Guy Leppard

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

Moscow's instantly-iconic exploding fuel storage tank is resulting in a flood of memes. I'll add a selection below...

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A bricklayer in East Yorkshire has spent 35 years putting up barn owl nest boxes on weekends. This year, the region saw 308 owlets hatch.

His name is Robert Salter. He's 56 and does bricklaying full time. In 1990, he saw a piece on the news about a man in Lincolnshire installing barn owl boxes, and decided he'd do the same. He started with five.

He now has more than 350 boxes scattered across fields, farms, outbuildings, and trees in East Yorkshire. Every June, he takes four weeks off from bricklaying and visits them with his wife Sue. Scrambling up ladders, ringing chicks, cleaning boxes, repairing the ones the weather got to. He's a licensed bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology.

In 2024, the region ringed 95 owlets. In 2025, the count was 308. The Barn Owl Trust says that nationally, this year was "pretty poor" for barn owl breeding, but east Yorkshire is the exception, and it's the exception because of one man with a ladder.

The barn owl population in the UK was estimated at 4,000 pairs in the mid-2000s and crashed to roughly 1,000 by the early 2010s. The species is still recovering.

Most of conservation is one person who refuses to give up.

[Alexandra Coghlan @AlexaCoghlan]

Email of the day…

[Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB]

#VictoryDay. How it started. How it's going.

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

A minimum wage of £15 would end my coffee shop, it would have to close, as would many other businesses.

I’ll explain for the economically illiterate.

Staff costs are currently half our costs, a £15 minimum wage is actually more than £15 an hour for the company, because you have to add:
- 12.07% holiday
- Sick pay
- Maternity pay if and when required
- National insurance
- Pension contributions

These costs would mean the shop loses money because remember, energy costs are up, rates are up, regulations are up.

Now you can pass these costs onto the consumer - that would mean charging a lot more for coffee, people won’t pay it. The likes of Starbucks and Costa can, because they have economies of scale. The independent doesn’t.

Now the little socialist will say well this is your fault, if you can’t run a business that can afford to pay its staff properly, but the little socialist has never run a business and does not understand the dynamics.

Now I could pay some staff off and fill those hours myself or reduce us to one staff member during certain periods - but this proves the point that a minimum wage costs jobs.

There was a time when these jobs were done by kids, perhaps on the weekend, paid a lower wage, no holiday and no silly employment rights. Perhaps they were even paid cash. The dynamic worked and small businesses like this could operate. It was also a great first job. Sadly now it isn’t worth employing entitlement youngsters at this level of pay.

So alas, I don’t need the stress, the business would close, a number of jobs would be lost.

Economics is about understanding these dynamics, no vibes.

The cost of living is not solved through passing on inflation to the business, it is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity. This is what socialists don’t understand, they can’t create prosperity, they can only destroy it.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

I'll tell you what I don't like, Darren. I can't speak for everyone, but these are my thoughts…

I don't like a tax burden at its highest level since 1948, under your government and the last, producing the weakest growth in a generation. And worsening public services to boot.

I don't like a 46% hike in the minimum wage for under-21s in three years that's helped push UK youth unemployment to 16.1%, above the eurozone average. I want young people paid more, earned through growth, not handed down by decree that squashes the rungs above them and tells a skilled forty-year-old their two decades of graft are worth precisely the same as someone walking through the door on Monday morning.

I don't like industrial electricity prices that are the highest of any IEA country reporting. Full stop. UK steelmakers pay 40% more than their French competitors. You don't build a future of advanced manufacturing on those numbers.

I don't like a planning system that takes longer to consent a pylon than to build one, business rates that punish high-street enterprise, and employment costs that turn every hire into a risk.

I don't like watching world-class British research get commercialised in Boston and Palo Alto because the capital, the talent and the regulatory patience aren't here. They're fleeing.

I don't like long-term borrowing costs at their highest level in over 25 years, eating into every budget for schools, hospitals and defence before a penny is spent.

I don't like the OECD saying that we're going to be the hardest hit economy as a result of a conflict in the Middle East that's got nothing to do with us. All because we've made ourselves weak and vulnerable.

I don't like a government that confuses 'raising money' with 'creating wealth'. Or 'standing against unearned wealth' with taxing to death the people who actually make things happen in this country.

You don't lift children out of poverty by strangling the economy that pays for their schools. You do it by letting Britain grow again. Letting it play to its abundance of strengths.

In this case, I feel the best way is for government to get the hell out of the way.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Spirit Airlines died tonight at the hands of the socialist crusader, Elizabeth Warren

She must be so proud to add another casket to her achievements.

Tonight at 3am, Spirit turns off the lights. 14,000 jobs gone. 30+ smaller airports lose service.

JetBlue offered $3.8 BILLION in cash to buy Spirit in 2022. Shareholders, flight attendants union, literally everyone voted yes.

The combined company would have held 9% of the US market against a Big 4 that already owned 80%.

For anyone who understands numbers: 9% isn’t a monopoly against 80%.

Warren said no.

She wrote letters. She pressured Buttigieg. Biden’s DOJ sued. A federal judge killed the deal in January 2024.

Her argument: the merger would cost consumers $1 billion a year.

Now look at her collateral damage she dusts under the rug.

510 pilots gone in the months after. 1,800 flight attendants furloughed in December.

14,000 jobs in 2023. 7,500 last week. Zero tonight.

And that’s just the people in Spirit uniforms.

Catering goes. Fuel guys go. Baggage crews, gate agents, airport coffee shops, hotels and rental cars in 70 cities Spirit flew to. Every airline job carries 3 more on its back.

40,000 people out of work because of one woman’s moronic crusade against the market.

And the math ain’t mathing.

Spirit abandoned 90 routes during the death spiral. Fares on those routes are up 14% on average. Oakland to Newark: $135 to $288. Fort Myers to San Juan: $92 to $219. Kansas City to Newark up 66%.

That’s reality. Not some BS number from a “study.”

So @SenWarren tell me how this saves the consumer money?

Cheap carriers in a market drop fares 21% across the board. Southwest did this in the 90s and saved Americans $68 BILLION over 20 years.

Warren killed it. That’s what moronic politicians led by socialism do.

Then with her own blind arrogance, she tweeted Spirit’s collapse is “a Biden win for flyers.”

A win.

14,000 people are reading termination letters tonight.

And she’s taking credit.

This is socialism in 2026.

A senator who’s never made payroll thinks she knows how to run a market better than the people who own and work in the company.

She saved you a billion on imaginary paper.

She cost you ten times that in real life.

She didn’t protect consumers from anything.

14,000+ will go from working to welfare.

She will make sure to blame billionaires, hardworking tax payers, AI, capitalism and whatever monster they will make up tomorrow hiding under your bed.

Higher taxes. Fewer jobs. More expensive everything.

She called it a win. I hope you enjoy winning.

[Guy Leppard @backstagebites]

@hannahapexfit Team it with an Onigiri 🍙 and Vitamin/Ginger shot in a £5 meal deal from Waitrose.

[Yun-Ta Tsai @yunta_tsai]

We have reached an era where some people have not touched a steering wheel and have simply let their cars drive them around for a whole year, whereas others do not know this is possible at all.

[Hollywood Horror Museum @horrormuseum]

Sadly this is 100% correct

[Merryn Somerset Webb @MerrynSW]

Is there a small silver lining watching the just stop oil people understanding what happens if you do indeed just stop oil.

[Harry Wallop @hwallop]

🧦 Wonderful letter in @thetimes about Jean-Michel Jarre, @ClaridgesHotel and some socks…

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

High school students built an autonomous ball-collecting robot! 🎾

A group of high school students built a robot that picks up balls and shoots them into a bin while moving without stopping, with impressive speed and accuracy.

It combines mechanical design, sensors, and software making constant adjustments in real time while the robot is driving.

When teenagers can build systems this sophisticated, the talent pipeline for the robotics industry is accelerating!
~~

♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news → https://t.co/GoA3ZuwoPB

[Miss Jo @therealmissjo]

I read that the tunnel under Stonehenge has now been shelved. The government has revoked the planning permission.

It has already cost taxpayers £179,200,000.

A drop in the ocean compared to the other big projects that have been abandoned in the UK.

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

this is actually insane

> be tech guy in australia
> adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live
> not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4
> pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA
> feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold
> zero background in biology
> identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets
> design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch
> genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own
> need ethics approval to administer it
> red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine
> 3 months, finally approved
> drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection
> tumor halves
> coat gets glossy again
> dog is alive and happy
> professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?”

one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline.

we are going to cure so many diseases.
I dont think people realize how good things are going to get

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

UK electricity generation has fallen 25% from its peak in 2004. Per capita electricity consumption is a third the level of the United States. The UK has the most costly electricity in the world. Half the gas we consume comes from the Norwegian side of the North Sea basin. The residual imported LNG has 4x the carbon footprint of supplying our own. And most depressingly of all the result is a deteriorating UK Balance of Payments, a weaker pound, and a bigger hit to the cost of living. And still the useful idiots want to further constrain UK energy production through high taxes, banning new licences, and gold-plating new energy infrastructure. Their luxury beliefs are behind the awful household disposable income growth of recent years. 🤡.

[Norman Brennan @NormanBrennan]

BREAKING NEWS; @Keir_Starmer has today Ordered that the Cutty Sark be taken out of dry dock in Greenwich Road driven to Portsmouth loaded with cannon balls & to Immediately set sail to Cyprus to protect our troops; he said “It should never have been decommissioned in 1895”👇🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[The Buck You Will @TheBuckYouWill]

THE MUSLIM WORLD IS DIVIDED ABOUT IRAN.

Muslim countries in favor of removing the regime:

Jordan 🇯🇴
Kuwait 🇰🇼
UAE 🇦🇪
Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦
Oman 🇴🇲
Qatar 🇶🇦
Bahrain 🇧🇭

Muslim countries against the removal of the regime:

Canada 🇨🇦
Great Britain 🇬🇧
France 🇫🇷
Spain 🇪🇸

[Ejaaz @cryptopunk7213]

i find it fucking hilarious how Apple "failing" at AI is now the exact reason they're about to win it:

- watched everyone else burn $1.4T+ building models... then picked the winner (gemini) to use for... $1B

- while everyone fights to grow users, apple flips a switch and 2.5 billion devices get AI siri tmrw.

- $150B to splurge on the device / app layer. zero competition (because everyones spent their cash).

- while openAI charges $200/mo subscriptions, Apple lets you run models on-device (cheaper, faster, private, personal)

- while openAI struggles to build an AI device, Apple just dropped 5 powered by the best AI chips for hand-held devices.

they "lost" the model race because they didn't need to win it in the first place

greatest to (accidentally) ever do it.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The US/Israeli attack on Iran and the widening hostilities in the region are exposing the growing scandal that is Britain’s military capabilities, or lack thereof. We are still in the world’s top 5/6 on defence spending yet:
We don’t have a single warship in the whole of the Mediterranean, despite the eastern Mediterranean becoming part of the theatre of war.
We don’t have a single warship in the Gulf. We have a naval base in Bahrain. But a base with no ships.
We don’t have any subs to deploy. The one active Astute Class sub is in Oz.
We have a handful of fighter jets in Cyprus.
And a smaller handful in Qatar (attached to Qatari airforce).
That’s it. Most of what’s left of the Navy — not even in the top 30 in the world in terms of warships these days — seems to be in repair/maintenance/renovation. Brilliant MoD planning.
Labour/Tories/LibDems who all had a shot at government these past 16 years need to be held to account.
When Ed Davey says Brit expats in the Gulf should pay for UK protection, exactly what protection does he have in mind that would be worth paying for?