https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4wgpdllleo
Starmer at odds with Trump in biggest disagreement yet
captain_spalding said:
:)
The Government Paid O2 to Monitor 25 Million Phones to Track EV Drivers. Nobody Asked Permission.
The Department for Transport commissioned O2 to trawl the web browsing habits and movement data of 25 million devices, including children’s, to identify electric vehicle owners. The study cost £602,000, ran for two years, and was quietly published this week.
Somewhere in the past two years, a version of you was being identified, tagged and tracked by the British government based on whether you visited an EV-related website twice in a month.
Not a suspected criminal. Not a person of interest to law enforcement. A driver who looked at a car charging app or browsed an EV comparison site on their phone, and was consequently flagged by a government-commissioned surveillance programme that tracked their movements across Britain using mobile network data. Children were included. Passengers were included. No individual consented to any of it. Nobody was told it was happening.
A report published this week by the Department for Transport has laid bare the details of a project commissioned in 2023 under the Conservative government, run through mobile network operator O2 and concluded in April 2024 just before Labour came to power. The study cost £602,000 of public money, drawn from the government’s Evaluation Accelerator Fund. Its stated purpose was to produce a “comprehensive evaluation and understanding of the uptake and usage of electric vehicles.”
The methods it used to achieve that purpose are the story.
What O2 Actually Did
O2 runs the mobile infrastructure used not only by its own direct customers but by Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, GiffGaff and Virgin Mobile. The study swept up all of them.
The identification method was blunt: anyone who visited EV-related websites or used EV-related apps at least once a month across two separate months was flagged as a probable electric vehicle owner. That criterion does not describe a car owner. It describes someone who was curious about electric vehicles, was researching one, was a passenger in one, or happened to click a link. Browsing habits were trawled, per The Telegraph’s original reporting. Web history and app records were processed. Children over the age of 12 were not excluded.
Once individuals were flagged, O2 began tracking their physical movements using mobile network location data, the same infrastructure used to triangulate position from which mobile signals are transmitted and received. That data was then supplied to the Department for Transport in what both O2 and the DfT describe as “anonymised and aggregated” form. Neither party released the specific technical details of what anonymisation meant in practice.
O2’s spokesman said the project was “entirely lawful” and that the company complied fully with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR. The DfT said the project was lawful and that all data transferred to officials was stripped of individual identities and locations. Civil servants in the DfT’s Advanced Analytics Division and Social and Behavioural Research unit managed the project.
The Technical Limitations the Government Did Not Advertise
The most revealing section of the DfT’s own published report is also the least quoted in the political coverage.
After two years and £602,000, the department concluded that mobile data could not directly be used to provide information about charging behaviour or travel times. The specific questions the study was designed to answer, where EVs are kept overnight, trip frequency, origin-destination patterns, charging locations, were not answerable from the data collected. The report notes that mobile data may be useful for monitoring overarching trends, but the granular operational intelligence the study sought was beyond what the technology could deliver.
The government spent two years tracking 25 million devices, including children, without consent, using methods described by critics as equivalent to law enforcement surveillance techniques, and concluded that the data was too imprecise to answer the questions it was designed to address.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MotorBuzz/comments/1rj7zss/the_government_paid_o2_to_monitor_25_million/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
Dozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
The Chaps won’t be happy, won’t be happy at all.
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Peak Warming Man said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
The Chaps won’t be happy, won’t be happy at all.
Interestingly there will still be a couple dozen Lords Spiritual.
I wonder if eventually there will be an elected HOL.
The Rev Dodgson said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Steady, steady …
dv said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
Dozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Steady, steady …
isn’t the technofascist plan to remove any kind of biological inheritance from power structures altogether
SCIENCE said:
They’ve obviously had a sleepover.
Not AI
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5789383-florida-bill-to-ban-marrying-first-cousins-fails-to-pass/
A win for traditional values
dv said:
A win for traditional values
wait are we saying that these traditions are taking them back to their colonial era
making the world safer one bomb oil tanker theocracy at a time
Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community ambulance service have been set on fire and destroyed in London in what police say is an antisemitic hate crime. The Metropolitan Police have launched an investigation into the incident which occurred in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighbourhood, in the early hours of Monday morning, local time. Explosions were heard in the area around the Machzike Hadath synagogue and police say that was due to gas canisters onboard the Hatzola Northwest ambulances.
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
SCIENCE said:
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
Texas T
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
Texas T
The commentators out there are calling it brexshit.
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
Liquid gold.
Texas T
The commentators out there are calling it brexshit.
As they should.
I wonder what effect Trump’s newfound distaste for all things British will have on the prospects of his ‘Reform’ and his fellow travellers in thrall of Farage.
Nigel Farage’s biggest problem? Donald Trump
Ben Quinn
Political correspondent
Nearly a quarter of voters cite Reform leader’s support for US president as main reason against voting for his party
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/31/nigel-farage-reform-biggest-problem-donald-trump
Nigel Farage to snub US conservative conference brought to UK by Liz Truss
Exclusive: Reform UK will be ‘steering well clear’ of CPAC event in July, source says, as will senior Tories
Helena Horton and Ben Quinn
Tue 31 Mar 2026 21.11 AEDT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/31/nigel-farage-snub-us-conservative-conference-cpac-uk-liz-truss
New YouGov poll for Great Britain (ie excluding NI)
Reform 23%
Green 19%
Con 19%
Labour 18%
LibDem 12%
SNP 3%
Cymru 1%
It’s mad that they are still using First Past The Post when the voters are like this, but anyway. There’s an opportunity for the leftward side of the table to clean up, if they coordinate well.
dv said:
New YouGov poll for Great Britain (ie excluding NI)
Reform 23%
Green 19%
Con 19%
Labour 18%
LibDem 12%
SNP 3%
Cymru 1%It’s mad that they are still using First Past The Post when the voters are like this, but anyway. There’s an opportunity for the leftward side of the table to clean up, ifthey coordinate well.
that’s
alleged
well chuff along, hurry up then
Oakeshott was the political editor of The Sunday Times.
dv said:
Oakeshott was the political editor of The Sunday Times.
Any relation to Rob?
;)
ruby said:
dv said:
I mean a cynical person might suppose that all of this was so that Trump and his clique could use insider knowledge to play the markets.
And as an added bonus to his clique, the instability will send some businesses and farms broke so the cashed up can snap them up cheap.
LOL amateurs why would anyone do such a primitive uncivilised thing as lifting 1000000000 people out of poverty when
you could send 50000000 people below the line instead
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393rwvzejyo
Is this still available?
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393rwvzejyoIs this still available?
My great-aunt shot Mussolini in the face, if that is what you’re asking…
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393rwvzejyoIs this still available?
My great-aunt shot Mussolini in the face
Tis for me.
furious said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393rwvzejyoIs this still available?
My great-aunt shot Mussolini in the face, if that is what you’re asking…
I don’t think you catch my drift
dv said:
furious said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393rwvzejyoIs this still available?
My great-aunt shot Mussolini in the face, if that is what you’re asking…
I don’t think you catch my drift
Yes, we need a modern-day Violet Gibson.
kii said:
dv said:
furious said:My great-aunt shot Mussolini in the face, if that is what you’re asking…
I don’t think you catch my drift
Yes, we need a modern-day Violet Gibson.
totally different to the ear thing
alleged
we mean as Australians we can’t talk, did they electroshock the fella
SCIENCE said:
alleged
we mean as Australians we can’t talk, did they electroshock the fella
Pharque.
The chap seems to be holding up in Wales.
Not a bad portrayal of UK prime ministers in movies, presented by Dan Snow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0TbAn6JfD0
Russell Brand’s controversial appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored has been widely ridiculed online after the former comedian spent over 90 seconds attempting and failing to find a Bible passage he read in court.
Brand, 50, will face trial later this year over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against him by six women. He denies all the charges, which date from 1999 to 2009.
While appearing on Morgan’s YouTube show on Friday (24 April), Brand – who became a right-wing podcaster in 2021 and a Christian last year – was asked about taking a Bible into his court hearing in February. The religious text was confiscated by the dock officer after he began reading it in Southwark Crown Court.
“Can I go back to asking you a question about your Bible?” Morgan asked Brand. “Is that the one you took into court? What was your thinking of taking it into court and you were seen looking at some passages – what were the relevant passages?”
“It was this from Isiah,” he said, before looking through his Bible for over 90 seconds of excruciating silence.
After almost two minutes of searching in silence while Morgan shot awkward looks at the camera, Brand finally gave up, admitting: “I can’t actually find the verse that I had that day but this is good enough. This is from Isiah 12.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/russell-brand-piers-morgan-interview-bible-passage-b2964889.html
Robert Reich’s Coffee Clatch
29 minutes
Oregon’s Bay Area is feeling inspired.
Good morning! If today’s news feels like it was assembled by six different editors who have never spoken to each other, that’s because it was. Depending on where you look, we are either on the brink of a global recession, in the middle of a triumphant stock market rally, negotiating peace with Iran, not negotiating with Iran at all, being stalked by shadowy forces targeting scientists, or… bringing back firing squads.
Let’s start with the small matter of the global economy hanging by an oil tanker. The war with Iran has now tightened the Strait of Hormuz to where something like normal no longer applies. A critical artery of global energy supply is choked, oil is hovering around $100 a barrel, gasoline in the U.S. has crossed $4, and the world’s top economic institutions are gently clearing their throats and using phrases like “recession risk” in the tone one might use to describe a hurricane that has already made landfall. The International Energy Agency is calling this the largest energy crisis in history, with hundreds of millions of barrels effectively removed from circulation and infrastructure damage that could take months or years to repair.
Somehow, this is also being presented as a diplomatic breakthrough. Donald Trump says Iran is preparing an offer that will satisfy U.S. demands. His envoys are being dispatched to Pakistan. The White House is projecting momentum, progress, and forward motion. Iran, on the other hand, is saying: we are not negotiating, do not call this negotiation, we will not negotiate until the United States lifts its blockade. We have, once again, two parallel realities: one in which a deal is forming, and another in which the premise of the deal does not exist.
This might be easier to take seriously if we weren’t also dealing with the small historical footnote that the current crisis is, in large part, self-inflicted. The Obama-era nuclear deal, imperfect, limited, and politically unpopular in certain circles, nonetheless forced Iran to ship out roughly 97 percent of its uranium stockpile, leaving it without enough material for even a single bomb. Then Trump tore it up, declared it the “worst deal ever,” and replaced it with nothing. Iran responded by enriching uranium “with a vengeance,” building up a stockpile now measured in tons, enough, with further processing, for dozens of nuclear weapons.
So here we are: the same administration that dismantled the system containing Iran’s nuclear program is now attempting to negotiate the elimination of a stockpile that grew because that system was dismantled. This is a man trying to negotiate with the consequences of his own decisions and insisting, loudly, that the new deal will be better than the one that prevented the problem in the first place.
In a completely different universe, one located somewhere between Wall Street and the collective denial of reality, everything is apparently going great. The Nasdaq is up 15 percent this month. The S&P 500 is hitting record highs. Tech stocks are soaring on the back of AI enthusiasm, and investors have decided that the United States can simply power through an energy shock because it produces a lot of oil and really likes semiconductors.
To be clear: the same moment that is producing warnings of recession, disrupted global supply chains, rising inflation expectations, and gasoline prices creeping upward is also producing what Bank of America politely describes as “bubble-like price action.”
Even central bankers are starting to sound uncomfortable. Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden, whose job description does not typically include public anxiety, has warned that markets appear to be ignoring multiple overlapping risks. Translation: asset prices are behaving as though nothing is wrong, while a number of very large things are, in fact, wrong.
It’s almost impressive. The market has looked at war, oil shocks, supply chain disruption, and tightening financial conditions and concluded: have you considered buying more chips?
Which brings us to the part of the story that should be obvious by now but somehow isn’t. If one war can push the global economy toward recession because oil shipments slow down, refineries get hit, and shipping lanes become geopolitical choke points, then fossil fuels are not a source of stability. They are a structural vulnerability.
Even as this becomes painfully clear, the United States is managing to trip over its own solutions. Across the country, solar projects, cheap, scalable, and increasingly essential, are being stalled or blocked because of unfounded health fears. Critics warn about electromagnetic radiation, contamination, noise, and other hazards, even though environmental lawyer Michael Gerrard put it bluntly: “there’s no basis for that.” One farmer whose solar lease was blocked was even more direct: “The health and safety issue… that is just a joke.”
Yet, the fear works. As Arizona State law professor Troy Rule noted, restrictions on solar development are spreading nationwide, often rooted in “misinformation or unfounded fears.” Public officials do not always test those claims against evidence. In St. Clair County, Michigan, one administrator warned that the county medical director’s memo “did not address the question or provide support” for the alleged risks. Another local official accepted it anyway.
While not every local solar fight can be traced to fossil-fuel money, the broader pattern is not exactly subtle. The Energy and Policy Institute has documented fossil-fuel interests, dark-money networks, and allied front groups working to block wind and solar projects before they are built, while earlier ProPublica reporting found a retired gas-industry executive and a “grassroots” group spreading misinformation against an Ohio solar project.
This is not merely organic local anxiety; it is anxiety made politically useful. The public-facing message is health and safety; the material result is delay, scarcity, and protection for the fossil-fuel business model. The health concerns may be unfounded, but the economic incentives are not.
You could stop there and call this a misinformation problem, but it’s more than that. Solar doesn’t just generate electricity; it disrupts an established business model. It reduces dependence on extraction, centralization, and scarcity, the very conditions that have historically made fossil fuels so profitable. So instead of adapting, the system does what it does best: it manufactures doubt, amplifies fear, and slows the transition just enough to preserve existing revenue streams.
Industry-specific economic incentives remain, and that’s how you end up in a world where a global energy crisis is unfolding in real time, and we are still arguing about whether the sun is dangerous.
If the economic reality is fragmented, the informational reality is something closer to… interpretive fiction. A conspiracy theory about missing and dead scientists, originating in the usual corners of the internet, has now made its way into the White House. The theory suggests a coordinated pattern of disappearances tied to sensitive research. The problem is that there is no evidence linking the cases, many of which already have explanations ranging from unrelated crimes to simple misidentification. But that hasn’t stopped it from being taken seriously enough to prompt investigations and public commentary from the president.
This is the pattern: speculation becomes narrative, narrative becomes repetition, repetition becomes “something we’re looking into,” and suddenly the absence of evidence is just another detail to be resolved later.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the darkest corner of today’s news cycle. While all of this is unfolding, war, economic fragility, informational breakdown, the Justice Department has decided it is a good time to expand the federal government’s execution methods. Not just resume executions, but broaden them: firing squads, electric chairs, gas, alongside the restoration of a previously contested lethal injection protocol.
There are some headlines you can process. This isn’t one of them, because this is not only about law enforcement; it is about moral authority. Taking a life, if it happens at all, is so profound and irreversible that it should never be reduced to bureaucracy, politics, or performance. It belongs, as much as anything human can, to a state of grace, not a checklist in a federal protocol.
The state presents execution as procedure: regulated, justified, operational. But human beings experience death as sacred rupture. What feels so offensive here is the normalization. The bureaucratic flattening of the unthinkable. A government calmly updating the menu of acceptable ways to kill a person, as though this were an administrative modernization rather than an expansion of state violence.
A system that treats killing as tragic is one thing. A system that treats killing as necessary is another. A system that treats killing as normal, even useful, even politically clarifying, even proof of strength, has crossed into something far darker. It’s not just that the machinery of death is being restarted, but that it is being expanded with visible comfort. The method becomes the message, and the spectacle becomes the point. The state is not merely saying it can kill; it is making sure we understand that killing has been reabsorbed into ordinary governance.
Today’s news is dissonant. War is sold as negotiation, markets celebrate risk, and misinformation shapes policy, and the system that underpins all of it, the one that ties energy, economics, and geopolitics together, continues to run on a resource that turns every conflict into a global crisis. We do not have an energy-security system; we have a ransom note with pipelines.
For me, today is a little more grounded. My oldest son, John, is coming to visit and help me wrestle the yards back into submission, front and back. Marz, of course, is thrilled. John is one of the few humans who understands that “playing” with Marz is less a pastime and more a full-contact sport.
So we’ll take the wins where we can: fresh air, dirt under our nails, a dog who thinks life is perfect because someone showed up ready to wrestle.
Enjoy your weekend. Take care of each other. As always, Marz and I hold you all in our thoughts during our moonbeam vigils.
I missed the news that Oregon got annexed to the UK
Divine Angel said:
I missed the news that Oregon got annexed to the UK
so bite me.
🪓🦖
ChrispenEvan said:
Divine Angel said:
I missed the news that Oregon got annexed to the UK
so bite me.
🪓🦖
is that a uk slang for something
Meanwhile
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/bus-lane-pensioner-fears-punished-33833492
dv said:
Meanwhilehttps://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/bus-lane-pensioner-fears-punished-33833492
👀
dv said:
Meanwhilehttps://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/bus-lane-pensioner-fears-punished-33833492
Gormless chappy.
dv said:
Meanwhilehttps://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/bus-lane-pensioner-fears-punished-33833492
saw that. some of the comments told him he was fined because he was in a bus lane not because he had a reform sticker on his car.