LittleGravitas, →EU immigrant, UK→ emigrant, anti-Brexit
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catanonim.me
LittleGravitas, →EU immigrant, UK→ emigrant, anti-Brexit
@catanonim.me
11K followers 13K following 17K posts
UK-bn ES-res European, "dangerously continental". Federalist. en fr de ca es. #FBPE. M: @[email protected]. lgrav24[a]privateum.net. ✔️ e2e 🚫 crypto! Signal. Kagi search. NO pointless arguments! No non-friend DMs. I mostly follow back - and I block back.
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catanonim.me
↑↑

And ↓…
However, what the Farage clause reports tell us is that he and other Brexiters hold something close to a veto on deeper forms of agreement than those envisaged by the limited scope of Labour’s reset. That is bad news in terms of addressing the multiple economic costs of Brexit, but it is not what makes Farage’s ‘power without responsibility’ so dangerous. Its real threat is to building substantive defence and security agreements with the EU, just when they are needed to face the urgent threats posed not just by Putin’s Russia but Trump’s America. Those threats mandate immediate progress towards very close UK-EU cooperation on conventional defence, as well as cyber-defence and intelligence capacity. But creating such structural, institutionally-shared capacity goes way beyond the economic sphere and, were it to be agreed but then reneged on, economic compensation clauses would not provide an adequate safeguard. If the EU is to reduce its enmeshment with US security because Trump has made Washington an unreliable partner, it is hardly likely at the same time to substantially deepen its reliance on an ally prone to similar unreliability. After Brexit, and with Farage in the offing, that is exactly what the UK is for the EU. And for the UK that means that, as well as being made poorer each year by Brexit, it is made more vulnerable to those who would do it harm.
January 13, 2026 at 1:32 PM
catanonim.me
↑↑

As some of us have been saying [see arrow]…

"…despite having no governmental responsibility, Farage and his allies are [still] able to exert considerable power."
January 13, 2026 at 1:29 PM
catanonim.me
It's a Tuesday 13th in Spain, as in many other places.

The Spanish equivalent of Friday 13th. Not that I believe in any of that.

("En martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu casa te apartes," which translates to "On Tuesday, don't get married, embark on a journey, or move away.")
January 13, 2026 at 9:03 AM
catanonim.me
Erm, Ofcom… ↓↓

January 12, 2026 at 5:21 PM
catanonim.me
Yes, a metal filter is better than paper. A Fellows filter is even better, for reasons given. Grind size is also important: medium-fine if you can do it, between drip and espresso. Here is my Melitta Calibra chart, if it helps.
January 11, 2026 at 9:57 PM
catanonim.me
One for Starmer - and McSweeney.

@darrenpjones.bsky.social @imogenwalker.bsky.social

https://macdonnchada.substack.com/p/pedro-sanchez-and-saying-what-needs
NATO as we’ve known it is gone. The future security of democratic Europe will depend on the EU. No one with any sense doubts the practical difficulties of getting from here to there, but the first step is to put words to our thoughts. Most European leaders understand the present situation intellectually but lack the courage to say it publicly. They fear the domestic political costs of breaking with decades of Atlanticist consensus. They worry about alarming voters or provoking Washington further. They hope that if they keep their heads down and make soothing noises about the eternal friendship between Europe and America, somehow things will work out. The problem with this is that if you keep saying it, you’re in danger of convincing yourself it’s true, and it paralyses you from taking the required action. The exception is Pedro Sánchez. Alone amongst major EU leaders, he’s speaking in the manner the present historical moment requires. His condemnation of the Maduro kidnapping wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was a statement that Europe cannot accept a world where the United States acts as a mafia state, and Europe offers only the most guarded criticism out of fear of being abandoned. His calls for genuine European strategic autonomy aren’t the usual empty rhetoric about burden-sharing within the Atlantic alliance. He’s talking about Europe developing the capacity to defend its interests independently of Washington, recognising that those interests increasingly diverge from American ones.
January 11, 2026 at 2:54 PM
catanonim.me
↑↑

Gawd. I'd hate to think that there is a Brexit b*n*f*t after all.
This is a genuinely odd place for digital computers to have got to. Every computer in your life, from your mobile phone to your smart speaker to your laptop to your TV, is theoretically capable of running all programmes, including the ones the manufacturers would really prefer you stay away from. This means that there are no prix fixe menus in technology – everything can be had à la carte. Thanks to the infinite flexibility of computers, every 10-foot fence a US tech boss installs in a digital product you rely on invites a programmer to supply you with a four-metre ladder so you can scamper nimbly over it. However, we adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the enshittification of technology. There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead. This means digital rights activists who’ve been trying to get rid of the “anti-circumvention” laws have a new potential ally: investors and technologists who’d like to make a hell of a lot of money raiding the margins of the most profitable lines of business of the most profitable companies the world has seen. In the UK, reverse engineering is restricted under article 6 of the European software directive of 2001. US companies have capitalised on this fact – that British companies cannot modify their products – to spy on us and whack us with sky-high fees. Now, post-Brexit, the UK is uniquely able to seize this moment. Unlike our European cousins, we needn’t wait for the copyright directive to be repealed before we can strike article 6 off our own law books and thereby salvage something good out of Brexit.
January 11, 2026 at 2:05 PM
catanonim.me
PPS: 'à’ and 'è’ are dead giveaways that stuff is in Catalan, rather than Spanish, Spanish not having accents leaning that way. See this wonderful chart of European languages!
January 11, 2026 at 11:50 AM
catanonim.me
A shout-out for the extremely good value adjustable (1~8) two piece Whityle 13T razor. Plenty of audible response as you shave. An enjoyable shave with sun streaming through the open shutters and closed windows into the room. One could almost imagine spring!
January 11, 2026 at 10:46 AM
catanonim.me
It is designed w pressure valve. Insert filter name-up into valve base, screw onto Aeropress. You can then moisten (16g?) of grounds, stir, fill to top, stir, wait for 1 minute in total, and plunge over cup.

No coffee escapes until you plunge. Means all water in contact w all grounds all the time.
January 11, 2026 at 9:09 AM
catanonim.me
The EU 'Farage Clause'.

Presumably this would be extensible to any wider or fuller arrangements the EU offered the UK?

[FT, so Kagi Summarizer ↓]

https://www.ft.com/content/3733b2b0-5d1e-47ba-b39f-ac8b113cce65
Title: EU demands ‘Farage clause’ as part of Brexit reset talks with Britain The EU is demanding a 'Farage clause' in potential Brexit reset talks with Sir Keir Starmer, requiring significant financial compensation if the UK government terminates a proposed veterinary agreement. This clause is intended to act as a deterrent against Nigel Farage and Reform UK potentially reversing any deal made with Brussels. The proposed veterinary agreement aims to reduce Brexit red tape for British food and drink exporters, with an estimated potential boost of 22% to exports. The EU seeks a long-term agreement that would endure beyond the current UK parliamentary term ending in 2029. The termination clause would cover costs related to infrastructure, equipment, recruitment, and training for border controls. The draft text requires the UK to pay a fee to join the veterinary agreement and dynamically align with EU rules on animal and plant products. Both Reform UK and the Conservatives have pledged to revoke such a deal, citing concerns about British legal independence and honoring the Brexit vote. Nigel Farage has accused Sir Keir Starmer of compromising parliamentary sovereignty with these potential agreements. Kemi Badenoch of the Conservative party has also vowed to reverse the deal, opposing any agreement subject to European Court of Justice rulings. UK government officials state that termination contingencies are standard in agreements and would apply to both parties.
January 11, 2026 at 9:01 AM
catanonim.me
The only gloss I would make on this is to replace "while Keir Starmer is PM" with 'while Morgan McSweeney is Chief of Staff and Blue Labour has the upper hand'.

@pecksniffsdiary.bsky.social
The PM is in no position to antagonise the president and understandably eschews the self-indulgent demands that he blow raspberries instead. But while he prefers to turn the other cheek, the British public do not. There is room for nuance, but the Jesuitical blather from his ministers avoids it and only makes the government look ridiculous. Kowtowing to the US can only be a mariage de convenance, unless the PM is preparing to offer up Britain as America’s 51st state. Behind the scenes, he has to be working feverishly to find new alliances – and that can only realistically involve the EU. Yet he has declared this week (when he really didn’t need to) that the US remains Britain’s most important ally. It seems a rebuttal of any idea of returning to Europe, so we (and the EU) know where we stand. We would like to believe that the government may be playing a shrewd game, but there is no evidence of it. The PM has never made any honest attempt to return to the embrace of the EU and there is simply no possibility of drawing closer to Europe while Keir Starmer is PM. He has to go.
January 10, 2026 at 10:49 AM
catanonim.me
↑↑

And, finally…
Brexit was always a strategic error for the UK but, as things have turned out, it also came at exactly the moment to make that error catastrophic. In this context, the government’s baby-steps, such as joining Erasmus+ and speaking in increasingly positive terms about “closer ties” with the EU, whilst welcome in themselves, are wholly inadequate to the situation of being squashed between two predatory super-powers. Meanwhile, the Brexitist opposition to even those steps, and the pro-Trump and pro-Putin populist and far-right campaign to destabilize Britain from within, are ever-more obviously the activities of a Fifth Column.
January 9, 2026 at 9:26 AM
catanonim.me
↑↑

Really scary stuff, actually.
it’s just possible that even Trump will baulk at the enormity of what an annexation of Greenland would mean. However, it is equally, if not more, likely that it will have no effect (the Tuesday statement certainly had no immediate impact on US demands), and that likelihood increases if words are all there are. So, either way, words are emphatically not enough. They must be backed by actions and, as the very fact of there being a joint statement implies, those actions must involve both the UK and the EU. What is needed, not at some vague future date but right now, is the rapid development of intense and close UK-EU cooperation on every facet of defence, security, and intelligence capability. The demand on Starmer should not be for him to make pointless and counter-productive rhetorical gestures about Venezuela, but to pursue this course of action as an overriding national priority. Surrounded and divided That, inevitably, brings us back to Brexit, which has made such a course of action far more difficult for both the UK and the EU.
January 9, 2026 at 9:23 AM
catanonim.me
↑↑

I do feel that this ↓ is speaking to me directly, as a fairly strident critic of Starmer from the centre-left. I'm not quite sure, though, what to do about that w/o giving him a soft pass.
The Venezuela crisis This was evident in reactions to his response to the biggest event since my last post, Trump’s attack on Venezuela. It was a highly diplomatic response, in the literal sense of the term, avoiding open criticism of Trump’s actions but also avoiding endorsement of them. Critics on the right immediately denounced it for that lack of endorsement, which they attributed to “the long love affair the Left has enjoyed with the basket-case communist country” and “his party's veneration of Nicolas Maduro's failed regime”. This was self-evidently ludicrous, since the statement said that the UK “regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President and we shed no tears about the end of his regime”. Meanwhile, critics on the liberal-left falsely claimed that Starmer had explicitly supported what Trump had done, whereas in fact he has been studiedly silent about that, a silence leading many, including LibDem leader Ed Davey, to demand that he condemn it as illegal. But giddy moral rectitude is an easy indulgence for those who have no responsibility for its consequences. The reality is that open condemnation from Starmer would be both foolhardy and pointless, and the statements from Emmanuel Macron and Friederich Merz, as well as from Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, were similarly cautious for the same reason. That reason is so obvious it should hardly need stating: the UK and the EU are far too dependent on US defence and intelligence capabilities to risk being subjected to Trump’s thin-skinned vengeful bullying. It is apparently not just Brexiters who need to understand that the UK is no longer a world power. Equally, it is not just Brexiters who need to lose their infatuation with WW2 comparisons: in particular, comparisons with pre-war appeasement of Hitler are entirely bogus because, unlike then, the situation we face is one where a longstanding major ally has gone rogue whilst we are still trapped in very high dependence upon them. This is an astonishingly dangerous situation and navigating it requires a far more serious response than most of Starmer’s critics seem to understand but also, I fear, than he, himself, understands.
January 9, 2026 at 9:18 AM
catanonim.me
Fascistic barbarism.
January 9, 2026 at 12:52 AM
catanonim.me
1) Has anyone tried to explain map projections to Trümp, wrt Greenland?

2) Would it make an iota of difference, anyway?

https://tinyurl.com/ycyv5nt4

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/yn7pbf/how_greenland_looks_in_ten_different_projections/
January 8, 2026 at 3:51 PM
catanonim.me
It is to this moral depravity that the race between legacy parties towards the far-right heads.

https://news.sky.com/story/conservative-party-pledges-1-6bn-ice-style-removals-force-to-detain-and-deport-illegal-migrants-13444647
January 8, 2026 at 3:39 PM
catanonim.me
And yet Labour is still on X/Twitter? It's unconscionable, isn't it?

@miattafahnbulleh.bsky.social @darrenpjones.bsky.social @imogenwalker.bsky.social
Just seen Grok putting the body of the victim of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis into a bikini. Digital corpse desecration now available to the public.
January 8, 2026 at 1:50 PM
catanonim.me
Ditch McSweeney. NOW.

@darrenpjones.bsky.social @torstenbell.bsky.social

~ Starmer has no friends and no plan - only a huge dose of luck can save him now ~

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/starmer-friends-plan-huge-dose-luck-4153512
The Prime Minister’s political strategy for the next general election – assuming he is still leading Labour by that point – is to paint himself as the only possible alternative to a Reform UK victory which would put Nigel Farage in No 10, an outcome that surveys show would not be welcomed by most voters. That made sense a few months ago, with Labour trailing Reform in the polls by a handful of percentage points and well ahead of any other challengers. It does not anymore: even if you dismiss the rise of the Greens as a bubble that will pop, poll after poll is now showing the Conservatives narrowly ahead of Labour in second place. It is by no means a given that the incumbents will be the leading anti-Reform force in 2029. It is this lack of a clear path forward that explains why Starmer has so few firm friends left in Westminster. MPs who owe their careers to his successful tactics at the last election now want him to quit; ministers who fiercely backed him are now in despair.
January 7, 2026 at 2:16 PM
catanonim.me
@darrenpjones.bsky.social @imogenwalker.bsky.social

This is what happens when government appeasers try to cozy up to megalomaniacs like Trump.

It's like Brexiters.

You can never satisfy them. They will always demand more. You should never try to appease them.
January 7, 2026 at 1:51 PM
catanonim.me
I have to say that, for a creaky old bod like me, my VMAX Vx4 ST e-scooter is a joy, for going round the village and environs. Freeing, mobility, and fun also.
January 6, 2026 at 4:04 PM
catanonim.me
↑↑

As I suggested yesterday, yes, we are being bullshat, again.
But the problem is that, while the UK might be changing its outlook on the relationship, the EU is not. There is little chance of Brussels allowing the UK to ‘cherry pick’ further access to the single market sector-by-sector, in the manner Starmer laid out. His proposal sounds like yet another case of Brexit wishful thinking from a UK Prime Minister. To understand why, we should be clear about the exact case that Starmer is making. It is not about rejoining the single market outright. He is instead arguing for “closer alignment with the single market” – which has in effect been Labour’s policy for the best part of eighteen months.
January 6, 2026 at 12:16 PM
catanonim.me
Very much THIS.

~New year, same old Brexit trade-offs - UK in a changing Europe ~

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/new-year-same-old-brexit-trade-offs/
Joël Reland argues that while the UK has indicated that it is keen to align more closely with the EU, the EU will not allow the UK to ‘cherry pick’ further access to the single market unless it accepts freedom of movement and makes budgetary contributions.
January 6, 2026 at 12:07 PM
catanonim.me
This is the real question. Not the only one, of course. But the core of it. [Kagi Summarizer, because £wall.]

https://www.ft.com/content/0808d0cb-3104-4767-8d33-aa887d9963ae
Title: Starmer may want closer ties with the EU — but will Brussels play ball? Sir Keir Starmer aims to boost UK growth by moving closer to the EU's single market, but faces skepticism in Brussels. Starmer plans a new bill for greater EU oversight in areas like food standards and animal welfare through 'dynamic alignment'. EU officials suggest the timing is poor due to preoccupation with the Ukraine war, rearmament, and budget negotiations. Brussels views Starmer's initiative as potentially ill-timed and fraught with problems, drawing parallels to past failed attempts to 'cherry-pick' single market access. Starmer has ruled out a customs union and rejoining the single market, prioritizing independent trade deals. However, some within Labour, like Wes Streeting and David Lammy, and the Liberal Democrats, advocate for a new customs union. EU diplomats state that closer ties require 'paying to play,' involving acceptance of EU rules, payments into the EU budget, and freedom of movement. The EU has consistently applied strict rules to the UK post-Brexit, rebuffing requests for concessions, including those for touring artists. The UK's independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimates Starmer's reset will lead to a minimal GDP increase, a fraction of the estimated Brexit hit. Trade groups are pressuring the government for deeper engagement with the EU, which accounts for nearly half of UK trade.
January 6, 2026 at 9:00 AM