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Greetings lovely people,

We hope you’ve all been staying hydrated during this record heatwave, and by hydrated we definitely don’t mean copious amounts of booze. Definitely not.

Crank up the A/C, or the desk fan you bought on Amazon for £9.99 if you’re European, and get ready for another dose of news through memes.

Let’s get stuck in.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

José Luis Ábalos, a longtime former ally of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro “Patrick Bateman” Sanchez, has this week been jailed for a record 24 years for taking kickbacks on government PPE contracts as health minister during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We were going to make a joke about corruption in southern European countries but, if he was British, Boris Johnson probably would have given him a seat in the House of Lords. 

Ábalos’ sentence is yet another headache in a long line of corruption scandals for Sanchez, as proceedings are also ongoing against his Socialist Party’s former party secretary and another former PM who was a close ally of Sanchez’s, both relating to corruption. 

The Spanish PM was defiant and refused to resign, hitting back with:

For those not versed in lying political spin, this means “No one does corruption like us, so we’re only ones who can possibly deal with it”. 

Meanwhile, Sanchez’s wife has been ordered to give up her passport and check-in at a court twice a month.

She has been deemed a flight risk by the court in relation to her own, drumroll please….corruption charges. 

Oh, and his brother has been nicked for corruption too. It’s enough to make Berlusconi blush.

Whatever you think of Sanchez’s attitude to cleaning house, we look forward to seeing how stamping out corruption will work at home on the domestic front. 

The ruling Cuckold Communist Party has passed a law allowing Chinese law enforcement to target anyone undermining “ethnic unity and progress” or “inciting ethnic separatism” beyond China’s borders. 

The totally normally named Ethnic Unity Laws take effect next week.

Naturally, a few eyebrows have been raised by observers, despite Vice Justice Minister Hu stating that the provisions have been “distorted and misinterpreted” by Western commentators as it was passed to “guard against various ​unlawful acts…from outside the country”. 

Given Beijing’s fondness for intelligence operations overseas, we look forward to the law being put to good use (i.e., dragging dissidents off the street and taking them to a nicely refurbished windowless room in the local Chinese embassy for a “chat”) in the name of self-defence. 

Or, in the words of the vice justice minister, a “legitimate, lawful, necessary, and feasible legal ​provision”. 

The biggest concern amongst observers is that the law will form a new legal basis for taking action against any Taiwanese citizens and pro-Taiwanese organisations.

Articulating pro-Taiwanese views will clearly be viewed as inciting ethnic separatism under the new laws, given that the CCP views Taiwan as a separatist Chinese province. 

This comes right as British, French and German governments issued a warning about Chinese activities off Taiwan’s east coast and accused Beijing of endangering regional stability. 

The destablising activities weren’t specified, but we’re pretty sure that we’ve seen this one before. 

Still, the people of Taiwan can rest easy in the knowledge that their protector, the U.S., hasn’t recently exhausted its arsenals and political will on another unwinnable war in the Middle East. 

It’s all Starmover.

Starmtroopers, stand down. The Thousand Keir Reich has come to an end.

Following months of speculation about his future as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has resigned as Prime Minister.

7 Prime Ministers in 10 years. Blink, and you may have missed one (it was probably Liz Truss).

Even with a 174-seat majority that would make a tinpot dictator green with envy, Starmer lasted just under 2 years, mired by Peter Mandelson-sized controversies, U-turns around welfare spending, and an inability to bring together various factions of a party that is about as harmonious as a bouncy castle full of 7-year-olds.

His successor looks all but certain in Andy Burnham, but the route the former Mayor of Greater Manchester should take to get to No 10 remains up for debate, with some Labour MPs calling for a contest and others hoping for an "orderly transition".

Whereas Starmer had years to prepare for power (not that you’d be able to tell), Burnham will have until the 20th of July, give or take a couple of days.

Aside from the groundbreaking platform of “Eee up lad -Oasis, chips and graveh, footie, triple lock”, Burnham has promised a series of sweeping changes when he comes to power.

The British electorate, famous for their patience and long term view of governance, will no doubt be extremely understanding and patient, especially when the initial honeymoon period is over.

For those of you thinking ‘what the fuck is going on with UK politics these days?"‘, here is a meme that sums it all up pretty well:

The US Senate passed a bill aimed at lowering housing costs on Monday after a major breakthrough and rare bipartisan consensus that comes as affordability remains top of mind for voters heading into the midterm elections.  

In an 85-5 vote, the Senate approved the legislation along wide bipartisan margins.It now heads to the House for approval. 

The bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, aims to increase housing supply and bring down costs, including by limiting institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes.

Blackrock, eat your heart out. Unless you’d like to sponsor us. In that case, our deepest condolences.

The bill has backing from both Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and ranking Democrat Elizabeth Warren, with the White House supporting the institutional investor restrictions.

It’s a rare point of agreement between the Trump administration and Senator Warren, who he calls ‘Pocahontas’ on account of her (supposed) Native American heritage.

Now that housing affordability may be back on the menu, maybe American lawmakers can turn their attention to why the Reflecting Pool in Washington looks like Shreks house.

AI company Anthropic has accused Alibaba of running the largest known campaign to illicitly extract the capabilities of its Claude AI model.

Sounds oddly similar to a certain someone’s business model, but alas.

In a strongly-worded letter to US lawmakers, the San Francisco company said Alibaba-linked operators conducted nearly 29 million exchanges with Claude through thousands of fraudulent accounts, using so-called "distillation attacks", a technique that harvests outputs from a more powerful AI to train a cheaper, shitter weaker one.

Anthropic says the campaign specifically targeted Claude's most sophisticated capabilities, and argues that such attacks effectively turn hundreds of billions of dollars in American R&D into a subsidy for geopolitical rivals.

The letter calls on Congress to penalise companies behind such operations and tighten protections for US AI technology.

Alibaba has not yet responded, and separately this week sued the US government to have its name removed from a Pentagon blacklist linking it to the Chinese military.

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King Charles III has become the first monarch to reveal their tax bill, disclosing figures that show he paid £12.9 million ($16.4 million) in tax for 2024-2025 to HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs).

The level of tax paid by the King places him among the top 100 UK taxpayers.

The Prince of Wales declared he paid £7.76 million ($9.9 million) tax over the same period, the figures in the annual royal report and accounts show.

Whilst it may place the Royals amongst the top 100 taxpayers, it firmly places them in the top 1 of families that end up costing the state around £60 million ($79 million).

This is the figure our underpaid interns came to once you account for the publicly-funded Sovereign Grant, used to pay for things like the restoration of Buckingham Palace and keeping Prince Andrew away from local schools.

The income from or any details on private investments of both the King and Prince William have not been disclosed, and MPs have raised concerns about a lack of accountability over how public funding was used by the royals.

To be fair, the tax report also confirmed Charles and Queen Camilla will stay at Clarence House after Buckingham Palace's £369 million ($487 million) refurbishment ends next year, turning it into an event hub with more public access to generate revenue, which is awfully nice of them.

A special shoutout to the mainstay of British politics of the last decade and a half:

Larry, Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street.

After he was informed that having a pig at number 10 would be quite impractical, then Prime Minister David Cameron adopted Larry the cat back in 2010.

Little Larry, whose official job it is to catch the mice that live in and around Downing Street, has ended up seeing off 6 Prime Ministers during his time.

Not that Larry gives a shit who the Prime Minister is, as long as someone feeds him.

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Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Rob & Dom