Jason Beckett

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

🇬🇧 THEY TOLD YOU A STORY. 🇬🇧

Colonisers. Slavers. Oppressors. And you were supposed to feel ashamed.

Not for what you done... But for WHO YOU ARE. 🇬🇧

So we tested it. Britain wrote everything down, so we opened the books. 📖

Turns out fewer than 1 man in 10 could vote in the year Britain banned the slave trade. No woman could. Your ancestors could hang for stealing a sheep, get shipped across the world for petty theft, or go down a mine at 8 years old. In Manchester, the average age of death in a labouring family was 17.

They weren't running the slave trade. They were underneath it too.

Which is what makes what happened next worth knowing.

In 1772 an enslaved man named James Somerset walked free from an English court, because English law couldn't hold a slave.

In 1791, 300,000 families just stopped buying slave sugar. No march, no riot, just a decision made at 300,000 kitchen tables.

In 1792, 519 petitions carrying 390,000 names hit Parliament, most signed by people who couldn't vote themselves.

In 1807, Britain banned the trade.

Then the slave owners sent Britain a bill for the 800,000 people they still held. 💷 £20 million. About 40% of the entire government budget at the time.

The Treasury says it wasn't paid off until 2015. So if your family paid British tax before then, they helped buy 800,000 people their freedom.

From 1808 the Royal Navy spent 60 years hunting slave ships at sea: 1,600 stopped, 150,000 people freed, and 1,600 British sailors dead, mostly of disease, buried thousands of miles from home. ⚓

In 1816 they ended two centuries of Barbary corsairs enslaving Europeans.

In 1896 a war that lasted 38 minutes ended slavery in Zanzibar. 🇹🇿

Almost every country on Earth outlaws slavery today.

That fight was paid for largely at British expense, by British hands.🇬🇧

So why haven't you heard any of this?

Because within living memory, someone rewrote the story. You got taught the crime. Not the cure.

The powerful exploited the world. They exploited their own people first. It was those people who ended slavery. 🇬🇧

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

History got rewritten once, in living memory, by no one who was ever named or held to account.

We are ordinary people doing what ordinary people have always done. Opening the books. Refusing to look away.

This is how we fight back. Fact by fact. Story by story. Name by name.

We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you in it.

If you can afford to support what we do: https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

This ‘Proud of Us’ video on slavery is well worth your time.

They have many other videos telling historical truths that are often kept from us

This is not just for kids!

All of us should watch them! 👍

[Cait Mercer @MercerCait]

23 June 1914 Edward Thomas and his wife boarded the Great Western train to Worcester & Malvern. He enlisted the following year and was killed in 1917. My father used to recite this each year on this day.

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

This past week, on a test bed in Britain, a Rolls-Royce jet engine ran at full take-off power on pure hydrogen, putting out water vapour instead of carbon.

Nobody on Earth had managed it before. It is the sort of thing that ought to stop the country in its tracks, and it will be forgotten by the weekend.

Leave aside the recent paroxysms of renewed net-zero insanity from Derelict Ed and the pervasive atmosphere of offended envy that greets much homegrown achievement nowadays in Britain. This engineering is a wonder, and it's British to the bone.

We gave the world the jet engine in the first place - Frank Whittle, a Coventry man and an RAF officer, patented it in 1930 while the Air Ministry assured him it was a curiosity. Rolls-Royce is today one of perhaps three firms anywhere that can build a large aero engine at the outer edge of the possible, and it has just done what most of the industry swore was twenty years away.

As usual, you marvel at how little the people who govern us had to do with it. The engineers in Derby are world-class; the stewardship above them is third-rate. They pulled off a global first while paying the most expensive industrial electricity in the developed world to keep the power on over the bench - a weight no German, American or Gulf rival has to carry. We produce frontier brilliance on the shop floor and fritter it away at the despatch box, and we have done for two generations.

That is the maddening shape of modern Britain: brilliance from below, sub- (or, indeed, ultra-) mediocrity from above. The people here who actually make things are still among the best in the world; the state that is meant to back them treats a firm like Rolls-Royce as a photocall today and a takeover target tomorrow, and prices its energy as though it would prefer the next plant were built in Texas.

Progress starts from the other end. Give these people what every rival government gives its champions and we beg ours to do without: the cheap, abundant power their competitors already enjoy, a supply chain built around them, and a state that guards a national asset rather than auctioning it. The hard part of a British revival - the talent, the nerve, the engineering - is already done, and was done again this week, by people who deserve a far better country than the one currently sitting above them.

We just taught an engine to breathe fire and exhale water. The least we owe the men and women who managed it is a government and a state as brilliant as they are.

[Gawain Towler @GHWTowler]

Matt, yet again

[Restoring Your Faith in Humanity @HumanityChad]

Dad jokes with Tom Hardy and his dad

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

The longest line of sight in the U.K. has been seen only a few times, and photographed once. In 2015, Kris Williams was atop Snowdon in perfect conditions and managed to snap The Merrick in Southern Scotland. A remarkable distance of 232km (144 miles).

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 Most Badass Presidents: Combat Veteran Edition #9 George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush, our 41st President, was one badass President.

He was shot down by Japanese fire, bailed out of his burning plane, and floated alone in the Pacific until rescued by a submarine.

Born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts.

On his 18th birthday Bush enlisted in the Navy.

He completed preflight training at UNC Chapel Hill and became the youngest naval aviator in the fleet at the time.

He flew the TBM Avenger torpedo bomber off the light carrier USS San Jacinto in Torpedo Squadron VT-51.

Bush flew 58 combat missions across the Pacific.

He named his aircraft Barbara after his high school sweetheart. There would be three of them by the time the war was over.

In June 1944, Bush was flying an unnamed temporary plane. It suffered engine failure. He made a forced water landing and he and his crew were rescued by the destroyer USS Clarence K. Bronson.

In August 1944, Barbara I suffered catastrophic engine failure. He had to turn back and make an emergency carrier landing.

Then on September 2, 1944, flying Barbara II, his squadron attacked a radio tower on the heavily defended island of Chichi Jima.

Bush dove straight into intense anti aircraft fire.

His plane was hit hard and the engine burst into flames.

Smoke filled the cockpit but Bush stayed on target, released his bombs, and scored direct hits.

He then flew the burning Avenger several miles out to sea.

He ordered his crew to bail out.

One crewman’s parachute failed to open.
The other went down with the plane.

Bush bailed out around 2,000 ft. His head grazed the tail wing and left a large bleeding gash above his eye.

In a panic, he pulled his ripcord early, causing the parachute to snag on the tail section and tear.

He hit the water hard.

He inflated his raft and floated alone for hours, vomiting from a concussion and bleeding down his face.

Squadron mates strafed Japanese boats that tried reaching him.

The submarine USS Finback spotted him and pulled him to safety.

He returned to action in November 1944 with Barbara III and participated in operations in the Philippines.

His squadron suffered nearly 50 percent casualties among its pilots.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation for his combat service.

He was honorably discharged in 1945 and entered Yale University.

Four years after meeting at a Christmas dance, George married Barbara. They would be together for 73 more years.

He flew for the Republic in the Pacific long before he ever stepped foot in the White House.

Thank you, Mr. President! 🇺🇸🫡

[BBC Archive @BBCArchive]

#OnThisDay 1964: A documentary about the ‘most exclusive club in Britain’ looked at the niche community of steam train owners, who have saved engines from ending up in the breakers-yard. Amongst them was Alan Pegler who spent £3,000 on the decommissioned Flying Scotsman.

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@Adrian_Hilton It’s Audenshaw school in Greater Manchester

[Napoleonic & Revolutionary War Graves Charity @NRWGCharity]

Today marks the anniversary of the storming of Seringapatam (1799).

This was a key battle in the conquest of Southern India and resulted in the defeat of the Tipu Sultan (the ruler of Mysore).

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

Marvellous. Just marvellous…

Follow this account.

Fascinating.

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@NIOgov @HillsCastle @cabinetofficeuk It's terrible.

[Hiroshi Suzuki @AmbJapanUK]

Happy St George's Day!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹

[teresa smith @treesey]

@campbellclaret @jk_rowling @RestIsPolitics @SarahEMcBride Editorial meeting for @RestIsPolitics

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

Raise an equestrian statue of Queen Elizabeth in St James’ Park - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/lSQVfGXzmm via @UKChange

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@cabinetofficeuk Very poor. Please go back to the drawing board.

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@George_Osborne @polcurrency How does Britain actually fight a war? With great difficulty after the cuts you made.

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@RachelReevesMP Congratulations, welfare benefits spending overtaking income tax revenue for the first time in the UK's history. Worst Chancellor ever.

[Jason Beckett @BECKETJ]

@NAM_London @LordAshcroft An excellent decision. Thank you