Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola Profile picture
Writer & speaker. Author of The Case for People's QE (Polity). Coming soon: The Absolute Essentials of Banking (Routledge). Sings a bit too.
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Feb 21 4 tweets 2 min read
Actually, you've set up a new company called Reform 2025, of which you and Zia Yusuf are sole directors. It's a company limited by guarantee and has no shareholders. But it's not "owned" by its members. 1/ …te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/162607… x.com/Nigel_Farage/s… Your old company, Reform UK Party Ltd, still exists. It is a private limited company. You have sold your shareholding in this company to your new company, Reform 2025 Ltd. …te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/116948…
Feb 8 6 tweets 2 min read
This is like a case study in extreme apartheid. They built a cage around a Palestinian family's home to separate it from the Jewish settlement surrounding it. The only gate to the cage is controlled by the Israeli army. The Jewish settlement is completely illegal. And so is the cage. And the presence of the IDF. And the IDF's refusal to open the gate to allow a sick elderly woman to be taken to hospital. They'd have let her die.
Feb 8 8 tweets 3 min read
For 16 months there has been a culture of silence about the true nature of the "peaceful Israeli communities" attacked on 7/10. Time that silence was broken. Those communities were established by Israel to secure the lands stolen from the Palestinians expelled to the Gaza Strip. In other words, to prevent the Palestinians returning. Image
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Jan 23 21 tweets 5 min read
This is the source of the Treasury's claim that in 2006, 90% of Waspi women (women born 6/4/1950 to 5/4/1960) knew women's state pension age was rising. At the time of the survey, these women were aged 45-56.
1/ webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100208…Image The survey was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and Professor Stephen McKay. It used a nationally representative sample of 1,950 adults aged 18-69. The sample was fairly evenly spread across age groups but there were more women than men.
Jan 3 7 tweets 2 min read
He was repeatedly warned that his algorithmic stablecoin could go into a death spiral. Instead of listening, he insulted those who warned him. But being a blithering idiot and too arrogant to listen to expert advice doesn't make him a fraudster. The question the court will have to answer is whether he intended to defraud people of their money. I'm not sure he did.
Dec 9, 2024 12 tweets 2 min read
I did a detailed analysis of the reasons for Silvergate's collapse, including the FHLB's decision to pull its funding, in March 2023. Nic Carter has of course gone for a conspiracy theory. But there are simpler explanations. coppolacomment.com/2023/03/lesson… x.com/Bitfinexed/sta… One possibility is that the rapid fall in the fair value of Silvergate's assets meant it failed to meet the FHLB's tangible capital rule, which is more stringent for smaller banks than the Fed's capital requirements.
Nov 11, 2024 14 tweets 3 min read
Still reading Meir Kahane. Blimey he's racist. And hopelessly illogical. After saying "Arabs can find a home in any of their 22 states", he then writes an entire chapter explaining why they can't. But at least he repudiates the sickening liberal Zionist gaslighting of Palestinians, which has gone on for decades and continues to this day in "peace proposals" that envisage Palestinians happily living in segregated bantustans with fewer rights than Jews.
Oct 21, 2024 15 tweets 3 min read
On Saturday, I received a letter from the DWP telling my partner about changes to Winter Fuel Payment.

My partner died on Thursday 19th September. I informed the DWP of his death on Friday 27th September using the online "Tell Us Once" service. 1/ My partner's state pension has already been stopped. I did not understand why they were writing to him about WFP, since clearly they knew he was dead. 2/
Sep 9, 2024 11 tweets 4 min read
This is idiotic. The hostages are in Gaza. Israel controls all movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza, and its military campaign creates serious risks for NGO staff. Clearly Israel must consent to allow Red Cross staff into Gaza and make it safe for them to do so. We identified only one BBC editorial reference to the Red Cross failing to visit hostages, and remarkably the BBC appeared to equally place the blame on Israel . The article reported that the Red Cross have been: “asking to visit the hostages, deliver medicalsupplies, and bring newsto desperate families. None of that can happen unless both Hamas and Israel agree”.  The suggestion that access to the Hostages is reliant on Israeli consent seems baseless. This is idiotic too. The reason the BBC (and other news organisations) preface "Gaza health ministry" with "Hamas-run" is to issue a content warning on the information provided by the health ministry, not to validate Hamas. The BBC frequently refers to the Hamas ‘run’ or ‘controlled’ Gaza Health Ministry. We have found:  a) 593 mentions of Hamas within 10 words of ‘health’ and ‘ministry’ (in other words, 4.8% of all mentions of Hamas); and b) 440 of the BBC items mention Hamas within 10 words of ‘health’ and ‘ministry’ (in other words, 29.3% of all items mentioning Hamas).  Thus, Hamas is more likely to be referred to in connection with a Health Ministry than as a ‘proscribed terrorist organisation’.
Sep 4, 2024 11 tweets 2 min read
I am reminded of them every time I enter @RochesterCathed and see the shadows of the paintings that were hacked off the walls, plastered over or whitewashed, and the banner in the Quire listing the Bishops of Rochester that starts with John Fisher and ends with Nicholas Ridley. John Fisher was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to recognise him as head of the Church in England and opposing his marriage to Anne Boleyn. He is a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
Aug 28, 2024 5 tweets 1 min read
There can be no private sector solution to the crisis engulfing water companies that does not involve very large increases in customer bills. Nationalise them. These companies provide a finite resource to a restricted population. Their revenue comes almost entirely from customer payments. The idea that shareholders can have high returns AND customers low bills necessarily means inadequate investment and/or unsustainable debt.
Aug 27, 2024 16 tweets 4 min read
Blimey. And you thought Thames Water was complicated. This is Southern Water. Topco (Greensands Holdings Ltd) is registered in Jersey. Image That strange arrangement at the bottom of the chart is a Whole Business Securitisation similar to that in Thames Water. And as with Thames Water, there is external debt in the parasitical extractive structure built on top of the regulated utility.
Aug 19, 2024 14 tweets 3 min read
I watched the BBC Storyville documentary about Yosef Weitz again last night. Interesting detail I missed the first time: clip of an Israeli academic saying that Ben-Gurion commissioned an academic research paper to "prove" that Palestinians chose to leave in 1948... 1/ ... he emphasised that Ben-Gurion didn't want genuine academic research to find out the reasons why Palestinians left, he wanted an academic paper to support his story that Palestinians freely chose to leave and were not driven out by the IDF. Astonishing. /2
Aug 6, 2024 13 tweets 6 min read
I read their amicus brief and can summarise it thus:

"We talked to our friends in the IDF and they told us the charges were unfounded". The same group produced a report on the 2014 Gaza war. embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOL…
Jul 22, 2024 41 tweets 6 min read
Distressing to see a leading legal commentator make statements about the ICJ's advisory opinion that are simply untrue. The ICJ did not ignore Israel's security needs, as @JoshuaRozenberg claims. It said they did not override the Palestinian's right to self-determination. 1/ In paragraph 233, the Court said:

"The Court considers that, in cases of foreign occupation such as the present case, the right of self-determination constitutes a peremptory norm of international law." 2/
Jul 20, 2024 17 tweets 3 min read
Israel has been told many times by legal authorities that it doesn't have a right of self-defence in the occupied Palestinian territories, and yet it still persists in claiming this right, and Western leaders - some of whom should know better - tamely agree. Israel's belligerent actions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not self-defence, they are violations of its legal obligations as an occupying power. The solution to its perceived need for security is to end the occupation, not to brutalise the occupied population.
Jul 10, 2024 15 tweets 3 min read
This "dividend" is not a payment to external shareholders, it is a cash transfer to Thames Water's private equity parent, Kemble Finance. In private equity such transfers are usually structured as debt service. I'm not sure why the Kemble-TW relationship relies on equity. Kemble Finance is wholly reliant on the cash transfers from TW to service its debts. Without them it would collapse into insolvency, forcing at the very least a distressed sale of TW. I suspect the regulator thinks this is not in the best interests of TW's customers.
Jul 8, 2024 6 tweets 2 min read
@richardathome @Opinion_Lassie @JohnWest_JAWS @BBCNews @Channel4News @BylineTimes The vetting company is real. is its trading name, hence the dormant company (it protects the brand name). The company itself is Sphinx Technology Ltd.
Website:
Companies House: Vetting.com
sphinxtechnology.co.uk
…te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/132048… @richardathome @Opinion_Lassie @JohnWest_JAWS @BBCNews @Channel4News @BylineTimes Companies House records show that Sphinx Technology Ltd was incorporated in February 2021 and Colin Bloom was appointed as director in March 2021. Image
Jun 18, 2024 25 tweets 6 min read
Dear @reformparty_Uk, you say you want to get "up to 2 million" economically inactive people "back to work", and you think this will save £15 billion in benefit payments. Here's a reality check... 1/ As of December 2023, 5.44 million women aged 16-64 were economically inactive. That's about a quarter of all women in this age group.
3.84 million men were economically active, about 18% of that age group.

2/researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06…
Jun 16, 2024 15 tweets 3 min read
They don't mean Bank of England debt, they mean the UK Gilts purchased by the BoE in return for new bank reserves during the various rounds of QE. The Bank of England has been selling these gilts off to drain excess reserves - what is known as "QT". Reform proposes to end QT. 1/ As far as I can tell, Reform proposes to refinance gilts held by the Bank of England as zero-coupon 75-year bonds, which the Bank would have to hold to maturity. This would prevent the Bank draining any more of the excess bank reserves from the system. 2/
Jun 8, 2024 5 tweets 2 min read
Sorry to throw a bucket of cold water over this, but economic inactivity is at almost the lowest level in history and far below what it was in 2010 when the Tories came to power. The small rise since Feb 2020 is largely explained by population ageing. coppolacomment.com/2024/06/the-my…
Here's the long view of the UK's inactivity rate. The tiny blip at the RH side is the rise since the pandemic. Image