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This thinktank exposed fat cats and obscenely high pay. Guess what has happened to it? | Polly Toynbee
The High Pay Centre (HPC), a British thinktank founded in 2011 by former Guardian business editor Deborah Hargreaves to scrutinise executive pay and the widening gap between CEOs and ordinary workers, is to close. Polly Toynbee argues that its demise removes a distinctive voice that focused not on tax and redistribution but on “predistribution” —…
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‘A lot of red flags’: plans for New Zealand’s first datacentre spark concern as locals demand greater transparency
Plans for New Zealand’s first AI datacentre, a NZ$3.5bn (US$2bn) facility to be built by Singapore-based company Datagrid in Makarewa, north of Invercargill, have prompted concern among local residents who are demanding greater transparency. Their worries centre on the centre’s substantial electricity and water consumption, potential noise and light pollution, and a sense that the…
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How Olivia Rodrigo Is Getting Back at the Trump Administration
Pop star Olivia Rodrigo is backing a voter-registration drive ahead of this year’s US midterm elections, in what The Hollywood Reporter frames as a response to the Trump administration after one of her songs was used in an anti-immigration advertisement. In November, Rodrigo publicly criticised the Department of Homeland Security when her track “all-american bitch”…
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Sarah McLachlan and Allison Russell on Touring Together and Summer Nights Devoted to ‘Forgetting Madness and Being Part of Something Beautiful’
Canadian singer-songwriters Sarah McLachlan and Allison Russell have teamed up for a joint summer tour running through 9 August, framing the shows around music as a healing, communal experience where audiences can “forget madness” and reconnect. McLachlan is touring behind her 2025 album “Better Broken”, following her successful 30th-anniversary tour for “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”, while…
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What a shameless stitch-up! Burnham WILL be PM after 322 Labour MPs back him – but voters still know almost nothing of what he stands for
Andy Burnham is on the verge of becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister after 322 of Labour’s 403 MPs backed him to replace Sir Keir Starmer, whom he is described as having ousted in a successful internal coup. Because such an overwhelming majority nominated him on the first day, the leadership “contest” is effectively over before…
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DHS plans costly crackdown on states that don’t cooperate on election security
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to withhold billions of dollars in preparedness grant funding from states that decline to adopt a set of new election-security requirements. The conditions, attached to more than $1 billion available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Homeland Security Grant Programme, would require measures such as voter…
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Make voting compulsory – with a £10 fine for those that don’t cast ballot, says lefty think-tank
The left-wing think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has published a report calling for voting in national elections to be made compulsory, with a £10 fine imposed on those who fail to cast a ballot. The IPPR argues that Britain faces a “crisis of pride” and growing disillusionment with the political system, and…
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Fresh doubts are raised over Farage’s claims he did not have to declare £5million ‘gift’ from crypto-currency tycoon
Fresh questions have been raised over Nigel Farage’s explanation for why he did not declare a £5million “gift” from crypto-currency entrepreneur Christopher Harborne. The Reform leader received the money in April 2024 but it remained secret until this year, and he argues he had no obligation to register it with Commons authorities because it was…
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Maine’s Senate Race Implodes, Meta’s Threads Rivals Musk’s X, and the Trump Phone Arrives
This episode of WIRED’s Uncanny Valley podcast, hosted by Zoë Schiffer and Leah Feiger, examines three current stories at the intersection of technology and politics. The main threads are the quiet rise of Meta’s Threads, which has reached 500 million monthly users to rival Elon Musk’s X; the belated arrival of the Trump-branded T1 phone;…