Tuesday 21st April 2026

[refitman]

Morning all.

[Frog222]

Good morning from the Guardian --

[gilsey]

[Frog222]

How was Matt Goodwin's Hungarian 'University' funded ? Orban gave it 10% of the shares in both an oil company and a pharmaceutical company ... .

so Magyar is going to nationalise them back again, and the same to be applied to the oligarch friends of the régime !

We're going to undo what the Orban coup did to destroy democracy .

Incidentally the very influential US CPAC ( Conservative Political Action Conference) was allegedly partially funded by this country with a mighty base of only nine million people ; at any rate the links were very close with Orban starring at CPAC . Also interesting is that Hungary is about the same population as Israel, so the capacity for trouble-making is not necessarily linked to size of population or economic power .

[refitman]

It's just winning strategy after winning strategy with this lot. They told the left to leave, and we did (and then they got angry that happened), and now they're telling the libs to leave? All that's going to remain is Wes and his weird bigot mates.

[Frog222]

I did wonder this at the time, liveblog --

Wiscot 5 hours ago

I have to ask "why Mandelson"? The previous ambassador Karen Pierce was well-liked even by the Trumpers.

From wikipedia:
Pierce is considered broadly popular across the political spectrum in the United States, with senior Republican campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, the co-campaign manager during Donald Trump's victorious 2024 presidential campaign, describing her as "professional universally-respected" and bemoaning her replacement. Trump had told Starmer he wanted to keep Pierce in place according to the Sunday Times.

The galloping unwisdom of announcing before other voices could be heard ,

BRILLIANT !

Perhaps some answers to that already in the LB , cos I've been away for a bit ....

[Frog222]

This from the Patrick Wintour earlier will go over many Trumpist heads --

" Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, made a similar point with a reference to Jane Austen, saying: “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a single country in possession of a large civilisation, will not negotiate under threat and force.” "