Barrie Cook snr

Proud Englishman, Liverpudlian, fly-fisherman. at the end of the storm, theres a golden sky & a wild brown trout, ❤️

[Callum Lyon @CallumLyon]

The UK has somehow convinced people that working full time and still being broke is completely normal.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@BirderSouth Beautiful, sadly nesting sites in Liverpool’s parks are dominated by rnp’s, they be with you soon enough i guess

[simon maginn @simonmaginn]

Can we all stop pretending Labour are in some way different from any other neoliberal project?
They're not, they're the same.
This is the Uniparty made flesh.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@KemiBadenoch @michaelkeegan14 I wont be listening Kemi, but guessing “cut welfare” might be in there.🤔

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

You couldn’t make this up, embarrassing for the tories, they will be praying he goes to Reform.

[Times Politics @timespolitics]

Jeremy Hunt: How I’d have found defence cash if I was still chancellor https://t.co/HSatvYgDqB

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@houndtrail @Sabiha1278 Very much so, friends often say to me, how’s Brexit going ? My reply is, I dont know, we never got it.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@michaelkeegan14 @UKLabour We are a welfare state though Michael, my point is there are lots of other areas that defence can be funded. I read today he is spending 4.5 billion on cycling lanes & zebra crossings 🙈

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@michaelkeegan14 @UKLabour 100 billion for Ukraine, i understand we have to help out there, but who comes up with these figures, why not 50 billion or 200 billion even. So many things unsustainable but lets go for welfare.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@michaelkeegan14 @UKLabour It jus becomes tiresome, work till your 70, cut welfare blah blah. Its same as labour & the greens screaming “wealth tax, tax the billionaires” blah blah again. Lets look at Billions on foreign aid, billions on illegal immigrants ,

[Rush @exRAF_Al]

OTD in 1982, HMS Glamorgan was attacked by two land based Argentinian Exocets, causing catastrophic damage. Glamorgan was the only British warship to be struck in the Falklands conflict by a Exocet, and survive. This was largely due to the professionalism and skill of the captain, Mike Barrow, who died a few years ago.

Before the Exocet struck, ‘Glamorous Organ’ executed a highspeed turn away from the missile, but the missile still struck the port side adjacent to the ship’s hangar near the stern. The manoeuvre prevented the missile from striking the ship's side perpendicularly, but causing it instead, to skid off the deck and detonate, making a 10 by 15 feet hole in the hangar deck and a 5 by 4 feet hole in the galley area below, where a fire started.

The blast travelled forwards and down, and the missile body, still travelling forwards, penetrated the hangar door, causing the ship's fully fuelled and armed Wessex helicopter to explode and start a severe fire in the hangar. Fourteen crew members were killed. Six of those killed were from the ship’s flight of 737 Naval Air Squadron who would have been co-located with their helicopter.

Thirteen crew members lost their lives that day and were buried at sea that evening. The fourteenth, Able Seaman David McCann, died on August 19, 1982. They are not forgotten, this is their memorial at Hookers Point near Stanley.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Every single person who still cringes at the memory of trying to bullshit their way through an interview or exam question: today, the slate is wiped clean. Set down your burden of shame. Nothing - nothing, I say - could touch this.

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

The many takes flying around about John Healey, resignation gossip and national security spending miss a fundamental point.

In Finland, where people have a strong social safety net and a real sense of shared national purpose, around 80% say they would be prepared to defend their country. In the UK, that figure is closer to 30%.

That should tell us something.

Until we change the financial architecture of our economy and bring the essentials of life out of the grip of corporate extraction and into public ownership, we will always be told to choose between bombs and butter.

But the reality is we need both.

Modern hybrid warfare means every public service is part of our national resilience. Energy, water, housing, health, transport, food security and social care are not separate from defence. They are defence.

If we want people to defend the country, we have to build a country people believe is worth defending. A thriving state. A fair economy. A society where everyone feels they have a stake.

I spoke about this on Peston on Monday night.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@LifeAfloat What a beautiful place to live Nick, i keep blowing picture up, trying to imagine how many birds nest i would find within a couple of hundred yard of your new house 💪

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@talkSPORT Pickfords our num 1, and rightly so, he is our best choice, he has got a rick in him, thats true also, but still our best keeper

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

The scale of what the Telegraph has uncovered requires the country to stop and process it methodically.

Between 2015 and 2021, more than £28 billion of British taxpayer money — through foreign aid payments and Covid emergency loans — was appropriated by terrorists, hostile foreign states and organised criminal networks.

The money is described as “beyond reach.”
Those who took it are “unpunished.”

Russia received grants via state-linked companies.

Islamic State received Covid loans.
Chinese military-linked firms received research investment.

And behind all of this sits a Cabinet Office report — the first government assessment ever to quantify this catastrophic leakage — that was deliberately suppressed to spare ministers embarrassment.

Now consider the timeline.

This covers six years spanning three Prime Ministers — Cameron, May, and Boris Johnson — and into the early Starmer era.

It covers the 2015-2019 Conservative governments, the pandemic response, and the transition to Labour.

Multiple Cabinets.
Multiple Chancellors. Multiple foreign secretaries.

All of them operating a foreign aid and emergency lending apparatus that — by the government’s own secret reckoning — channelled tens of billions to Britain’s worst enemies.

None of the money recovered.
None of the recipients punished.

And the report — rather than triggering urgent cross-party accountability — was quietly buried.

The public paid for this report.

They paid for the £28 billion it documents.

They were then deliberately denied the right to know either existed.

If there is a cleaner definition of contempt for the electorate, it is hard to imagine.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@IainDale @michaelkeegan14 @BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire He is fuckin clueless, the lack of talent in politics is alarming

[simon maginn @simonmaginn]

This is such an important point. Those who are comfortably off (such as our MP class) ignore how an unexpected cost, even a comparatively small one, can tip you into crisis when you have no reserves.

[Barrie Cook snr @CookSnr]

@BBCMOTD @BBCSport They will be looking for another one this time next yr, he is shite, one of the worst centre backs we have ever had, plays like someone has tied his laces together