The Critical Commentator

  A Russia-born trading tycoon who was named this year as Britain's biggest single taxpayer has seen his personal  fortune almost double, according to a study of plutocrats. Duty Paid Ralph Hedley (1848-1913) Photo Credit: Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens [CC BY-NC] The estimated net worth of Alex Gerko has been upgraded by $5 billion to $10.8 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index... Gerko, who is 43 and lives with his wife, Elena in North London, owns 75 per cent of XTX and was recently named by The Sunday Times as Britain's top taxpayer, paying £487 million in UK taxes last year. Raised and educated in Moscow, he moved to Britain in 2006, took British citizenship and renounced his Russian citizenship after the invasion of Ukraine... Gerko toppled Denise Coates of the gambling group Bet365 as Britain's biggest taxpayer, according to Sunday Times research. "I am very happy to pay a ton of taxes," he has said. He has gone further, supporting proposals fo

  The size of the funding increase awarded to King Charles 111 by the government is unjustifiable, and all the more so at a time when millions of people are struggling with the  painful effects  of high food, housing and other costs. Teachers have had to fight very hard for a below-inflation offer of 6.5%, along with  many other public servants, and the economic outlook is widely accepted to be bleak. It seems extraordinary, in such circumstances, that the government has seen fit to offer the new king a rise estimated to be 45% from 2025. The precise figure will depend on profits from the government property portfolio known as the crown estate. The projected increase of £38.5m, taking the sovereign grant from £86m to £125m, undermines King Charles's often-cited commitment to "slim down" the monarchy... By emphasizing that the percentage of crown estate profits that the royal family receives is being reduced, from 25% to 12%, the Treasury presented the deal as if it were a

  The UK should finally acknowledge its leading role in the 1953 coup that toppled Iran's last democratically elected leader, the former foreign secretary David Owen has said. The US formally admitted its role 10 years ago with the declassification of a large volume of intelligence documents that made clear the ousting of the elected prime minister Mohammad Mosadegh was a joint CIA-MI6 endeavour. The UK position is to refuse to comment on an intelligence matter. The original plot, codenamed Operation Boot, was drafted by MI6 after Mosadegh became prime minister and the dominant British oil company in Iran was nationalised. In the spring of 1953, the CIA began planning jointly with MI6 and the operation was renamed Ajax. Today, the 70th anniversary of the coup, Lord Owen, who was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979 told The Guardian : "There are good reasons for acknowledging the UK's role with the US in 1953 in overthrowing democratic developments. By admitting that we wer

According to Ofcom, half the nine-year-olds in Britain own a mobile phone. By the age of 12, virtually all have one. Somewhat incredibly, about a fifth of three to four year olds also have a phone - that's about 300,000 very young children. The lives of young people have changed radically in the past decade, since smartphones became ubiquitous. Many report spending about seven hours a day online, turning their daily activities into Instagram and Snapchat content and following trends on TikTok. One persuasive writer and campaigner on this issue, Jonathan Haidt, has described what has happened as a "transition from a play-based childhood ... essential for overcoming fear and fragility, to a phone-based childhood which blocks normal human development by taking time away from sleep, play and in-person socialising, as well as causing addiction and drowning kids in social comparisons they can't win." Children at Play Joseph Edward Southall (1861-1944) Photo Credit: Victoria