David

Often tired, occasionally mardy devoted Dad, emergency nurse, cyclist & food fanatic

[Damian Low @DamianLow3]

Since Labour entered government net immigration is down 74%, small boat crossings have dropped by 44% and the number of asylum seekers in hotels: gas decreased by 46%.

That is progress, no matter what Rupert Lowe, Reform and others say.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

The media are desperate to pretend that Farage isn’t the establishment, so i’ve written an article explaining why he is.

Can we get it shared 1000 times??

Thanks 🙏

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

Cost of the asylum system falls by nearly £1Bn under Labour https://t.co/O8DbMQGx1g

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🇷🇺 In 2018, Putin warned Britain not to hold a 2nd Brexit vote, urging May to “fulfil the will of the people”.

Now we know why. His allies were funding the Brexit machine.

Arron Banks met Russian officials. 2025: Farage’s lieutenant Nathan Gill has pled guilty to Russian bribery.

Brexit wasn’t democracy, it was a Russian operation.

#Brexit #Putin #Farage #Russia #Treason #NathanGill

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The doctor who delivered Dolly Parton in a one-room Tennessee cabin in 1946 was paid with a sack of cornmeal. Her father farmed other people's land and could not read or write. Eighty years later, the reading program she built in his name has mailed more than 300 million books.

She wrote "I Will Always Love You" on the same afternoon she wrote "Jolene," as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner, and released it in 1974. Elvis wanted it. The night before the session, Colonel Tom Parker called and said Presley would only record it if they got half the publishing, meaning half of everything the song ever earned. She had been in Nashville ten years by then. She said no, and cried all night. Whitney Houston cut her version in 1992, held number one for fourteen weeks, and Forbes later put Parton's royalties from it near $10 million. She put some of that money into an office complex in Nashville and called the place the house that Whitney built.

Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge in 1986 because she wanted paychecks in the county she came from. Around 4,000 people work there now. Three million visitors come every year. The University of Tennessee put its economic impact at $1.8 billion, and it is the largest employer in Sevier County. Since 2022 the company has paid tuition, fees, and books in full for every worker from their first day, seasonal hires included.

Wildfires tore through those mountains in November 2016, killing fourteen people and destroying more than 2,400 buildings. Her foundation was handing out money within 48 hours. Every family that lost a home got $1,000 a month for six months, regardless of income. The final check was $5,000. Total delivered: $8.9 million.

In April 2020 she sent $1 million to Vanderbilt for coronavirus research. When Moderna's vaccine results ran in the New England Journal of Medicine that November, her fund appeared in the footnotes.

Carl Dean, her husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025. The note she wrote to fans afterward ended with the same five words she wrote for Porter Wagoner back in 1974. She died in Nashville today. Her family asked that instead of flowers, people give to the Imagination Library, which still mails 3.4 million books a month to children who will never get to meet her.

[John Sweeney @johnsweeneyroar]

The Real Nigel Farage, published by @headlinepg on September 10.

You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

@Nigel_Farage won’t like it.

But @campbellclaret, @mrjamesob, @carolecadwalla and @CountBinface do.

Pre-order here
https://t.co/woWIk6OZdL

Tinkerty-Tonk!

[Reform UK Exposed 🇬🇧 @reformexposed]

Reform UK Councillors Gone: Update

[Martin Cymbal💚 @cymbal_martin]

When this chap, probably the most informed individual in the world with regard to Russian corruption and 'black ops', tells you Farage, Banks, Reform and co. are Russian assets......it's time to pay proper attention

[Steve Shovlar 🇪🇺🇺🇦 🇬🇧 #AFCB 🍒 #PROEU @SteveShovlar]

My daughter who lives in a rural area, receives PIP. She suffers from a learning disability. PIP pays for a very small car through Motability, which enables her to live a life where she has got a job. Take away PIP, takes away car, takes away job.

Never vote ReformUK.

[Mike Howes @howes_mike]

Maybe 10 years ago, the French offered the UK an asylum processing facility in Calais which we rejected. The advantages would be that asylum seekers would be processed before reaching the UK so that only those accepted would travel legally. Why did we not accept Robert Jenrick?

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

🔴NEW🔴

We reveal that during the crucial period when convicted Reform leader Nathan Gill was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage’s closest confidantes 1/12
https://t.co/vExmBdcF5c

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

My jaw hit the floor when I discovered Boris Johnson left an emergency NATO meeting after the Kremlin’s chemical warfare attack on Britain & flew to an off-the-books meeting with an ex-KGB spy.

Yours should too.

This is how it happened.
1/

https://t.co/5Yv5C6IuDM

[Peter Oborne @OborneTweets]

Union with Wales 1543. Wales and England unite with Scotland 1707. Acts of Union with Ireland 1800. The blind ignorance of Reform MPs about their own country never ceases to amaze.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Someone has to do it, so I will. This policy is holed below the waterline before it begins.

Zia Yusuf wants Britain’s warships to push migrant boats back to France. There are only three small problems: the law, the French and the Royal Navy.

Operation Fortress will be “the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two”. Nigel Farage will grandiosely order “his Majesty’s Royal Navy” to intercept every unauthorised vessel crossing the Channel and return its occupants to France. No one arriving illegally will reach Britain. The border will become “impenetrable”. The invasion will be stopped.

It sounds magnificent, provided you know nothing about ships, sailors, France or the law.

The first clue lies in the name. Operation Fortress sounds like the title of a 1960s war film. Once the bunting has been cleared away, this new policy amounts to parking a few warships in the Channel and instructing them to make the small boats go backwards. Nobody appears to have asked what happens when they do not.

An overloaded inflatable carrying 60 or 70 people is rather different to a French fishing trawler whose skipper can be ordered to head for Calais. It may have insufficient fuel, an inadequate engine, and no one aboard capable of navigating it safely. The smugglers may have left the controls in the hands of one of the passengers. The boat may already be leaking, listing, or taking on water. A Royal Navy officer cannot order an inflatable to become seaworthy.

The Navy cannot legally fire across its bow. This is a border control operation, not a war. There may not even be enough bow to fire across. HMS Cottrell cannot ram the boat, create a wash beside it or undertake aggressive manoeuvres without risking a capsize. Sending a boarding party alongside an overcrowded dinghy creates another opportunity for dozens of frightened people to shift their weight at once and end up in the water.

The moment the boat becomes unsafe, Nigel's great military operation turns into a rescue mission. British sailors are legally required to save those aboard. The obligation arises under the law of the sea, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. None of these contains a Zia Yusuf exemption.

After rescuing the passengers, the Navy must take them to a place of safety. Reform says that place will be France. France may have something to say about that.

Britain cannot sail warships into French territorial waters, seize boats, or disembark passengers in Calais without French permission. Nor can it deposit 70 people at the maritime boundary and invite them to swim the remaining distance. Returning them to France requires the French government to accept them. This is the gap at the centre of the policy. A Reform government can give orders to the Royal Navy; it cannot give orders to Emmanuel Macron.

There is already a UK-France returns agreement. It permits selected small-boat arrivals to be returned after they reach Britain, in exchange for Britain accepting an equivalent number via a legal route. The arrangement exists because France’s consent is required. It is limited, negotiated and reciprocal. Nothing in it authorises the Royal Navy to deliver every intercepted passenger to a French port.

Perhaps Reform has secretly negotiated a much broader agreement with Paris. Perhaps Macron has promised Farage that France will accept tens of thousands of people in exchange for nothing. Perhaps the French will also provide a complimentary cheese board. The details, we are told, will be revealed today.

Without French agreement, the Navy will intercept the boats, rescue their occupants, and bring them to Britain. Reform’s answer to the “free ferry service” is to paint the ferry grey and staff it with sailors.

The legal problems persist after rescue. Once British forces exercise effective control over a boat or take its passengers aboard, those people fall within British jurisdiction. They cannot all be summarily expelled without any examination of their circumstances.

France is a safe country, and there is no general legal prohibition on returning an asylum seeker there. However, any return must still take place under a lawful arrangement. Officials would need to identify children, trafficking victims, those requiring medical treatment, and anyone presenting a specific reason why return would expose them to serious harm.

Roughly one in seven small boat arrivals since 2018 has been referred to the National Referral Mechanism as a possible victim of modern slavery. Among those who arrived in 2025, the eventual figure reached 19 per cent. Those cases cannot be resolved by a sub-lieutenant circling boxes on a clipboard while HMS Harborne bobs around somewhere off Dungeness.

The European Court of Human Rights has already held that intercepting migrants at sea does not create a legal black hole. In Hirsi Jamaa v Italy, Italy was found to have violated the European Convention by returning intercepted migrants without considering their individual circumstances. In that case, the destination was Libya, so it does not establish that returning to France would be unlawful. It does establish that a government cannot evade its obligations by processing the entire group under the legal category of “off you go”.

Reform might respond that it intends to leave the European Convention. That still leaves the Refugee Convention, maritime rescue law, France’s sovereignty, and the stubborn tendency of drowning people to require rescue. A press conference cannot repeal the sea.

Then there is the Royal Navy itself. Britain possessed 32 frigates and destroyers in 2000. By October 2025, it had 14. Several of those were undergoing maintenance or preparing for operations. The Navy is also attempting to sustain the nuclear deterrent, protect two aircraft carriers, patrol the North Atlantic, support NATO, guard undersea infrastructure, maintain overseas deployments, and prepare for a possible war with a serious state adversary.

Amid this crowded programme, Zia Yusuf demands the largest Channel operation since 1945.

A Type 45 destroyer is a £1 billion air-defence platform designed to protect a carrier group against missiles and aircraft. It carries sophisticated radar, anti-aircraft weapons and a crew of nearly 200. Using one to chase inflatables off Dover would be rather like sending a new Challenger 3 tank to enforce parking restrictions outside Lidl.

The Type 23 frigates are old, scarce and already stretched. The River-class offshore patrol vessels are better suited to maritime security, but the newer ships have global commitments, while the older ones perform fisheries protection, patrol and training tasks. Moving them into the Channel simply leaves gaps elsewhere.

Border Force operates five cutters, six coastal patrol vessels and a range of smaller craft. These are the vessels designed for customs and immigration enforcement. Even that fleet cannot create an impermeable cordon while covering Britain’s other maritime borders. The Channel is one of the busiest shipping routes on earth, not a village pond across which the Royal Navy can stretch a chain.

Ships also require crews. As of April 2026, the Royal Navy and UK Marines had 32,520 regular personnel, of whom 4,580 were untrained. Recruitment has begun to improve, but the Navy remains critically short of experienced technicians, engineers and specialists. Some vessels have been alongside for extended periods because the service lacks the trained personnel to operate them.

A continuous patrol requires several crews for each vessel on station. One crew is at sea, while others are training, recovering, taking leave or preparing the ship. Each interception requires qualified boat crews, boarding parties, medics, communications staff and command support. If people are brought aboard, the ship also needs space, food, sanitation, interpreters and safeguarding personnel. Warships do not come with infinite sailors.

The smugglers would adapt before the first triumphant press release had even finished circulating. They would overload boats until turning them around became impossibly dangerous. Engines would “fail” as British vessels approached. Passengers would be instructed to call for rescue, enter the water, or threaten self-harm. Several boats would launch simultaneously during brief windows of good weather.

The absolute promise that nobody will reach Britain creates an incentive to treat every encounter as a humanitarian emergency. The Navy would either rescue those aboard or preside over preventable deaths within sight of its ships. No commanding officer should be placed between his legal duty to save life and a politician’s promise that not one migrant will set foot on British soil.

There are serious policy options available. Britain could negotiate broader returns with France, fund aggressive French interception near the beaches, attack the financial and logistical networks behind the crossings, accelerate asylum decisions, remove failed claimants, and build a Border Force fleet capable of sustained maritime enforcement. Joint patrols could operate under an agreement that defines jurisdiction, disembarkation, and responsibility for rescued individuals.

Operation Fortress contains none of the difficult parts. France will apparently accept everyone. Every boat will turn around safely. Every legal claim will disappear. The Navy will find spare ships and sailors somewhere in a cupboard in Portsmouth. Declaring the Channel impenetrable will make it so.

This is not a serious or credible policy. Operation Fortress is nothing but a press release wearing a sailor’s hat.

[🇬🇧King 🇬🇧 @King0243_PJC]

People of Clacton, @ByDonkeys have absolutely lifted the lid here.

You pay Farage £94k to be your MP. He’s hardly ever there.

Meanwhile his 12 other jobs have paid him £1,182,498 since the election, Mayfair gold dealers, tax-avoidance passport hustlers, US anti-abortion outfits, thousands of Cameo videos, the lot.

He who pays the piper dictates the tone.

When the bigger cheques come from multimillionaires and foreign interests, what makes you think he’s representing you?

[Kay Burley @KayBurley]

Yeah, but who was Home Secretary when they reached a record high in 2022, Suella?

[🌷🦋 Love Music 🎶 & Dance 💃🏻🕺��� @Tiana_Celine_23]

Lady Gaga performed Elton John’s “Your Song” in front of him and absolutely nailed it!

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

This is beautiful from start to finish.

[🇬🇧King 🇬🇧 @King0243_PJC]

Robert, spare us the pantomime.
Gary Lineker did not drag the government to court so he could pay less tax.

HMRC tried to reclassify his freelance work as employment under IR35 and hit him with a £4.9 million bill he did not owe. He took them on, won the case, and proved they got it wrong. That is not tax dodging. That is making the taxman stick to the rules instead of inventing them.

Defending yourself against a false bill is completely different from choosing to support higher taxes. One is your right. The other is putting your money where your mouth is.

You, on the other hand, are busy sneering at millionaires willing to pay more while the Met Police are investigating a £37,500 donation to your own Tory leadership campaign. The Electoral Commission referred it because part of the money allegedly came from a foreign source. You say the claims are false. Fine. The investigation is still running.

So whose side are you really on? Not the ordinary voter in your constituency watching services get cut.

Not the people who actually need the system to work.

You talk tough about tax while your own campaign finances are under scrutiny, and you still found time to abandon the Tories for Reform after failing to lead them.

You lecture others on hypocrisy while the police check your receipts. That takes a special kind of nerve.

[David Hayward | Artist @nakedpastor]

In 2016, I lost my brother to suicide. I’m still grieving him.

Here in Canada, people say a redbird is a deceased loved one visiting you. I don’t believe it literally, but every time I see one, I think of Mark. And maybe that’s enough.

So I painted "I Will Never Not Miss You".