AndyW

Optimist, happily applying logic and evidence to solve big problems, but don’t hold that against me. Opinions are my own.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

I just got a note from a Jewish mother in Leeds who took her kids to the Vue cinema at The Light for a birthday on Remembrance Sunday.

The staff member checking tickets was wearing a Palestinian badge, and she told him she didn't think staff should wear political badges that can make customers feel uncomfortable.

She says two managers were called, her family was refused entry, and one manager told her she wouldn't get a refund if she kept complaining.

@vuecinemas, can you confirm your version? Are your staff allowed to wear political badges on shift, and what happens to a customer who comes in with her children and says a badge makes her feel intimidated?

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@DanielJHannan @wallaceme All those youngsters working there. The first rung on the employment ladder removed. @UKLabour leveling down, again.

[AndyW @GAJ070]

If I had my pension invested in the Welsh Pension Partnership, I’d be asking some questions of the board members.

https://t.co/OYraWL1T9p

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

Today’s Guardian finds it "astonishing" that Russell Brand, convicted of one count of rape and three sexual assaults yesterday, was “embraced as a serious social commentator” when he returned to Britain in 2013. Embraced by whom, sorry?

The paper gives its own role in promoting brand Brand one single line, noting he had already written columns for it. Yesterday’s big Guardian piece on TV insiders said "Brand’s case has led to difficult questions for the BBC, Channel 4 and the production companies that worked with him." Hilarious...

On an unrelated note Russell Brand's 137 written contributions to the Guardian are still online - 17 of which are after 2013 and which concluded in February 2015.

Long after the Andrew Sachs voicemails, the paper ran his opinion on Thatcher the day after she died, ran a GQ awards column over a large chunk of the front page in September 2013, and ran his column blaming Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death on “extremely stupid drug laws.” Not to mention the fawning praise from Owen Jones and the entire Labour establishment, including the now-Prime Minister...

Today’s piece also sniffs that critics lavished praise on his memoir, quoting its tale of Brand trailing a classmate 200 miles to Wigan as an early warning sign.

That particular book was serialised in the Guardian.

In October 2014 the paper put on a ticketed Guardian Live event, with Owen Jones interviewing Brand. It was broadcast live from the Emmanuel Centre.

That day Jones penned a piece in the Guardian attacking the “all-too-smug, seen-it-all-before snottiness” aimed at Brand. Two months later George Monbiot named him a hero of 2014, calling him “the best thing that has happened to the left in years”.

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor from 1995 to 2015, claimed in Prospect Magazine in 2023: "I only met him once, when he was writing a popular football column for the Guardian, along with the occasional commentary piece." Funny, seeing as the football column was pre-2010 and there is a photo of them snugly on the sofa together at the Guardian’s morning conference in August 2013...

[AndyW @GAJ070]

He was never a lad. @bbc can’t swerve this. They enabled him. Just like Saville.

https://t.co/npaKJp1fuh

[Richard Holden MP @RicHolden]

This is clearly insane.

A charity set up to maintain London’s bridges is sitting on £1.5 BILLION, funding political campaigns and giving £1.1m to a group with links to a charity now under investigation over alleged Hamas connections.

Meanwhile, Hammersmith Bridge is still closed and other Thames crossings are crumbling.

What on earth are @cityoflondon doing?

Via @Fhamiltontimes in @TheTimes

https://t.co/JARRobVrxv

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

He shouldn’t be working in the NHS or living in the UK.

[Esther McVey @EstherMcVey1]

Woke, broke and out of control, it’s time to scrap the license fee.

As someone who started my career at the BBC, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to write these words. But let’s face the brutal truth: the British Broadcasting Corporation is a shadow of its former self and needs to be put out of its misery.

Founded in 1922 by Lord Reith with a proud mission to inform, educate and entertain, the Beeb was once the envy of the world. Today it has degenerated into a cesspit of left-wing political bias which the British public are forced to pay under the threat of criminal law.

Even when staring down the barrel of a $10 billion defamation lawsuit from the US President for its misleading edit of his Capitol Hill speech and which triggered the double resignation of its Director-General and Chief Executive of news, the BBC still refuses to admit its bias problem.

And yet the problems were laid bare again over the weekend with more revelations. First, we learned that taxpayer-funded civil servants have been seconded into BBC newsrooms, ‘fact checking’ and writing articles while masquerading as impartial journalists. Second, we discovered that schoolchildren are being brainwashed with left-wing views on net zero and immigration via the BBC Bitesize platform.

 No wonder the BBC has plunged to the bottom of the Ofcom league table for impartiality, and that 2.5million viewers have turned their backs on the station since 2020, preferring instead to get their news from elsewhere.

And rather than addressing those problems BBC bosses and government ministers, concerned about the loss in licence fees, have decided to impose draconian measures to force people to pay for something they no longer want and no longer watch.

The tragic irony is that the BBC knows exactly what the problem is. Between 2024 and 2025, three separate internal reviews warned that ‘perceived political bias’ was driving viewers away. As whistleblower Michael Prescott revealed in an explosive leaked memo, "systemic editorial bias" runs deep. The main areas of concern were gender reporting, along with its reporting of Britain’s history, colonial past and in its anti-Israeli stance. Let’s be honest BBC, it isn’t perceived bias, it's real. The Gaza documentary got the BBC sanctioned and its Arabic station was forced to make 200 factual corrections about its wider Israel-Gaza war.

The BBC internal inquiry noted working-class viewers are particularly dissatisfied, finding it ‘out of touch’ and ‘alienating’.

Little wonder when you had ex-Match of the Day pundit, Gary Lineker, on £1.3 million of public money, using the profile the BBC gave him to pontificate about Brexit, Gaza, and Rwanda.

And what about the concerns over two-tier coverage of “Unite the Kingdom" protests and  pro-Palestinian marches along with trigger warnings on comedy classics such as Dad’s Army and The Royle Family.

The BBC has been infiltrated and taken over by a left-wing woke metropolitan establishment and it is slowly killing it from within.

The public realise that this culture is so ingrained it will never change. It’s time to end the BBC licence fee.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

Endowments to fund our infrastructure are going to "black-led charities", the "Global Majority Fund", and the "Muslim-led charity sector."

Some reached a charity linked to Hamas.

Our inheritance isn't just being squandered - it's being stolen from its rightful purpose.

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@deirdrecostigan @andyburnham Ministry of Truth more like. Read Orwell 1984. Or watch the film. It’s a glimpse of Burnham’s Britain to come.

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@JamesCleverly Theyre not just nice, they’re trustworthy and expert too….🤡

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@YouGov 75% of a narrow sample who don’t want to work. Unemployed turkeys don’t vote for working turkeys.

[Andy Ngo @MrAndyNgo]

"Rest in piss"

Bluesky, the home where leftists make death threats and organize violent riots, is also where they are praising the m—rder of 78-year-old English conservative politician-activist and Reform spokeswoman @AnnWiddecomb.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Indeed.

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@RupertLowe10 And to distract everyone, they cast shade at the Masons…! I’d argue the Fabian Society are the real dangerous quasi overt subversive society.

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@griffitha How about a national debate on Energy Subsidies and how much that is costing the UK taxpayer?

https://t.co/FBEpHxygG4

[AndyW @GAJ070]

“They” don’t want us to see the whole bill. So some clever people worked out how to aggregate what was quietly published by individual govt departments and quangos. Laid bare is how much UK Energy Subsidies are costing us, and who it’s paid to.

https://t.co/FBEpHxygG4

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@CopperCation Need sectioning for their own protection…..!

[AndyW @GAJ070]

@NickBuckleyMBE Move along, nothing to see here, there is no problem, just another gas leak…..