@pholmes8
Semi-retired trade economist, Emeritus @ UKTPO Sussex. Posts about Brexit, Freeports, WTO and anything else that catches my fancy. Migrating across from other place. Tweeted as @pholmes8. Blogs with others at https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/uktpo/blog/
That Trump repeats calls for Iran's unconditional surrender on same day he's got the defence industrial chiefs round for an emergency meeting on military supplies perfectly sums up his grasp of ends & means.
I’m pretty astonished Badenoch and Farage both decided to get lockstep behind Trump as he walks off a cliff.
Yes, we’ve entered the nightmare era when machines decide on kills. My thoughts are with Sarah Connor at this difficult time.
www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/it-looks-l...
@edconway.bsky.social points out there are limits to storing oil and even more so gas if Hormuz is closed, and facilities degrade if unused. AND the region is a main source of other scarce resources such as helium.
We can surely rely on Trump to have thought this through or.... 😱
Anyone with any knowledge of modern history knows that shutting down oil and gas supplies from the ME is going to have much bigger ramifications than markets are currently signalling
open.substack.com/pub/robinjbr...
“Mistakenly withheld”
The U.S. is not in the business of nation-building, but it will pick Iran’s new leaders, bring it back from the brink of destruction and make it bigger, better and stronger than ever…
Noem is gone, sort of, but there are lessons to be learned from her tenure, how she was fired, and why it didn’t happen earlier, why the Senate confirmed her in the first place, that we can”t afford to ignore joycevance.substack.com/p/fired-but-...
I will miss Kristi Noem's inimitable constitutional insights, as when, asked by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. at a Senate hearing to define "habeas corpus," she replied, "Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country."
These headlines should always read “New secondary moderns set to return”, since that’s where most kids will go under that system.
This is incredible. UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...
bsky.app/profile/ones...
They.
Just.
Lie.
Pissing off India to sink a light frigate that posed basically no threat to any naval assets was a very stupid decision.
He’s both.
What on earth does she mean by 'we have located 145k children'?
Still they rise
so far i think in the last 48 hours trump has called
- michael scherer at the atlantic
- jonathan karl, abc
- jake tapper, cnn
- axios
- bret baier, fox news
- the new york times
- the washington post
just noting that when he wants to sell a war, suddenly theyre not "fake news" anymore
GOP man on #Radio4 saying US military is better when it works with UK. But UK military isn't better joining a war with no plan, no exit strategy, no goal. Also illegal.
An economically, politically and morally bankrupt strategy.
Bad for individuals, bad for families, bad for businesses, bad for public services, bad for integration and cohesion.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Well before Kristi Noem’s confirmation hearing to become DHS Secretary, Thom Tillis knew she gunned down her dog and goat
And if this wasn’t enough of a display that she has always been unqualified
She made it INFINITELY WORSE by putting this story IN A BOOK
Tillis voted to confirm her anyway
sure isn’t
bsky.app/profile/zenz...
Fine, but Labour have no plans to substantially "break down trade barriers" with the EU. Perhaps because they judge that to be politically impossible but, if so, that needs to be said. Otherwise, we just continue the endless dishonesty which has characterized Brexit.
I particularly resent rags like Daily Mail gleefully reporting Trump’s bullying of Starmer. It’s disloyal and hypocritical - they’d be screaming from rooftops if U.K. meekly followed European diktats, yet would have us unquestioningly kowtow to Trump. Starmer’s task is incredibly difficult.
Yeah, I'm not sure that taking his advice would be a smart move.
We'll sit this one out.
WELCH: Mr. Yoho is also the husband of your former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin?
NOEM: Yes
WELCH: So your former assistant and her husband are the ones that got the DHS no bid contract for $143m. Any dispute about that?
NOEM: No.
