George Smedley

Old Wykehamist at St Andrews. Art dealer. Occasional thoughts on defence/politics.

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

Delighted to have been featured in the lastest copy of The Saint.

https://t.co/37pJjXuLwr

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

Wargame is terrifying and ominously eerily thrilling: the degrading of our defences and the feckless impotence of ministers ring only too true: rearmament is so urgent and now desperate. @SkyNews

Starturns from @michaelgove as PM and @scaramucci as Secretary of State.

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

@JackLopresti Many congratulations!

[James Heale @JAHeale]

Various methods have been tried to win selection as a Conservative MP. In the late 1940s Enoch Powell decided that being a Tory politician meant you had to learn to hunt, so he would rise at an ungodly hour from his lonely bachelor flat and travel to hounds by tube, dressed in full hunting pink, amid somewhat bemused workmen.

[Jack Blackburn 🇺🇦 @HackBlackburn]

I’m told that someone in Mail towers ironically remarked “Hurrah for the black shorts”

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

An excellent delivery location via DPD - definitely my gallery and not a random bin store!

[Nicholas Boys Smith @boys_nicholas]

In a little known quirk of history, his son (Napoleon IV to some) died fighting for the British Army in the Zulu wars….

[Bloke on the Range @BlokeOnTheRange]

@MarioNawfal The £30M saving corresponds to 1 hour and 13 minutes of NHS spending...
@DaysofNHS

[Henry Jeffreys is working on a new book @HenryGJeffreys]

Just posted something about the awful new Timothy Taylor's rebrand. The thing is the last rebrand wasn't great. Why replace the stout Yorkshireman with a Welsh rugyby player?

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

Always heed Kenneth Clark.

[BBC London @BBCLondonNews]

Fabric nightclub plans gigs at St Paul's Cathedral ➡️ https://t.co/5zH5y5Hhw7

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

@SeaSpitfires I raise you Paul Anderson (Arthur Shelby) from the upcoming 'Fortitude'.

https://t.co/6JYjTLZ06p

[James Heale @JAHeale]

Reform source messages: “Anyone seen Mattie Storren?”

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

Politicians of all shades often talk about business rates as being a easy relief for small businesses - but more should be said re fixed rate utility bills. Over a year my 200sq foot gallery has to pay £744.97 in property drainage charges, despite having almost no water usage…

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

@boys_nicholas Does an excellent job of complimenting other institutional buildings in Winchester, eg Peninsula Barracks

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

@ruby_dunn01 There’s a huge issue with this, e.g. lovely flats on South Street let down by landlords (and lettings agencies) that simply don’t care. Lovely neo-Georgian detailing left to rot and grow mouldy. Meanwhile students pay extortionate amounts.

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

@SeaSpitfires Not whoever plays him in SAS Rogue Heroes, where’s he’s made to sound like a bad Margaret Thatcher impression.

[Capel Lofft @CapelLofft]

I mean the IRA was explicitly pro-Nazi in the 1940s so I guess their sympathies were with the Gestapo officers who were torturing the French resistance fighters.

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

Can’t wait for Reform to pick on every St Andrews business one by one.

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

Welcome to 'Jahangir Balti & Tandoori Restaurant' in St. Andrews. 

The business has been going for more than 12 years.

But in 2023, they appear to have settled on a new business model. 

Between 2023 and 2024 they received FORTY-TWO Certificates of Sponsorship for 'Skilled Worker' visas. 

42 workers in just two years.

For a single curry house. 

The firm remains an A-rated Skilled Worker sponsor. 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It does not include the dependants these workers are likely to have brought with them. 

The ratio between workers and their dependants is often as high as 5 to 1.

That means this single curry house could have brought over 200 people to Britain. 

This is what the Tories did to our country.

Reform will send fraudsters packing and reverse the Boriswave scam.

[George Smedley @GeorgeSmed]

Did this before it was Burnham approved.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The Government says it will now set "clear expectations" for shop designs to "improve the appearance of high streets"

"Garish neon signs and oversized logos have contributed to high streets feeling less welcoming"

[Calgie @christiancalgie]

I've only just seen the official wording of the document used to appoint an MP to the chiltern hundreds/northstead, and it's a thing of beauty.

'Know Ye, that I, the said Right Honourable Rachel Reeves...

'Nigel Paul Farage shall receive for and to His Majesty's use, within forty days next after the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel...

'I have hereunto set my hand and seal the eighth day of July in the fourth year of the Reign of His Majesty King Charles the Third, and in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-six.'

I'm astonished Tony Blair never got his awful modernising mitts on this