As soon as I got into Tiktok (about a year ago) I saw lots of videos by wannabe British finance and investing "influencers", who emphasised how easy it was to make a passive income through multiple buy-to-let houses.

And I think it says a lot about the world we live in...👇🏽 Firstly, if wannabe influencers on Tiktok are talking about it, it must already be popular.

That suggests a lot of Britons took advantage of zero interest rates to borrow money up to their eyeballs for buy-to-let properties.

This might explain our housing shortage problem

A few thoughts on Suella Braverman's extreme and offensive language on asylum seekers crossing the Channel.

There's this idea that Rishi Sunak is using another brown woman to "whitewash racism".
THREAD Some on the left believe that only white people can be racist. This neatly puts brown and black people on a pedestal, who can only be authentic and "right on" with left-wing politics.

I'm just glad we have Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Rishi Sunak to prove you wrong.

We all love to hate the Tories, but I think left/liberals in the West should look at the bigger picture.

Because there's a global culture war going on and we're on the losing side.

Written about it in the FT but here's an overview - THREAD
ft.com/content/1fcc69… Lefties say Rishi Sunak is too rich to be representative and is bringing in policies to harm minorities. Partially agree.

But the fact he's been tasked to lead Britain shows we are increasingly comfortable with being a Multicultural Democracy. That matters a great deal /2

One common response to Rishi Sunak's coronation as PM is that he doesn't represent the "common man" or even British Indians.

This is true. But there is an important way in which he is one of us, the Tofu-eating Twitterati, and why the hard-right hate him. When you hear phrases like "globalist" and "WEF elite" etc, mostly from the radical- & far-right, the implication is that Rishi Sunak is a metropolitan social liberal.

Not the criticism Suella Braverman and Priti Patel usually get.

And Sunak *is* obviously a social liberal.

As we are about to get our first non-white and Hindu PM, a few reminders:

1) Disparaging someone's racial or religious background, or claiming they're not "authentic" brown/Hindu is racist.

2) Point 1 applies regardless of your own background.

3) Hindu is not same as Hindutva 4) Calling someone a "brown sahib" or a "coconut" or anything along those lines is racist and derogatory. Why? You're implying they are controlled by white people.

5) Rishi Sunak doesn't represent you? That's fine too. He's not trying to
independent.co.uk/voices/conserv…

Here's the case against Rishi Sunak as PM, from a liberal-left perspective.
Thread

1) He has absolutely no good ideas. His earlier leadership campaign was awful, with not one good idea.

2) he will claim a "mandate" from the markets (not so simple, pal) to pursue more austerity 3) He's a plutocrat, a rich kid with no sense of how the poor in Britain are suffering. He'll say Britain needs a large dose of cuts to balance the books because that's the kind of politics he's comfortable with.

4) He will always pander to the Tory right bc he's scared of them

I was told this morning that the Indian government is retaliating against Suella Braverman's comments last week by putting a delay on visas to India.

This has led to hundreds of British Indians having their plans thrown into disarray over visa delays. /1 Background: Suella Braverman told the Spectator she had “concerns about having an open borders migration policy with India” and that Indian visa overstayers were a huge problem.

The Indian govt was quite annoyed by this statement. /2
thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/…

Here's how I think the UK's economic situation could rapidly deteriorate in the coming weeks. First, it's worth remembering the fall of the pound is driven, partly, by the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates *very* rapidly.

This has led to the the Dollar rising against all major currencies in recent months.

BUT our weaker economy has made the Pound's fall worse

Ok, I've been watching the violence and mayhem unfold in Leicester with alarm, as it's bad and could escalate further.

I’ve been warning about such rising tension - imported from South Asia - for years, and police need to get a grip.

Thread on events & thoughts👇🏽 First, this is not a definitive series of events but my rough timeline of how things escalated.

This all kicked off on 28 August after a India-Pakistan cricket match, when India fans converged on Leicester to shout "Pakistan Murdabad" (Death to Pakistan).

A week ago, we published an editorial on The Independent by a Hindu woman on the bigotry (against Muslims) she was increasingly see around her.

After it was published, she immediately received threats and became worried for herself & family.

We took the article down.
Thread 👇🏽 (I'm writing this thread with her permission)

None of the complaints were based on anything factual, they simply accused her of having an agenda against Hindus, even though she is still Hindu.

This sort of intimidation is not new and sadly all too prevalent

A thread on why nationalising UK energy 🔥 companies to stop 🚀 bills:

- is bad for tackling climate crisis
- won't be taken up by Labour party
- wouldn't work even taken up by Jeremy Corbyn

👇🏽 First question: how much would it cost?

Depends on what you want to buy.

TUC say it will cost just £2.85 billion.
But, crucially, we would only buy their customers not more than that.

tuc.org.uk/news/tuc-publi…

I don't under this cognitive dissonance.

We agree it's wrong to attack Salman Rushdie for offending people... and yet we want to cancel comedians for offending people.

Or are we saying its ok to offend religious people but not others? That doesn't fly either. Let's not forget that when Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses came out, lots of Muslims (around the world) said it was offensive and derogatory towards them.

That's the reason why he faces death threats, because he was "offensive".

Outside of the financial press, there has been very little attention paid to this coming cliff edge.

Russia still has the potential to devastate European economies, and this week we may see that in action.

Worse, Europe is not prepared for it.
Thread 👇🏼 Last week, Russia switched off all gas supplies to Europe through its Nordstream 1 pipeline.

This is supposed to be routine maintenance but there are serious worries Russia may not resume supplies.

This graph from Reuters

Hi Twitter! I'm launching something new 🔥🔥

I’ve been writing about climate change for a long time.

I’ve also been painfully aware that trying to make people feel guilty, alarmed or shamed into action doesn’t always work.

I think there is a better way. So here it is 👇🏽 'Energy Disrupt' is about the coming energy revolution.

Politicians and media call it a 'transition' - but clean, renewable energy will be transformative.

It will change everything.

energydisrupt.substack.com/p/we-are-on-th…

This is big, very big.

If the UK can manage to get all its electricity from clean sources by 2035, it will set a precedent for the world.

The framing - it will make us less vulnerable to gas / oil price shocks - is spot on too Politically, Labour should have been making these kind of targeted, bold promises.

Instead we make vague promises about spending billions and arguing about the 'green new deal' (which the public know FA about). 😞

I think the England football team are teaching something important.

For the right, they are creating symbols of a new English identity: comfortable in its diversity and tolerance (pro-LGBT, pro-BLM).

For the left, they illustrate what progressive patriotism looks like.
[thread] Naturally, this is why some on the left and right are uncomfortable.

Some right-wingers fear the #ENG team is mainstreaming cultural values they dislike. Some on the left fear the team are popularising 'jingoism' or nationalism.

Both strands are (deservedly) being left behind

I'm going to be contrarian here, but I think the Labour Party, especially the centre left, need to chill out.

It's extraordinary that @Keir_Starmer is being judged against precedent, as if Britain just had a normal year.
1/n Britain just faced the biggest crisis since WW2 (and it's not over yet!), Boris Johnson could come out with post-9/11 Bush level ratings.

But.... he didn't.

So why is Starmer being compared to previous leaders when they didn't even come close to facing anything like this?

Here's my write-up that NO ONE asked for and a topic you all love-hate.

This shouldn't be complicated and doesn't need some detailed policy analysis.

Labour just doesn't know how to talk to people. A bit like me as a teenager!
sunnyhundal.substack.com/p/labours-prob… TL;DR

Detailed policies are a good goal. But we are putting the horse before the cart. The leader of the Labour party needs to know how to connect with people before he can get their vote. That doesn't come through policy. It comes by earning their trust first.

Ok, a quick thread on why "calling out" racism doesn't work - when that's exactly what the far-right are looking for.

See these tweets by a prominent White Nationalist YouTuber for a start. They'll give you a clue. Here we have a White Nationalist explicitly saying:

1) Their strategy is to hijack radio / TV shows and "use your anger to create publicity".

This is literally their aim. We played straight into them

2) Amazed that the Left has fallen into the trap of seeing Nazis everywhere.

Some quick thoughts on Keir Starmer and racism and *that* LBC interview yesterday.

This will apply a lot over the next few years, so consider them ever-green tweets. There will be times when Starmer won't react to rows on racism to how I would react.

But he has to pull together a broad coalition of voters, not me. Labour needs focus, discipline.

Stay away from culture wars. Labour doesn't need a civil war everytime Owen Jones thinks so.

So, the not-politically-correct Home Office review on grooming gangs, ordered by not-politically-correct Sajid Javid, finds:

- grooming gangs came from diverse backgrounds
- "links between ethnicity and this form of offending" could not be proven 🤔🤔

independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/… I first wrote about CSE around... 2004 (wow, 16 years now)... and how we need a full investigation into this topic instead of brushing it under the carpet, after a C4 doc on the topic got shelved.

I've always believed we need a proper investigation regardless of sensitivities.