Trades I'm eyeing up #cocoa #jpy #wheat open.substack.com/pub/macrov…

The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, continues to call for greater intervention and regulation of social media platforms that highlight rising crime in the capital. Khan has claimed that London has been subjected to a “relentless and unprecedented attack of lies and hatred” on social media. He now argues that online “misinformation” is deterring tourists from visiting the city. Yet Home Office data show that there were nearly 100,000 thefts or attempted thefts in London last year, compared with around 45,000 in 2019. Rather than trying to shut down criticism and debate, or blaming social media for London’s problems, the Mayor should focus on tackling rising crime and making the case for his own policies. More open discussion is not the problem. It is part of the solution.

Or parents could parent, anyone thought of that?

I'm an adult and I don't want access to any of that stuff and I very much don't want it to be fed to me by social media algorithms. The issue is how we protect children without restricting the freedoms of adults. Who decides what is and isn't acceptable? Personally, I don't trust the government or the social media companies to make that judgement.

Why is Sir Keir Starmer’s Government set to ban under-16s from accessing 10 major social media platforms — including X — but not left-wing platforms like Bluesky? Since coming to power, this Government has been openly hostile to X, a forum for debate that prides itself on free speech. Ministers have even floated the idea of blocking UK citizens’ access to the platform altogether. Starmer can no longer pretend this is solely about protecting children.

What starts as child protection never ends with child protection. First it’s the children. Then it’s “misinformation”. Then it’s “harmful content”. Then it’s whatever the government decides you shouldn’t be allowed to see. Every restriction on freedom is sold as protection.

20 years ago, An Inconvenient Truth put climate change at the center of global debate, shaping politics, influencing leaders, and inspiring a generation of activists. Two decades later, we can assess not just its impact, but its accuracy. Many of the film’s most alarming predictions did not materialize, while many of the policies it inspired have proven costly and ineffective. The lesson? Panic is a poor guide for public policy. Focusing on innovation, adaptation, and economic development can do far more to help both people and the climate—at a fraction of the cost. financialpost.com/opinion/bj…

🗞️ We welcome this coverage in @Telegraph highlighting the growing consensus that an under-16s social media ban is a deeply flawed policy. However, it sadly dismisses our concern with the government's proposals to block nude images at the device level as "wild hyperbole". State-mandated scanning of our private messages and photo galleries is mass surveillance, plain and simple. Any operating system that is legally compelled to constantly monitor your communications for restricted content fundamentally breaks device integrity and user privacy. In order to know if the images need blocking, the device must know the age of the user. This guarantees the rollout of population-wide digital ID checks simply to use our own phones and access the internet. We have repeatedly warned against this.

Watch our General Secretary Lord Young ask Baroness Lloyd how the Government plans to safeguard against the obvious risk of requiring technology companies like Apple to scan private messages before they're received or sent — what's known as client-side scanning? History teaches us that that mass surveillance and censorship capabilities, however well intentioned, never remain narrowly scoped. Watch Lord Young below 👇

Remarkable story in Telegraph revealing just how useless recent Tory governments were: A secret Whitehall report found that more than £28bn in foreign aid and Covid-19 loans was handed to terrorists, hostile states and gangsters! The misappropriation of taxpayer funds from 2015 to 2021, includes millions sent to the Islamic State and Russia. Those responsible remain unpunished and the dossier was buried to spare official embarrassment.

True. The British press has failed today. Few journalists if any seem to grasp what this means. It’s a fundamental reshaping of modern civil liberty and the internet in the UK. Seismic loss of privacy. Millions of adults will have limited web access. In a democracy...? 🤡

its hard not to be cynical today, but fck me its exhausting and saps the fun out of everything...

RT @chigrl: I released my most comprehesive report on copper last weekend. Link in bio!

Must-read by @KonstantinKisin: thefp.com/p/konstantin-kisin…

And the Lib Dem’s are not a serious party…

There is very little ‘green’ about the Green Party these days, Labour are not the party of the working man, Conservatives have abandoned conservative policies and there are serious doubts Reform will make any material changes to current trends…

This is exactly why ANY Government should NEVER have a monopoly on information

BS

surprised that countries w/large production of #corn & #sugar & simultaneously large oil/energy importers have not seized opportunity to develop more robust domestic energy industries thru biofuel making their economies more resilient and energy secure...Australia, Thailand...

An 'unkindness' of ravens