CardiffBikeCommuter

The Times has pulled together the evidence of Russian activity around the 2016 referendum: Russia-linked social-media networks, bot activity, state media propaganda and the same wider interference techniques seen in other democracies. But the most important point is still the one Parliament’s Russia Report raised in 2020: Britain never properly investigated it. Russia expert Keir Giles puts it starkly: the UK “carefully looked away from what was happening.” That is why asking whether anyone can prove Russia changed the result misses the point. Before you can assess impact, you have to establish what happened. And ten years later, Britain is still trying to answer that question. Full article in 🧵 👇

🚨 Sky News @danwnews came to the farm to look at what the diesel crisis means in the real world. Farming is completely dependent on fuel 👉and when diesel prices surge, farms and hauliers feel it first and those costs then work their way through the food system. ‼️ But there is a deeper problem. Britain spent decades operating inside European supply chains and resilience arrangements. Brexit removed us from that architecture, but we never built enough domestic resilience to compensate. Instead, refining capacity fell, dependence on imported fuel increased and we carried on assuming global markets would always deliver. Now that assumption is being tested. The UK has only four working refineries, diesel imports are a major part of our fuel supply, and the US, now a key supplier, has openly considered restricting diesel exports. Meanwhile Europe still holds substantial emergency diesel stocks, particularly in France and Germany. That is the paradox of Brexit sovereignty: greater freedom on paper, but greater dependency in practice. And it is why I keep saying food security is national security.

Truly vile. At a public event, Mike Graham mocked Andy Burnham’s father for having Alzheimer’s, less than three weeks after Roy Burnham died and apparently on the day of his funeral. Just the lowest of the low.