Rantin Roger

Grumpy farmer who loves the countryside and Antigua. Hopefully irreverent.

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

It’s so very clean and friendly.

[Rocketshipalx @rocketshipalx]

My thoughts after 3 months in the US/Texas🇺🇸:

- Americans are way more extroverted than Europeans
- Talking to strangers is normal here
- My first H-E-B trip felt like Boris Yeltsin seeing an American grocery store
- Some food is more artificial, but the amount of choices is insane
- You can still eat healthy. You just have to choose it
- High risk, high reward is real
- Way more people are entrepreneurial
- People dream bigger than in Europe, and they actually execute
- Obv not everyone is smarter, but the smart people are world-class
- Successful people here are way more down-to-earth. In Europe, successful people care about status and can be arrogant
- Cars. Enough said
- Americans have perfected artificial sweets
- There’s still more freedom here than in Europe
- One thing I didn’t expect: some Americans talk down on America
- As an outsider, that’s weird, because imo it’s still the greatest country on Earth🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

Be careful, badgers will dig them out and eat everything.

[Monica Hone 🍃💚🌿🤍💜 @MonicaHone]

Ground nesting bees in our garden!

Keep watching. So many in one nest!

PLEASE because careful cutting back longer grass after no-mow May, and PLEASE don't use insecticides on flowering plants that will poison the pollen and nectar and kill these lovely fuzzy buzz balls!

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

@SaraChristineG @KyHorsePark It’s a wonderful place, and a superb monument, with a beautiful true story.

[Rachael Hamilton Scottish Borders @Rachael2Win]

We lost the vote 71-50 tonight which would have forced a Scottish Parliamentary inquiry into the SNP’s murky affairs.

John Swinney’s pals, the Greens backed the SNP to avoid scrutiny.

The public deserve better.

[Shaun Terhune @Shaun_Terhune]

My very good friend Nate just joined X this morning and came out the gate with THIS video he shot for his first post! Give him some love!

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

@ClaydonDrill Well done Jeffery, what a good looking crop!!

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

@afneil We’re not far off that now!

[Agent P @AgentP22]

Spotted 5 minutes ago flying over Holyrood.

[Hidden History @HiddenHistoryYT]

In a single afternoon on May 22, 1941, the Royal Navy lost two cruisers and a destroyer off the coast of Crete to German dive bombers. The fleet commander was urged to withdraw what was left.

His reply has been quoted ever since, but the situation that produced it is less well known. By the morning of the 22nd, the German airborne invasion of Crete was four days old and on the brink of failure. Of the seven thousand paratroopers Kurt Student had dropped on the first day, roughly half were already dead. The Germans had taken huge losses trying to capture Maleme airfield in the west of the island. Without an airfield, no reinforcements could land. Without reinforcements, the invasion would collapse.

What the Germans needed was a seaborne convoy of mountain troops, heavy weapons, and ammunition. Two such convoys were assembled in Greek ports and put to sea under Italian destroyer escort, hoping to slip across the Aegean to Crete.

The Royal Navy intercepted the first convoy on the night of May 21. In a confused action in the dark, British cruisers and destroyers tore through a fleet of small Greek caïques crammed with German soldiers. Roughly three hundred Germans drowned. The convoy was destroyed.

But by morning the Royal Navy was south of Crete in clear daylight, within range of the Luftwaffe's Fliegerkorps VIII, the most experienced and lethal dive-bomber force in the world. And the British ships were running low on anti-aircraft ammunition because they had spent most of it sinking the convoy.

The Stukas came in waves. The cruiser Gloucester took two direct hits and capsized, taking 722 men with her. The cruiser Fiji was hit by a single bomb that ruptured her hull. She sank slowly, with most of her crew getting off, but 241 men were lost. The destroyer Greyhound was bombed and went down in fifteen minutes. The battleships Warspite and Valiant were both damaged, Warspite badly enough that she had to go to the United States for repairs.

By nightfall on May 22, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commanding the Mediterranean Fleet from Alexandria, was looking at a casualty list that included two cruisers, a destroyer, two damaged battleships, and roughly fifteen hundred dead British sailors. The army on Crete was asking for naval evacuation. The army on Crete also had thirty two thousand troops on it.

Cunningham's staff, looking at what the Luftwaffe had done in a single afternoon, urged him not to commit the rest of the fleet. He could not protect transports from Stukas in daylight. Anything he sent into the waters north of Crete would be sunk. The navy had taken enough.

Cunningham listened, and then he gave the order that is still quoted at Dartmouth Naval College.

"It takes the Navy three years to build a ship," he said. "It would take three hundred years to build a tradition. The evacuation will continue."

The fleet went back. Between May 28 and June 1, the Royal Navy evacuated 16,500 men from the south coast of Crete under continuous air attack. They lost three more cruisers and six more destroyers doing it. Thousands of British soldiers were left behind and became prisoners. But the navy did not abandon the army.

The German victory at Crete was so expensive that Hitler never authorized another major airborne operation for the rest of the war. The paratroopers had taken the island, but the airborne arm as a strategic weapon was effectively destroyed in the process.

Cunningham's decision was not a calculation about morale. It was a statement about what kind of institution the Royal Navy was, made in the moment when the institution was being tested. He was sixty years old. He had spent forty four years at sea. He understood, in a way that staff officers in London did not, that an institution that abandoned its soldiers in 1941 would still be remembered for it in 2041.

Three hundred years to build a tradition. Eighty five years ago today, the bill came due, and Cunningham paid it.

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

How has this been allowed to happen ?

[Sophie Corcoran @sophielouisecc]

Husbands with second, third and even fourth wives living in the UK have had their benefits allowance increased by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Polygamy is illegal in the UK they should have their benefits stopped, not increased.

We shouldn’t be paying for this

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

@lembitopik The End by the Doors

[Mac Wood @Askrigg_lad]

How are Muslims allowed to claim benefits for more than one wife.
I thought bigamy was illegal in the U.K.

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

Starmer preaching to his converted acolytes. All the cliches included. What world does this man live in?

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

Beautiful

[Robert Denny @denny_robert]

Nothing better!

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

At the Kentucky 5*. Boy, the Americans can organise a beautiful event!

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

Housemartins are here. The first I’ve seen this year.

[James Cleverly🇬🇧 @JamesCleverly]

🚨BREAKING🚨
Transcript of a conversation that Starmer expects us to believe actually happened somewhere in Whitehall.

Security Official 1: Lord Mandelson has failed Developed Vetting.

Security Official 2: Oh sh!t, We should definitely tell the PM.

Security Official 1: No, it’ll be fine.

Security Official 2: Should we tell the PM’s Chief of Staff?

Security Official 1: No, he’s busy hiding donations.

Security Official 2: Should we tell the Foreign Secretary?

Security Official 1: No, no one listens to him.

Security Official 2: So, what should we do?

Security Official 1: Let’s just go to the Winchester Arms, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over!

[Clive Bailye @TWBFarms]

While @Tesco post record profits again, British farmers like myself are facing decisions not to plant crops this autumn as they will lose money.

Food inflation isn’t driven by farming, it’s driven by retailer margins.

We don’t need pricier food, but we desperately need a fairer supply chain.

Let’s ensure British farming is sustainable, profitable, and valued.

Food security is national security 👍

@agricontract @wheat_daddy @loosecollie @TheFarmingForum #Farmers #FoodSupply #FairTrade #FoodSystem
#Conservatives #Labour #Reform #FoodSystem

https://t.co/FhY3vR5Yfg

[Rantin Roger @078Claydon]

So, so, funny!

[James Hogg @JamesAHogg2]

Remembering the sublime genius, Maurice Cole, AKA Kenny Everett, who passed away on this day in 1995.

Here he is in a very famous sketch alongside his friend and regular co-star, Billy Connolly, that took almost a day to record. Why? Well, because they hadn't hired any extras for the sketch they roped in some music hall performers who were recording in the studio next door and they all appeared in costume, much to the amusement of Kenny and Billy. The punchline was reached eventually, but they decided to include the outtakes.

God bless Cuddly Ken x