Raymond

Egg chaser!

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

First Hole-in-one, 15th at The Players! Buzzing! @RickShielsPGA

[HIN News🇬🇧🇺🇸 @HerdImmunity12]

News🇬🇧: "Andy Burnham's 'Devolution Dream' is more like a Fabian nightmare on Downing Street. Look at Scotland and Wales over the past 20 years, economically weak, NHS services disastrous and with crime and drug deaths among the worst in the Western world".

Veteran Scottish broadcaster Andrew Neil takes his trusty blow torch to future PM Andy Burnham's BS Fabian, communista vista for the future of occupied Britain.

Source: https://t.co/4aN2aOASXZ

[Aaron Newbury @AJNewbury94]

I have to admit, Burnham's speech comes off as a bit naïve. To be blunt, it smacks of a man who's grown extremely used to not having much scrutiny and to being the centre of local power and attention for nearly a decade.

Him not taking questions at the end is just as telling. Burnham will effectively become Prime Minister by default: no contest inside his own party, no general election mandate for the changes he wants, and of course no scrutiny from the press.

His entire speech was, in effect, "why can't everyone be more like me" and yet it announced almost nothing. Nothing on cost, nothing on how any of it actually gets done. Just a collection of soundbites, and painfully political ones at that, with no substance behind them.

"A circuit-breaker." "Good growth in every postcode." All of it sounds lovely (let's do the good things and not the bad ones). Nobody's ever thought of that before!! But… how?

Being a Mayor is a fundamentally different job to being Prime Minister. A Mayor spends money, much of it handed to him by central government, and never has to weigh one department's misery against another's. The job he's warming himself up for is the one that has to make those trade-offs, and nothing today suggested he's reckoned with that.

He reaches, as these people always do, towards the idea of a country "lifted back up", homes built, places regenerated, industry revived, pride in place, etc etc. There are models for this. You can run massive public housing programmes, but historically they're delivered through expensive, highly centralised, government-run schemes. Singapore being the obvious example. What they are not delivered by is building a second centre of government.

What Burnham is really offering is top-down socialism with a smile. Devolution on steroids doesn't shrink the state, it bloats it. A "No.10 North" doesn't move power closer to people, it just builds more state, in a second place, at additional cost. It's more process, dressed up as a radical idea nobody's ever had before.

More and more, political speeches are just a hodge-podge of pleasant noise. We will do things, lots of things, good things. We'll make sure things you like have "social value", we'll make you proud of [insert thing to be proud of], we'll deliver [insert policy that sounds really nice].

But the problems this country faces are enormous. Law and order is eroding, and rebuilding it means serious money for police, courts and prisons. The state grows more expensive by the year while the workforce paying for it keeps shrinking. We have an energy crisis and a poverty crisis, conflicts multiplying abroad and armed forces begging for cash, and more than a million young people out of work - on top of housing nobody can afford, child poverty, and a generation that feels detached from the society around it.

You don't fix any of that with a slogan and a second postcode for the guy in charge.

Every Mayor thinks his city is the best, and Mayors, almost uniquely in British politics, are rarely questioned. Today we all saw what nearly a decade of that does to a man. And thanks to his refusal to so much as take a question, we've had no chance to hold a single one of his plans up to the light.

[Sunday Sport @thesundaysport]

'We promise to undo some of the insane shit we imposed on you last time we were in power' is certainly a bold strategy.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

“Under a Labour government we would freeze energy bills. We wouldn’t allow them to go up.”

~ Keir Starmer

Yet another lie.

A typical energy bill will rise by £221 a year from July.

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

Cannot get my head around £231K in expenses, absolute joke. There are over 600 sitting MPs

[Moving Home with Charlie @moving_charlie]

Behold: the most impressive abuse of an MP’s expense account that I’ve seen.

An average price of just under £2,000 PER ITEM.

Just me, or is this taking the piss out of tax payers?

[Moving Home with Charlie @moving_charlie]

Behold: the most impressive abuse of an MP’s expense account that I’ve seen.

An average price of just under £2,000 PER ITEM.

Just me, or is this taking the piss out of tax payers?

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

Mental 🤯

[LBC @LBC]

'Be clear, do you support the Iranian regime?'
'Yes I do.'

@TomSwarbrick1 gets all the information he needs from caller Najam.

[Paxton Road 🎯 @PaxtonRoadUpper]

What a fucking helmet 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

How can Parliament be SO out of touch with the people it’s supposed to represent?

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@hodgson1878 Looks class that mate, looking forward to seeing the rest of the trip. Taken some thatchers over? 😂

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@RossPidge @racingblogger 😂 glass houses son

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@ander_son3 😂😂😂

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@joshlloyd88 @lloydyg1986 Brilliant

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@Legzy11 @CribbsFC @FromeTownFC Looking good big un

[Barton Hill RFC @BartsRugby]

PRE-SEASON UPDATE |

Bart’s will be looking to start some touch rugby from this Tuesday. A chance to get those legs slowly working again before officially starting preseason a month later.

Key dates

Tues 6th June - touch rugby

Tues 4th July - preseason starts

⚪️🔴⚫️ UTBs

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@CribbsFC @Legzy11 @Mattrickwoo1 Class @Legzy11 👏🏻

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@hodgson1878 Class fairplay

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@jcbs3 @jonjonspowell Needs to get into the gym… happy birthday @jonjonspowell

[Raymond @RaymondChase]

@TheAleWolf @hodgson1878 @Legzy11 Thanks for sharing, will see what games I can come watch. UTC