Niall Deacon
@nialldeacon.com
Reposted by Niall Deacon
There wasn't a £37bn Covid testing contract. And Dido Harding was never handed a contract, she was head of NHS Improvement who was seconded to run Test And Trace. And the total amount that Randox was paid by the NHS was 133 million. But you're right, Matt Hancock WAS MP for Newmarket.
Newmarket MP Matt Hancock gave a £37bn Covid testing contract to Jockey Club director Dido Harding, who subcontracted it to Grand National sponsor Randox, employer of Tory MP Owen Paterson, whose late wife chaired Aintree racecourse. That's how the Tories handled the pandemic.
November 22, 2025 at 12:54 PM
There wasn't a £37bn Covid testing contract. And Dido Harding was never handed a contract, she was head of NHS Improvement who was seconded to run Test And Trace. And the total amount that Randox was paid by the NHS was 133 million. But you're right, Matt Hancock WAS MP for Newmarket.
TIL that Edwin Hubble was part of a team that was National College Basketball Champion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908%E2...
1908–09 Chicago Maroons men's basketball team - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 20, 2025 at 12:23 PM
TIL that Edwin Hubble was part of a team that was National College Basketball Champion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908%E2...
"More than 35 yards"
November 18, 2025 at 10:15 PM
"More than 35 yards"
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Yep, why not score a goal from your own half in the 98th minute?
November 18, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Yep, why not score a goal from your own half in the 98th minute?
For anyone at #ShawIAU25 we are having issues due to Cloudflare. We are using a backup stream on Youtube @astro4edu.bsky.social www.youtube.com/live/Fy4mpYa...
Shaw IAU Workshop Session Emergency Broadcast
YouTube video by Haus der Astronomie
www.youtube.com
November 18, 2025 at 1:11 PM
For anyone at #ShawIAU25 we are having issues due to Cloudflare. We are using a backup stream on Youtube @astro4edu.bsky.social www.youtube.com/live/Fy4mpYa...
Reposted by Niall Deacon
The truly disturbing thing here isn't the bypassing of polygraph tests for chosen MAGA appointees. It's the fact that the FBI still uses polygraph tests in this way, decades after they were debunked as a method for detecting deception.
“FBI Director Kash Patel granted waivers to Deputy Director Dan Bongino and two other newly hired senior FBI staff members, exempting them from passing polygraph exams normally required to gain access to America’s most sensitive classified information…”
www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff
As the FBI’s deputy director, Bongino receives some of the country’s most sensitive secrets, including the President’s Daily Brief. His ascent to that position without passing a standard bureau backgr...
www.propublica.org
November 16, 2025 at 7:08 AM
The truly disturbing thing here isn't the bypassing of polygraph tests for chosen MAGA appointees. It's the fact that the FBI still uses polygraph tests in this way, decades after they were debunked as a method for detecting deception.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
This is why we should protect the BBC.
November 14, 2025 at 11:43 AM
This is why we should protect the BBC.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?
November 10, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?
Reposted by Niall Deacon
My annual post about how the Morning Star reported the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...
hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...
November 9, 2025 at 9:02 AM
My annual post about how the Morning Star reported the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...
hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...
I assumed this was satire. But he actually wrote this.
New image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS by M. Jäger, G. Rhemann & E. Prosperi.
Avi Loeb's: "Is the network of jets associated with pockets of ice on the surface of a natural cometary nucleus or are they coming from a set of jet thrusters used for navigation of a spacecraft? We do not know."
Avi Loeb's: "Is the network of jets associated with pockets of ice on the surface of a natural cometary nucleus or are they coming from a set of jet thrusters used for navigation of a spacecraft? We do not know."
November 9, 2025 at 7:03 AM
I assumed this was satire. But he actually wrote this.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Reposted by Niall Deacon
29 years ago today, Jamiroquai released the music video for 'Virtual Insanity'
August 19, 2025 at 9:20 PM
29 years ago today, Jamiroquai released the music video for 'Virtual Insanity'
Reposted by Niall Deacon
I’m sure Matt Goodwin will be along shortly to tell us all whether LNER Customer Service Host Samir Zitouni counts as British or not. news.sky.com/story/train-...
Train company LNER 'extremely proud' of rail worker in critical condition after mass stabbing as family call him 'hero'
The "extraordinary bravery" of the LNER worker who intervened during the train mass stabbing attack on Saturday has been hailed by his company.
news.sky.com
November 4, 2025 at 10:59 AM
I’m sure Matt Goodwin will be along shortly to tell us all whether LNER Customer Service Host Samir Zitouni counts as British or not. news.sky.com/story/train-...
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Ive never been slow to criticise the Reach plc media for their awful clickbait headlines. But this is another level. They know exactly what they're doing with this headline, and it is horrible, divisive and dangerous. Shame on them.
November 4, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Ive never been slow to criticise the Reach plc media for their awful clickbait headlines. But this is another level. They know exactly what they're doing with this headline, and it is horrible, divisive and dangerous. Shame on them.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Yep. This even has its own acronym - MUU (mixed, unclear, or unstable). It constitutes the majority of Prevent referrals as of the 2024 Independent Review.
Rudakubana is part of a trend that the annual threat lecture has been mentioning for several years now, of threats that can’t easily be categorised but whose perpetrators are not psychotic. Happening across the world:
The maddest people you meet in a focus group are becoming terrorists. First we have someone who reads too much Slate Star Codex, now we have this guy.
November 3, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Yep. This even has its own acronym - MUU (mixed, unclear, or unstable). It constitutes the majority of Prevent referrals as of the 2024 Independent Review.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Matt Goodwin attributes a crime that he now knows appears to have been committed by people born in Britain in the early 1990s to "mass uncontrolled immigration"
November 2, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Matt Goodwin attributes a crime that he now knows appears to have been committed by people born in Britain in the early 1990s to "mass uncontrolled immigration"
Reposted by Niall Deacon
More information coming out now on this. Looks like a Cabinet Office scheme led by Georgia Gould… planned savings of £10m-£30m a year (back up lower Premier League full-back price) don’t really seem worth the candle if this the result IMO.
October 31, 2025 at 8:05 AM
More information coming out now on this. Looks like a Cabinet Office scheme led by Georgia Gould… planned savings of £10m-£30m a year (back up lower Premier League full-back price) don’t really seem worth the candle if this the result IMO.
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
October 29, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.
You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!
🧵
1/9
Reposted by Niall Deacon
British Governments do not understand "soft power". See also restricting BBC Sounds to the UK (and the BBC making the BBC world channel visibly the cheapest of all the international channels)
Literally one of the greatest soft power brands on planet earth driven into the ground by successive British governments that embrace failure, decline and irrelevance.
on.ft.com/3Wq1XIT
on.ft.com/3Wq1XIT
British Council ‘selling everything it can’ to survive
Cultural body plans more job cuts, sale of assets and closure in 35 countries to stave off ‘financial peril’
on.ft.com
October 28, 2025 at 10:34 PM
British Governments do not understand "soft power". See also restricting BBC Sounds to the UK (and the BBC making the BBC world channel visibly the cheapest of all the international channels)
Reposted by Niall Deacon
Sultana’s position on Ukraine is not just morally reprehensible but juvenile and trite
There is always money for war, never for the poor.
Every penny spent on bombs, tanks and missiles is stolen from our homes, schools and hospitals.
We are not going to take it anymore.
Every penny spent on bombs, tanks and missiles is stolen from our homes, schools and hospitals.
We are not going to take it anymore.
October 28, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Sultana’s position on Ukraine is not just morally reprehensible but juvenile and trite
Reposted by Niall Deacon
![1
Nurse:
It’s become a real problem in this area
2
Nurse:
We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction
3
Show a building sign posted:
Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic
With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it
Nurse:
Ministers, Spads, Researchers…
4
Nurse:
Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely
[Nurse on phone taking a call]
Ok - we’ll be right over
5
Nurse:
We just have a gentle chat
[Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster
Minister:
I understand your concerns…
6
Nurse:
Are you OK love?
Minister:
Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters
7
Nurse:
That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian
[Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters]
Nurse 2:
Give us your phone, love
8
Nurse:
At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to
[We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.]
9
Minister:
YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR
[woman looks baffled]
10
woman:
I just want a bus service
Minister:
LOOK AT MY FLAG
[produces a St George's flag]
[ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreicahofq6s4xow7vowj7dx6odw6ejdwr4kwcmzta7qwi4hg2nvywji@jpeg)
Yup, this is an elite radicalisation story. The public don't want these policies yet the Tories and Reform are stuck in spiral of insanity trying to out-do each other
Far right policies of mass deportation and revocation of rights for people who have worked and played by the rules are overwhelmingly rejected by the public, based on widely shared anti-prejudice norms. Mainstream politicians who propose them should be pariahs not “rising stars”.
October 19, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Yup, this is an elite radicalisation story. The public don't want these policies yet the Tories and Reform are stuck in spiral of insanity trying to out-do each other