Michael Longden

Slimming World Consultant running Groups at Fairway, Birley Weds 9.30, 11.00, 5.15 & 6.45 and Thurs 9.30 & 11.00

[NHS Nurses @SocialistNHS]

We need a national care service 👇

[IslamophobiaUK @uk_islamophobia]

Two Muslim men pulled an elderly couple and their grandson from a burning house in Leeds last Friday.

You probably didn’t hear about it.

Mohsin Qayyum. 22.
Mohammed Yusuf Iqbal. 20.

Both from Bradford.

They drove past the garden. They saw the fire. They ran straight in.

Sheila Robinson, the grandmother who was trapped inside, posted on social media:

"My family and I will be forever grateful to these young men."

Her granddaughter Kayla wrote:

"Drove past the garden, seen it, and ran straight in and made sure everyone was okay without a second thought."

Everyone got out. The house can be replaced. The family is alive.

Every outlet that covered it called them heroes.

They deserved every word.

But not one headline told you they were Muslim men.

We have seen this before.

Two weeks ago, a teacher was stabbed in the neck protecting his pupils from a knife in his Manchester classroom.

Maysum Abdullah. 27. Science teacher.

LBC named him a hero. So did the Independent, the Manchester Evening News, the Mirror, the Sun.

He ran towards the blade.

A hero in every paper. A Muslim man in none of them.

This is the pattern.

When a Muslim name appears in a crime, the faith leads the headline.

When a Muslim name appears in a rescue, it vanishes from the page.

Now look at who that erasure clears the path for.

Bradford, the same district these men come from, is now led by Reform as its largest party.

One of their candidates, Daniel Devaney, topped the poll in his ward after writing on Facebook that Muslims were "pure scum" and that he wanted to "blast [them] off the face of the earth."

He was not deselected. He was not suspended. He was elected.

They are loud about our religion when they want to call it a threat.

They are silent when that same religion sends two young men running into a fire.

The book they want to criticise is the same book that commands us to save a life.

"Whoever saves one life, it is as if he had saved all of mankind."
— Qur'an 5:32

Qayyum and Iqbal lived that verse on a Friday in Leeds.

Abdullah lived it in a Manchester classroom.

And the headlines recorded the act, but erased the faith that drove it.

When we are the suspect, our religion is the whole story.

When we are the rescuer, it is not worth a line.

Their names are Maysum Abdullah, Mohsin Qayyum, and Mohammed Yusuf Iqbal.

Muslim men.

Say both.

Sources first comment.

Report: https://t.co/D9amGp2yxO
Keep us alive: https://t.co/Z8H0Flg44Y
Substack: https://t.co/9x6sqmwMge
IG: @islamophobiauk

[Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 @JujuliaGrace]

The next Labour leader must commit to reversing NHS privatisation.

Share if you agree 💙

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Farage is a liar and he wants to privatise the NHS. The proof 👇👇👇👇

[Michael Longden @MichaelSWBirley]

@rufc_news I’ve been watching 51 years. First came as a boy with my dad. Now attend with my son. Far from an OAP social club - not glory chasing fans - realists and will support the Millers through thick and thin and have done. This season has been shocking. Injuries have crippled us.

[JAHID @Hey_jahid94]

This is the pic of Donald Trump on Epstein's plane with a child.

This is the pic the DOJ deleted yesterday.

Now they want to scrub this from the Interne

Share this everywhere.

[Sam @SamCKx]

I can no longer hold my tongue seeing the utter lies being spread about Britain, our history of migration, and how this country was built into what it is today. For those so deeply buried in fake news, manufactured outrage and billionaire‑funded propaganda, I’m going to lay out the truth – and exactly why you’re being fed all this poison.

Britain was never a sealed white island. From Roman times there were African soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and living in British towns, people from across the empire walking these roads nearly 2,000 years ago. Through the Middle Ages and Tudor England you still find Black people in the records – sailors, craftsmen, servants, musicians – even Black musicians at the royal court and Africans being baptised, marrying and being buried in English parishes like anyone else. This isn’t some modern experiment; it’s older than half the castles people visit on their bank‑holiday tours.

As Britain went out into the world, the world came here. Sailors and traders from India, Yemen and beyond were arriving in British ports from the 1600s. Some of those men were practising a new faith to most Britons at the time, praying quietly in boarding houses near the docks while they worked brutal shifts in the engine rooms of British ships. Over the centuries, more people from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia passed through and settled, bringing their languages, foods and beliefs into port cities that were far more mixed than today’s nostalgia merchants like to admit.

After two world wars, the truth is simple: this country asked the Commonwealth to come and rebuild it. People from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia didn’t sneak in; they were recruited. They came to drive buses and trains, staff the NHS, work in mills and foundries, clean offices, run corner shops, open takeaways and small businesses, and yes, build prayer spaces and community centres alongside churches and temples in the neighbourhoods everyone now pretends were always “traditional” and “unchanged”. They did the work that kept Britain going while being told to go home, refused housing, and treated as permanent outsiders.

And what have they been paid back with? Scandals where people who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades get told they don’t belong. Policies designed to make life so hostile that some give up and leave. A media that uses their names, accents, clothes or places of worship as props in endless scare stories. The message is always the same: you might toil for this country, but you will never fully be of it.

So when you hear that “Britain was white until recently” or that the country has been “overrun”, understand that you don’t arrive at that belief by accident. You get there because your history has been deliberately ripped out and replaced with a comforting myth: that “real” Britain is white, homogenous, and constantly under siege from people who look, speak or pray differently.

Now look at when this myth has been turned up to max volume. Wages frozen. Housing a sick joke. Energy and food prices out of control. Public services hacked to pieces. At the same time, the number of people hoarding unimaginable wealth at the top has exploded. Funny, isn’t it, how every front page is about boats and “swarms” and “our culture”, and almost never about the landlords, hedge funds, private equity and offshore trusts quietly buying up your city and your future.

That’s because this isn’t just prejudice; it’s a strategy. If you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth, the last thing you want is ordinary people – of every colour and background – realising they have the same problems and the same enemy. Much safer if the factory worker is furious at the new family down the road. Much safer if the person who can’t see a doctor blames the nurse with an accent instead of the minister who cut the funding. Much safer if a man who can’t afford his rent spends his rage on the woman in a headscarf at the bus stop instead of the billionaire who owns half his city.

Racist rhetoric, religious dog‑whistling, all of it, exists to break solidarity. It turns neighbours into enemies and stops people seeing that Black, brown and white working‑class communities have far more in common with each other than any of them will ever have with the people flying in on private jets. It keeps you so busy policing skin colour, passports and prayer mats that you never get round to asking why your kids can’t afford a home, why your parents can’t get a hospital bed, why you’re working harder and standing still.

The real story of Britain is this: a crossroads, not a fortress. Africans on Hadrian’s Wall. Black people in Tudor courts and city streets. Sailors, traders and workers from South Asia, the Middle East and beyond in the ports. Caribbean, African and Asian workers rebuilding the country after the war, staffing surgeries and hospitals, driving cabs, running shops, cooking food, teaching kids. Today’s multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith working class is not a glitch; it is Britain. It built this place and it keeps it running.

If you’re genuinely angry about what’s happening to this country, good. You should be. But aim it where it belongs. Britain was never pure, never untouched, never “theirs” to take back. The people ruining your standard of living are not the ones risking their lives to get here, or the ones whose names you struggle to pronounce. They’re the ones buying politicians, owning media outlets, writing the story of this country so you never learn your own – and never realise who is standing beside you.

[Michael Longden @MichaelSWBirley]

@kevjohnson77 Been waiting for North stand. It will sell.

[Michael Longden @MichaelSWBirley]

@robstaton The infuriating thing was he was told to go down by a substitute who was “warming up” simply cheating. He shouted to “Robbo” to go down. Shocking.

[Ragged Trousered Philanderer @RaggedTP]

Dennis Skinner:
'After the 2nd World War and without a penny to spend we built a National Health Service, we built council houses, we found jobs for 600,000 servicemen, we introduced pensions for the old, free education... and at the end of it unemployment was only 2.2%'

[State of the Scene @SOTSPodcast]

which side are you on?

like/rt for Green Day comment for Trump

[. @jdpoc]

#LateNightThoughts ..

[Iain Key @iainkey]

Thank you to @ClashMagazine for including Billy Bragg : A People’s History in their Top 10 of the year

Very proud

Cheers

@billybragg @SpenwoodBooks

[Dr Jay Watts @Shrink_at_Large]

As a consultant clinical psychologist, I feel a duty to say this plainly: DWP assessments and sanctions are the biggest trigger of mental health breakdown in the country, and it is dangerous.

[Michael Longden @MichaelSWBirley]

@billybragg Please Release this Billy… let’s get it charting…

[Michael Longden @MichaelSWBirley]

@TinyWriterLaura @labourlewis Surely giving people with mental health issues the right support at the right time to engage in society without stigma is the best option.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Seen as #BBCLauraK won't interview @ZackPolanski - can we share this video 10,000 times so everyone can see it?

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

If you want to see Michelle Mone kicked out of the House of Lords and arrested until she pays the £232,000,000 she owes give this a RT.

If you want Rishi Sunak's involvement in the £14,900,000,000 PPE Fraud he covered up investigated, LIKE.

[Dale Vince @DaleVince]

Just another issue where Reform are out of touch with the British people - as our Giga Poll shows. Ed is right, we should tell them to Frack Off.

https://t.co/3BrOK7KlER

[Paul Vick @PaulVick138203]

Do you think the BBC gives Reform UK to much airtime compared to all the other political parties?🤔
Repost after voting please.