KhalifaBigDreams3

I am a simp for knowledge, teach me

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

THE FIVE TESTS

For weeks I've argued that this party, and this country, needs a proper debate about where we go next. Not a reshuffle. Not a few degrees of course correction. The big, difficult, honest choices we've spent thirty years avoiding.

A few people have asked me what that debate should actually be about. Fair enough. I spent 24 years in the Marines and two in government, and I resigned because I couldn't win the argument I believed in from the inside. So let me make it here, plainly.

This isn't a manifesto, but a set of five tests. Anyone asking to lead our country should be able to look down this list and say yes to all five.

1️⃣ ⁠The Frontline Test
Do we give the people on the frontline the kit they need to do the job, and stand by them when the job is done?

I joined the Marines at 18. I've buried friends. So I do take this one personally.

I sat in government and watched us write a defence plan for a world that no longer exists, discussed in rooms I was kept out of. A 100k drone is now sinking warships that cost a billion. That is the reality of the wars being fought right now.

Passing this means 3% of GDP as the floor, not the ceiling. Buying for the next war, not the last. And fixing the Legacy Act so blokes in their seventies aren't back in the dock for what they were cleared of decades ago.

2️⃣ The Next-Generation Test
Are we handing the next generation a better deal than the one we inherited, or a worse one?

I'm a lad from a tough part of Aberdeen. My mum raised five of us through some bleak years. The only reason I got out was because I was given an opportunity. That cannot be said for young people today.

Nearly a million young people, around one in eight, are now outside work, education or training. That isn't their failure. It's ours.

Fixing this means a NEETs and youth unemployment target with a date, the youth guarantee delivered not just announced. Restoring the link between work and a decent life for the under 30s, on housing, wages and opportunity. Skills and apprenticeship numbers that beat the last government, not just match it.

Talent is everywhere in this country. Opportunity isn't. Fix that and you fix half of everything else...

3️⃣ ⁠The Trillion-Pound Test
Is the plan to add a trillion pounds to what Britain earns, or to manage the decline more politely?

Here's the lesson I learned from Ukraine and in government, and it never changes. We invent things. Other countries build them. Other countries decide. We're brilliant at the first mile and absent for the next ninety nine.

So set a target and be judged on it. A trillion pounds added to our GDP within a decade. Yes, it's ambitious. We should be ambitious!

Getting there means backing the high tech inventors just as much as the high street traders. Your local coffee shop shouldn't be paying more tax per cappuccino than Starbucks does. So why on earth do they?

It means an industrial strategy worth the name. Things to make and things to sell, in Barrow, in Derby, in every region. Our industrial base is national security, so we should fund it like it.

And it means building the chips and the compute here, not inventing the breakthrough and watching someone else scale it. Data is the new gunpowder.

4️⃣ The 10% Test
Can we make the country work 10% better, instead of only ever asking for 10% more?

I saw this from the inside. We patch the symptom this year, but the bill grows next year, and we end up paying for failure at the most expensive end of every system.

A 10% improvement in outcomes across a handful of our biggest problems, ill health, reoffending, wasted potential, would free up somewhere between £40 and £60 billion a year. We're already paying those costs. We just pay them too late, when they're at their worst.

Passing this means investing early instead of paying far more later, and having the honesty to admit that not every pound we spend today delivers an immediate return.

5️⃣ ⁠The Lights-On Test
Does our energy policy keep the lights on, the bills down and factories open, or do we keep chasing a target and hope the rest sorts itself out?

For years we've treated net zero as the only goal, and everything else, your bill, our industry, whether the grid even stays up, as a problem for later. That’s the wrong way around.

Make energy security the goal. Power that people, businesses, and industry can afford, and a grid that stays on when someone tries to switch it off. Do that and net zero follows. Chase the target on its own, and you end up with neither.

Passing this means a serious baseload, nuclear and the North Sea, built in time to matter. Strong countries have cheap, secure energy. Weak countries don't.

None of this is complicated. It's the oldest deal there is. You serve the country, the country stands by you. In uniform, in a hospital, in a classroom, on a building site. Right now that deal is broken, and everyone keeping our country going can feel it.

That broken deal is the real reason for the frustration out there. It's why trust has drained out of politics. And it's why our party that won a landslide is, halfway through the term, already arguing about who leads it.

But changing the person at the top fixes nothing if we don't fix the deal underneath. Swap one leader for another and leave the deal broken, and we'll be right back here in eighteen months, asking the same question all over again.

So I'm not interested in who gets what job. I'm interested in whether we've got the courage to pass these tests.

We've been promised a debate. This is my opening offer to it. And if that debate ever becomes a contest, it should be fought on this ground, not on personalities.

I know where I stand.

[KhalifaBigDreams3 @KhalifaBigDream]

@HandofArsenal

I want to get a “NTH LDN Whatever The Weather” tattoo. Can you get one of the players to write it on a piece of paper and take a photo?

It would be class to have it in the writing of one of the players

[Spike⚡ @SpikeTweets_14]

Arsenal 1 - 0 Burnley

Palace 0 - 1 Arsenal

PSG 0 - 1 Arsenal

[PD 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇫🇷 @1_2spaces]

Arteta and Jover on the touchline watching Rice and Saka launch corners.

[KhalifaBigDreams3 @KhalifaBigDream]

You’ve exceeded your daily carbon allowance

[Magnus Monad @MagnusMonad]

Biggest bubble in history is in the process of popping.

War has been used to justify economic crashes and new monetary policy for as long as we have had the concept of money.

Fiat currency world wide is crashing and they all know it but don’t want to say it.

If Trump moves to “sound money” of one kind or another, it would be the biggest rug pull on the international banking cartel ever.

If the federal reserve and fiat currency survives Trump’s term, then he will have failed in my book.

End the Fed and return to sound money.

[Football on TNT Sports @footballontnt]

Myles Lewis-Skelly vs. Real Madrid:

100% tackles won
100% dribbles completed
95% pass accuracy
4 duels won
2 key passes
1 clean sheet
1 assist

He made his senior debut for Arsenal in September 😳

[Ryanair @Ryanair]

Turkey flight?

[hobshy @hobshy]

I've never seen a truer response on reddit

[Alternative News @AlternatNews]

On Croatian Television channel 4. Vladimir Putin was allowed to speak.

He addressed the Europeans: "Russia has never been and will never be your enemy!

We do not want European raw materials and wealth, we have our own raw materials and wealth, we absolutely do not need your raw materials. Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of raw materials.

We do not want your land or your territory. Look at how wide Russia is on the map. Russia is twice the size of the whole of Europe in one place. What would we need your land for, what do we do with it?

Why do you think Russia is an enemy of Europe? What damage has Russia done to you?

Have we sold you gas and raw materials at lower prices than the prices at which your "friends" are currently selling you? YES

Did Russia sacrifice 20 million people in World War II to get rid of the Nazis? YES

Was Russia the first country to help Europe during the Covid pandemic? YES

Did we help Europe when there were fires and natural disasters? YES

What has Russia done to you that you hate it so much?

Russia is not your enemy; your real enemies are your leaders, those who lead you!”

[7 on the shirt @7ontheshirt]

Saying you have a good chance to beat them and then losing by the biggest margin in your clubs entire 110 year history?! Spursy.

[AFCAMDEN @AFCAMDEN]

People are not ready for the four haramball 1-0 victories coming up over the next few weeks.

[E @eddiesintown]

if I commit suicide at least a real nigga killed me

[Concerned Citizen @BGatesIsaPyscho]

JFK assassination.

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

🗣️ Nottingham Forest fans chanting to the tune of Zombie:

"We're in your heeeaaaad, in your heeeeaaaaddd, Arne Arne Arne-Ne-Ne.”

[Ben Habib @benhabib6]

It’s easy to fix the economy:

Ditch net zero - save £50 billion per annum

Slash benefits for 3 million people not even looking for a job - save £30 billion a year

Eliminate benefits for foreigners - save £10 to £15 billion per annum

Mass deportation of all illegals migrants - save a minimum of £10 billion per annum

Sack half the civil service - save a minimum of £8 billion per annum

That’s over £100 billion per annum saving

Slash regulations on business.

Slash taxes on SMEs, working and middle classes, employment

Slash corporation tax

Stop cheap imported labour

And watch the UK sky rocket.

It’s obvious. Just do it!!!

[Rich 🐺 @heywildrich]

business idea: raising capital to buy up entire neighborhoods in India since our dollar goes so much further than theirs, then tripling their rents.

since the whole world is just everybody's for the taking, i'm going to become an Indian slumlord and profit off their misery.

[ᴊᴀᴄᴏʙ ᴜʀᴏᴡꜱᴋʏ @jacoburowsky]

@Slatzism >gf does mass shooting
>reach out to journalist
>clarify that she "looked way better than that"

my man