AWL

dyslexic atheist insomniac, I can’t sleep at night wondering if there is a dog.

[AWL @coawljan]

@unusual_cars A seasoned up hyena could not have been more obcena in the back of my ………..

[The Extreme Music Enthusiast @TheExtremeMusi1]

They definitely don’t make them like this anymore.

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

This is easily the greatest performance of the James Bond theme by any orchestra.
In 2020, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra was about to play the famous score but surprised the audience when the conductor is "shot dead" by a secret agent, squib fx 'n all, kicking off the epic performance without missing a beat. The best part is the cameras continuously cutting back to the conductor's motionless body 🔥 watch til the end

[Stansaid Airport @StansaidAirport]

That's the 900 year old Bayeux Tapestry just arrived in the Freight Warehouse, ready for transporting to the British Museum for display. I had a sneak preview and it's absolutely magnificent.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

A pasture in the Lincolnshire Wolds has carried cattle for a thousand years.

It's worked by the Crawford family. Has been since the reign of George IV. Two hundred years of calving in the small hours, of bringing the herd in before storms, of two hundred years of knowing that the Lincoln Reds prefer the south-facing slopes in spring and the sheltered hollow when the wind comes off the North Sea in October.

In 2025, a solar developer offered them £1,250 an acre per year, index-linked, on a forty-year lease. The suckler herd was running at a loss before subsidy. With subsidy, the margin was thin enough that one bad winter or one TB reactor wiped it out.

The family is thinking about it.

You can't blame them. The maths is not subtle. The maths is a father and a son walking the herd at first light, neither of them speaking, both of them knowing that the figure on the developer's letter is more than the farm has cleared in a decade.

If they sign, the panels go up in 2027.

The herd will be dispersed at Louth, which is now the last remaining livestock market in Lincolnshire. Two hundred head of one of the oldest beef breeds in Britain, descended from cattle the Norse settlers brought across the North Sea, finished on grass without a grain of cereal, broken up and sold to whoever turns up with a trailer. Fewer than five hundred original-population Lincoln Reds remain in the world. The Crawford herd was one of the larger ones.

The barn becomes a substation. The cattle grid gets lifted. The hedge the great-grandfather planted in 1958 gets pulled out to widen the access track for the construction lorries.

The Crawfords did not choose this. The economics were engineered, in Westminster, over fifteen years, to make this the only sensible option.

The panels are not the villain. The panels are the symptom.

The villain is a country that decided British beef mattered less than electricity it could have generated from the roof of the Amazon warehouse outside Grantham. The shelf in the supermarket where the Lincoln Red used to sit will be filled, quietly, by Irish beef, then Australian, then Brazilian, and nobody will tell the shopper why the country stopped feeding itself.

The roof of the warehouse is still empty.

The herd is gone.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

@AngelaRayner, a few questions your statement does not answer.

Tax Policy Associates, one of the most respected independent tax bodies in the country, states it cannot understand why HMRC decided not to charge a penalty. Both of your advisers explicitly told you to obtain specialist tax advice before completing the transaction. You did not obtain it. Independent experts say a penalty of approximately 20 percent was the likely and legally correct outcome under Schedule 24 of the Finance Act 2007. HMRC reached a different conclusion without explaining why. Do you believe HMRC reached the correct conclusion and if so can you explain why two independent expert bodies disagree?

You state you had no personal financial interest in the trust set up for your son. The trust was funded in part by NHS compensation money awarded for your son's care. You sold your remaining stake in your Ashton constituency home to that trust for £162,500 in January 2025 and used those proceeds as a deposit on an £800,000 flat in Hove. How do you define no personal financial interest in that transaction?

A £50,000 donation to the Office of Angela Rayner Limited from Refrigeration House Limited arrived on 24 March 2026, described as towards staffing costs and declared on the parliamentary register. Weeks later you paid the £40,000 stamp duty bill. Who owns Refrigeration House Limited, what is their connection to you, and was any part of that donation used directly or indirectly to meet the stamp duty liability?

You say politicians should be held to high standards. The questions above are what high standards look like in practice. They deserve answers.

[Andrew Lawrence @andrewlawrence]

Big problem...

[AWL @coawljan]

@daveatherton Just reading Len Deighton’s book Bomber, a great insight into the technical and tactical capabilities of the Lancaster and its crew, with lots of detail including the results of the bombing raid from a German point of view.

[Radmore Farm @Radmore_farm]

I found two different starches in a Tesco pork joint. Not one — two. Here's what they do, why they're there, and what it means for the price you're actually paying.
Tesco Basted Pork Loin Joint (800g) ingredients: Pork Loin (90%), Water, Sea Salt, Modified Maize Starch, Sugar, Tapioca Starch, Rosemary Extract.
I'm a primary producer. I don't supply supermarkets. That means I have no agenda except showing you what's actually in the food reaching your plate — and what the label is telling you, if you know how to read it.
In this video I break down what Modified Maize Starch and Tapioca Starch are doing in a whole pork joint, why two starches are used together, and how this connects to the same approach I exposed in a Tesco beef roasting joint weeks ago.
The information is on the label. It always has been. But it's written in language designed not to slow you down in the aisle.

Want real meat?
Shop now :
https://t.co/OeCNt28O8n

Memberships:
https://t.co/FDHsSDpn0V

[June Slater @juneslater17]

The suck it up post for Boomer Angst

Yes I'm a boomer I bought my first home in 1979 for £4.56p it had rocketed in value to £10,000 just after my husband carried me over the doorstep some hours later.
I often changed jobs because there were plenty of them.

Politicians wore normal suits and bum bashing was a secret passtime only divulged because Jeremy Thorpe's hitman was a really bad shot and the whistleblower went to the papers.

Being gay and married was frowned upon in politics, now it's a goal!

I only knew one female MP..that was Barbara Castle she had really
back combed red hair that was only washed after the nesting season when the young had fledged.

The Prime Minister was Harold Wilson when I was a kid. smoked a pipe my dad wanted to shove it up another one of Mr Wilson's orifices ...preferably lit!

There was a bloke called Jim who was prime minister once, he had the same surname as Dirty Harry and was really shit at his job that's when they invented Margaret Thatcher . They thought she was going to be really shit too and they could blame all Jim's shit on her, but it didn't work

She was pretty good, unless you were a miner then she was a Twatter.

Life started getting really lavish, we had chip shops and take aways , Italian restaurants with waiters called Luigi who were really good at making girls pregnant.

A pub crawl would cost nearly £3 quid, or £3.25 if you caught the bus home .

Cars didn't have head rests and Jimmy Savile hadn't started flogging seatbelts as only some cars had them
No one could spell pedophile because we didn't know we had any,
We trusted the BBC.

It's a knock out was a game show, not a boxing result and people stayed in to watch
The Generation Game because there were prizes you only ever dreamed of, like toasters and chip pans and leatherette car seat covers and a cuddly toy.
A night out involved beer and a delicacy called scampi in a basket , not a real basket a plastic one so the tartar sauce didn't run out.
People showed off about having central heating put in and buying Tupperware.
Cobblers were craftsmen who repaired your shoes it wasn't a rebuke.
Nobody had fancy dogs
Women never mentioned the menopause they just looked like they'd been caught shoplifting, all red faced and sweaty then it would pass ..

It was the worst of times, the best of times ...
We didn't get a choice 😉

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

Sir James Bevan spent 8 years at the Environment Agency and oversaw the decimation not only of the agency but every river in the country.

He's recently reappeared again on the boards of Welsh Water and the Canal and Rivers Trust. The man is not fit to handle this week's shopping list never mind run an organisation especially a water company.

[John Ward @jwflame]

@AvonandsomerRob Some American lot bought them up, then shoved palm oil and other sludge into it to save on production costs and make loads-a-money.

[AWL @coawljan]

@Suffragent_

[Cristo @cristo_radio]

So a man invited to the BAFTA’s as inspiration for a film demonstrating the horrific hostility and lack of understanding people with Tourette’s face… is now facing horrific hostility and a lack of understanding over his Tourette’s?

Have I got that right? 🤦

[AWL @coawljan]

@RayTough @SandyofSuffolk Deal or no deal, wardrobe supplied by TK Max

[Alfie_West @alfie_w_1979]

so some Scumbag Scammer tried to scam my folks out £1100 quid today.

the scammer txt my mum, kidding on to be me saying the had changed their phone number, but could not process a payment of £1100 for a new laptop.

my mum only went and paid it, called me at work to ask if i got the money, i was like....what money, the penny dropped.

i said get on the phone to the bank now, she did and luckily the bank had flagged it so she never lost her money.

utter scumbags out there, my mum's nearly 80 now sitting pure mortified with herself when she's done fuck all wrong

some right scum out there

[Graham Smith 🇺🇦 🏳️‍🌈 🇬🇱 🐧 @GrahamSmith_]

This week William did nothing at all. Last week he briefly met Earthshot CEO and John Swinney, Scottish FM, and one engagement in London. That’s it. We pay him more than £442,000 a week. #AbolishTheMonarchy #NotMyKing

[🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿InsideLucysHead🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿© @InsideLucysHead]

I did my nursing training at a hospital in Liverpool, England...

My fellow students and I had little money for meals, so we ate the awful food provided at the hospital complex.

We often took our breaks in the kitchen, and sometimes kindly visitors would give us some of the treats they had brought for patients.

One night, a woman brought a pork pie to the kitchen and said to me, "Would you eat this up, love?"

Delighted at the offer, another student and I devoured every crumb.

Soon our benefactor returned, however, and asked, "Is me 'usband's pie 'ot yet, dearie?"

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

When Ideology Becomes Law, Truth Becomes a Sackable Offence

He was not rude. He did not shout. He did not threaten or abuse anyone. By all accounts his tone was calm, firm and respectful. David Toshack, an army veteran in the final week of training as a prison officer, said one thing in a classroom in Edinburgh: he would not call male prisoners "she" or "her" because that would be a lie. Within hours he was removed from the session, taken into a corridor, HR was consulted, and he was dismissed with immediate effect. Not suspended. Not warned. Gone.

That detail matters. This was not a case of misconduct. It was a case of belief. More precisely, it was a case of a man refusing to say something he believed to be untrue after being told – falsely – that the law required him to say it. Toshack pointed out that this was company policy, not statute. He was right. UK law does not compel pronoun use. Parliament has passed no such requirement. Courts have not imposed it. Yet a trainer stood in front of a room of recruits and declared it "the law" anyway. That lie is the heart of this case.

Once an institution starts presenting contested ideology as settled law, the transformation is complete. Training stops being about competence and becomes about belief. Policy hardens into doctrine. Disagreement is no longer something to be answered, but something to be managed and punished. This is not mission creep or confusion. It is the end result of a long capture by a left-progressive worldview that treats language as a weapon, truth as optional, and dissent as a form of harm to be neutralised.

For years, universities trained graduates to believe that sex is subjective, speech is violence, and discomfort is oppression. Those graduates moved into HR, safeguarding, training and compliance roles. From there they rewrote internal rules, redefined "harm", and quietly blurred the line between law and belief. What begins in seminars ends in staff handbooks. What starts as theory ends as dismissal.

Look at how quickly the system moved. There was no attempt to clarify the law. No effort to accommodate a reasonable, calmly stated belief. No recognition that prisons, of all places, rely on clear sex-based language for order and safeguarding. Instead, the machinery activated automatically. Corridor discussion. HR escalation. Termination. The outcome was pre-decided because dissent itself was the offence.

The justification offered only deepens the rot. The company spoke of "care and welfare", yet no prisoner had been mistreated. No incident had occurred. The only person visibly distressed was Toshack himself, described as shocked and upset as he was walked to his car. The harm was theoretical. The punishment was real. That inversion tells you everything.

This is how progressive ideology now operates inside institutions. Respect is redefined as affirmation. Dignity is equated with submission. And HR is used as the enforcement arm – not to manage conduct, but to police belief. The law is dragged in as cover, even when it does not say what they claim it says. Few challenge this, because challenging it carries a cost.

What makes this case especially serious is the setting. Prisons are not lecture halls or marketing firms. They deal with violence, sex-based risk and vulnerable people. Biological reality matters. Clear language matters. Yet ideology was prioritised over clarity, and punishment over truth, without hesitation.

If David Toshack loses his case, the precedent will be stark. You may keep your job only if you say what you are told to say. It does not matter whether it is true. It does not matter whether the law requires it. What matters is that you comply.

"David Toshack, an army veteran in the final week of training as a prison officer, said one thing in a classroom in Edinburgh: he would not call male prisoners "she" or "her" because that would be a lie."

[Christopher Head OBE @chrish9070]

#PostOfficeScandal Latest piece in the @DailyMail by the one and only @nickwallis

What happened to the executives who ruined so many lives during the Post Office scandal: NICK WALLIS who helped expose the debacle reveals the key figures still living VERY comfortably‼️

Two years ago next week, the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office caused a national outcry after highlighting what has been called the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

The Horizon IT system, adopted by the Post Office in 1999, created false financial shortfalls in Post Office branches, for which sub-postmasters were held liable. Almost 1,000 sub-postmasters were prosecuted and some imprisoned, thousands more were affected, others died waiting for justice.

The scandal caused family breakdowns, loss of livelihoods, bankruptcy, and has been linked to at least 13 suicides. The statutory public inquiry into the scandal is due to deliver its final report in 2026. But while hundreds of wrongful convictions have now been quashed and compensation is being paid to claimants, at the time of writing 2,703 have not yet received a full and final settlement.

Meanwhile, what has happened to the executives responsible for sending innocent people to jail and ruining so many lives? As part of the six-year criminal investigation Operation Olympos, which has so far cost close to £10 million, the wheel of justice may finally be turning. It was announced this month that police are considering corporate manslaughter charges, focused on eight suspects and 53 ‘persons of interest’.

However, as an investigative journalist who helped to expose the scandal, I have discovered that, despite the misery they have caused, some significant figures behind the debacle are currently still living rather well.

THE MILLIONAIRE VICAR

During her time as head of the Post Office, the Reverend Paula Vennells also used to preach at St Owen’s, a beautiful church dating from the 13th century and set in a private country park in the village of Bromham, Bedfordshire. Throughout her Post Office tenure, Vennells denied the organisation had prosecuted innocent people. After Sir Alan Bates’ Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance successfully exposed that lie, Vennells retired from public life, ceasing clerical duties in 2021. But many parishioners spilling out of St Owen’s Sunday morning service say they see her regularly.

‘We all love her,’ says Pat, a church chorister. ‘She’s been an absolutely first-class preacher and she’s had to give it all up… She’s taken it on the chin. She has lost a lot of weight.’

Vennells (portrayed in the TV drama by Lia Williams) was appointed Post Office CEO in 2012, after five years as a senior executive within the organisation. She took the top job knowing that dozens of former sub-postmasters were claiming their lives had been ruined by the Post Office’s vindictive culture and blind faith in the reliability of its faulty Horizon IT system.

Vennells took a dim view of the sub-postmasters’ campaign, telling colleagues in an email that a TV report about their plight ‘bored’ her. A year into Vennells’ tenure, Martin Griffiths, a sub-postmaster from Cheshire, took his own life after being hounded for mysterious cash discrepancies that kept appearing in his branch accounts.

Griffiths’ tragic death was a key storyline in Mr Bates Vs The Post Office. What the makers of the drama didn’t know was that when news of Griffiths’ suicide reached her, the Reverend Vennells told her colleagues he might have had previous mental-health and family issues. She emailed her staff, instructing them to dig for information.

Chatting to people outside St Owen’s, I found that admiration for Vennells was tempered by one parishioner, who asked to remain anonymous. He told me he had seen Vennells ‘presiding over the odd funeral and thought, “That’s that bloody woman! She needs to be prosecuted. People’s lives were destroyed!”

Read the full piece👇
https://t.co/pPZ6FtLA8h