Politics
House Of The Dragon Season 3 Finale’s Major Change From Book Explained
This article contains major spoilers for the latest episode of House Of The Dragon.
House Of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has opened up about the decision to deviate from the show’s source material in its latest season finale.
Monday’s instalment of the Game Of Thrones prequel saw Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra Targaryen not just delivering a rousing speech to the masses of King’s Landing, but also revealing the Prince That Was Promised prophecy (and how it relates to her) out in the open.
None of this featured in author George R R Martin’s books, on which House Of The Dragon was based, which Condal spoke about at a press conference coinciding with the finale.
“It’s not in the book and it’s not in the history,” he explained (as reported by IGN). “But there is a bunch of talk about how Rhaenyra became very despotic and became a tyrant at the end and was very unpopular with the people.
“So we saw it as ‘this could just be something that happened and there was disagreement over exactly what it was’, so it didn’t make the historical record.”
He quipped: “But my glib sort of toss-off from the historians is, ‘Oh, well, Targaryens say crazy shit all the time’.”
Condal continued: “So much of [the Targaryens’ existence] is this self-aggrandisement. And for the stone masons standing there in the crowd just looking up at this, it could just sound like somebody trying to make something of themselves because they have no idea of all the ‘real history’ that went into Rhaenyra making that speech.
“But we wanted something that felt like a real seismic change, a sea change in Rhaenyra’s relationship to her people. She’s seen the death of their religious leader. She’s standing outside of the church of the faith of most of the people standing there, as a member of a totally different faith.
“This old Valyrian faith of dragons and fire gods and blood magic, and pronouncing herself the chosen one, the leader that is going to take them through the fire and out of the darkness.”
“And so tremendously, virtuosically performed by the great Emma D’Arcy,” he enthused.
Back in January, US broadcaster HBO confirmed that the upcoming fourth season of House Of The Dragon will be the show’s last.
Condal, according to Variety, told the press conference that he’d been “taking time off” from the fantasy world of Westeros while season three was airing, as he “needed to step away from all of this”.
However, he noted that he’s already handed a first draft of a new episode in to HBO, insisting: “We have an incredible season coming. As crazy and big as season three was, I think season four is going to be even bigger.”
All three seasons of House Of The Dragon are now streaming on Now, Sky and HBO Max in the UK.
Few familiar with Westminster City Council will be surprised by its draft proposal to refuse licenses for new pubs and nightclubs unless they ban standing up while having a pint – an activity it calls ‘vertical drinking’. After all, when it comes to petty killjoy regulations, this council has form.
Take its attitude to takeaway pizza. After a blurry night out, I usually sit on the floor, in between the sofa and coffee table, in a relaxed heap, my face as close to the hot, greasy and preferably cheesy food as possible. Coupled with a can of cold Diet Coke, it’s the perfect end to a night out. In the morning, I am immeasurably grateful to myself for the carbs and fluid consumed in this state of nirvana.
Westminster council have found a way to spoil even this in Soho. The pizza restaurant ICCO on Greek Street has a limitation on its licence that dictates it may not sell pizza for takeaway after 11pm. The chain operates two other units, both outside of Westminster’s boundaries, that have no similar restrictions.
Shrief Kamel, creative director at ICCO, has said this causes no end of grief for his staff when the clock strikes 11. Customers line up hoping for a late-night snack, and his embarrassed team has to inform them that there is a ban on boxes. Tourists end their night in London on a sour note, and incredulous residents point to their nearby flats saying, ‘but I live just there’.
On the one night a month that it does operate as a takeaway after 11pm, it has to apply a week in advance and pay a fee for a ‘temporary event notice’. On other evenings, Shrief has encountered licensing officers attending the restaurant to search through bins, checking for timestamps showing takeaway pizza sold after 11pm (always in vain). Customers who do decide to eat in at the few tables the restaurant has aren’t even allowed to take leftovers with them if they depart after 11.
Like other restrictions on venues operating in Soho, the reason cited by the council for this strange ban is the dreaded ‘cumulative impact assessment’ (CIA). This is the method that the council employs to work out what effect a concentration of venues has on the ‘licensing objectives’ handed down to them by the 2003 Licensing Act. Although the Licensing Act isn’t something the council has the power to change, the act does not require the council to maintain use of the CIA (Camden council recently ditched its CIA).
The CIA is the same mechanism that Westminster council used in its draft policy to ban ‘vertical drinking’ in pubs. The policy, which is currently out for consultation, states that there will be a standard presumption to refuse all applications for any new pub or club. However, if space for ‘vertical drinking’ is removed, then the council will consider awarding a licence.
Several Westminster councillors have taken to social media to declare themselves proud ‘vertical’ drinkers, and have consistently denied the claim that this policy amounts to a ban on standing. However, the policy reveals the council’s aversion to ‘alcohol-led’ activities, and it has yet to lay out any substance as to what the policy actually intends. Moving past the faintly comical idea of a nightclub where customers must remain seated, it seems the council has not considered what effect this paragraph would have on prospective publicans. If the intention is really isn’t to ‘reduce the extent of, or to remove opportunities for’ standing in the pub, then why include the passage at all?
Westminster council seems incapable of acknowledging the positive contribution made by Soho’s venues to the reputation of London, the social lives of residents and visitors, or the many jobs they create. Not to mention the revenue these businesses generate for the council. Hospitality is viewed in this area, and I suspect increasingly across the country, as a problem to be managed, not an industry to be encouraged and celebrated.
The licensing officers told me earlier in the summer that they would like more people to engage with the consultation process and to bring their questions and concerns. Well, these are our questions and concerns.
One of the stated objectives of the draft policy is to help reduce social isolation. The British pub must be at the centre of that mission, and the post-night-out debrief over an open pizza box is a close second. The council must change its policy: let people stand, and let them have boxes for crying out loud.
Lucy Rogers is the head of community at Looking for Growth, the political movement to end decline and save Britain.
On 7 August, streamer Asmongold received a temporary ban after he made comments about the need to murder migrant children. Since then, Asmongold has actually doubled down on his initial comments:
asmongolds response to being banned for advocating to murder migrant children was to double down and then talk about other kinds of children that should also be murdered. i am not even joking. https://t.co/EruJRhwXuh
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) August 10, 2026
Grim
Asmongold — real name Zack Hoyt — is one of the most popular right-wing streamers in the world. He’s also notorious for his personal hygiene, including his use of the infamous ‘rat alarm clock’. In his own words:
I’ve had many dead rats in the house, but there was a dead rat in the house… I use the dead rat as an alarm clock, because basically I live in Texas. It gets really hot in Texas, and whenever it would get really hot… the house would get hotter, and it would like cook the corpse of the rat, and it would make it smell worse.
So like I would wake up every morning at like 7:30 or 8:00 am.
Like I was ready to fucking go because the first thing that happened is I’d smell that goddamn rat. You know what the fuck? Yeah, this is a, that’s what, it’s a natural alarm. Yeah, free alarm clock.
In his latest controversy, Asmongold was commenting on a video which covered the recent incident in Ceuta. Said incident saw thousands of Moroccans making their way into a Spanish territory that’s situated on the African continent; it also involved Moroccan authorities assisting in the process. As Skwawkbox previously reported for the Canary:
Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente has suggested Israel is behind the ‘immigration crisis’ in Spain’s Ceuta enclave in Morocco.
Puente said:
The Moroccan government is widely considered a US client state and is heavily dependent on Israeli weapons supply. Israel and the US have been accused of coordinating the Ceuta crisis, in which thousands of Moroccans poured into the enclave and at least 67 people have died, to punish Spain. Spain’s resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its refusal to allow US warplanes to use Spanish bases and airspace to attack Iran and Spain’s condemnation of Israel’s racist attack on footballer Lamine Yamal have infuriated the imperialist regimes.
Witnessing footage of these scenes, Asmongold said:
I’d shoot whoever
He further specified:
kids, women, men, anybody.
Asmongold says undocumented children need to get shot if they cross the border with their parents.
"If you don't do that, they'll use women and children as shields to get themselves over." "These people are animals, they're savages" pic.twitter.com/eox5pZzl8D
— Hasanabi Productions (fan account) (@HasanabiProd) August 4, 2026
Asmongold isn’t sorry
Speaking after the ban, the streamer said said:
So, this is the funniest thing, by the way. I actually don’t even know this is why I got banned. Twitch has never communicated to me what the thing is that I did wrong that got me banned. I’m just guessing it’s probably the thing that everybody was mad about, right?
Asmongold also clarified how he feels about the comments now:
I apologize for absolutely nothing.
He added:
People can say I’m mean, they can say I’m evil, they can say everything, but they’re not saying I’m wrong.
Contrary to this, many people are in fact saying that he’s wrong:
Kyle Kulinski on Asmongold saying he thinks women and children crossing the border illegally are fair game to sh**t:
“He’s calling others animals and savages as he’s advocating for sh**ting children”
“YOU’RE the animal, YOU’RE the savage” pic.twitter.com/GZ86kXMC5J
— Substance (@SimplySubstance) August 7, 2026
Hey @Twitch, here’s Asmongold saying he’s not sorry and the behavior that got him suspended won’t stop because he believes he did nothing wrong. He then goes on to say he will submit an appeal. I sincerely hope you deny that appeal and consider an indefinite suspension. https://t.co/evnhej3EFA pic.twitter.com/faEAVk4Fik
— sus ಠ_ಠ (@susravioli) August 9, 2026
Hoyt continued:
And I think that ultimately we should look at a lot of these uncomfortable truths with a lot more of a clear mind rather than allowing it to be polluted by people that I think want to hurt us. People that want to put us in a position that is not advantageous.
And that’s the reason why I communicate the way that I do. It is hopefully to normalize this type of language and for people to see things for what they are rather than what they want them to be. And I think that’s for better and for worse. So that’s the reason why I talk the way that I do.
I’m not sorry.
Moving forwards
While he did vow to ‘tone down his language’, it wasn’t due to any moral concerns:
I’m going to try to obviously tone it down a little bit because I don’t want to get suspended all the time.
If Hoyt is allowed to continue on the platform despite his clarifying comments, it’s a pretty clear sign that Twitch is okay with the promotion of child murder — just so long as it’s tactfully done. And this shouldn’t be that surprising. After all, this stance is no different than that of all the governments and organisations that continued to support Israel despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
We live in an increasingly inhuman world, and Asmongold is the poster boy for that.
Featured image via Dexerto
By Willem Moore
Has there ever been a dumber clever person than Jolyon Maugham? For someone with a first-class Durham degree who reached the dizzying heights of King’s Counsel, he doesn’t half swallow a lot of bullshit. First he fell for trans-fabulism, becoming one of the noisiest acolytes of the delirious idea that you can have a cock and be a woman. Now he’s fallen for the alleged fabulism of Jason Arday, the disgraced ex-prof famous for his long hair and tall tales.
No sooner had Arday’s thesis and origin story been called into question than Maugham and his nutty Good Law Project were rushing to his defence. The fox-killing, case-losing irritant headed an open letter claiming Arday was the victim of a ‘smear’ campaign by ‘right-wing newspapers’. The claim that Arday plagiarised the work of others is ‘entirely false’, said the letter-signers. It’s ‘racism’, they yelped, as if it were still 2020, as if the cynical deployment of that R-word by bourgeois pricks were still sufficient to tame public discussion. We stand in ‘unwavering solidarity’ with Arday, the letter said.
Turns out their solidarity wasn’t all that unwavering. As the accusations against Arday piled up, causing him to part ways with Cambridge, Maugham engaged in some frantic arse-covering. He wrote a Substack post in which he clings for dear life to the idea that the scrutiny of Arday is racist while also acknowledging he doesn’t know the full story. I’ve been on ‘holiday’, he says (yes, he puts ‘holiday’ in quote marks, because he is far too busy and important to take an actual vacation like you plebs). ‘I do not have the expertise to speculate on what effects [Arday’s] neurodivergence may have had on how he spoke [about his past]’, he writes.
I think this word salad might be the closest thing we’ll ever get to a mea culpa from the turbo-smug likes of Mr Maugham. The class of imperious, insufferable Brexit-allergic bores to which Mr Maugham belongs is never going to say: ‘Okay, okay, we fucked up.’ But they might, once in a while, confess to having ‘lacked the expertise’ to ‘speculate’ so cockily on a ‘matter of public interest’. I wish they’d just admit it – that for all their intellectual pretensions, they are the biggest eejits in Britain, blown this way and that by whatever ideological wind happens to be howling this week.
It’s not just Maugham. Virtually the entire Smart Set (sic) fell for Arday’s alleged grift. From Cambridge to the BBC, from ‘black academia’ to Simon & Schuster, every ivory-tower dweller fawned like a fool over this bloke with an iffy backstory whose academic work consisted of critical-race bollocks about ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘racist’ pop music. The Arday scandal has exposed the breathtaking credulity of the credentialled classes. This is more than the fall of a ‘DEI darling’ – it’s the puncturing, at last, of the fake moral authority of the graduate classes who so love to lord it over the rest of us.
Another member of the smugocracy who fell at Arday’s feet was James O’Brien, the LBC knob jockey who’s built an entire career on being a clever wanker. He, too, rushed to Arday’s defence against the accusations of academic fakery. Later, when more info came out, O’Brien said he felt ‘like a mug’. Well, if the shoe fits. Someone uncovered an old chat between Arday and O’Brien, from 2023, in which the prof gushes for three minutes straight over O’Brien’s history-shaping moral bravery. O’Brien chokes up. In the future, someone’s going to dig up this recording in the rubble of whatever remains of human society and marvel at the sheer arseholery of the 21st century.
O’Brien, of course, once wrote a book called How To Be Right. Yet he’s wrong about pretty much everything. That’s the clever crowd summed up – their arrogance is entirely out of proportion with their intellect. They pose as the singular possessors of moral truth and yet chat shit morning, noon and night. That’s the great service of the Arday scandal – it has ripped away the cultural elites’ veil of enlightenment to reveal the wide-eyed idiocy beneath. The very people who snootily view ordinary people as ‘low-information’ – translation: thick – are themselves the giddy propagators of half-truths, harebrained beliefs and post-scientific drivel. I don’t know about you but I am done with being called stupid by people who believe in lesbians with cocks.
For years, especially following the votes for Brexit and Trump in 2016, Ivy League types wrung their untoiled hands over the dim-witted throng. They came to view the masses as putty in the hands of demagogues, easily swayable by the sophistry of snake-oil populists. Yet show me the Brexiteer who displayed even a fraction of the obsequious devotion shown by Hilary Cremin as she welcomed Arday to Cambridge in 2023. She’s the head of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. She all but bowed as she greeted Arday in front of the cameras and gushed about him being ‘the best in the world’ at what he does, whatever that might be.
The Cambridge elites suspended every one of their critical faculties in the presence of this god-child of DEI, this man who they clearly hoped would wash away Cambridge’s sins of whiteness. It was undiluted demagoguery. The amount of ideological effluent that flows from our universities these days is extraordinary. It was on these leafy quads that trans irrationalism first took root. And where the demented cult of white guilt spread like a pox. And where people would need a lie-down if someone asked them: ‘Where are you from?’ I’ll never forget speaking on campuses in the late 2010s and being told Brexit was a product of mass stupidity by plummy twats who thought it was an act of genocidal erasure to say ‘he’ about a fat bloke in a boob tube.
The more that universities became factories of elite reproduction, the more awash they became with ideological folly. The more they morphed from citadels of knowledge into businesses that inculcate correct-think into the next generation of rulers, the more they’ve fallen victim to the demagogic trickery of wokeness. If we take one lesson from the Arday scandal, let it be that the ‘high information’ elites are far more vulnerable to dogma and delusion than the ‘low information’ working classes. Give me the bawdy scepticism of everyday Britain over the high-minded gibberish of the intellectual classes any day of the week.
Labour Defence Secretary Wes Streeting accepted a £30,000 donation from a think tank linked to convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
David Lawrence
David Lawrence was the co-founder and treasurer of Labour for the Long Term (LLT). But just days before setting up the think tank, Lawrence received a £500,000 “gift” from Bankman-Fried. In 2024, the “crypto king” was jailed for 25 years in an $11 billion fraud case.
Lawrence previously worked as a parliamentary assistant to former Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy. Last February, Lammy held an “off the books” meeting with serial lobbyist Trevor Chinn, who has also made cash donations to Streeting in recent months.
In November 2023, Lawrence stepped down as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Basingstoke, officially citing personal reasons. But I’ve been told that a source close to his campaign claimed the real reason was the impending release of court documents linking him to convicted fraudster Bankman-Fried.
When questioned in December 2022, LLT refused to disclose the identities of its funders, describing donors simply as:
UK citizens who support the Labour Party.
American entrepreneur Bankman-Fried was not mentioned in their response.
‘Entirely plausible’ Labour knew
On an archived version of LLT’s website, Wes Streeting is listed first amongst their parliamentary supporters. Also listed were former party chair Anneliese Dodds; Labour Friends of Israel supporter Fleur Anderson; Andy Burnham’s Trade Envoy to Ukraine, Alex Sobel; and a smattering of Labour Party peers.
In August 2022, just over a month after Bankman-Fried’s £500,000 payment to Lawrence, Streeting accepted a £30,000 donation from LLT. He used it to hire Thomas Gardiner as a policy adviser. Gardiner went on to become a key member of Streeting’s team.
According to a Labour source I spoke to, it is “entirely plausible” that the party knew about the Bankman-Fried connection to LLT. This seems to be backed up by further claims this week that, at the time of the donation to Streeting, other Labour shadow ministers had been advised against accepting money from the think tank.
Who owns Streeting?
After being appointed by Burnham as Labour’s Defence Secretary, Streeting is now responsible for national security and armed forces operations, but new revelations about the donations he has been willing to accept throw his judgement into doubt.
This year has been particularly lucrative for Streeting. On June 19th, he accepted a £20,000 donation from Daniel Luhde-Thompson, a strategic adviser at Quadrature. Quadrature now hold one million shares in IOF-linked surveillance firm Palantir, a holding currently worth over £86 million, and Palantir now has a £330 million contract with the NHS.
On that very same day in June, Streeting accepted £12,000 from Trevor Chinn. Burnham’s new Defence Secretary claims to be an opponent of Israeli settlements, but Chinn, one of his most consistent donors, is President of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, which acts as the sole British organiser of so-called “Birthright Israel” trips and regularly promotes “excursions” into illegally-occupied lands.
This year, Streeting has also accepted two payments from Mike Craven, a former adviser to Tony Blair: £5000 on July 10th and another £5000 on May 16th. Craven has also funded Hamish Falconer, Burnham’s current Minister for Europe, and Josh Simons, the Labour MP who “gave up” his seat for Keir Starmer’s successor.
In 2024, Streeting held onto his own parliamentary seat by just 528 votes after an insurgent campaign by British-Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad. Now, with growing scrutiny into who funded his own campaign, it is unclear how long Streeting will be able to hold on to his seat in the cabinet.
Featured image via the Canary
Reform UK has declared its intention to pay El Salvador to rent spaces in its notoriously hellish prisons for the UK’s prisoners.
The announcement marks the latest in a series of blatant human rights violations masquerading as political policy from the far-right party. And, of course, it just so happens to be a carbon copy of a Trump policy, to boot.
Likewise, it forms part of Reform’s broader plan to massively ramp up already overinflated levels of imprisonment in the UK. This will also include a pledge to build “nightingale prisons” to incarcerate a further 12,000 inmates.
‘No serious answers’
On 9 August, Zia Yusuf — Home Affairs spokesperson for Reform — stated that his party would:
change the law so that those who commit serious crimes like murder, manslaughter, rape and serious violence serve their full sentences.
This is a clear jab at Labour’s current early-release scheme to ease overcrowding in UK prisons. From October, some prisoners will be eligible for early release after completing half of their sentences. This is markedly less than the previous three-quarters requirement.
Unbelievably, there are over 10,000 foreign nationals in British jails.
We will deport all foreign nationals from our jails. If their home countries won’t take them back we will send them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo.
We will use the space created to ensure that serious criminals stay where they belong. Behind bars.
The Sun broke the story that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is currently in talks with the El Salvadoran government regarding the possibility of renting prison spaces. Lee Anderson, Reform’s chairman, will reportedly lead a delegation to the country itself to continue the discussions.
Never to be outdone on performative racism, a Labour spokesperson stated that:
The Government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we’re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.
Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse
Notorious human rights abuses
Prisons in El Salvador are notorious for human rights abuses, even when compared to the standards of the carceral system worldwide. Last year, watchdog organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared that these abuses included:
cases of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.
In the UK government’s own travel advice, it acknowledges that El Salvadoran prison facilities are known for “mistreatment and human rights violations”. It states that these can and do result in death. Further, it also questions the UK’s ability to gain consular access to prisoners held in El Salvador.
Human Rights Watch also detailed the foul conditions which have been reported in El Salvador’s prisons. These included cells so dangerously overcrowded that detainees had to sleep “on the floor or standing”, cruel and humiliating punishments, and regular beatings with batons.
Some prisoners reported being forced to use a hole in the cell in place of a toilet. The filthy conditions mean that tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive issues are rampant. An estimated 350 people died in the prisons between 2022 and 2025 alone.
Trump speaks, Reform’s lips move
In 2022, El Salvador’s government declared a ‘State of Exception’, suspending the right to due process. That suspension remains in place.
Between that time and 2025, the government arrested some 1.4% of its own population – roughly 85,000 individuals. Though the country has capacity for 70,000 inmates, HRW estimated that it held some 109,000 as of last year.
However, the US has further compounded that dangerous overcrowding. Back in 2025, Trump struck a deal to deport individuals – many of them Venezuelan – his administration deemed illegal migrants to CECOT, an El Salvadoran mega-prison facility.
The BBC reported that CECOT director Belarmino García greeted detainees with the words:
Welcome to hell. Welcome to the cemetery of living men. The only way you leave here is dead.
Cruelty is the point for Reform UK
Of course, the fact that Trump’s deportations lead to massive human rights abuses has done nothing to deter Reform UK from following his lead.
Likewise, the Canary has frequently reported that Farage is desperately trying to emulate the US fascist-in-chief – and particularly his murderous ICE border regime.
So, to clarify, Reform UK is actively planning to pay to send “foreign nationals” to El-Salvador, a prison system synonymous with ‘hell on earth‘.
The far-right party knows that these prisoners will inevitably suffer abuse and heinous mistreatment. At best, it doesn’t care; at worse, that degradation is the point of this scheme.
If only there was a word for a legal system which metes out human rights violations according to race or ethnicity.
Featured image via the Canary
By Grace
Madonna’s Confessions II era is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Released last week, the duet marks the singer’s first official collaboration after sharing the stage during the Queen of Pop’s Celebration tour back in 2024.
And speaking of celebrations, the Official Charts Company revealed in its “first-look” preview on Sunday evening that the new version of Love Sensation is currently on track to peak at number eight in this week’s chart.
Now, admittedly, we have to assume that this is based on physical pre-sales of the single’s CD format, meaning that unless it can keep up streams in the days ahead, this position is likely to drop before the chart is announced.
Kylie, of course, has been enjoying a chart resurgence of her own in the last few years.
Writing in the Guardian, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has released his latest plan for driving down the cost of living crisis. While the things he’s proposing aren’t objectionable, they are yet another example of tinkering around the edges.
Too many people feel like modern life is designed to catch them out.
It should be just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to start it. And if something is advertised as half price, it should actually be half price.
So I'm taking action. We’re taking every opportunity…
— Andy Burnham (@andyburnham) August 10, 2026
Burnham reflects on modern life
Burnham’s piece opens as follows:
It’s remarkable how much of modern life can seem designed to wear us down. Every “sale” seems to come with an asterisk. Consumer contracts often find a way of costing more than you expected. And too many companies want you to sign up in seconds, but then make it feel impossible to leave. It’s exhausting.
They might not be the issues that keep you up at night. But they’re often the reason you go to bed ticked off. Westminster has got used to telling people that these everyday hassles are just part of life. The response has too often been a shrug of the shoulders or just calling it bad luck.
I don’t think that’s right. Because these everyday hassles affect millions of people. And they add up. Every single one is an unnecessary cost. And when the cost of living continues to weigh heavily on so many people’s lives, we need to be pulling every single lever we can to help ease that.
Burnham continues to make the same point for successive paragraphs, suggesting they didn’t have much meat on this bone.
The ‘cost-saving’ measures proposed
Our new prime minister isn’t wrong that these things are annoying, and he highlights the following issues specifically:
First, we are putting an end to phoney bargains. We are taking on poor practices that make people’s lives harder. If something is advertised as half price, it should actually be half price. We will make sure that when families snatch a deal, they can be confident they’re actually saving. That’s the least they deserve when budgets are so tight.
Second, we are making it as easy to leave a subscription as it is to join, and businesses won’t be able to renew a subscription without notifying you. New rules will come into force in January 2027, in time for when people often start new subscriptions, or cancel the ones they have, for the year ahead.
While the first is nice, it won’t necessarily save you any money. If companies can’t lie about how big a saving is, they will presumably just be honest about the percentage of the discount rather than knocking more money off.
The second is great for the many people who forget to cancel subscriptions. Given that there are numerous apps which cater to this audience, that’s presumably a decent number of people.
Every little helps?
Obviously these ideas won’t produce big savings, but Burnham argues his government will ‘pull every single lever we can’ to ease the cost of living crisis (also known as the ‘cost of greed’ crisis). According to him, this will all have a cumulative effect:
These are just a couple of our everyday fixes. There will be more to come over the next few months and bigger plans to make life easier and fairer for people over the longer term.
Each everyday fix will be designed to put a bit more money back into people’s pockets, to make daily life a little fairer and to give people a bit more hope that politics really can work for them again.
So on the one hand, Burnham is doing many little things which could save us small amounts of money in the future. On the other, he’s doing a number of big things which will make us much, much poorer in the long run. This latter category of decisions includes:
- Supporting Trump’s disastrous war in Iran (which is going to drive extreme inflation later this year).
- Failing to renationalise utilities despite overwhelming public support for doing so (especially as many of these failed businesses could be brought back in house at no cost owing to their many outstanding debts).
- Ignoring the climate crisis which is going to make Britain poorer at best and uninhabitable at worst.
Easy wins
It seems likely that Burnham’s latest proposals will resonate with voters. Honestly, it says a lot about the state of recent governments that he has so many easy wins to choose from. His ideas won’t make a meaningful difference, though, and sooner or later voters are going to realise that.
Featured image via Christopher Furlong/ Getty Images
By Willem Moore
Between her work as an actor, comedian and presenter, Whoopi Goldberg is one of the most celebrated stars in Hollywood today – and she’s got the EGOT to prove it.
The “O” part of that coveted accolade came in the early 90s, when she picked up the Best Supporting Actress prize at the Oscars for her work in Ghost.
However, during an interview on the podcast Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, Whoopi opened up about how the role of conwoman-turned-psychic-medium Oda Mae Brown in the hit romance drama didn’t come easy.
Initially, she recalled that “every Black woman and their mama” had been called upon to audition for the role of Oda Mae but her, quipping: “They got women out the grave to come audition for this – and I hadn’t gotten a call.”
When she enquired with her agent as to why this was, her team claimed: “[We] suggested you [for the part]. They didn’t want you, because they felt people would take you out of the movie. I said how would I take them out of the movie? I don’t understand!”
Apparently, the film’s casting director had been advocating for Whoopi to land the part, and when Patrick Swayze was cast as Ghost’s leading man, he also said he wanted her to play Oda Mae.
Eventually, this was enough to get the film’s male lead and director on a plane to visit her in Alabama, where she was shooting Long Walk Home.
“Patrick and I hit it off right away, because he was just a really funny, wonderful man,” she recalled. “They literally flew in, we had some fun and did some improv, and the next day, they offered me the part.
“And [Patrick] kept saying, ‘why haven’t you called her? Did she turn it down? Did she not want to do it?’. And they finally had to say to him, ‘no, we thought it’d be too much, and [she would] just weigh [the film] down in a way we didn’t want’.”
Host Keke then suggested to Whoopi this was a case of her successfully “advocating for yourself”, after which the View panellist opened up about some more of her biggest roles – and how few of them were actually written with her in mind.
“They wrote [Sister Act] for Bette Midler,” Whoopi said. “That wasn’t mine. I was looking for work [and] apparently I’m Black! And I guess I didn’t realise it! So, every time I went looking for [a role] they were like, ‘oh, no, no, no, this isn’t for you’.
“So, I started saying to my agents, ‘give me all the stuff that people have turned down’. So, I got that Burglar that way, that was Bruce Willis’ movie. Jumpin’ Jack Flash was Shelley Long’s movie. There’s several! A whole bunch of movies! Because I felt like people really wanted to make those movies, and then the person they wanted said no. Let me see what I could do!”
Suzanne Hanover/Touchstone Pictures/THA/Shutterstock
“People 30 years ago or 40 years ago had a limited idea what could be done, and had a limited idea of what I could do, because clearly they hadn’t seen my show – so they didn’t know,” she continued.
“So, I did [those films]! And you know, listen, they didn’t always work at the box office. But when they got on television, people lost their minds. And that’s how a lot of my movies have become these kind of classics.”
Although these days, Whoopi’s time is often spent offering her hot takes on The View, she made a big return to the acting world in the 2020s.
Her recent credits have included the historical drama Till, the dramedy Ezra and the Western Outlaw Posse.
She also made a cameo in the 2023 musical The Color Purple, having previously starred as Celie Harris-Johnson in the 1985 original, earning her the first of her two Oscar nominations.
Parts of the UK seem set for their fifth heatwave of the year, with no significant rainfall set to take place in parts of the south this month.
Claire Belcher, an Exeter University professor, told the BBC the risk of wildfires has “never been so high”. And firefighters warn that the risk of house fires rises in drier, sunnier conditions, too.
Speaking to the MK Citizen after a run of “near disasters” in Milton Keynes, a spokesperson for Bucks Fire and Rescue said: “As the bright weather continues, we’d like to remind everyone of an often unconsidered fire risk within homes.”
Watch out for glass items on windowsills
Multiple windowsill fires have broken out over the years due to glass items left in direct sunlight.
They’ve created blazes in places like Essex, Northamptonshire, Dorset and Wiltshire, Norfolk, Merseyside, Milton Keynes, and more.
The Bucks Fire and Rescue spokesperson said: “Recent incidents have highlighted that reflected sunlight can become concentrated enough to generate significant heat, resulting in marks, smouldering materials and, in some cases, fire.”
Which items should I keep out of sunlight?
Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service said to keep crystals; mirrors, especially magnifying ones; and glass ornaments off windowsills and out of direct sunlight in the summer.
The firefighters added you shouldn’t keep them near curtains or bedsheets in the heat either.
Other risky items include:
In general, Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue explained, any glass ornament or object that’s curved can work as a lens, intensifying the sun’s heat.
“The principle is the same as using a magnifying glass to start a fire. It does depend on the angle of the sun, but any mirror or glass ornament with a curve in it should never be left on a windowsill or by a window,” their site reads.
A Bucks Fire and Rescue spokesperson added: “If you notice a bright spot of reflected sunlight inside your home, move the object immediately or close curtains or blinds.
“Check around windows regularly to ensure decorative items are not creating focused beams of light.”
Ben Wallace has hit back at Zia Yusuf after the Reform home affairs spokesperson called the ex-defence secretary a “traitor to Britain”.
Their social media row began when Wallace, who stood down as a Conservative MP in 2024, criticised Reform UK’s plan to fix the shortage of prison spaces by sending foreign criminals abroad.
The right-wing party has proposed deporting those with non-custodial sentences to their country of origin if they ever get into government.
Those with custodial sentences would either be forced to go home or to a third country, like El Salvador.
But Wallace, a former Tory cabinet minister, tore into the proposal while also accusing Yusuf of “making policy and facts up”.
He wrote on X: “If memory serves me right the top foreign nationalities in UK prisons are Irish, Polish, Romanian, Albanian and Baltics. Total number of foreign offenders always hovered around 10-11k.
“ Reform have to answer a.) how they will force those countries to take these offenders. For decades they have refused to.
“b.) If they won’t and then deport them but they are released how will that sit with their victims? And the Irish offenders will find it easy to return.”
Yusuf soon hit back by calling Wallace, who headed up the defence department for four years, a “moron”.
He wrote on X: “Incredible that this moron was defence secretary.
“Our policy today is in direct response to your government’s failures.
“If their home countries won’t take back, their citizens that are languishing in our jails, we are renting spaces in countries like El Salvador to put them.
“They will serve their full jail terms there, and will be banned from ever coming back to Britain.
“They may well include some of the thousands of Afghans you imported, including those who had not been vetted properly and including Taliban fighters (!).
“You know, the ones you took a super injunction out to keep secret from the British people? That’s why I call you a traitor to Britain. You fit the dictionary definition.”
But Wallace hit back: “Oh look a lesson from a man who never put a uniform on…just worked at bank.
“A man who is literally making policy and facts up.
“A man who cant even get his own party to pick him as an MP ( tell us why please?).
“When Reform stop taking £5m bungs and start being honest with people then people might take you seriously.
“No one is saying don’t send prisoners back when you can but don’t lie to the public you can do it with a magic wand. You guys are getting desperate. After all you recruited Suella!”
Suella Braverman worked in the Tory cabinet at the same time as Wallace but defected to Reform earlier this year.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
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