Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Eclectic views, proud of my family; past and present 🇬🇧 Content with my place in the world ... an armchair reader of twitter good and bad. Ecclesiastes 1:9

[Jean Hatchet @JeanHatchet]

Jesus! Someone has to care enough to help this woman. It won’t be @andyburnham or any of the other Labour fearful but surely there is SOMEONE decent in govt can push the police to protect her. @KemiBadenoch perhaps?

[Frank Wright @frankwrighter]

Yesterday @RupertLowe10 spoke of the “powerful, malign influence” of the Fabian Society whose symbol is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Today at Mass the Gospel warns:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves”.

[Emma Trimble @Emma_A_Webb]

England beat Norway on the 1099th anniversary of England defeating the Vikings.

[Lewis Brackpool @Lewis_Brackpool]

1,099 years ago today, in 927 AD, England became a unified kingdom under King Athelstan.

It’s ok to be English. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @cag8109]

Interesting idea

[Lee Chapman 🇬🇧 @Lee_MJ_Chapman]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Happy Birthday, England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

On 12 July 927, King Æthelstan united the English kingdoms, creating what is widely regarded as the birth of England as one nation.

Nearly 1,100 years later, England still has no officially recognised national birthday.
Perhaps it is time we changed that.

A nation with this much history, heritage and identity deserves a day to celebrate its story.

Happy birthday, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @cag8109]

💔 you only get one go at this life, make it count and she did

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

This is what was taken from us.

[Gethin Chamberlain @newsandpics]

Amnesty International has now removed its report accusing women’s organisations of being “anti-rights groups”, possibly because it realised calling for removal of charitable status and funding met the criteria for serious financial loss required for a successful libel action.

[Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @cag8109]

❤️❤️❤️

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

Given the way this headline is worded, many are (understandably) taking it to mean Reform MPs have been given police protection by the state.

I want to clarify that the opposite is true.

The state is providing no protection whatsoever.

In fact, based on what I have seen in the last 48 hours, none of the government, the Speaker nor the police care at all about the security of Reform MPs.

Several of our MPs have written to the above in recent months about distressing, escalating security concerns, asking for help.

Their correspondence was not even replied to.

I will let you draw your own conclusions from this.

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

⚓🇬🇧🇳🇱

For 300 years, corsairs came to enslave Europeans.

Not from a colony. From Europe's own coasts.🏴‍☠️

Spain, Italy, France, even Ireland and Iceland felt their reach.

One historian's estimate puts the number enslaved above a million across the centuries.

That figure is disputed. In both directions. What is not disputed: every government paid ransom, and paid again, and the raids never stopped.

🕊️ In 1816 Britain tried one more time, through words alone. The Dey of Algiers agreed to stop. For a while, it held.

⚡ Then in May 1816, around 200 fishermen under British protection were massacred at Bona. Britain had run out of patience.

Admiral Lord Exmouth was given a fleet. And Britain did not sail alone: a Dutch squadron joined him, under Vice-Admiral van Capellen. British and Dutch, sailing as one force.

💥 August 1816. The combined fleet stood off the walls of Algiers. Exmouth sent his terms in. The Dey refused. At half past two, the guns opened fire.

For nine hours, British and Dutch guns hammered the harbour defences. The corsair fleet in harbour was destroyed at anchor. Allied casualties, British and Dutch together, passed 900 killed and wounded. It was a hard fight, not an easy one.

By morning the defences lay silent. Exmouth demanded surrender. The Dey accepted.

🔓 1,083 slaves were freed at Algiers itself. Men and women of many nations and many faiths. The Dey repaid around 80,000 pounds sterling in ransom money.

Counting earlier releases that year, around 3,000 people walked free across all of 1816. Not walking free in a single day. Freed across the whole of that year.

The treaty broke the back of a 300-year system. It did not end the raids overnight. Raiding returned in the years after, on a smaller scale. It was the French conquest of Algiers, from 1830, that finally ended it for good.

Britain and the Netherlands had broken a system three centuries old. Not for empire. For people who had no one else to answer for them.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

British and Dutch sailors stood against a system nobody else had stopped.

Knowing their story, you stand a little taller.

We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you with us. 👇🙏

👉 https://t.co/wN9S2gRmFj 👈

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

Lancashire was starving. The cotton was an ocean away, in the hands of enslaved people.

They still said no.

The mill has gone quiet. No cotton is coming. An ocean away, it is still growing. Lancashire is starving for it. They could have ended it tomorrow. They said no.

Britain's cotton mills ran on American cotton, the great majority of it grown by enslaved hands. In 1861, America went to war with itself, and the Union navy blockaded the southern ports. The cotton stopped crossing the ocean.

⚙️ In Lancashire, the mills began to close. By November 1862, three-fifths of the workforce stood idle. Hundreds of thousands went onto relief.

The mill owners wanted the cotton flowing again. Break the blockade, they urged Westminster. Get the cotton moving. That would have meant Britain siding with the slave states. The workers were the ones being asked to pay for it.

They said no.

📜 Manchester, the final days of December 1862. Cotton workers filled the Free Trade Hall. They voted, overwhelmingly, to stand with the Union. To endure the famine rather than profit from slave-picked cotton. Then they did something else. They wrote to the President of the United States. Despite everything they were losing.

The letter went to Abraham Lincoln. It crossed the same ocean the cotton no longer could.

✍️ Washington, January 1863. Abraham Lincoln read what Lancashire had written. Hungry people, choosing his side over their own bread. He wrote back: "An instance of sublime Christian heroism, not surpassed, in any age, in any country."

His reply crossed back over the same ocean. Lancashire read it, and kept going.

The hardship lasted years. Many left Lancashire for good. But they did not break. Lincoln's words still stand in Manchester today, cut into the stone he stands on.

Ordinary people chose a stranger's freedom over their own comfort.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

They had nothing to gain, and everything to lose. They stood with strangers across an ocean, and history remembers it.

We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you in it. 👇🙏

When we stood together, we achieved more.

👉 https://t.co/wN9S2gRmFj 👈

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Translation: oops, didn’t realise people outside our ideological bubble are THIS pissed off about the loss of sex-based rights. We remain implacably opposed to any organisation fighting to retain them, but shove in the words ‘rights of women’ to keep the bigots happy.

[Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @cag8109]

Perfect!

[Let Gays Choose @LetGaysChoose]

Ann Widdecombe making the best defence of religious tolerance between homosexuals and Conservative Christians I have ever heard. We have lost a true legend. I hope to see her in heaven. 🕯️

[BruceUnfiltered @BruceUnfiltered]

Every major party said the Clacton by-election was beneath them. Then Andy Burnham endorsed Count Binface on camera — and Labour mega-donor Dale Vince offered to fund him up to £180,050. That's not staying out of an election. That's fighting it with the rosette taken off.

[Women o' Scotland @WomenOScotland]

Six sexual assaults in six weeks. Four within 12 days. Four reported in the media as rape. One city. And not a word from the Scottish Government.
https://t.co/dWSlaESeqB

[Cath 🇮🇱 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @cag8109]

🤷‍♀️🤬

[Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker]

Sunny days turn men into paedophiles.

[Lucy Hunter Blackburn @LucyHunterB]

I used to worry about old age as a health issue. But following the news, it's clear my vulnerability to male violence will become greater, not less, in old age.

I have nothing but contempt for any man celebrating Anne Widdicombe's death. You mark yourselves as dangers to women

[Dr Yash  @YashRMFC]

This is insane, man. Everyone in the stadium is chanting "Hey Jude," including Beckham.