"make it more tax-efficient for parents and grandparents to invest in their children’s business" That'll be a nice inheritance tax loophole then.
Nigel Farage wants to scrap 'suffocating' UK GDPR
Reform UK says it wants to scrap the UK GDPR after eight years of the regulations “strangling” small businesses. The party’s leader Nigel Farage and economy chief Robert Jenrick announced additional pledges on Tuesday evening, which include scrapping the UK’s data protection regulation for a “light-touch” alternative more akin …
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Sunday 30th August 2026 16:57 GMT Philo T Farnsworth
Re: making plans for Nigel
Be careful of what you wish for
When guillotines are outlawed, only outlaws will. . .A California man who was arrested this week for having a wooden guillotine near the US Capitol grounds pleaded not guilty at a Wednesday arraignment to a misdemeanor weapon charge, court records show.
Prosecutors sought to keep 35-year-old Philan-Tam-Duy Le in jail, but Judge Robert Hildum of the District of Columbia superior court declined the request, according to the Washington Post.
At the Wednesday hearing, Hildum acknowledged having a guillotine amounted to a "very, very serious thing", but noted that Le did not threaten anyone with the device.
The remark stood in contrast to prosecutors' accusation that Le, who has been charged with attempted possession of a prohibited weapon, had intent to use the guillotine "unlawfully against another", per court docs.1
________________
1 The Guardian: California man who brought guillotine to US Capitol grounds pleads not guilty
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 17:07 GMT FIA
Re: Where "light touch" means
And where he says "strangling small businesses" he means large businesses want everyone's data.
Exactly.
The reality is, a lot of small businesses don't give a toss about GDPR, and in many ways nor should they.
That doesn't mean if they fuck up the law shouldn't be there to protect my personal data; far from it.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 15:24 GMT alain williams
Re: Where "light touch" means
Our ICO is too light touch, it does not go after enough cases where personal data is abused. It gets about £100 million from fee income, most of its expenses are staff costs (£80 m). I do not know if it is limited by income or what.
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:10 GMT Fred Daggy
Re: Sigh, not again.
(Outsider looking in at the UK)
It was only ever about power. Power to make decisions, be the top dog. So long as there was a European directive or law out there, they weren't quite the top dog.
Now, they're finding out that even if you're top dog, there still needs someone to feed it. So, need to return the favours to corporate mates.
I'm always putting self-interest and get-rich-quick as being the reasons for most things. Not often wrong.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 11:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ah yes
the good old "doing things we don't like makes business hard", because doing the things is seen as a burden, rather than a default action.
Usually because the mentality is "how can we monetise or exploit" something, rather than "how can we get on with our business without being cnuts".
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 11:56 GMT Tron
Abolishing the OSA would save everyone money.
They could jack in their VPN subscriptions.
Energy prices are going up again (due to the on-going war that Trump has already won about eight times) and Burnham hasn't ruled out tax rises. That will skim a chunk of votes off Labour.
The UK is a modern democracy, That means that campaign promises do not need to be affordable, sensible or kept, policies don't need to be viable and any idiot can run the country as long as they get enough votes in key constituencies.
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 19:20 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Abolishing the OSA would save everyone money.
The EU never banned bendy bananas...
It was Boris "Bendy Banana" Johnson who kept on about it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6481969.stm
Bananas have always been classified by quality and size for international trade. Because the standards, set by individual governments and the industry, were confusing, the European Commission was asked to draw up new rules.
As Commission Regulation (EC) 2257/94 puts it, bananas must be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature". In the case of "Extra class" bananas, there is no wiggle room, but Class 1 bananas can have "slight defects of shape", and Class 2 bananas can have full-on "defects of shape".
Boris did banish the bendy buses from London when he was the Mayor of London, and occasional IT student in Shoreditch or thereabouts - allegedly
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 10:20 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: Abolishing the OSA would save everyone money.
Taxes will have to go up, whoever runs the country, it's just a question of when the bond markets turn sour again. Failing to acknowledge and prepare for this was probably Starmer's biggest failing leading to lopsided policies and inevitable U-turns. I'm old enough to remember Lawson's useless income tax cut at the end of the eightie: for me it was the equivalent of a couple of pints a month, but it cost the country a lot and has still not been rolled back while more regressive taxes like VAT have repeatedly been raised and extended.
However, Nige is not looking as comfortable as he once was. In order to be elected he needs some of the business Tories, which are much more centrist and less worried about immigration than the base. This is why he's losing votes to Restore (I think). And his inability to shake the bribery allegations.
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 12:03 GMT Philip Storry
And what about NI?
No, not National Insurance.
Northern Ireland.
Yet again this con man seems to forget that Northern Ireland exists and the circumstances in which it exists. (And also the right that Irish citizens have to live in the UK.)
The Good Friday Agreement will make it hard to treat the two sets of citizens in NI as different. Which means that the most likely result would be that NI would retain GDPR, whilst the rest of the UK wouldn't.
All UK businesses therefore still have to comply to GDPR anyway, or risk the possibility of breaching their customer's or employee's rights (GDPR applies worldwide to EU citizens) should the individual happen to be from either Ireland or NI.
The only way to avoid that would be to not employ anyone from Ireland or the NI, and that's a discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen. The company also has to not do business in NI and hope they never do business with folks from NI or Ireland who are resident in the mainland UK - hardly a plausible business plan.
This is just a stupid idea, driven by petty ideology and ignorance.
It's almost like the lying, corrupt, self-serving greedy little gobsh*te hasn't thought this through. But surely, with so many years of campaigning against the EU, that can't be true? Surely he'd have done the necessary research? Surely nobody could be that dishonest or incompetent?
Oh, wait, it's Nigel Farage. Of course he could.
Anyway, now that we have an answer to that, let's move on to the question of that five million quid that's totally not corruption...
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:51 GMT Tron
Re: And what about NI?
I stopped exporting to the EU (including NI) after Brexit due to the extra paperwork issues. Lots of SMEs did. Nationalism is a wrecking ball. Expect more of that if he gets in.
British voters don't care tuppence about NI or the GFA and will vote according to their own prejudices/financial situation/level of annoyance.
As with Brexit, anything they implement will require a messy bodge to be worked out for NI. Special Economic Needs Designation.
If they break enough, there won't be a lot of trade between GB and the EU/NI for a spell, until/if they sort something out.
Sterling down 25% at Brexit. The bookies can offer odds on how much lower it might go. Then another inflationary spiral, more staff shortages, fewer services. Reform winning would by Brexit 2.0. If Labour fail in the popularity stakes, it will be Groundhog day.
-
-
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 12:40 GMT tiggity
Re: And what about NI?
"But half of them vote for a bunch of Irish political parties that take no part in UK politics"
Well, anyone from a republican party cannot take their place in the HoC ... as you have to swear allegiance to current monarch & their descendants. No genuine republican could do that (I remember discovering that oath as a youngster & realising being an MP was another thing to cross off list of potential jobs as an adult)
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:39 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: And what about NI?
Sterling down 25% at Brexit.
No matter how often you repeat that, it still isn't true.
When the Euro was created 1999, 1 GBP was worth 1.4 EUR. In the early 2000s, in the recession that culminated in the 2008 crash, one GBP was worth between 1.5 and 1.7 EUR but by 2011 it was back to it's current rate of 1.2 EUR, a 15% drop on the original rate. It has hardy changed at all since then. Before and after the referendum it stayed around 1.3. Just after the UK left the EU in 2020 it was 1.18, the same as 2011. Today it is 1.17. Over the past 15 years it's barely changed at all, it certainly did not lose 25% at Brexit.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And what about NI?
What was the highest exchange rate in 2015, according to the site you got your figures from? According to this one, it was 1.44 (minimum was 1.27, average was 1.37):
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/history/GBP-EUR-2015
In 2016, when we had the vote, it was 1.3 the day before, dropped to just under 1.2 immediately, and bottomed out at 1.1 before the end of the year. I'm not sure that's "hardly changed at all since [2011]"
(I remember the big drop as I was on holiday in Europe at the time, and got a bunch of euros out of a cashpoint the day before at the good rate. The cashpoints wouldn't take British cards the day afterwards).
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 15:46 GMT Lon24
Re: And what about NI?
I was a professional forecaster. I got the Brexit vote right. Hence bought as many euros as I could afford and made a pretty penny. Thank you Nigel. That was the last time I made any real money in business. Thank you not Nigel.
Like the OP I had to forgo business because of the issues dealing with what was an integrated market. Looks to me the only real Brexit winners were Farage & friends.
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 10:34 GMT Will Godfrey
Re: And what about NI?
Brexit bankrupted one of my neighbours. He ran a small international transport business, and was doing reasonably well beforehand, able to be home much of the time. Since the fiasco and the business folding because it was now uneconomic and bleeding money, he and his wife have to work full-time just to keep on top of his home mortgage.
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 15:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Brexit bankruptcies
My company went bust because it was no longer able to do business in the EU. After Brexit, there was far too much paperwork and far too much hassle for its EU customers. One contract in Belgium got ripped up just before work was due to start. The client was working on an EU-funded project and we found very late in the day that meant no subcontracting outside the EU. Which left a big hole in our cash flow and a pile of invoices from suppliers that wouldn't get paid because the contract got killed.
It really, really pissed me off that arch Brexiteer and lying hypocrite Jacob Rees Mogg set up shop in Dublin so he could do business in the EU once that couldn't be done from England. Farage was just as bad. He arranged German(?) passports for his sperm donations to the gene pool so they could all enjoy the benefits of EU membership he'd denied to everyone else.
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 17:02 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: And what about NI?
What was the highest exchange rate in 2015, according to the site you got your figures from?
1.4362, from https://www.ecb.europa.eu/, the EU central bank.
In 2016, when we had the vote, it was 1.3 the day before, dropped to just under 1.2 immediately, and bottomed out at 1.1 before the end of the year.
Briefly, then rose again. All currencies have day-to-day fluctuations, just look at the period from October to December 2008, but what matters is the general trend, and the average GBP:EUR rate really hasn't changed much over the past 15 years. It goes up & down, as do all currencies, but over time it's been remarkably stable. It certainly hasn't "lost 25% since Brexit".
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 18:02 GMT Roland6
Re: And what about NI?
>” I remember the big drop as I was on holiday in Europe at the time”
It wasn’t a big drop, expectations were it would drop significantly more hence why the cash points stopped accepting GBP.
With the Euro it felt more as people emotionally felt the GBP should be worth more than the Euro, for no good reason.
Back in 1993 the movement of the GBP against the Yen was such, playing the currency exchange game paid for a 3 month holiday to Japan in spring 1994
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:56 GMT Michael Strorm
Re: And what about NI?
> "Yet again this con man seems to forget that Northern Ireland exists and the circumstances in which it exists"
He forgets that it exists because he doesn't care about it.
For all that he drapes his party in the (British) Union Jack and is happy to accept the support of gullible unionists elsewhere, Farage himself is essentially an English nationalist, the type of person whose idea of "Britishness" and "Englishness" (and "Britain" and "England") are largely, and unthinkingly, interchangeable.
And in that respect, he's much like the hard-right Tories who pushed for Brexit without considering how NI would fit in or what they consequences would be because they really didn't care about it. At least, not until the consequences of that ignorant indifference came back to bite the Johnson regime on the backside during Brexit negotiations.
Even the most rabid unionists in NI are aware that they- and NI itself- are generally forgotten about by their allies elsewhere in the country they so desparately want to remain a part of.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:16 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: And what about NI?
GDPR applies worldwide to EU citizens
No. GDPR applies within the EU to any data collected about anyone who is in the EU at the time the data are collected. Citizenship does not enter into it. An American staying in a London hotel? GDPR applies to any of their data that is processed in the UK or EU. If even the people who want GDPR don't understand it, how can we expect an attention-seeking populist like Farage to do so?
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 17:56 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: And what about NI?
Not entirely, it can also apply to an Eu citizen outside the Eu if the data is about actives inside the Eu.
eg. If you have data on a passenger on a flight from the Eu to XYZ that can be covered by GDPR.
Similar to over-broad US federal rules on financial disclosures that made Eu banks wary of dealing with US citizens living in Europe
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 12:15 GMT Boris56789
Everything must go sale
If it's not taking 5 million and then getting cross when asked and then wasting probably 600 k on by election.
We knew he wants to flog the NHS to mates and bankrupt everyone with insurance based health care.
Remove ECHR and other rights, so I guess next brain fart is removed data protections so that can be flogged too
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 17:13 GMT hoola
Re: Everything must go sale
The scary thing is that I believe there is a real risk that Reform will either win a majority or we will have a complete mess with no overall control,
There are a number of problems:
There are a group who believe some of the core soundbites that Farage spouts therefore Reform gets their votes. These people completely ignore all the other issues because the only thing they hear is "Immigration".
There are sufficient people who don't like the other two main parties so vote Reform as a protest. At the last election it was the Conservatives. Next time round it is likely to be Labour and to a lesser extent the Conservatives. This is where the danger comes in as the protest votes suddenly start returning Reform candidates.
Then we have voter apathy. As turnout drops (people are fed up with the main parties) then that share of the votes disappears further advantaging minority groups and particularly a party like Reform that is more mainstream in their exposure.
At the end of this who knows what the outcome could be?
The Conservatives looks to becoming more marginalised. The LibDems appear incapable of achieving anything worthwhile, I think for many that may have voted for them the 2010 coalition is still having an impact. The Greens (in theory) could/should do better but appear to be doing everything possible to shoot themselves in the foot.
That leaves all the single-interest or even more extreme variants of Reform sucking up the rest.
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 12:31 GMT Pascal Monett
"Building a more prosperous business environment"
You mean one where Big Business can skirt all protections for its own benefit, don't you ?
And I marvel at how you completely erase any foreign exchange issues, after all, it's not like any UK companies actually send goods through the Chunnel, right ?
I will not, however, marvel at the fact that he can say the bullshit with a straight face. He's got plenty of experience spewing bullshit.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 12:34 GMT Bebu sa Ware
“Reform’s pledges 'collapse on contact with reality,' ”
Surprisingly coherent comment from the corner that gave Britain the Lettuce PM, Bloody Useless and indeed Brexit.
Couldn't the voters of Clacton not see that an animated garbage bin was going to represent them more effectively than this prat? Clearly not but then Farage probably does accurately represent his dismal Clacton constituency.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:51 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: “Reform’s pledges 'collapse on contact with reality,' ”
>bin was going to represent them more effectively than this prat
The voters know that a local MP can't do anything to represent anyone. Unless they happen to be PM they aren't going to be able to do anything to save the local hospital.
Even if Barnsley's MP became PM he isn't going to reopen the pits.
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 16:22 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: “Reform’s pledges 'collapse on contact with reality,' ”
>represent his constituents nationally,
That's my point, back bench MPs have no power. They can 'represent' the town in the same way as a football club mascot, and with about as much effect.
My hometown voted Labour since the peasant's revolt, the MP gets elected with a massive majority. Some MPs were famous, some good, some bad, one went to prison. But their effect on government policy as it affected the town = bugger-all
Now that future party leaders and PMs are chosen by a spreadsheet and a focus group then dropped into a safe seat I can't see the point in having a "local" MP at all.
It seems that local mayors have more value, at least they can at least make the bins run on time.
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 22:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Nope. Trump's mini-me has no need of a job. He was independently wealthy and then made loadsamoney as a city trader long before the mainstream media started licking his arse. Now, the country's biggest charlatan gets by on tax-free backhanders, pimping dodgy cryptocurrencies and appearance money from his bully pulpits.
Oh and he'd never get out of bed for a job paying a chickenfeed £100K. He rakes in about that for cosplaying an MP and does fuck all in parliament or serve his constituents.
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:01 GMT Sproggit
Madness
In the article, Connor writes,
"The UK must keep an active adequacy decision from the European Union so that personal data can flow freely across borders without extra legal hurdles. Any plans to diverge from EU data protection law in a major way could jeopardize the adequacy decision."
But that's the whole game, right there...
Wrapped in the "Adequacy Decision" are three key elements, one of which is the "Equivalence Requirement" - and that's the kicker. This is the part of the arrangement that allowed the UK to continue to have it's current service sector access to the EU market - because in simple terms it meant that UK businesses were legally required to protect the data of EU citizens in the same way as any other nation.
If Farage scraps or weakens the DPA to the point that it no longer achieves "Equivalence", that would throw such a spanner in the works for London and the UK. It would toss the UK's financial services industry and service sector in to upheaval.
Still, I suppose that if you've got "five million quid" you can set fire to the UK and then simply go live in Florida as an ex-pat. I wish he'd just get start on the ex-pat bit right now...
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 16:50 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: Madness
"Fuck the EU. We can keep trading with our bestest friends in Trumpworld, become the 51st state".
It was the brexit extremists plan all along but they weren't in a position of power to deliver what they dreamt of, conned people into voting for. And even BoJo wasn't so stupid as to pursue that path. Liz the Lettuce might have been but luckily exploded on arrival.
The brexit extremists don't give a fuck about Britain or Brits; it's all about enriching themselves.
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:51 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:38 GMT Sproggit
Yeah, somehow I don't think Farage is that much of a fan of the EU to do that - he being of Brexit and all...
Much more likely to be selling data to big US multinationals... which of course the EU GDPR/UK DPA presently stand as our "last line of defense".
On that front, bear in mind that we've had the "EU-US Safe Harbor" framework, invalidated by the EU Court of Justice in 2015.
Then we had the EU-US Privacy Shield, which went the same way (huge shout out and "thank you!" to Max Schrems).
Currently we're using the newer "EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF)", although that continues to face on-going legal scrutiny such that its survival is by no means certain.
Basically, the US would love to use the UK to undermine the effectiveness of the EU, just like Putin uses Hungary and Turkey in the same sort of way for the EU and NATO, respectively.
The UK just needs to remember that what Farage is proposing here would destroy British businesses and wipe out jobs as the big US multi-nationals steam-roller their way in...
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:54 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
Good grief does every post need overtly flagging as sarcasm now?
I don't think Farage is that much of a fan of the EU to do that - he being of Brexit and all...
No! Really?!? Well how the hell was I, a citizen of the UK who voted in that very election ever supposed to know that?!?
Please go mansplain somewhere else. <--------------- Here - this is the part which ISN'T sarcasm
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:38 GMT Antony Shepherd
If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
This just strikes me as the typical kind of Brexity "Fog in channel; Continent cut off" malarkey from people who hate everything foreign and have never quite got over not having an empire to rule.
If Farage and his ilk ever gain power, the UK is finished. But that was always the point, wasn't it.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 13:43 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
They don't have to gain power and their backers know it. They just have to shift the political discourse.
So some policy wonk in Labour (and the other lot ) is now busy briefing that support for Reform is increasing and so "the public" obviously oppose GDPR and so perhaps a lighter touch regulation would earn votes...
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:10 GMT Antony Shepherd
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
Sadly you're right. Labour still need to realise that chasing Reform votes isn't going to work (as Reform voters will vote for full-fat Reform and not Skimmed Reform) and will only drive people away from Labour to the Greens or the LibDems.
-
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 12:58 GMT tiggity
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
Plenty of people have nobody they feel particularly motivated to vote for*, or if they are fortunate enough to have a party they support, FPTP often makes it quite unlikely / impossible their candidate will win, hence increasing voter apathy & low turnouts, so the amount of the electorate a particular party needs to win over becomes smaller. Until there is PR, many people will have only the option of a wasted vote (or not voting). If we look at the Stammer Labour "landslide" - they got over 33% of the vote and over 400 seats, Conservatives got 10% less of the vote and 121 seats. I support neither of those parties (my labour membership was cancelled decades ago when they got rid of clause 4!) but the results illustrate the flaws of FPTP.
e.g. no parties are ideal for me, of the "mainstream" parties, Workers party GB would probably have most overlap with my views, but they (& other small quite socialist parties) only stand in a few constituencies. Even if they did stand in "my" constituency, chance of them winning would be zero with FPTP.
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:08 GMT Tron
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
quote: If Farage and his ilk ever gain power, the UK is finished.
I think the UK was finished at Brexit and is now slowly transitioning to a post-developed society. After the Romans left etc. Reform would just speed up the process, whilst cherrypicking public money for their mates from the process.
The BBC had someone on this morning on how the NHS could improve. Their plan required more staff and more money. Everything is going to have less staff and less money in future, so nothing is going to improve. Go back and you would have had someone complaining that the communal Roman bath house was looking a bit run down. Everyone would politely nod, but they all knew nothing was going to get better. Not enough money, not enough staff. Enjoy what remains until it goes.
A Reform win depends largely on how well/badly Labour manage the decline. I'm not sure they have even accepted that yet, never mind worked out how to do it.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 14:46 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
Their plan required more staff and more money.
Well of course, have you ever met anyone who works for any company who has said that fewer staff and less money would help?
The big problem with the NHS is that the medical staff are excellent and overworked, but the management staff are abysmal. Unfortunately those managers, like civil servants in general, see "more of us" as the only fix. If the NHS fired half its managers, abolished half the paperwork and red tape, and used the money saved to hire doctors, dentists and nurses we'd see a huge improvement.
-
Tuesday 8th September 2026 16:10 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
used the money saved to hire doctors, dentists and nurses we'd see a huge improvement
You forgot "bring services like cleaning and food back in-house".
As with IT services, outsourcing fundamental services just means lower quality for a higher price.
-
-
-
Tuesday 8th September 2026 16:08 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: If RefUK want to do it, it's a damn fool idea.
If Farage and his ilk ever gain power, the UK is finished
I can see it now:
Day one of the Farage premiership:
Scotland declares an independence referendum.
Scotland votes for independence.
Farage bleats about "it's not a valid referendum"
Scotland points out that the Brexit ref. was 'advisory only' and that Farage can sit and swivel.
Scotland leaves the UK followed by Wales and Cornwall.
NI rejoins Eire to become a United Ireland
Eire realises that it now has a Loyalist paramilitary problem.
Sections of the North of England join Scotland. Everywhere north of Sheffield becomes Alba Minor.
The West of England (Somerset, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Devon) joins with Cornwall to become Western Britain. Wales also joins.
Manchester and Liverpool join Alba Minor along with anything north of Birmingham.
Farage ends up ruling over a 'UK' that consists of the South East and Midlands.
Farage belatedly realises that he's just caused the destruction of what he claims to love. But is reassured that he can bog off to Germany and life a very nice life off the money he has grifted in his time in power.
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 15:08 GMT imanidiot
To translate:
Farage wants to make sure his US cronies can hoover all the data they want. The only laws that the UK needs to repeal is the horrendous age verification bullshit now getting foasted on all of us just because the UK now requires it (And that I absolutely refuse to comply with).
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 16:33 GMT Filippo
"For small businesses"
Bullshit. What does granny's corner store care about tracking and profiling her customers?
Only big businesses have the sheer scale to make big money off their customers' data. Small businesses can only do nothing with it, or sell it to some big business for pennies.
GDPR is a bureaucratic annoyance, yes, but it's also the only thing that's at least aiming to prevent unfair competition by mega-scale operators, who have several orders of magnitude more data to play with than mom & pop. If anything, we'd need more of it and harder.
It's not GDPR that's causing every shop on High Street to close - it's the mega-scalers. Killing GDPR because filling forms is annoying is like curing an itch by setting yourself on fire.
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 15:28 GMT tiggity
Key reasons small businesses are closing on "high street" near me are:
a) Excessive rents (obv. small sample size, but I knew the (different) people who ran a local deli & a pub quite well. Both jacked it in as rent kept increasing & hard work was not really benefiting them (they were personally working very long hours & making massively under minimum wage rates if they calculated their pay hourly ), only the landlord was profiting from their hard work.
b) Lack of free parking. Obviously council is underfunded, but by charging for parking* near "High St" many people park in supermarket free car parks, which are not particularly close to town centre, supermarkets get heavy usage & few people trudge into town centre from "outskirts" supermarkets (especially since supermarkets have reduced "free" parking time, so if they did walk into town then not much time to shop.
* "High St" is often the cheaper option e.g. fruit & veg & higher quality food e.g. specialist butchers (who can also tell you which farms all their meat comes from) but a parking fee irrationally off putting for many & "one stop" supermarket is convenient / attractive for many people too.
-
Sunday 30th August 2026 18:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Lack of free parking."
Here in North many cities are removing *all* parking. Free parking was dead a decade ago and this is the next phase.
The fantasy is that people would use public transport to go shopping and because these people are basically fascists, they make sure that there are no other options. Of course that does not happen and every small shop just quits or moves to malls as there just aren't enough people living at walking distance to make enough customers.
Malls naturally offer free parking, that's the reason they exist in the first place.
Green fascism kills small businesses just because they hate cars beyond any rational thought. Not their problem, obviously.
-
-
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 16:49 GMT mark l 2
"Farage said Reform would scrap income tax on full-time workers’ overtime pay, referred to as a “hard work bonus,”
This would be ripe for abuse as no doubt some business's would just put all their workers on 1 hour a day contracts but still make them work 7 hours OT to avoid having to pay any income tax.
Of course this could be a nice loophole and just what Farages buddies are looking for from their crypto donations with no strings attached.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 17:15 GMT Don Jefe
Always Farage
No matter how wonky the world is. Demagogues, autocrats, Fugue States, religious terrorism, economic crisis, pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, famine, genocide, and climate change. No matter what, Nigel Farange will come along and make it worse. He’s like an ambulatory divide by zero.
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 21:22 GMT Someone Else
_There_ it is!
The Reform UK party itself is currently embroiled in a data protection-related legal battle brought against it by the Good Law Project, which claims Farage's party failed to comply with current UK GDPR.
The campaign group sued Reform UK in March 2025 after it claimed the party was refusing to disclose to people the data it stored about them and failing to respond to requests to delete that data.
And there it is. No doubt Nigel and his minions wouldn't even know how to spell GDPR were it not for the fact that he has run afoul of it, and can't bluster and/or bullshit his way out of compliance ("Do you know who I am?!?"). It's likely gonna cost him and, well, paying is soooo for the little people.
"I know Donald Trump. ... And Nigel, you are no Donald Trump!" elided because the rest of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's diatribe against an all-too-haughty Dan Quale doesn't really apply here. I mean, Donald Trump is no friend of mine...
-
Wednesday 26th August 2026 21:28 GMT H in The Hague
Data protection act - GDPR
Ermm, it's a bit beyond my ken, but I seem to remember that at the time GDPR was introduced the comments from the UK were "Shouldn't take too much work to implement, most of this stuff is already covered by the UK Data protection act which we comply with."
Could anyone more knowledgeable comment on that?
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 07:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not a fan but...
GDPR is being used in ways never intended. Friend tried to oay her student daughters electricity bill online but couldnt because "GDPR: she was not the account holder".
My wife needed emergency dental treatment the day before going away for a month, got a temporary fix and asked for a copy of the xrays in case she needed anither fix while away : refused "because GDPR"
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 07:54 GMT Filippo
Re: Not a fan but...
The notion of "data privacy" is extremely recent. Until just a couple decades ago, for the vast majority of people, it just wasn't a thing that affected them. Nobody ever even thought about it.
Now it's suddenly a thing that affects, directly or indirectly, everyone. Because of that, it needs regulation. But that doesn't mean that everyone understands it, far from it. On top of that, when new legislation is introduced that covers something never covered before, it takes a long time for case law to build up around it, and until then, you don't really know how courts will react to something.
A lot of people, when they feel they don't have a solid grasp on something, react by being overcautious. For example, by keeping secret all the data, from everyone, all the time by default, just in case someone - you, a customer, a lawyer, a judge - misunderstands something at some point. Some bits of these laws can surely be improved, but there's only so much legislators can do about the attitude of being overcautious about something new; it's only natural.
I myself refuse to use WhatsApp because I have customer data on my cellphone, including in the address book that WhatsApp needs access to, and I don't trust Meta not to take it and share it with third parties. If they slip something in an EULA and I accept it, I'm not sure I couldn't be held liable for that breach. I'm probably overcautious, but nobody has ever been in court for that, so who knows?
The chaos will settle eventually. We can help this process by not spreading misinformation, thinking rationally about things, discussing them honestly, and denouncing bad actors when we see them. Remember that there absolutely are forces that do not want the chaos to settle, and will do everything they can to present GDPR as even more clunky than it is, and encourage people to be overcautious and annoying, in order to use this as leverage to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 11:11 GMT R Soul
GDPR
Friend tried to oay her student daughters electricity bill online but couldnt because "GDPR: she was not the account holder".
This is routine call centre bollocks for "Fuck it. I can't be arsed". GDPR is just the magic buzzword call centre droids use these days whenever a caller asks the droid to do something. Before GDPR came along, these fuckwits used to say it was Data Protection. Since few people know anything about GDPR (or Data Protection), their bollocks rarely gets challenged. Just say GDPR and whatever problem the call centre droid imagined simply goes away.
GDPR is about how Personal Data - ie stuff that identifies someone - get used and stored. It's got fuck all to do with paying electricity bills or getting copies of x-rays.
BTW, my bank's call centre droids ask for half-assed authentication info "for GDPR/Data Protection". Which is a lie. That info's got nothing to do with GDPR. The droids don't yet have scripts saying "I need some info to check you are who you say you are before we can discuss your overdraft". They should have had these decades ago.
-
Thursday 27th August 2026 11:22 GMT EvaQ
Re: Not a fan but...
> GDPR is being used in ways never intended. Friend tried to oay her student daughters electricity bill online but couldnt because "GDPR: she was not the account holder".
Yes, GDPR correct. Not your friend's data, but his/her daughter's.
> My wife needed emergency dental treatment the day before going away for a month, got a temporary fix and asked for a copy of the xrays in case she needed anither fix while away : refused "because GDPR"
Your wife asked for her own patient data? GDPR tells she has a right to all here data. And yes, "GDPR!!!" is abused to not give data: laziness, incompetence, scapegoating. But GDPR offers an escalation path: you can escalate the matter by contacting their privacy officer, filing an official complaint with your national data protection authority, or taking the issue to court.
-
