Henry F

English.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@LauraTrottMP @MumsnetTowers @RaiseTheAge16 @HP4SaferScreens @safe_screens @Netmums Isn't Keith great? Are you hoping to form a coalition government?

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@KemiBadenoch Well that's completely debunked the theory that Keith had been bumming them.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@Conservatives Isn't Keith great? Totally brilliant. We can all understand why you're 100% behind him.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@TomTugendhat @O2 @EE Hindering your work does not sound like a total disaster for the nation. A net positive perhaps.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

And yet if you ride a motorcycle, your visor will be covered in insect splatter within minutes. A mystery.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

If you are old enough to have driven in Britain in the 1980s, you remember the windscreen.

By July you could barely see through it. A run from Leeds to London in August finished with a bumper that looked like it had been to war and a sheet of glass you scrubbed with a sponge at the services while the engine ticked as it cooled. Moths in the headlights. Flies in the wing mirrors. The grille packed solid. Nobody thought it remarkable. It was simply the price of moving through a country that was still, in living memory, heaving with flying things.

Drive that same road today. Stop at the same services. The windscreen is clean. Spotless. You could very nearly eat off it.

We have the numbers, for those who want them. The Bugs Matter survey, run by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, has had volunteers counting the splats on their number plates since 2004. Britain's flying insects are down by roughly four fifths in twenty years. Gone in a single human lifetime, while the rest of us noticed nothing at all.

The birds went down with them, because the birds lived on them. A child born this year can grow up in the English countryside and never once hear a turtle dove, for the simple reason that there is almost nothing left to do the calling.

And none of it, not one acre of it, happened on the grass.

It happened in the arable fields, where the hedges were torn out for bigger machines and a single crop was sprayed over and over to keep it upright. The herb-rich meadow grazed by cattle still hums. The beetles, the pollinators, the ground-nesting birds, all still there, just about, on the pasture our ancestors never stopped grazing.

So when someone tells you your steak is emptying the British countryside, ask them what grew on that field before it was drained and ploughed and sprayed to raise the oats for the carton in their fridge.

It was grass, and there were cattle on it, and back then the windscreen needed cleaning.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I live in a country where the energy secretary and his climate committee commissars are promising to ban or severely restrict:

Petrol and diesel cars
Oil and gas drilling
Gas heating
Underfloor heating
Tumble driers
Fertiliser
Air travel
and Cattle

They plan to forbid their way to prosperity.

Please somebody explain to them why that won't work.

[realhansard @realhansard]

The Wets holding everyone hostage again?

Marxism or civil war would be more appealing.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

Highly credible claim that Olukemi Olufunt Adegoke Badenoch is working closely with the Remigration Party.

[Rt Hon Nadine Dorries @NadineDorries]

Well known that Rupert Lowe is working with Kemi Badenoch. I imagine the word ‘peerage’ pops up a great deal in conversations…

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

"I'll have some of the guacamole please."

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

That look you get when you’re in Makerfield, just as Wigan are about to kick off in the rugby, and you ask the barman if he can switch over to Canada v Bosnia-Herzegovina…

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@GuidoFawkes Poor Keith, having to bring back one of the Eagle brothers. It's hard to imagine it getting worse, but it will.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@KemiBadenoch Buying a new hoover are you?

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@jeremycorbyn There aren't anywhere near enough foreigners on benefits in this country either. Only 1.5 million reportedly.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@PolitlcsUK @e_casalicchio Well, they could consider not giving these things free to any foreigner who turns up.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@GuidoFawkes Surely they've got a spare transvestite somewhere on the backbenches that could do with a job?

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@TheEconomist Public: Upset about foreign rapists and murderers.
SW1: You bastards.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@KemiBadenoch You'd know.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@FraserNelson I hope that Keir has noticed your fawning devotion to censorship. Fingers crossed.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@DPJHodges Have you considered reporting this outrage to the police?

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@DPJHodges You should get a Reform membership list then insist that each individual SAYS EXACTLY WHAT YOU DEMAND RIGHT NOW.

[Henry F @roadsofglass]

@BBCNewsnight I remember when the fat bloke on Radio 4 accidentally introduced him as Jeremy Cunt. Thought it was a bit rude at the time, but all these years later he was proved right.