The study – Money, Media and Lords: How the ultra-rich are shaping Britain – argues that unelected power in Britain has risen sharply at the same time as an increasing amount of money is spent on political access and influence.

“These trends move in lockstep with wealth concentration at the top and are increasingly embedded within the country’s political and media systems,” said Sahni-Nicholas.

The report shows how the appointments system for the House of Lords, the scale of political donations and the concentration of media ownership each function as “conduits for unelected power”.

[...]

The Guardian’s own analysis has found that one in 10 peers were paid for political advice in the 2019 to 2024 parliament.

The trust’s report also shows how media ownership has become dramatically more concentrated, with the share controlled by the UK’s three biggest news conglomerates rising from 71% to about 90%.

The UK’s local newspapers are dominated by a handful of corporate chain publishers, with just two companies – Newsquest and National World – controlling 51% of the UK’s 882 local newspapers and online local news websites.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/27/ultra-rich-unelected-power-reshaping-british-politics-equality-trust-report

On December 15, 2023, an Israeli sniper operating in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City opened fire on three shirtless, unarmed men in their twenties, one of whom was waving a white flag. Two were killed instantly; the third fled into a nearby building, where he called out for help in Hebrew. He was discovered there by another IDF patrol, which shot him dead. At the time, there was already ample evidence of major war crimes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip — only two days earlier, for example, credible reports had emerged that the IDF had executed a group of Palestinian civilians sheltering on the grounds of a school near the Jabalia refugee camp. But the Shuja’iyya incident provoked special outrage, with small demonstrations in Israel. The victims, it turned out, were escaped Israeli hostages.

Though Israeli officials had announced in 2016 that the Hannibal Directive (named, it is reasonable to presume, for the Carthaginian general who died by suicide in the second century B.C.E.) would soon be phased out, it was deployed in at least three locations on October 7, per investigations by the United Nations and Haaretz. In one instance, the IDF killed an elderly hostage by firing into her captor’s vehicle from a helicopter. In another, an Israeli tank shelled a house in Kibbutz Be’eri, killing thirteen captives inside. On a November 2023 episode of Haaretz’s podcast, an IDF officer, Lieutenant Colonel Nof Erez, called the day’s maneuvers a “mass Hannibal.”

https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-masada-option/

Public groceries hit the mainstream with Zohran Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign in New York City. The good news for boosters is that it already exists at scale in the US military’s commissary system. The military commissary system underwrites the gross margins of retail operations so that retail prices are 20 to 30 percent lower than grocery prices. The military commissary generates over $5.6 billion in annual sales and leverages large-scale buying power to ensure low wholesale costs and a great selection.

The commissary system is well-loved by US service members. An army officer friend summed it up to me, saying, “Always less expensive. Good food. There should be a push for public PX-style grocers across the country.” In New York City, there is a commissary at Fort Hamilton, in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. This market has 193 ratings on Google Maps, averaging 4.6 stars. The commissary system is proof that the government can operate efficient, popular grocery stores that customers genuinely appreciate.

https://jacobin.com/2025/11/trump-grocery-prices-public-option/