noser for the rich who failed to last two months as Prime Minister, Liz Truss is also a huge transphobe who did a bunch of damage during her time as Minister for Women and Equalities and continues to strive to take away trans rights.

https://www.redpepper.org.uk/society/lgbtqplus/this-government-is-failing-trans-people-labour-must-take-a-stronger-stand/

https://outfrontmagazine.com/uk-equalities-minister-liz-truss-transphobic/

https://news.sky.com/story/liz-truss-furious-after-mps-accused-of-blocking-transgender-reform-bill-13095370

Truncated the title as it doesn't give me much hope yet. Until we actually tax the rich, I won't be happy.

Early indicators are that this Labour administration won't do it either.

The article effectively says:

• The ultra rich run the media, and pretend that taxing the rich is a bad thing.
• Basically everyone wants to tax the rich apart from the rich.
• MPs and governments are cowards, for the most part.

That's my read on it anyway.

TLDR; A Zionist organization is mad that other people don't agree with it's views, so it calls them racist.

A resolution passed by 118 votes to one on Sunday declared that the Greens "by adopting an antisemitic platform become a racist party".

Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg said: “By adopting an antisemitic platform, the Green Party of England and Wales has become a racist party. We will treat it accordingly.

From the Wikipedia page for the Board of Deputies:

Notably, while Lord Rothschild was President of the Board of Deputies, the Balfour Declaration was addressed to him and eventually led to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 2018, over five hundred British Jews signed a letter from Yachad saying that the Board had "deeply misrepresented" their views after the board criticised Hamas for "repeated violent attempts at mass invasion" but did not call for Israeli restraint or acknowledge that the IDF may have acted disproportionately in massacring Palestinians at the Great March of Return. Liberal Judaism said that "the Board's credibility as the voice of British Jewry depends wholly on its willingness to listen to, hear from and reflect the values of all sections of the community".

In 2019, following Jeremy Corbyn's decision to resign as leader of the Labour Party [...] the Board asked candidates for the leadership to sign up to ten pledges in order to "end the antisemitism crisis". The pledges included a resolution of outstanding disciplinary cases, lifetime membership bans for some individuals, an independent disciplinary process, full and unconditional adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism

So they're a Zionist organization. No surprise that they are against this motion. They should be ignored.

A good article. The TLDR;

• Cutting red tape is a neoliberal / right-wing / capitalist talking point.
• It may or may not save money for businesses, but it will often remove important protections for the public.
• Often, the red tape exists because we have privatised something that we should not have, and if it's important enough to do right perhaps the state should do it.

I'll also add that red tape is often soaked with blood. It's there because when we didn't have it in place, there was a catastrophe and we finally added it to protect ourselves.

Blaming a moribund economy on too many rules is a hackneyed neoliberal trope – UK plc needs smarter regulation, not less regulation

In the run-up to the chancellor John Healey’s high-stakes Commons address, the government issued a press release last week promising his plans would include measures to “slash the red tape choking firms”.

Getting the interfering state out of the way of the wealth creators was a trope of Thatcher and Reaganite economics, and on this side of the pond it has been repeated ad nauseam by every government since.

Thatcher unleashed the City with her “big bang” deregulation drive, and her successor John Major was enthusiastic about “hacking back the jungle of red tape”.

Boris Johnson wanted to unfetter Britain’s businesses from “Brussels bureaucracy” and waffled on during the Brexit campaign about bendy bananas. Yet, after Brexit, business groups said their members would rather comply with longstanding EU standards in many areas than adopt an entirely new UK regime. And bananas are no more or less bendy than before.

There is nothing wrong with ensuring the interaction between business and the state is smooth. But even during the early years of neoliberalism, the free market good, regulation bad dichotomy was always unhelpful, for several reasons.

First, good regulation – a robust competition regime, for example – is essential to make markets work well. And even most enthusiasts for a laissez-faire approach would acknowledge the need for some basic quality standards – for food and medicines, for example.

“The neoliberal illusion, that privatisation liberated markets from state interference, obscures the reality that the state already significantly controls our privatised utilities, but through a maze of arm’s length regulatory agencies which operate outside democratic influence.”

For the water sector, privatised in 1989, these include Ofwat, which sets bills (with the Competition and Markets Authority acting as an appeals body in the event of a dispute); the Drinking Water Inspectorate; the Environment Agency; and the Consumer Council for Water.

Yet, as Yang points out, none are responsible for drawing up a coherent plan for the sector as a whole. “Everyone knows how this story ends: with our rivers polluted and our water infrastructure dangerously lacking.”

Hacking away at the regulatory thicket fails to deal with the structural features of the economy that make the rules necessary in the first place.

“Regulators continue to be labelled as ‘blockers’ despite the vital work they do keeping us safe and protecting our natural environment,”

Open 9 days a week 9a-11pm 24h

I genuinely don't know if the quality will get worse or improve.

It may get less transphobic and vile, unless they specifically train their AI to be so.

Europe’s largest residential landlord is set to lose €8.4bn (£7bn) as a result of plans by leftwing political party Die Linke to bring more than 140,000 Berlin flats into public ownership.

The real estate company Vonovia, which owns roughly 130,000 apartments in the city and 528,000 across Europe, would be the most affected by the plans, with 120,000 of its apartments set to be put into public ownership.

Die Linke, which won Berlin’s state elections in September, has agreed to talks with the city’s Greens and Social Democrats as part of plans to transfer ownership of flats from companies that own more than 10,000 apartments, with the legislation scheduled to be brought forward in 2028.

Excuse me, but why do we allow companies to own flats at all? Let alone a staggering 10 000 of them? What a joke.

Tbh I doubt this legislation will go through. These firms havevtoo much money to not squash it in some way. Still, it's good they are trying.

But Ofcom found that “at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force in July 2025”.

Examples of harms included children being shown the murder of Charlie Kirk, graphic pornography and weapon-related content making them feel unsafe in their schools and neighbourhoods. Personalised recommendation feeds powered by “for you” algorithms were repeatedly found by Ofcom to be at the root of the continuing tide of harmful material.

“Tech companies have had months to act, yet too many platforms are still built to keep children hooked with their algorithms continuing to push harmful content to their young users,” she said. “We urgently need stronger action from tech companies to rein in features that drive harm to children and stop putting business interests over their safety obligations.”

If you don't start fining them, they won't improve. £1000 / day per person.

The regulator is already facing a wave of legal actions from tech companies challenging its powers including the Instagram operator Meta, as well as TikTok and X, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX group. It has warned it risks being “absolutely clobbered legally by deep-pocketed individuals and firms”.

If you're going to enact a law that makes everybody's lives worse and destroys privacy, you might as well do a decent job at what the law is intended for.

“They wanted to arrest young people,” Sandra says. “Two of the policemen said it was because they were short of three people in their quota.”

Homicide rates in El Savador had been falling, but in March 2022 an alleged truce between the government and gangs appeared to collapse when gangs reportedly killed 87 people in three days. Bukele responded by declaring a nationwide state of emergency.

What followed was an unprecedented campaign of mass incarceration. An estimated 90,000 people were arrested. About 120,000 people remain incarcerated – roughly 2% of the population, one of the highest rates in the world.

The crackdown has swept up tens of thousands of people with no proven links to criminal gangs, human rights groups say. The so-called state of exception allows the government to detain suspects for prolonged periods while curtailing constitutional rights.

A judge ordered Hernández’s release at a hearing more than three years ago, she says, but instead of being freed, he was transferred to Cecot, El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, the centrepiece of Bukele’s war on gangs. Sandra has not seen her son since.

Until they handed him over to me in a bag.” When she saw her son’s body, she says he had been “practically tortured”.

Behind the prison walls, former detainees describe a system of malnutrition, physical abuse, degrading conditions and torture.

“The guards tortured us psychologically and beat us constantly. They treat you like a rat, like garbage,” he says.

Detainees were denied medicine, deprived of sunlight, given just one glass of water a day and punished for worshipping

Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that officers faced pressure to meet arrest quotas, with those who fell short risking disciplinary action or losing their jobs

Almost four years into the crackdown, authorities have increasingly resorted to mass trials, trying hundreds of defendants at once by video link.

Defendants are unable to discuss their cases with their lawyers, says Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at HRW, while lawyers are prevented from calling witnesses and witnesses are threatened if they agreed to testify for the defence. “Defence lawyers also operate in a climate of fear, they too are sometimes threatened with being prosecuted or being surveilled,” she says.

“I presented all the evidence to prove my son’s innocence, but they disregarded the case entirely. He was treated like a criminal, despite having a clean record and all his documents in order.”

The state of exception, initially presented as a temporary 30-day measure, has become a permanent fixture of Bukele’s government.

The strongman has won the admiration of the Trump administration and conservative leaders around the world.