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Bushra Shaikh: This is what Donald Trump celebrated…

This is what Donald Trump celebrated: Nine U.S. bunker buster bombs, double tap strike, both within the space of two hours, heavily impacted B1 bridge in Karaj, Alborz. Beyond breaking international law by hitting civilian infrastructure, these strikes killed 13 Iranian civillians, of which included pregnant women and children as young as 6 months old. 250 people injured. On a day where families were picnicking below the bridge to celebrate nature day. Where is the international community? Grave war crimes and the silence is deafening.

Dale Vince: The biggest tax increase in British history…

The biggest tax increase in British history is being done by stealth. Since the Tories froze the annual tax free allowance in 2021, instead of raising it in line with inflation, 2 million more people have been dragged into the income tax bracket - raising nearly £100 Billion. That’s shocking. If this government won't or can’t remove this new tax burden from the poorest among us, they should introduce a tax at the high end of wealth - to be fair. They could raise £26 Billion a year, a very similar sum actually to the income tax stealth move - and it would be super fair, a tiny 2% tax on wealth above £10 million. It’s wrong to place the burden only on those at the lowest end of earnings and wealth. I want to live in a fairer country, for that we need a fairer tax system. We need to reform the one we have. It was written by people with money for people with money, at 3,000 pages long it’s ten times that of other nations - because it’s chock full of exemptions and loopholes.

Daniel Lacalle: It makes no sense for central banks...

It makes no sense for central banks to hike rates in a temporary energy shock. Rate hikes hurt consumers and businesses, and have no impact on the geopolitical risk premium attached to commodity prices or on government spending plans. Furthermore, by keeping money supply and liquidity elevated, central banks incentivise and perpetuate high government borrowing, which causes persistent inflation. Hence, hiking rates and incentivising government spending exacerbate the same productive sector weakness and stagflation risk they claim to try to avoid.

Liz Webster: As Starmer faces a leadership…

😡 As Starmer faces a leadership crisis and expected local election wipeout, his niece Ellie Sandover has been parachuted into a safe Labour seat in Croydon. Sitting councillors reportedly removed to make way for her. Nepotism and central control, while he lectures everyone else about “due process.” @LibDems did similar with @DavidCampanale in Sutton and are now staring at a big payout. Party machine control freakery looking after their own while preaching democracy. Voters notice.

Franz-Stefan Gady: One issue I see here is that the perception…

One issue I see here is that the perception of a transparent battlespace (IMO semi-transparent at best) paired with the notion of accelerated kill-chains is a further widening of the technical and tactical levels of warfare from the operational and strategic-political levels of warfare, which creates essentially two wars, and makes successful war termination harder. The combination creates a war-termination problem by structurally widening the gap between the technical-tactical levels of war and the operational and strategic-political levels. Precision warfare encourages planners to substitute the act of striking for a theory of how striking produces not only political but also operational-level outcomes. Transparent battlespace assumptions make this substitution feel somewhat doctrinally respectable, because if you can see everything and kill what you see, any problem appears to dissolve into a targeting problem. This could turn into a dead-end. Beyond the strike as strategy paradox Amos Fox & I outlined before, I think that adversaries will increasingly price into their military and political decision-making overwhelming inferiority in closing of kill-chains and defeat at the tactical level and adapt their force design, structure and doctrines accordingly to “ride out” this form of precision warfare and still prevail or at least not suffer defeats at the other levels of warfare.

Dale Vince: The biggest tax increase in British history…

The biggest tax increase in British history is being done by stealth. Since the Tories froze the annual tax free allowance in 2021, instead of raising it in line with inflation, 2 million more people have been dragged into the income tax bracket - raising nearly £100 Billion. That’s shocking. If this government won't or can’t remove this new tax burden from the poorest among us, they should introduce a tax at the high end of wealth - to be fair. They could raise £26 Billion a year, a very similar sum actually to the income tax stealth move - and it would be super fair, a tiny 2% tax on wealth above £10 million. It’s wrong to place the burden only on those at the lowest end of earnings and wealth. I want to live in a fairer country, for that we need a fairer tax system. We need to reform the one we have. It was written by people with money for people with money, at 3,000 pages long it’s ten times that of other nations - because it’s chock full of exemptions and loopholes.
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