In the second half of 2025, one man accounted for almost 40% of all money donated to political parties in the UK: a crypto-billionaire who lives in Thailand.
Britain desperately needs to rewrite its party funding rules.
observer.co.uk/news/the-sen...
Staggering that a Palantir lobbyist was appointed to an NHS role. And no one seems to have seen this as a problem.
He worked for Global Counsel, where Palantir was a client, and was "a member of Palantir’s health advisory board..until April 2022" when he was appointed chair for 4 hospital trusts.
The head of a UK regulator's inquiry into Amazon has quit due to concerns over independence. The Govt has put Amazon's former UK chief in charge of the regulator. Could the two possibly be connected?
www.themorningintelligence.uk/cma-cloud-in...
UK Govt's upcoming National Policy Statement on data centres must include real protections for climate and water:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Very clear that for Starmer, 'sectarian voting' is when British Muslims don't vote Labour, and for many others, it is just when British Muslims vote.
Behind the scenes, “Meta was divided on whether protecting kids should take precedence over user growth and engagement. For years, the company only incrementally rolled out restrictive safety features, even as its own staff detailed the risks its platforms posed to children.”
In good news, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee has announced an inquiry into the environmental impact of data centres. And they don't seem hugely impressed by the non-answers they've had from the Govt so far. committees.parliament.uk/committee/62...
I'd assume child soldier TikTok videos can only have received millions of views if they're being promoted by TT's algorithm. Shows the truth behind TikTok's claims that they "don't allow content that could harm young people".
EXCLUSIVE: The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has triggered security fears in Berlin after officially requesting information on vulnerabilities in NATO defenses — insight that would prove useful to the Kremlin.
I know PQ answers have always been a bit uneven, but have govts in recent years got worse in terms of just not answering or even addressing the Q at all? This one on Palantir / MoD is a particularly bad example: questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-ques...
This is batshit
Also - sure, gen AI may improve productivity in some specific areas - but it clearly harms it in others. Not to mention increasing costs to the state by turbo-charging fraud & abuse. Are we ever going to get a proper picture of both sides? Rather than the Govt just repeating the industry's claims?
There are so many examples like this of Big Tech forcing the state to pick up piles of extra work because they can't keep their platform safe, and want to run it as cheaply as possible. They effectively run off huge, public subsidies.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Today's by-election is another illustration of the problems with FPTP.
The result may tell us less about what voters want to happen than whether they can game the system effectively to stop a result most *don't* want.
The electoral system should not be an obstacle that voters have to work around.
If the Treasury is serious about getting better at tech procurement, why are they taking advice from (1) a former PR person for Big Tech and (2) a Larry Ellison-funded lobby group?
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
UK Govt calls in Ellison's lobbying front to advise on tech procurement.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
middle-aged men are unbeatable at dressing up adventures as important charitable initiatives
Palantir's Louis Mosley has insisted on multiple occasions that the UK Government shouldn't worry about the risks of 'lock-in' with Palantir, but this looks a lot like lock-in to me:
One of those days when you genuinely wonder whether anyone in the UK Govt has read the openly stated foreign policy of Trump & his Big Tech allies
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
In news that should anger (if not surprise), Peter Kyle has confirmed a former boss at one of the world's largest monopolists to head the UK's competition regulator: www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Possibly one of the more surprising entries in Global Counsel's list of recent EU clients:
Interesting to look at the Global Counsel clients who don't (yet) seem to have distanced themselves from the firm - eg OpenAI, Drax are among those listed on the EU lobbying register for the current year: transparency-register.europa.eu/search-regis...
Former Amazon UK chief Doug Gurr has now been 'interim' head of the UK's competition regulator for over a year: www.gov.uk/government/n...
'testimony from one former top safety executive...claimed Meta once had a “17x” strike policy for accounts engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex”.
'"...you could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended.”'
reads: This impression is enhanced by the bizarre way the issue of AI taking human jobs comes up in these discussions. The left hates tech CEOs and knows they’re out to get the ordinary worker, but the left also thinks the CEOs are idiots and can’t actually pull it off. Thus, Doctorow claims, “Bosses are mass-firing productive workers and replacing them with janky AI, and when the janky AI is gone, no one will be able to find and re-hire most of those workers, we’re going to go from dysfunctional AI systems to nothing.” Or, in Bender and Hanna’s words, “AI is not going to replace your job. But it will make your job a lot shittier.” The picture is practically Cubist: management is trying to fill your role — with something that’s not real and can’t do it.
the dude whose entire piece hinges on “the left is missing out cuz an open ai dude says so” defends tech ceos *pretends to be shocked*
Love this so much, especially the juxtaposition of English folklore paths with an Amazon spokesperson going out of their way to deny a person driving their branded vehicle is an employee.
Alpha School, an "AI-powered" private school that costs as much as $65k a year, is generating faulty lesson plans and stealing content from textbooks for training data www.404media.co/students-are...
Goodwin is employing a straight-up Holocaust denier.
The author of this piece appears to also be a 'visiting researcher' at Google DeepMind (www.leverett.harvard.edu/people/adam-...) - which seems like something the NYT should mention in the bio? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...
Interesting piece, whichever side of the argument you're on.
Puts me in mind of the stat that 10% of Meta's revenue comes from ads for scams. At a guess, scam income prob comes more from pensioners than from kids - will the Govt stop Meta harming the former too? www.reuters.com/investigatio...
