Awwww love it 🙏🏻
It’s Budget Day! And the old BBC dream team — JoCo and Andrew Neil — reunites on Times Radio from 1pm til 4pm today with all the Budget coverage you’ll ever need. Don’t miss it @TimesRadio — online, free TimesRadio app, Times app, digital, Alexa etc.
3
4
19
6,331
Giles Dilnot retweeted
NEW Why did a judge impose a community sentence on a 14-year-old boy who stabbed a girl ten times in a terrifying, premeditated attack? Footage shows him chasing her around a store in Cirencester, where he also stabbed a shopkeeper.
Finally, after 5 weeks, I’ve been sent transcripts of the court proceedings.
* It’s clear the judge’s priority was the boy’s “rehabilitation” & managing future risk.
* The judge did not appear to consider the need for deterrence or punishment.
* The judge was “deeply unhappy…astonished” the boy had been held in a secure children’s unit for 3 months after admitting guilt & released him on bail.
* When bailed the boy did not return home until early hours when meant to be under curfew & so couldn’t be tagged straight away
* A youth offending team officer expressed concerns about the eventual sentence - a referral order - because it doesn’t include tagging/curfew requirements
* Court heard about boy’s interest in disturbing films, his unpredictability & how he “craved” custody
All in all, what emerges is a far from satisfactory sentencing process, containing some rather flippant remarks from a judge who appeared determined to avoid imposing custody from the outset.
Story with @charleshymas in @Telegraph :
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/2…
Finally, after 5 weeks, I’ve been sent transcripts of the court proceedings.
* It’s clear the judge’s priority was the boy’s “rehabilitation” & managing future risk.
* The judge did not appear to consider the need for deterrence or punishment.
* The judge was “deeply unhappy…astonished” the boy had been held in a secure children’s unit for 3 months after admitting guilt & released him on bail.
* When bailed the boy did not return home until early hours when meant to be under curfew & so couldn’t be tagged straight away
* A youth offending team officer expressed concerns about the eventual sentence - a referral order - because it doesn’t include tagging/curfew requirements
* Court heard about boy’s interest in disturbing films, his unpredictability & how he “craved” custody
All in all, what emerges is a far from satisfactory sentencing process, containing some rather flippant remarks from a judge who appeared determined to avoid imposing custody from the outset.
Story with @charleshymas in @Telegraph :
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/2…
26
123
374
10,481
Giles Dilnot retweeted
My Chairman of Ways and Means uniform has been around since 1641- always worn by men till now. The tie is a nod to my East #Sussex constituency. #budget2026
@ayeshahazarika
@ayeshahazarika
1
4
29
6,368
At last Albanese gets called out for her shameless bias and distortion - but why she hasn’t been stripped of her role for these long known issues is a still mystery.
BREAKING: Francesca Albanese, Hamas’ de facto U.N. spokesperson, gets rebuked after her presentation by a cross-regional coalition including the United States, Italy, Argentina, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, and Fiji.
Argentina: “The objectivity is questionable. The report use of civilian infrastructure such as schools by Hamas and other terrorist groups.”
Fiji: “Resolution 5/2 binds every mandate holder to impartiality and restraint. A pattern of public commentary has in our assessment moved outside that code.”
Romania: “The issue of antisemitism as well as Holocaust distortion and denial are top priorities for my country.”
Italy: “The independence and credibility of the mandates are best served by the consistent respect and application of the Code of Conduct.”
Bulgaria: “It is essential that special rapporteurs be guided in their work by the Code of Conduct for special procedure mandate holders of the Human Rights Council and uphold the principles of independence, impartiality, objectivity, balance, and non-selectivity.”
Czechia: “We wish to underline the importance of impartiality, accuracy, and due consideration of the historical context in the special rapporteur's work.”
0
0
9
769
“But we football administrators apologise to China for Mbappe pointing out the truth and ruffling red feathers” 😳🙄
The thing about Mao Zedong was that he was not just a dictator. He was actually a f***ing idiot to such an extent that it would make Trump’s ridiculous claims of himself being a “stable genius” almost credible.
Mao forced farmers to make steel out of farm tools and in small left farmers with no tools to work the fields. He forced farmers to chase away insect-eating sparrows, which led yo locust-infested fields. Millions starved to death as a result.
He thought that turning the population on itself in endless struggle was the path to proletariat prosperity - all it had done was to make more starve to death, loss of Chinese know-how across the board and China left on the brink of bankruptcy.
His views on dental hygiene were so off the planet that he eschewed both “modern” or more traditional Chinese modes of dental care, to the point that his doctors and others all mention the rotting stench that emanated from his mouth.
Not all dictators are idiots - Deng Xiaoping was a dictator but not an idiot. But Mao excelled himself in his idiotmaxxing, more a buffoonish Idi Amin than a dangerously bright Emperor Kangxi.
1
0
1
632
Giles Dilnot retweeted
I wanted to visualise Britain's state spending ahead of the Budget, so I've vibe coded an app which presents it as a disk drive.
Take a look at the tradeoffs and see if you can make the budget fit:
britains-disk.pages.dev
Take a look at the tradeoffs and see if you can make the budget fit:
britains-disk.pages.dev
112
117
1,361
621,121
Saying you are not-white so cannot be racist whilst transparently being a racist still make you a racist. That the term has been thrown around a lot doesn’t stop real racism being racism. Saying you’ve always been anti-racist is not a mic drop defence when you are being a racist.
1
4
24
932
Giles Dilnot retweeted
@AVMikhailova @RaheemKassam I would like to put a complaint against the editor in chief of Breitbart in 2018, Raheem Kassam, for wrongful description of Raheem Kassam as chief of staff to Farage...
breitbart.com/europe/2018/02…
breitbart.com/europe/2018/02…
6
63
203
11,523
The Times isn’t buying Kassam’s toxic strategy either - he’s actually damaged the people he thought he was supporting and helping
Nigel Farage is failing to call out blatant racism within Reform thetimes.com/comment/the-ti…
6
10
40
2,056
Giles Dilnot retweeted
For those following along, the post Raheem made referring to himself as a former chief of staff, he has now deleted
10
85
284
20,920
Well having been on @LBC earlier I was about to get off a bus to walk home when I spotted in the bus stop the most god awful vicious fight between two small but adult women cheers on by an absolutely hammered thug. Stopped the bus, driver was helpful and hemmed the drunk…
4
2
19
4,073
Bus driver and a few men dealt with drunk who then backed off and sloped away. I called police and ambulance and passengers tried to remonstrate with attacker who in a clearly drunk state frustratingly slunk away while I was on phone with police.
That poor girl’s face. Horrible
That poor girl’s face. Horrible
1
1
8
839
Random acts of human kindness by some, really vicious nastiness from the attacker, drunk indifference to the beating from the man, the level of distress from the victim, blood, shock and what pointless ugly stupid end to a day. 🙄🤷🏻♂️
2
0
11
607
The right choice to have in Washington and he probably always was until Starmer’s fans of “just Peter” obscured that fact
COUNTERING TEHRAN: "My Director of MI5, our domestic counter-terrorism agency, called out over 20 plots in the U.K. over the last few years... British jets have flown over 2,400 hours in the Middle East shooting down drones and missiles... In the end, the goal is the same against make sure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon." @CTurnerFCDO
1
2
25
6,510
Not that Twitter/X’s armchair detectives and activist counter terror experts agreed, preferring the high art of ‘common sense’ speculation and the old “it’s open an’shut mate” ploy
Met Police hit back at criticism over bailing Fairford suspects how two have been charged under Nat Sec laws:
“We know that decisions made during our investigations can sometimes appear illogical to those on the outside, but I want to make it very clear that there will always be a good reason or rationale behind them.”
“In this case, this decision-making has led to swifter progress, better evidence and ultimately us securing the charges.
“In sensitive investigations like this, it can take time to convert intelligence into evidence.”
0
2
6
1,069
Giles Dilnot retweeted
Nigel Farage today says Raheem Kassam is ‘not a former chief of staff’ - which is news to all journalists who previously dealt with him as his former chief of staff
77
339
1,042
41,561
Kassam’s weasel words are 🙄, because criticism isn’t of just one tweet but a whole strategy - plus Reform described him as a ‘random journalist’ not connected to Reform, in America. Not -in fact NF’s former CoS- back here all summer, and 👇🏻 “a close ally” who he’s “spoken to”
EXCL: Nigel Farage privately rebuked a close ally for calling Kemi Badenoch a “Nigerian scammer”, telling him the remark was not clever or funny
Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to the Reform UK leader, told The Times that he accepted Farage’s criticism and acknowledged his comments had been “particularly poorly timed”
However Kassam insisted he had been referencing Fonejacker, a Channel 4 comedy programme from 2007, and accused Britain of having lost its “sense of irony”
The programme featured prank calls, including one that sought to solicit people’s bank account details under the guise of paying them winnings from a fake competition worth thousands of “Ugandan dollars”
One recurring character in the show was George Agdgdgwngo, an African fraudster who tried to obtain people’s bank details using increasingly absurd stories, including a claim that a pigeon had become trapped inside a bank vault
“I’ve spoken to Nigel, and he made it clear to me that he thinks it wasn’t clever or funny, and I accept that. Maybe con artist or liar would’ve been better phrasing. Because, to me, that’s what Kemi Badenoch is, and I know more people are beginning to find this out. I was once a member of the Tory party, and it’s genuinely because of this Lib-Demification that I left.”
“I take the point that the ‘Nigeria’ [Fonejacker] element of my tweet was, perhaps intentionally, lost on the media class and spun by Tory HQ to their client reporters. As someone who wants Reform to succeed, I need to bear those things in mind."
“I’ve lived in the US for a decade and it’s sad that, to me, Britain has lost so much of its sense of irony and abstraction. But that isn’t to say I shouldn’t have thought more carefully about that before firing off those tweets."
“Again, I respect Nigel’s views on this. He’s a serious leader for serious times and I take his guidance on such matters in the constructive manner in which they are intended.”
With @Geri_E_L_Scott
thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…
1
10
37
1,596