The European Commission's "GDPR simplification" package proposal mandates a browser level signal to allow data subjects’ to refuse a request for consent, and exercise the right to object and potentially to give their consent, see Article 88b, page 57.

👏 ITV speaks to businesses in Northern Ireland 10 years after Brexit. A food wholesaler: extra £750k tied up in stock, huge delays on goods from GB, and constant red tape. “Cheese I could have ordered today in Wales could have been here tomorrow. It’s now a 7–14 day lead time and five to seven bits of paperwork.” Promised control and opportunity. Delivered higher costs, delays, and frustration. Northern Ireland does not have the “best of both worlds”. It has the best of the worst worlds created by Brexit. Yes, some businesses get dual market access (GB EU). But the reality for many is: • Extra hundreds of thousands tied up in stock • 7–14 day delays on goods from Great Britain • Mountains of paperwork and red lane checks • Ongoing political tension and identity friction Brexit forced a border somewhere. In Northern Ireland, it created complexity, cost, and compromise everywhere. This is the messy, unsatisfactory hybrid that was always going to happen when you leave the Single Market but try to keep an open Irish border. Not a win. A painful fudge. The Brexit experiment continues to extract a heavy price. Watch full documentary @jordan_utv tweet below.

CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei awkwardly smiles through his answer to a question about why Claude AI directly contributed to the US Military bombing of the elementary school in Minab.

The UK is not the first to ban the use of social media for under 16 year olds. In fact, Australia became the world's first country to ban social media for children under 16 in December 2025. Then came others. Austria. Canada. Denmark. France. Germany. Greece. Indonesia. Now the UK. Fuck you @elonmusk Fuck you. You shouldn’t have allowed hardcore porn here on @X amongst other unacceptable things, should you? You have brought this upon yourself under the umbrella of free speech. Tell me, do you allow your children to call you a cunt, for example? It’s ‘free speech’ after all.

A) This a properly brilliant piece of investigative journalism by BBC & @hopenothate. Huge kudos to all involved. B) The Kremlin operative who BBC names as directing arson attacks against Keir Starmer was taught his tradecraft by…drumroll…Sergei Nalobin !!! Pictured here with Boris Johnson. Also: the star of our podcast series, Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring! Wtaf

A Russian online sabotage network was behind a series of arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s family home and other targets linked to the UK prime minister, an FT investigation has found. ft.trib.al/jsCDpCO

🚨HOPE NOT HATE EXCLUSIVE 🚨 The Starmer arson plot: Russian interference on a grand scale in the UK hopenothate.org.uk/2026/06/1…

10 years ago my wife, the mum of our kids & the MP for Batley&Spen was killed by a far right extremist. At anniversaries I try to be optimistic about the future. But not this time. In the ten years since she was killed we have gone backwards & I fear our democracy is now at risk

We offered Putin to meet anywhere where real decisions to end the war could be made. He does not want it. We discussed with the U.S. and France the possibility of a meeting with Russia around the G7, with all democratic nations represented. Putin does not want it. Yesterday, we discussed with President Trump that such a meeting could be organized in the U.S. – in a format where Putin would find it much harder to refuse at least to President Trump. We will see what comes of it. If Russia refuses this chance as well, additional pressure will be needed. From an intervention at the EU Intergovernmental Conference. (3/3)

A few things happening at once that people should connect. Russia is now linked to the arson attacks on the Prime Minister's house and car last year. Shocker. And we all saw what happened the moment that story broke. Our feeds flooded with a different story about who the men were and why they did it. That's the operation. The arson is one half. The disinformation campaign is the other. Flood the zone, muddy the water, get the country shouting at itself instead of asking who is behind it. And at the same time, a chunk of the accounts pushing Scottish independence on X went dark the night Israel hit Iran's nuclear sites. Ask yourself why. Why would hostile states be interested in sowing division across the country? This is exactly what I mean when I say defence is the thread underneath everything now. Again, it isn't tanks on a border. It's an arson attack on the PM's front door and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns in the replies. It's the argument about breaking up our country being run out of Tehran. This is why resilience matters. And it's bigger than just factchecking a tweet. It's energy we can rely on. Industry we actually own. Institutions that are rock solid. Communities that don't split and fracture the moment someone pushes them. A country that is built to take a punch. That's the job now.

British children have been the subject of a malign mass experiment to optimise Big Tech profits to horrendous effect so I welcome the Govt taking action but told the SoS we need to go after the ad-hungry business models and lack of transparency which enable and accelerate harms.

I joined @BBC’s @amolrajan for an episode of the Radical podcast. We chatted about whether ethics is more important to business success than a good product, and more. Link below for the full episode bbc.com/audio/play/p0nm33fq

Fascists want our kids brains filled with racist 💩

Until the text of the US-Iran deal is signed and released, there is going to be a lot of spin on both sides. But here is my initial take. This war was a mistake, and it needs to end. The President thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly, but it did not. In fact, it has been strengthened strategically by its survival against a heavy US-Israeli assault and carrying out some effective counterstrikes. Many countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to deescalate and rebuild ties. A sign of which way the wind is blowing. Getting the Strait of Hormuz open is the most important outcome of this MOU. Of course, the Strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy and rattling President Trump. As for the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement, other than to negotiate over the HEU stockpile and an enrichment moratorium. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and try to pocket concessions along the way. It is possible that no deal will every be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war. Iran is not likely to take seriously that the US would return to war, certainly before the US midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without a credible threat of force. If any agreement ultimately reached actually safely puts Iran's nuclear ambitions out of reach, I'll acknowledge it. It's just too early to make that judgment. Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA. But we are a long way from being able to make that comparison, and it may end up no better, or weaker than that deal. But in some ways, Trump's deal and the JCPOA are already similar. Nothing on ballistic missiles, nothing on proxies, nothing on weakening the regime or helping the Iranian people. And plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime, and be poured into the missile program and proxy network. Honest critics of the JCPOA will not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump's approach. Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump's and Netanyahu's interests, there was a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end. Netanyahu wanted to continue. Trump's claim to include Lebanon in the ceasefire and his harsh shutting down Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel's campaign of strikes in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. So let's hope we see the removal of Iran's enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. But to achieve those goals, Trump's team is going to need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. If it is a phase one splash with no follow-up on implementation of later phases, like in Gaza, we will be much worse off after, and because of, this war.

RT @YuanfenYang: I really welcome today's announcement that the government will be bringing in a social media ban for under 16s, after the…

Chris, what is most striking about your piece is not the reporting of events, but the relentless effort to frame every development through the prism of impending collapse. Throughout the article, readers are presented not with objective analysis, but with a succession of loaded phrases and assumptions designed to reinforce a predetermined narrative. A premiership is described as "flailing", potential rivals are elevated into waiting successors, and routine political disagreement is transformed into evidence of a government supposedly on the verge of disintegration. What is conspicuously absent is any serious examination of the reality facing any government today. Defence spending does not emerge from thin air. Every additional pound committed to the armed forces must either be raised through taxation, borrowed, or diverted from another area of public expenditure. That is not a political slogan. It is a fiscal fact. You devote considerable attention to those criticising the Defence Investment Plan, yet remarkably little attention to what their alternative would be. If the spending settlement is inadequate, what precisely should replace it? Where would the money come from? Which taxes should rise, or which public services should face reductions? These are the questions that matter. The article also appears determined to portray every resignation as a judgement on Sir Keir Starmer's leadership while giving scant consideration to the possibility that ministers can disagree on policy without it amounting to an existential crisis for the government. Westminster may enjoy perpetual leadership speculation, but governing a country requires rather more than gossip, intrigue and anonymous briefings. Perhaps the greatest weakness in your analysis is the assumption that political commentary can substitute for political reality. The government remains in office with a substantial parliamentary majority, inflation has fallen significantly from its peak, economic growth has returned, and major policy decisions continue to be implemented. Whether one supports the government or not, those are facts rather than interpretations. In the end, your article says far more about the current appetite among sections of the media for leadership drama than it does about the actual condition of the government. The country deserves analysis grounded in evidence, not a running commentary built upon Westminster's favourite pastime: predicting the imminent downfall of every Prime Minister. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx26…

RT @MayorofLondon: Disinformation about London is spreading globally, fuelling fear for politics and profit. We’re launching a major new c…

Labour must borrow to invest to meet its 3%/GDP Defence spending target: change the "debt falling by X" fiscal rule, repurpose the National Wealth Fund and join the DSRB... link in next post...

Efforts to deal with the aftermath of the Russian strikes are ongoing in Kyiv, as well as in Kharkiv. Last night, the Russians launched more than 60 missiles at the capital alone. In total, 70 missiles and 611 drones were used against Ukraine. As of now, 28 people have been reported injured and four killed in the capital. My condolences to all their families and loved ones. A Russian strike on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra set the Dormition Cathedral on fire – a church whose history dates back to the 11th century. And this is one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date. The State Emergency Service has already extinguished the fire on the cathedral’s roof. In Kharkiv, the Russians carried out a repeat strike against our rescuers as they were putting out a fire at the site of an earlier strike on an industrial facility. So far, tragically, five people have been confirmed killed. My condolences to all their families and loved ones. Nine people have been injured. In Dnipro, Russia struck the grounds of a railway station, a college, and several enterprises. Other cities and communities were targeted as well. The Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and Mykolaiv regions were also under attack. This is how Russia shows the world its intention to continue the war. It is very important that there be a response from the G7 countries, which are now gathering for their summit – and that this response be decisive and substantive: more pressure on the aggressor and more support for Ukraine’s air defense, especially anti-ballistic capabilities. I thank everyone who is helping us protect lives.

Brilliant to hear Keir Starmer announce a ban on social media for U16s and restrictions on adult/child online gaming connections 💥💥💥 take on the platforms and smash them!

Translated: There goes our ad revenue 👇🏽