Ferg Morrissey 💜

★Bowiefan★ (... but wha deed you keell Zeeggy?)

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

These words. These perfect words.
Goodbye mum.
I have never felt so close to you. https://t.co/huts3Uq7uL

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@RJTMorrissey @LairdSummerisle Yeah, space cadets! 🫩

[Kate Ferguson @kateferguson4]

Tom Holland calls for a national celebration to mark England’s 1,100th birthday next year.

King Athelstan was declared the first ‘King of the English’ on July 12, 927.

Let’s get this campaign going!

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@anstey_Carol @DebraBe16141698 Reminds me of arriving at Vancouver airport during Covid.

[Beth Gibbons @realbethgibbons]

General Sale: Friday 13 November 10am CET
https://t.co/SLs5xid5l2

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@Annemarieward @UnrepentantYoon @weeglesgapoet Yes Chef.🫡

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@Annemarieward @UnrepentantYoon @weeglesgapoet God is in the details of course Annemarie.
Horseradish?

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

Happy birthday ma'am.🎂💜
@Annemarieward

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@roisinmurphy @Gaynotqueer1 *Comedienne 🫩 🌈

[Heroes Of Britain @HeroesOfBritain]

Grace O’Malley-Kumar grabbed a knife attacker to protect her friend. When he turned on her, she held on.

On 13 June 2023, during the Nottingham attacks, Grace was walking back to student accommodation with her friend Barnaby Webber when a man with a large knife attacked Barnaby and brought him to the ground.

Grace grabbed the attacker and tried to hold him back. The man turned the knife on her, but she kept her grip and kicked out even after he had stabbed her several times.

When she fell, she tried more than once to get back up and reach him again.

Grace and Barnaby both died from their injuries, aged 19.

Grace had just finished her first year of medicine at the University of Nottingham, where she played hockey after representing England at under-16 and under-18 level.

In October 2025, Grace was awarded the George Medal for trying to save Barnaby.

That July, her name had already been on a different kind of award, the Grace O’Malley-Kumar Cup.

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@roisinmurphy @realsashastone @Glinner https://t.co/2hI9RaeWQ9

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

Mick Ronson played the piano and arranged the strings on Lou Reed's original 1972 studio recording of "Perfect Day".
He also co-produced the track with David Bowie for the Transformer album.
Ronno was an unsung genius.

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@ireland_society Obvs.

[Catherine McBride OBE @CeeMacBee]

For the many UK politicians @UKLabour and journalists @BBC who don't know anything about UK trade, here are the highlights:

1. The UK is now predominantly a service exporter. 57% of UK exports are services, which are not affected by EU 'red tape'.

2. UK goods exports have dropped from almost 70% of our total exports in 1997 to just 43% in 2025. This trend began long before Brexit and is tied to Net Zero mandates, high UK energy prices, and EV mandates.

3. Machinery and transport goods, such as cars and aircraft parts, are 42% of all UK goods exports. This is by far the UK's largest export sector, although it is also falling. It was 50% of UK exports in 2000. But if the UK joins the EU's CBAM, companies in this sector will see their imported material costs rise, making their exports even less competitive.

4. Chemicals are the UK's second-largest export sector. They account for 19% of UK goods exports, but this share is shrinking due to UK and EU energy costs and Net Zero regulations. These will increase if the UK joins the EU ETS.

5. Miscellaneous Manufactures account for 11% of UK goods exports. This is still the UK's third-largest export sector, even though it includes many goods the UK no longer makes because of our high Carbon taxes, which will increase if the UK signs up to the EU's even higher ETS on November 20th.

6. Fuels account for 9% of UK exports. This is still the UK's 4th largest goods export sector, even though the current and previous governments are/were trying to destroy it with bans on new exploration and ultra-high taxes.

7. Material Manufactures account for 8% of UK goods exports. This sector includes iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics, and glass manufacturing - industries that have gone, or are going, out of business in the UK because of high UK energy costs, which will rise if the UK joins the EU ETS.

8. These five sectors make up almost 90% of UK exports. The other 5 industry sectors are insignificant. But the government and our journalists think the UK is New Zealand and that the only goods we export are food and live animals to the EU. We don't! UK food and live animal exports to the EU were just 1.3% of the UK's total exports.

9. The government is about to sacrifice all of the export industries listed above to slightly reduce the IMPORT costs of a handful of Supermarkets, at least two of which are privately owned German companies.
These savings will not be passed on to UK shoppers because the government has also increased wages again, and supermarket energy costs will increase if we join the EU's ETS.

10. UK exports of food and live animals will not increase because we are paying farmers to not produce them, this has nothing to do with EU red tape. Instead we are paying farmers to plant trees and wildflowers or plaster their farmland with solar panels. (54% of UK electricity is coming from gas today, 12% from solar and 3% from wind.)

11. Write to your MP and tell him to #StoptheReset.
If you don't stop this, don't complain when all of our goods export industries have closed because of EU higher carbon taxes, EU higher carbon import tariffs, and the cost of complying with the EU's new packaging and process regulations.

[Laurence Fox @LozzaFox]

We will never forget their sacrifice.

#RemembranceDay

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

“People whose commitment to truth is subordinate to their commitment to tribe. And I believe this duality explains a great deal about the state of the western world.”

Excellent column from @matthewsyed

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@DrSuneelDhand Make sure it id the MK 7 variant of K2.

[Annemarie Ward 💜 @Annemarieward]

This is why people are falling into the socialism trap when they should be blaming statism, not capitalism. Socialism is the perfect ideology for elites because it wraps coercion in moral vanity. It offers compassionate rhetoric and a posture of moral superiority while making the very people it claims to defend poorer, more dependent, and less free.

The cats promise free cheese to the mice who do not understand why it is “free"

Read more here

https://t.co/dRBTHMgG1l

[Beth Gibbons @realbethgibbons]

Extra Dublin date added to 2027 European and UK Lives Outgrown shows.

Tickets are on sale now.
https://t.co/CvlZ3wZWvb

All other dates at https://t.co/VYP7W3focO

[Ferg Morrissey 💜 @fig100]

@roisinmurphy @stellaomalley3 Maybe distracted by one of the cast of The Muppets in front of him.
Is that Animal?

[мαяк from Sandy Row | 🇬🇧 @MVMCCU]

A quiet intruder

Portaferry is a small place, and it has had a very large loss. Ciara Mageean died on 1 November, aged 34, and was buried on 3 November. Young players from Portaferry GAC formed a guard of honour for her. Camogie was where she started, at that club, in a family that lived for hurling and camogie.

To the world she was a champion. To the people who loved her she was Thomas's wife, Catherine and Chris's daughter, and sister to Máire, Nuala and Brendan. They have lost the most. If Portaferry is like any other small town, I'm sure they have good neighbours around them.

In her last year she became the public face of a disease most people keep private.

Bowel cancer is a quiet intruder. The symptoms are easy to explain away and awkward to mention. Ciara was an athlete, used to an unsettled stomach, and she found sensible reasons for what she was feeling, as most of us would. In May 2025, aged 33, she got her answer, and it was the worst one: stage four. That means the cancer has spread to distant parts of the body, in her case the liver and lungs. At stage one it is still inside the bowel wall.

It is mostly a disease of older people. About 1,300 are diagnosed each year in Northern Ireland, and around 6% of them are under 50. That share is small, but across the UK the diagnosis rate for 25 to 49-year-olds has gone up by more than half since the early 1990s. And in England, if it is caught at stage one, around nine in ten people live at least five years.

She didn't hide any of it. She talked about it on the radio and on podcasts, and wrote a book, My Greatest Race. She told people what her oncologist had said about how long she might have, and admitted she probably shouldn't have googled the survival rates. She married Thomas Moran in Belfast and wanted it to be a normal day, not a hospital bed in a wedding dress. I have seen the photographs. They are lovely, and they are also the pictures of a woman who knew how little time she might have.

She was a beautiful young woman.

Health campaigns struggle to get people talking about bowel cancer. She managed it just by being honest. Here was a fit, young, well-known athlete with the disease so many still think happens to somebody else.

I assume I have little in common with the Mageean family, because I stand under a different flag. But I'm a parent, and my child is not far off Ciara's age, and I can't begin to imagine losing them. Every parent understands that grief, whatever flag they fly. I hope her family know they aren't on their own in it.

My own reason for caring is closer to home. My father came from a family not known for athleticism, and this disease took him as it took her. It's a strange sort of kinship, and plenty of families belong to it. My father died of bowel cancer, and so did his father and his twin brother. I'm over 50. I can't assume I'm safe.

If you've noticed blood, a change in your bowel habits that lasts, weight loss you can't explain, or constant tiredness, see your GP. If bowel cancer runs in your family, tell them straight out and ask about an assessment. Don't wait for a screening kit to arrive in the post.

Ciara spent a year getting the rest of us to talk about this. We should keep doing it.

It's the one part of my father I hope I didn't inherit.

Figures: Northern Ireland Cancer Registry; Bowel Cancer UK; Cancer Research UK.