John Healey

Old school gentleman, Brexit supporter, wry sense of humour… #NeverLabour #ReformMember #NetZero=Scam #StarmerOut, No DMs 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧

[John Healey @JohnColonelputt]

A good watch, Charlie Kirk at Oxford...

My Full Speech At Oxford: Make England Great Again https://t.co/7OAlC4ZqNx via @YouTube

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Fish and chips fried in beef dripping was a different thing entirely to what is handed over the counter today.

Walk into a Whitby chippy in 1976. The range has been roaring since eleven, the windows running with steam, the whole street smelling of hot fat and salt and the sea. The fat is beef dripping, pale gold, held at 180 degrees by a man in a white apron who has fried since he was fifteen. There is no seed oil in the building. The thought would not have crossed a single mind.

The haddock goes in first, off the boats that morning, dipped and lowered into the dripping. The fat is hot enough to seize the batter on contact, sealing it into a shell while the fish steams white and soft inside. Ninety seconds and it surfaces the colour of a conker. Press it and it cracks. Underneath, the savoury note only animal fat leaves, the thing that makes you eat faster without knowing why.

Then the chips. Thick-cut Maris Pipers in the same dripping. Dark gold at the edges, fluffy in the middle, tasting of the potato and of something deeper beneath it, something close to a Sunday roast, something you couldn't name because you were nine and nobody named it. It was simply what chips tasted like.

That deeper taste, in the fish and the chips both, was beef dripping.

Salt. Vinegar soaking through the newspaper. A handful of warm coins. You eat them walking the harbour wall in the cold, the parcel held to your chest like something living.

From the mid-seventies the fat was tipped away. The war on saturated fat reached the chippy, cheap vegetable oil undercut the dripping, and the fryers filled with rapeseed, palm and sunflower, kinder to the accountant and to the new advice. By the turn of the century nearly every fryer had switched. A stable fat used since before history, traded for an industrial oil that oxidises in the pan across a twelve-hour day.

What comes out now is paler, looser. The batter sogs instead of shattering. The chip tastes of potato and stops there. No depth. No hum. No ghost of a Friday roast.

Ask anyone under thirty what it is meant to taste like, and they will describe, in full sincerity, a supper their great-grandfather would have sent straight back. They cannot mourn it. The reference was wiped from the national tongue before they were born.

A stubborn few never let go. Yorkshire mostly, where jumbo haddock in dripping never died, and a growing handful elsewhere now painting "100% beef dripping" across the window like the badge it is.

Go. Drive. Queue. Eat it out of the paper, standing up, fish and chips together, the way it was built to be eaten. You will understand, in a single bite, what was taken.

The cattle are still in the field. The suet still hangs at the butcher. The fryer could be filled with the right fat again tomorrow.

A whole country forgot what its own national dish was meant to taste like.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Marged is a Tamworth gilt in Monmouthshire. Eighteen months old, eighty kilograms, ginger, and in possession of more opinions than most parish councils.

Start, as you must with any pig, at the nose. Marged carries something like eleven hundred working olfactory genes to your three hundred-odd, and reads the world roughly ten thousand times more vividly than you do.

Before she has properly opened her eyes she knows the wind has shifted, that a badger crossed the lower fence in the night, and that the farmer is having toast with marmalade rather than honey. She files all of it, then gets up and goes to find the apple she also smelled.

The apple is not incidental. There is a tired old Bramley at the edge of her paddock, and Marged has worked out a ripeness protocol for its windfalls more sophisticated than most commercial fruit buyers manage. She nudges the ones that are not ready and leaves them, returning in a few days when they are.

The farmer's wife bakes with what she can reach. Marged handles the rest. A tree, a baker and a pig, with an understanding none of them have ever written down.

She is, like all pigs, far cleverer than the people who eat them prefer to dwell on. She holds firm views on her water, the root vegetables that turn up on Thursdays, and the farmer's scheduling, all conveyed through grunts so precise the farmer's wife keeps a glossary.

Grunt 3 is "I am awake and this is your notification." Grunt 7 is "something is wrong or interesting, distinction unclear," and the day she aimed it at a fence post, the post turned out to have a crack in it. The farmer now checks whatever Grunt 7 is about. Marged is usually right.

What looks like a pig making a mess of a paddock is a pig doing the work of a drainage contractor for nothing. She took a waterlogged corner that had beaten six years and two consultants and turned it, in a single week, into open worked earth, clearing the couch grass nobody could shift because she wanted to eat it.

The wallow she has deepened since October keeps her cool, a pig having no way to sweat. It will fill with insects, and the insects will bring the swallows in May. None of which she intends, and all of which happens anyway.

She is ginger, and young, and entirely her own animal. When the time comes, her bacon will feed seven local households and keep a heritage line going a while longer, which is the whole quiet point of her.

Pigs are not what you have been told. Marged knows you are reading this. Marged does not require your attention.

[Ratko R. @RatkoR2]

PRÄSIDENT PUTINS BOTSCHAFT AN DIE DEUTSCHE REGIERUNG UND DAS DEUTSCHE VOLK

So wird der Gnadenstoß versetzt – ohne Waffen, verbal… 🥳

„Wir wollen euch nicht angreifen! Warum sollten wir? Diese Zeiten sind längst vorbei! Jeder, der noch bei Verstand ist und klar denken kann, versteht das.

Erstens:

Ihr habt bereits Staatsschulden in Höhe von 2,5 Billionen Euro, und kein seriöser Wirtschaftswissenschaftler hat eine Ahnung, wie ihr die jemals zurückzahlen wollt. Und jetzt wollt ihr weitere 1 Billion Euro aufnehmen, um euch gegen uns zu bewaffnen. Wollt ihr, dass das russische Volk diese Schulden bezahlt? Niemals!

Zweitens: Euer Land ist voller Millionen von Migranten, die euch 50 Milliarden Euro im Jahr kosten. Sollte das russische Volk dafür zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden?

Drittens: Ein beträchtlicher Teil eurer Bevölkerung ist so verrückt, dass er glaubt, das Klima durch Fahrradfahren und Insektenessen beeinflussen zu können. Vielleicht ließe sich dieser massive Hirnschaden beheben, aber das würde uns auch etwas kosten.“ viel.

Viertens: – Euer Bildungssystem war einst vorbildlich. Jetzt findet in vielen Klassen praktisch kein Unterricht mehr statt, weil fast niemand mehr Deutsch spricht.

Fünftens: – Eure Infrastruktur verfällt, und ihr kommt mit den Reparaturen nicht voran.

Sechstens: – Eure Eisenbahnen waren einst der ganze Stolz der Welt. Jetzt fahren eure Züge wie in Indien.

Siebtens: – Wir brauchen eure berühmten Ingenieure nicht. Während der Sanktionen haben wir gelernt, dass wir ohne sie auskommen können. Sollten wir sie aber doch brauchen, wenden wir uns an China. Dort sind sie nicht nur billiger, sondern auch besser.

Achtens: – Ihr habt weder Rohstoffe noch Energiequellen. Warum sollten wir also euer Land erobern? Um Probleme zu lösen, die wir sonst gar nicht hätten? Realistisch betrachtet: Selbst wenn ihr uns rufen, kapitulieren und weiße Fahnen hissen würdet, würden wir trotzdem nicht kommen!

[The Jackal… @ToonDazza]

Dont remember him crying for Henry Nowak, the Southport little girls, the Belfast victim, the Nottingham victims - not a drop.
Just for himself.

[Andy Burnham @AndyBurnhamGM]

I think this hashtag needs to be trending tonight, don’t you?

#GeneralElectionNow

[Kevin Edger @KEdge23]

Labour voted to take the winter fuel allowance off pensioners. Not just Keir Starmer.

Labour voted to increase your taxes, introduce the family farm tax, and cripple businesses. Not just Keir Starmer.

Labour lied and gaslit you for years. Not just Keir Starmer.

Never forget.

[Matt Casey 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 @MattCas04807118]

👏👏

Enjoy him before he’s sacked!

"The reason why I was declared the 'anti-woke Chief Constable'... I had the temerity to say 'no, we won't take the knee, no, we're not going to wear rainbow coloured lanyards, no, we're not going to dance around with environmental protesters'," he said.

"Why? Because we're the police. So, in a sense, asserting professional, impartial, policing without fear or favour has got me branded as anti woke."

GMP's Chief Constable has spoken out on his 'anti-woke' agenda, five years after taking over the police force.

https://t.co/5j2R1lAvth

[Sith Daddy @sithdaddyx]

Let's celebrate the resignation of Keir Starmer with this wonderful song. Bye-bye, Keir! We will remember you as the biggest wanker of all UK leaders. Donald Trump and his band are performing this song for your pleasure. The Spotify version is coming soon.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

This breaks my heart. 👇

I would dearly love to have more wool in my clothes - jackets, coats, jumpers, trousers and dresses are all wonderful made from wool. Warm but breathable, creases drop out, and fire retardant.

I would also love to insulate my home with it.

But wool is expensive. And hard to buy.

So everyone replaces it with manmade fibres…. Made from oil….

The polyesters etc are rarely as practical or hardwearing. They are far less ecologically sound.

They are a symptom of our throwaway culture.

I wish we could buy more wool - and if we did, the processing costs would reduce, the farm gate prices rise and natural fibres would replace the mountains of unrecyclable discarded tat that we dump every year.

Support British shepherds, buy British wool.

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

Andy Burnham is either principled and will follow his own advice from 2022, or is a cynical careerist politician who has no principles whatsoever.

Can you guess which he is?

CALL A GENERAL ELECTION NOW

[Wokerati Marty @WokeratiMarty]

Keir Starmer is absolutely full of shit.

He’s just said, “Six years ago I inherited a party which was morally bankrupt.”

No, mate, you’re the one who’s morally bankrupt.

Get in the bin.

[The Jackal… @ToonDazza]

A reminder:

21000 people moved for @AndyBurnhamGM to become Makerfiald 'MP'

0 people voted for Him to be the Prime Minister

He has NO mandate to govern.

We need to have a General Election.

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

Please do not believe the platitudes that Starmer is a “decent man”.

He hounded innocent British troops in court as a hobby. 👇

[Sandy Tregent @SandyofSuffolk]

Just so you know.

When Angry Andy Burnham became Mayor of Manchester, he promised to end rough sleeping.

Rough sleeping in Manchester has now actually doubled.

Just so you know.

[No Farmers, No Food @NoFarmsNoFoods]

Keir Starmer resigns and repeats his claim that he always “puts the country first.”

Thousands of farmers beg to differ about that claim.

[Robert Abel @rj_abel]

It’s hard to understand how Andy Burnham could be the next Prime Minister when only two weeks ago he wasn’t even an MP.
The country should decide who leads the people — at the ballot box — call a general election.

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

In his resignation speech, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer boasted that he protected British children from social media.
Someone needs to remind him that he was supposed to protect them from rape and sexual exploitation.

[The British Patriot @TheBritLad]

🚨 BREAKING: Following Keir Starmer’s resignation, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has demanded an immediate General Election.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Do you agree with this?

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

In the 1980s, California spent around seventy-four million dollars of public money building the Kern Water Bank, a vast underground reservoir meant to hold water for cities to fall back on in a drought.

Today it largely waters almonds and pistachios for a single billionaire couple.

Stewart and Lynda Resnick own the Wonderful Company, the outfit behind Wonderful Pistachios, POM juice, Halos mandarins and Fiji Water, and the biggest nut growers in the United States.

In 1994, across a few days of closed-door talks on the Monterey Peninsula, that taxpayer-built water bank was quietly moved out of public hands. When the dust settled, a Wonderful subsidiary held a 57 percent controlling stake. The same deal let water be banked, traded and sold like a commodity, and stripped cities of the priority they used to hold in a shortage.

So in a dry year the Resnicks can sell water back to the very public that paid to store it, at a premium.

The rest gets poured onto permanent orchards in the semi-arid western San Joaquin Valley, ground that sits close to desert and survives only on imported water. An almond drinks roughly a gallon apiece, and a nut tree cannot be left fallow when the rain fails the way a field of lettuce can. The thirst is locked in for decades.

None of this happened by accident. The Resnicks have poured millions into politicians of both parties and sit among Gavin Newsom's largest donors.

Water in California is supposed to belong to the public. They worked out that whoever owns the land and the paperwork owns the water, and they bought both.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Activist: "You should put solar panels here instead."
Farmer: "Instead of the food, you mean."
Activist: "Leasing to a solar firm is the responsible choice."
Farmer: "Responsible to whom? The firm, mainly."
Activist: "It's about cutting carbon."
Farmer: "The panels come from China and the land stops growing food. Where's the saving hiding?"
Activist: "It's only temporary. They lift them again in forty years."
Farmer: "Forty years. That's two generations of a family farm, swapped for a rent cheque."
Activist: "You'd still be paid."
Farmer: "Paid to stop doing the one thing this valley is any good at."
Activist: "It's a guaranteed income."
Farmer: "So is selling the family silver. Hardly makes it clever."
Activist: "You just dislike change."
Farmer: "I dislike being sold a power station and told it's a meadow."