Official figures out this morning report that last month, the UK government borrowed £24.5 billion. But the fineprint shows that almost £11 billion of that extra borrowing went on debt interest payments. That's more than £400 per household on debt service costs, in September alone. So far during this financial year, from April to September, the government's debt interest payments amount to £61 billion. Now, this number will barely feature in UK newspapers and across our airwaves. It may be mentioned in passing in out-of-the-way business sections, or on the odd business bulletin. But this huge debt interest bill won't register with the vast majority of our political and media class, or impact the national debate. Let me explain why that's so wrong and so dangerous ... £61 billion is a massive amount of money. It's equivalent to the UK's entire annual defence budget – the money we're paying, increasingly to foreign creditors, simply to service our national debt for six months, not to pay any of it back. £61 billion is equivalent to the money you'd raise over a year from adding a whopping 7 pence to the basic rate of income tax. For £61 billion, you could build around 40 large, state-of-the-art hospitals, or employ more than 100 thousand extra nurses for ten years. £61 billion would pay for free-at-the-point of use social care for everyone who needs it in the UK, for an entire year – three times over. Again, this is the debt interest bill on Britain's spiralling national debt – now more than 3 trillion pounds – over the last six months alone. The UK's public finances are close to meltdown – yet so many MPs and journalists continue blithely to view ever more public spending and borrowing as the answer to every problem. Those who highlight the dangers post by our hugely precarious national accounts are dismissed as cranks, ideologues or worse. But basic arithmetic has no ideology. And there is nothing "progressive" or "kind" or "right-on" about driving the UK ever closer to the fiscal cliff edge, provoking a crisis that will make the "austerity" years of the 2010s feel like a picnic, a crisis in which poorer households will suffer the most. Yes, Britain's national debt is lower than that of France. But because our borrowing has been rising so sharply, and because we're so prone to inflation, our debt service costs are much higher. The UK is spending a disgraceful 3.6pc of GDP on public debt interest, while France spends less than 2.5pc. Endless airtime and column inches are devoted to spurious conversations about a billion or two of additional "fiscal headroom" we may or may not have in three years' time. And, of course, any "extra headroom" is immediately pledged in new spending – which means yet more borrowing. These conversations are a waste of time – and, in fact, are deeply counterproductive. Three-year fiscal forecasts, even one- and two-year forecasts, routinely turn out to be askew by tens of billions of pounds. I'm not saying we don't need fiscal rules - we do, but we need more immediate rules, which actually bite, acting as a meaningful constraint on out-of-control borrowing and spending. Instead, political and media sages present the nation with spuriously precise discussions about fictional fiscal outcomes way into the future – using rules which are deliberately designed to kick arithmetic realities into the long grass .... An increasingly expensive, over-bearing, out of control state is not the answer to Britain problems. But unless we change course, it will certainly be our downfall. Please like/share if you think what I'm saying is important – and if fiscal realities should feature more prominently in our national debate. And for more sharp, plain-speaking economic analysis subscribe to: "When The Facts Change - economic and politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

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FINISHED? THAT WAS IT? Millions of our money torched on a slogan that belongs on a cheap gym poster. HOPE? I see no hope. I see a fraud in a borrowed suit, playing Prime Minister while the country burns. You are not a leader. You are a performance artist of fake grief crying on cue, wheeling out your father's corpse for applause, then checking the likes like an influencer hawking detox tea. Three thousand. Mostly your own staff and the grifters who feed off your cowardice. The nation is not moved. The nation is nauseated. How much did those tears cost us? How many millions for this theatre of the absurd? You want to be a dictator, don't you? The chin lifted, the voice dropping, that practiced solemnity. But you are no strongman. You are a middle-management tyrant a coward who bullies from the podium and crumbles at the first hard question. A sellout. A traitor to the people who once believed you were different. You are not different. You are worse. At least the last lot didn't pretend to care. Check your replies, Prime Minister. Read them. Every name, every angry voter, every working person watching you squander their future on slogans and spin. They see through you. The mask has slipped. The act is dead. England has had enough of being managed by a focus group in human skin. Step aside. Or be pushed.

FINISHED? THAT WAS IT? Millions of our money torched on a slogan that belongs on a cheap gym poster. HOPE? I see no hope. I see a fraud in a borrowed suit, playing Prime Minister while the country burns. You are not a leader. You are a performance artist of fake grief crying on cue, wheeling out your father's corpse for applause, then checking the likes like an influencer hawking detox tea. Three thousand. Mostly your own staff and the grifters who feed off your cowardice. The nation is not moved. The nation is nauseated. How much did those tears cost us? How many millions for this theatre of the absurd? You want to be a dictator, don't you? The chin lifted, the voice dropping, that practiced solemnity. But you are no strongman. You are a middle-management tyrant a coward who bullies from the podium and crumbles at the first hard question. A sellout. A traitor to the people who once believed you were different. You are not different. You are worse. At least the last lot didn't pretend to care. Check your replies, Prime Minister. Read them. Every name, every angry voter, every working person watching you squander their future on slogans and spin. They see through you. The mask has slipped. The act is dead. England has had enough of being managed by a focus group in human skin. Step aside. Or be pushed.

THIS MORNING. RAF FAIRFORD. 00:45. A pensioner called 999. Not MI5. Not GCHQ. A villager spotted three suspicious vans heading toward a US bomber base and dialled 999. Five men arrested under the Explosives Act, then upgraded to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act: preparation of a terrorist act. Three vans. 85 homes evacuated at 1.30am. Army bomb disposal robot inside a 400-metre cordon. Counter Terrorism Policing now leading. Major incident declared. The operation was not intelligence-led. A resident made a phone call. That is what stopped it. The IRGC already told you this was coming. In July 2026, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a formal statement naming RAF Fairford specifically as "a legitimate target." They cited the US B-1B bombers striking Iran from British soil, authorised first by Keir Starmer in March 2026 and continued by Prime Minister Andy Burnham. They published the threat. They named the base. Seven months later five men turned up at it after midnight. The intelligence services had no warning. A villager did. Now the part they really do not want you to know. Last November the National Crime Agency arrested a man in central London on a German warrant. His name is Mohammed Naim. Son of Basem Naim, Hamas politburo member, former Gaza health minister, US-sanctioned terrorist. Mohammed served as personal bodyguard to Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh from 2006. He was photographed doing it. AFP published the images. In 2010 Egyptian police arrested him for smuggling weapons and gold through tunnels into Gaza. That arrest was documented. On record. Available to any Home Office caseworker. In 2015 he walked into a British Home Office and claimed asylum. They gave it to him. Theresa May's Home Office granted him indefinite leave to remain. He later received full British citizenship. Changed his name. More than once. Settled in suburban England as an IT consultant. Raised a family. The state never looked twice. In summer 2025 he travelled to Berlin. Collected five handguns and ammunition from a Hamas contact. Drove to Vienna. Stored the weapons in a storage unit. Recorded a propaganda video announcing the plot. Target: Jewish community centres, Israeli diplomats, pro-Israel events across Germany and Austria. Timed for the second anniversary of October 7. Mossad and German intelligence foiled it. British intelligence did not find it. A court granted him anonymity for 100 years. He sits in a British cell while Germany waits for extradition. The state that gave him the passport is now hiding his identity. Indefinitely. Now look at what your Prime Minister found time for this morning. While five men were arrested at gunpoint outside an airbase the IRGC had publicly threatened, while 85 families were evacuated in the middle of the night, while bomb disposal robots crawled through vans a mile from sleeping US bomber crews, Andy Burnham was on the BBC. He was asked about Daniel Thomas. A father of four. A former soldier. A working man. And Burnham said it is "hard to conclude" he is "anything other than someone who has racist views." Instant. Confident. No hesitation. No "inappropriate to comment." Asked about five terrorism arrests at a US bomber base: "It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst investigations are ongoing." Asked about 85 families evacuated at midnight with zero intelligence warning: he is "being kept updated." Asked about a Hamas weapons operative handed a British passport who moved guns across Europe: silence. He found the words to attack a British father in seconds. He cannot find words for the people who were almost blown up this morning. This is the government that calls you racist for wanting to know who is crossing the border. This is the government that houses asylum seekers in better accommodation than 75% of the working families funding it. This is the government that gave a Hamas weapons operative a British passport and then a century of anonymity when he was caught. This is the government that sat on an IRGC threat against British soil and left a pensioner to do the job of the security services. They are not failing to protect you. They are choosing not to. A villager stopped the attack this morning. Not the Prime Minister. Not MI5. Not the Home Office. A resident who looked out of a window at 00:45 and knew something was wrong. They were right. This government was asleep. Every fact in this post is verified and sourced. Screenshot it. Share it. They will not tell you. So we have to.

A far right plot has been thwarted this morning after locals found several empty plastic bottles being stored in a council recycling bin. Several arrests have been made with many already imprisoned after rapid response CPS squads were dispatched to the area.

Doctor: your cholesterol is 6.4. I would like to start you on a statin. Patient: what does it do for someone like me. Doctor: it lowers your cholesterol. Patient: I mean, what does that do. If a hundred people like me take it for five years, how many are alive at the end who would otherwise be dead. Doctor: the trials show a clear benefit. Patient: how many. Doctor: for people who have not had a heart attack, the trials do not show a statistically significant reduction in death. Patient: so, none. Doctor: it prevents heart attacks. Patient: how many, in the hundred. Doctor: about one. Patient: and how many of the hundred get diabetes from it. Doctor: about two. Patient: and how many of the people in those trials were women my age who had never had a heart attack. Doctor: fewer than we would like. Patient: so the pill is for life, it prevents one heart attack in hundred over five years, gives two of the hundred diabetes, was tested mostly on men, and does not make me live any longer. Doctor: those are the numbers, yes. Patient: then I will take the numbers home and read them, and you can send the pamphlet to whoever it was written for.

The most complete food in the supermarket is in a tin, costs about £1, and is bought mainly by pensioners and cats. A tin of sardines in spring water or brine, 120g, eaten whole: - 25g of complete protein - Around 2g of omega-3, more than a salmon fillet - 40% of your daily calcium, from the bones - Vitamin D, at a level almost no other food reaches - Vitamin B12 at 3 times the daily need - Selenium, iodine and iron - Mercury: almost none, because a sardine dies before it can accumulate any It is the only animal most people will ever eat entire. Skin, spine, organs, brain. Every part the nutrition tables say is the good part, which is why the fillet on the fish counter loses. Canning was invented for Napoleon's army. The first sardine cannery opened in Brittany in 1824, and the tin has not needed improving since. A sardine packed in 1924 was the same food it is today. There is no version of it that a laboratory could make better, which is why no laboratory has tried to sell you one. The fish that fed the poor of Europe for 200 years is now the cheapest thing in the health aisle, and the health aisle does not know it is there. Buy six tins. Eat one a day for a week. Then tell me what the supplement rack was for.

When we look at an oak, a sequoia, or a balsa tree in the Amazon rainforest, we're looking at solidified carbon and oxygen. Trees do not obtain structural mass from the soil; it comes out of thin air. Plants are built almost entirely from atmospheric gases—living, complex architectures of carbon, oxygen and sunlight. No wonder that as children, we hug them, play and climb in them, or wander through their woods, hearing them sighing in the wind. Around 90% to 95% of a tree's dry weight is carbon and oxygen, pulled directly from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Most people assume trees draw their body from the earth, yet the soil volume beneath a canopy remains unchanged as a sapling matures into a giant. Roots do not consume dirt to build branches; large trees leave no gaping holes in the ground. Instead, the root network is a mechanical anchor to hold the heavy tree structure upright, while absorbing water and a tiny fraction of soil minerals—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. These are their biological multivitamins, accounting for less than 5% of final dry mass. Through photosynthesis, sunlight breaks apart carbon dioxide and water molecules. The plant releases oxygen back into the atmosphere and chains the remaining carbon and oxygen into glucose molecules, forming complex structural polymers like cellulose and lignin. Across the globe, an estimated 3 trillion trees hold roughly 500 billion cubic meters of wood. Every forest on Earth is in reality solidified atmosphere—hundreds of billions of tons of air trapped, structured and given physical form by living plants. Mankind owes its survival to these friendly giants of the natural world.

MP: "It only affects the wealthiest estates. Most family farms won't pay a penny." Farmer: "Mine's 300 acres. Grass is making £8,600 an acre. Do the sum." MP: "That's £2.58 million, so you'd be just over the threshold. A very small bill." Farmer: "The farm made £9,800 last year. Whose money pays the small bill?" MP: "There's an interest-free option over 10 years." Farmer: "Interest-free on money I haven't got, paid out of an income I haven't got, for 10 years. That's not a concession. That's a repayment plan for a mugging." MP: "Land values reflect real wealth." Farmer: "They reflect what a solar developer offered the man next door. I've never sold an acre. His price became my tax." MP: "You could sell a portion to settle it." Farmer: "Sell 60 acres and the herd no longer fits. Sell the herd and there's no farm. So the portion is the whole thing on a delay." MP: "The policy targets people using farmland as a tax shelter." Farmer: "Then look at who buys the 60 acres. A pension fund. A fund doesn't die. It'll hold that field for a century and never pay a penny of this tax." MP: "..." Farmer: "So the tax lands on the one owner who keeps farming until he's dead, and it hands his field to the one owner who can't be taxed by dying." MP: "The Treasury has to raise revenue." Farmer: "From me it won't. I'll sell the good ground before I go, there'll be no tax event, and you'll have lost the farm and the money in the same afternoon." MP: "That seems a drastic reading." Farmer: "Which of us is the loophole? The man who feeds you off it until he dies, or the fund that never has to?"