Karen Q

Wife, mother, teacher ....... retired and very glad to be so!!!! Love photography, design, art, reading and lots more! Enjoying the sun in Corfu when possible.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This face is over 2000 years old

He’s known as the Antikythera Philosopher, a bronze sculpture made around 240 BC and now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. His brow is furrowed, his beard wild and untrimmed, and his eyes, still set with their original glass irises, stare out at you like those of a man who has just been interrupted.

Divers pulled him from an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, the same wreck that gave the world the famous Antikythera mechanism. Other pieces of his statue were found with him, including his feet and part of his cloak, and they show he once stood life size, a staff in one hand, the other stretched out the way speakers did when they were making a point.

His rough cloak and his pose suggest he was a Cynic, one of the philosophers who rejected wealth, comfort and good manners, and lived as simply as they could to prove how little a person really needs. Some scholars believe he may be Bion of Borysthenes, a philosopher famous for his sharp tongue. We’ll probably never know for sure, and whatever he once had to say has been lost along with his name, but somehow you can still see it in his eyes...

[David Shaw @David90shaw]

🚨 PANIC IN DOWNING STREET AS ANDY BURNHAM FORCED TO OPEN SECRET UAE FILES!

Days after I exposed Burnham acting as an unpaid defense lawyer for Man City, the Prime Minister has officially hit the panic button haha.

Faced with overwhelming public backlash, Burnham has surrendered and announced he will publish his private meeting logs with the club billionaire Emirati owners.

He rushed onto a podcast desperately trying to get ahead of the scandal, claiming he only had one significant meeting back in 2021 and that his mind was on other things when he defended the club on national television.

What an insulting, pathetic excuse from the man supposedly leading Great Britain.

Burnham conveniently failed to mention that he personally chaired the authority meetings that handed 55 million pounds in taxpayer loans to Jersey property companies owned by Sheikh Mansour.

He wants the public to believe football rules and foreign investments are totally separate, yet his local administration used public money to buy up land specifically for Abu Dhabi developers.

The Prime Minister is only agreeing to publish these records because he was caught red handed using his political office to shield foreign oligarchs while taxing British workers into the dirt.
I want every single unredacted diary entry, text message, and private meeting note released to the British public immediately without Whitehall censorship.

Retweet this right now to demand total transparency before Downing Street scrubs the files. 🇬🇧🔥

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

People need to understand clearly what is happening here.

Andy Burnham has never been a fan of Britain’s democratic decision to leave the European Union in 2016. The referendum was one of the biggest democratic processes in modern Britain, with strong views on both sides.

The Prime Minister now claims officials told him that Russia interfered in the referendum.

Burnham used his first speech at the UN to announce the creation of the National Centre for Information Defence. He said it would tackle Russian misinformation that sows division, interferes in our democracy, spreads false narratives about Britain and pushes people towards the “far right”.

But today, a Foreign Office minister slapped down that claim, saying Russia was not successful in influencing the Brexit referendum.

It is clear that this new centre will almost certainly be used to clamp down on those who do not subscribe to Burnham’s vision of Britain or the progressive orthodoxies he promotes.

It looks as if Andy Burnham is now spreading misinformation about misinformation — the very thing he claims threatens democracy.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Burnham's attempt to scrap photo ID checks in polling stations must be resisted.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

I do not believe that the NHS should exist to serve millions of migrants from the third world.

Walk into any waiting room, any emergency department, any specialist clinic, any maternity unity - you’ll see exactly what I mean. British men and women forced to wait months, even years, for an appointment or procedure, whilst the system gets clogged up by migrants who should not be in our country.

I’ll get the usual screeching in response to this about how the NHS would collapse without immigration.

Wrong.

We can welcome the French oncologist or South Korean surgeon without also welcoming millions of zero-skilled migrants who use and abuse our generosity.

We don’t have to do both, clearly.

There is a better way.

Here is Restore Britain’s six point plan to fix the NHS.

Demand.

- Most importantly, reverse mass immigration.
- A financial penalty for missed appointments without an evidenced reason.

Supply.

- Remove caps on medical-school places so that more talented British young men and women have the opportunity to become doctors/professionals - apprenticeships, training schemes and more.
- With the same effort for dentistry, which is equally important.
- Work to retain experienced NHS staff, bringing them back into the service with incentives.
- Maintain a selective route for genuinely exceptional overseas medical professionals.
- Demand rigorous and consistent professional standards.
- Ensure no qualified and capable British medical professional is out of work.
- Introduce grants to attract emigrated qualified Brits back home.

Access.

- Work with the private sector on a massive scale to reduce waiting lists to manageable levels, alongside a 24/7 service in appropriate units.
- Use AI to bypass the GP bottleneck, clearing the way for rapid diagnostic tests, with appropriate clinical safeguards.
- Invest in community support to hasten discharges so that hospital beds aren't occupied by patients who no longer need the care.
- End the 8am GP appointment scramble. Establish more accessible online booking systems, with urgent appointments appropriately prioritised and telephone access retained for those who need it.
- A national infrastructure reinvestment scheme for technology, diagnostics, equipment and facilities.

Patient experience.

- Make hospital parking free for patients, visitors and staff, introducing sensible controls to protect availability.
- Remove ALL foreign-language translation services across the health service.
- Ensure all staff speak fluent English - OBVIOUSLY.
- Improve complaint/whistleblowing processes so that patients and staff have a proper voice.
- Invest in proper hospital food - British sourced, nutritious, and as natural as possible.
- Respect continuity of care, making it easier for patients with complex or long-term conditions to see the same GP or clinical team.
- Patients will receive clear, timely and understandable explanations of delays, cancelled operations, test results and changes to treatment plans.

NHS culture

- End every last DEI programmes and the politicisation of the health service - staff will leave their rainbow lanyards at home.
- Require NHS staff to prioritise patient care, professional standards and political impartiality.
- Sack the staff who breach these professional obligations.
- Introduce salary-linked league tables for senior executives across the trusts. Again, remove those who are not performing.

Efficiency

- Radically reduce NHS bureaucracy.
- Eliminate duplicated administrative roles, wasteful expenditure and unnecessary management layers.
- Overhaul procurement - put qualified men and women with genuine private sector experience in charge of a total root and branch review of how our money is being spent.
- Conduct an NHS-wide technology audit - drag it into 2026.

A full Restore Britain policy is being worked on, but these are the principles on which it is based.

In the medium to long term, we need a more fundamental conversation about how healthcare is delivered in Britain.

But this is the basis of Restore Britain’s plan to ensure the health service provides timely and robust care to the people who need it.

The British people.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Burnham Promises £10 Billion From Brussels. What Will Britain Pay For It?

A fortnight ago, Andy Burnham was telling the country that Brexit had done more harm than good. Now he is telling Parliament that closer relations with Brussels could add £10 billion a year to Britain's economy by 2040. On 20 November, he will travel to Brussels to pursue that ambition. What he has yet to explain is what Britain must surrender, accept or pay in return.

The timing deserves attention. During the recent Makerfield election, Burnham assured voters in a constituency that backed Leave that he would not undo Brexit. Within weeks, he was openly discussing a future relationship that could extend as far as rejoining the European Union. Today he tells Parliament that Britain must be open to a longer-term arrangement. Voters are entitled to ask where that arrangement ends.

The proposed agreements cover food and agricultural standards, emissions trading, energy cooperation, youth mobility and immigration. Some could deliver genuine benefits. British farmers and food producers would welcome fewer border checks. Better intelligence sharing could help tackle criminal gangs. But every agreement has terms, and the Government has been considerably more forthcoming about the promised rewards than the obligations attached.

Take the £10 billion figure. Is it additional annual economic output, increased trade or revenue for the Treasury? What assumptions underpin it? How much comes from agreements already proposed under the previous government? And what financial contributions, regulatory commitments or restrictions on future British policy are included in the calculation?

An agreement aligning British food standards with EU rules might reduce paperwork for exporters. It could also require Britain to follow future European regulations over which its ministers have no vote. Linking emissions trading systems may help certain industries, but could constrain Britain's freedom to set its own carbon pricing arrangements. A youth mobility scheme might create opportunities for young people while raising questions about numbers, eligibility and reciprocal access. These are matters of policy, accountability and democratic choice. They deserve answers before agreements are signed.

Then there is Burnham's extraordinary intervention over the 2016 referendum. He told a podcast that he had received confirmation of Russian interference. When challenged in Parliament, he insisted he had never suggested Moscow swung the result. Those claims can coexist. Attempted interference and changing an election result are very different things. But if the Prime Minister possesses new evidence, he should publish what can safely be disclosed and explain precisely what it establishes. A referendum involving 33 million voters deserves more than insinuation followed by clarification.

My argument on 1 October was straightforward. Britain continues to trade extensively with Europe. Goods exports have struggled, partly because Brexit introduced friction, but goods exports have also declined in EU member states facing wider economic pressures. Meanwhile, British services exports have grown strongly. Burnham's claim that Brexit failed cannot settle the question of whether surrendering further regulatory autonomy would leave Britain better off.

Nor does a projected economic gain settle the constitutional question. The British people voted to recover authority over their laws, borders and trade policy. Governments are free to negotiate agreements that serve the national interest. They owe the electorate an honest account of the powers and obligations involved.

Burnham has given Parliament a date, a destination and a headline figure. What remains missing is the price. Before he boards the plane to Brussels, he should tell the country exactly what he intends to buy, what he is prepared to give away, and who will have the final say.

Andy Burnham meeting Friedrich Merz in Berlin

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

It is almost certain that Islamist extremists were allowed to influence the Government’s official definition of Islamophobia.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government initially claimed it had deleted all the responses to the Working Group’s consultation. After pressure from the Free Speech Union and Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy, it was forced to admit that the responses still existed.

Now the Ministry says it still won’t tell us who helped draft the definition. It stinks of a cover-up.

We’re on to the Government. The public deserves to know who influenced the definition — and how Britain came to have a de facto Islamic blasphemy law.

Watch BlackBeltBarrister below 👇

https://t.co/hMMiw35sey

[Henry Bolton OBE 🇬🇧 @_HenryBolton]

Some people say Restore Britain should disband because we are “splitting the vote” or because Reform is currently polling higher.

My answer to them is this:

No political party owns the votes of the British people.

Restore Britain exists because there are a great many people who believe Britain needs something different to what any of the other parties offer. There are a great many of them who are uncomfortable with Reform UK’s leadership, the fire from the hip and fag packet policies, the weak statements made on immigration and Islamification, and the performative, celebrity politics its leaders like project.

Those people are looking for statesmanship, strategic clarity and consistency, sincerity, credibility, depth, detail, frank talking and moral courage.

Restore’s supporters are entitled to that choice, just as Reform, Conservative, Labour and Green voters are entitled to theirs.

Also, contrary to the often posed argument, polling numbers do not determine who will win a general election 3 years away, nor do they give any political party ownership of the political field.

Polls and by-election results are snapshots. They change, both up and down, and they do not determine what voters should believe or which political choices should be available to them.

If Reform wants the support of voters, it should earn it, not demand another party stands aside and gives it a free pass.

Rupert Lowe has already publicly offered to put personalities and past disagreements aside and explore cooperation in the national interest. Reform UK has rejected the offer.

That door remains open.

But, for the reasons I’ve stated, cooperation does not mean one party being expected to disband so that another can inherit its voters simply because it currently polls higher.

Nor can it be assumed that every Restore supporter would automatically vote Reform if Restore did not exist. That cannot be assumed more than it can be assumed all Reform voters would vote for Restore if Reform collapsed. Yes, it’s a convenient argument for Reform’s leadership and supporters to make, but they know well how quickly things can change. And, in their hearts they know it’s a political argument that has no evidential basis and fails to take account of the differences I’ve mentioned. If Restore members wanted to support Reform they already would. But they don’t. Indeed, many have moved the other way - from Reform to Restore.

If those who genuinely want political cooperation want to talk seriously about it, then talk.

Until then, Restore Britain will continue to make its case to the British people, and the British people will decide.

[Charlie Peters @CDP1882]

Today we saw communists in keffiyehs chanting about Palestine while standing on the Battle of Britain Memorial.

Police officers were watching on for far too long while the protestors desecrated the monument.

[Katie Hopkins @KTHopkins]

A little refresher for those at the back ….

Those who preach tolerance are the most intolerant of all. The ‘inclusivity’ brigade demand you BELIEVE exactly the same as them.

Onwards. Towards the bastards

[David Shaw @David90shaw]

🚨 THE STAGGERING DAMAGE LABOUR INFLICTED ON GREAT BRITAIN IN JUST SEVEN DAYS!

I need every taxpayer to look at the absolute trail of destruction Burnham and his cabinet left behind over the past week alone.

While working families struggle to pay their bills, the Westminster establishment has been busy dismantling our country piece by piece:

*The Ministry of Justice paused tougher life sentences for child rapists just to save 350 prison beds, right after releasing hundreds of convicted criminals onto our streets.

*Burnham openly floated a second Brexit referendum on television and confirmed that dragging Great Britain back into the European Union is firmly on the table.

*Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy backed a disgraceful plan to force every household to pay a mandatory BBC tax on their broadband bills even if they do not own a television.

*Nature Minister Jenny Riddell Carpenter publicly smeared traditional British country pubs, pints of ale, and pet black labradors as a dangerous far right fantasy.

*Shabana Mahmood approved blowing 250 million pounds to dump a massive migrant compound into the tiny Oxfordshire village of Piddington while British veterans sleep rough.

*Justice Minister Jake Richards went on BBC Question Time and deliberately refused to commit to stopping the small boats until the studio audience groaned in absolute disgust.

These out of touch socialists are treating our nation like a radical ideological playground and bleeding the domestic working class dry to pay for it!

I am sick to death of watching arrogant politicians destroy the country my grandparents built!!

Retweet this immediately to expose the disastrous reality of this government to every single voter before they do any more damage. 🇬🇧🔥

[Raja Miah @recusant_raja]

It is long past time we stopped running away from the truth. Working-class White girls have been gang-raped and trafficked on an industrial scale, not just in Birmingham, but in towns and cities across the United Kingdom. The men who committed these crimes were disproportionately of Pakistani heritage and Muslim.

It is now the responsibility of the National Inquiry to establish the correlation between the perpetrators’ ethnicity, religion and culture, the crimes they committed, and the institutional failures that allowed them to continue.

Neither Khan nor the National Inquiry will be able to stop this truth from being forced in to the light. A reckoning is coming. And as long as you are with me, there is nothing these people can do to stop it.

Link to my latest here.
https://t.co/bY9NRdoIwv

PLEASE SHARE.

_________

Unfortunately, we are reaching the end of the road where I can continue working this way.

The paid subscriptions have stalled. Worse, tens of thousands of people are now reading these articles without even joining the free mailing list. The audience is growing, but the number of people actually standing behind the work is not growing with it.

This is becoming impossible to sustain.

You know what we are up against. The mainstream media will not touch my work. Institutions I investigate do not volunteer their records. Politicians do not suddenly decide to hold themselves to account.

And yet, despite all of that, we forced the national inquiry. We did that because enough ordinary people refused to go away.

But getting the inquiry was never the end of this campaign. In many ways it was only the beginning. Now we have to watch where it goes, what it investigates, which places it avoids, which witnesses it calls, which records it obtains and whether the same institutions that failed these children are allowed to control the story again.

Nobody else is going to do that work for us. And I cannot do it indefinitely working on my own. That is why I keep talking about 50,000 committed subscribers.

It is not a vanity number. I did not pluck it out of the air. With fifty thousand people with me means when we uncover something important, it does not depend on a newspaper editor, a television producer or an algorithm deciding whether you are allowed to see it.

It gives us reach they cannot easily shut down.

But there is another reason. I need to build a proper backroom operation around this work. At the moment I am investigating, researching, writing, publishing, producing the videos, running the newsletter, dealing with the technology and then starting again. It is unsustainable.

I need people behind me who can take care of the technical and production work so that I can spend my time doing the thing I do best. That is why we have been pushing so hard for new paid subscribers.

If you read my work and want it to continue, I need your help. If you are yet to do so, and can afford the £3 a month or £30 for the year, please become a paid subscriber.

🔴 Sign Up Here https://t.co/mZBZnScays

We forced the inquiry. Now we need the numbers to make sure they cannot control what happens next.

Raja Miah MBE

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

She won't come clean. If she did, they would have to fire her

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

Angela Rayner wouldn't tell us who she consulted when designing her anti-free speech Islamophobia definition.

Then she claimed that the responses had been deleted.

But it turns out, that isn't true. What is she trying to cover up? And why won't she tell the truth?

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

The Free Speech Union is making progress in its efforts to discover who the Working Group on “anti-Muslim hostility” consulted while drafting the non-statutory definition.

We are increasingly concerned that extremists may have had the opportunity to influence the definition — which has already had a chilling effect on free speech.

When Shadow Justice Secretary @NJ_Timothy submitted an FOI request, the Communities Department initially said it had deleted all the consultation responses.

The FSU then threatened the department with legal action, arguing that destroying records from an important public consultation may be unlawful.

The department has now told both the FSU and Nick that it still holds the responses — but refuses to release them.

What a stunning admission. Were the documents simply lost in the backlog, or was there an attempt to cover up the possibility that extremists had been involved in the process?

The next battle is to make the department release the responses.

Slowly but surely, we are making progress. The British public deserves to know the truth.

Watch the Free Speech Union’s General Secretary, Lord Young, below 👇

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Every single one of our 692 Restore Britain votes yesterday meant it. We don’t have the Muslim vote to fall back on, or decades of voting habit. They went out and cast their vote knowing we could never win that seat, we said so from the start. They backed us because they believe in what we’re trying to achieve.

One of the most left wing seats in the country, 692 votes. 3%. For a months-old party promising to deport millions, reverse the islamification of Britain, openly and honestly labelling London a third world dump?

We will take that.

Tories on 7%, Reform on 6%. The establishment may detest it, but Restore Britain is now an established national political party.

When you see national polls, failing to even prompt Restore Britain, giving us 3%?

Total bullshit. We got 3% in a central London seat, packed with Muslims, foreign nationals, and Camden liberals. We are FAR higher than that elsewhere.

I see now we’re even being accused of ‘splitting’ the vote and ‘costing’ Reform third place?

Honestly, it’s so pathetic. Those 692 votes do not belong to us, and they certainly do not belong to Reform. We made our argument, and they chose to support us. If Reform want to appeal to those voters?

They are more than welcome to do so - insulting our intelligence likely won't succeed.

Our candidate, Tyler Johnson, and the campaign team, did Restore Britain proud.

They were hounded, abused, violently attacked.

They kept going.

They gave those 692 patriots a voice.

That was our objective, and it’s a job well done.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Because this is not a routine redesign. Nobody threw a tantrum when Turner replaced Dickens or when Austen replaced Darwin. The design changed but the principle remained: that British banknotes carry the faces of the people who shaped and defined this nation.

This time the principle itself has changed. For the first time in the history of British currency, historical figures are being removed entirely and replaced with wildlife. Not different heroes. No heroes at all. A hedgehog where Churchill once was.

And here is the part nobody is saying out loud. The Bank of England is bound by the Equality Act. It has faced years of pressure over the fact that not one person from an ethnic minority background has ever appeared on a banknote since historical figures were first introduced in 1970. That is a reputational problem with no clean solution. Replace Churchill with a figure from a minority background and you have a culture war. Replace him with another white historical figure and the pressure intensifies. A puffin offends nobody. The consultation did not uncover a national passion for hedgehogs. It found a way out of an impossible corner. That is not anti-counterfeiting policy. That is identity politics with better lawyers.

It's a statement. It says that Britain no longer considers its history worthy of daily commemoration. And it says it without a parliamentary debate, without a public vote, and without asking anyone. That's why the tantrums. Some of us think it matters.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The poll is precisely the problem, not the solution.

Twenty percent of respondents preferred historical figures. Twenty nine percent preferred wildlife. On the basis of that margin, with no parliamentary debate and no public vote, Britain removed Churchill, Turner, Austen and Turing from its currency permanently. A decision of that cultural significance decided by a consultation in which the majority of respondents chose neither option.

But here's the more fundamental point. There are decisions that should not be made by consultation, because what is being decided is not a preference but a principle. Whether a nation commemorates the people who built and saved it on its own currency is not a question to be settled by polling, any more than you would poll on whether to keep the Cenotaph. Some things belong to the national inheritance and require a higher bar than a Bank of England survey to remove.

The consultation did not happen in a vacuum. The Bank faced sustained legal and reputational pressure under the Equality Act over the absence of ethnic minority figures on banknotes. Wildlife was not the most popular choice because the British public has a burning passion for puffins. It was the most convenient choice for an institution trying to escape an impossible corner without admitting why.

That is not a conspiracy. It's an institution doing what captured institutions do. Finding the path of least resistance and dressing it as public preference.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Replacing Churchill With a Puffin: The Quiet Erasure of Britain

The Bank of England has made its decision. Churchill goes. Turner goes. Jane Austen goes. Alan Turing goes. In their place, wildlife. A stoat, perhaps. A puffin. A hedgehog. The consultation found it popular. The anti-counterfeiting argument was sound. And so, without a parliamentary debate, without a public vote, without anyone in authority pausing to ask what it means to remove the faces of the people who built and saved this country from its own currency, it was quietly done. This is how erasure works. With a consultation and a press release.

Churchill's face on the five pound note is not decoration. It's a daily reminder that Britain has a history worth being proud of. That the people who shaped and defended this nation deserve to be remembered. And that national identity is something real. Hand over a fiver for a coffee and catch a glimpse of the man who stood between Western civilisation and Nazi conquest. The man who refused to negotiate when every pressure was on him to do so. The man who defined British resolve at its finest hour. Replace him with a puffin and you have made a statement about what Britain now thinks of itself. You have made it to every man, woman and child in the country. Without a debate. Without a vote. Without asking anyone.

That is the pattern. It's always quiet. It's always administrative. It's always defended on its own terms, as common sense, as progress, as a neutral technical decision. Statues fall to angry mobs and the establishment calls it a moment of reckoning. Street names are changed by council committees and it's called sensitivity. The curriculum is rewritten by academics and it's called balance. And now the currency is stripped of the faces that connect a people to their past, and it's called anti-counterfeiting policy.

Individually each decision is defensible. Cumulatively they form a pattern that is not accidental. The institutions entrusted with stewarding British identity have been captured by people who regard that identity as a problem to be managed rather than an inheritance to be protected. The long march through the institutions that began in the universities and the civil service fifty years ago has reached the point where it makes decisions about whose face appears on your money, and nobody with the power to stop it seems minded to try.

The consequences are not abstract. A population severed from its history, its symbols and its heroes loses the connective tissue of national identity. It cannot defend what it no longer recognises. It cannot demand loyalty to values it has been taught to be ashamed of. Lebanon's Christians believed their country was too civilised, too plural, too decent to fall. They were right about the decency. They were wrong about what decency alone can protect. Britain is making the same error by different means. You do not need armed factions to hollow out a nation. You need a Bank of England consultation, a university diversity committee, and fifty years of patience.

Churchill understood what was at stake when identity and resolve were under pressure. He said so, repeatedly, in language that would today be considered inflammatory by the very institutions that once celebrated him. The irony of removing his face from the currency of a country he saved, in an era when the threats he warned against have taken new forms, is apparently lost on the people who made that decision.

A stoat will never evoke what Churchill evoked. That is not sentiment. That is the point. The replacement of meaning with the merely decorative is not a neutral act. It's a statement about what a nation values, made quietly, by people who were not elected to make it, and cannot be held to account for having done so.

If we cannot defend the face on a banknote, we will not defend what that face represented. And the people dismantling it, piece by piece, consultation by consultation, know that perfectly well.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

The official petition to end the mandatory fortification of white flour with folic acid has just hit 100k.

Great news.

It helps me take the fight to the establishment in Parliament.

Let’s end it.