Graham Cooke

Married. Worked at: Swindon speedway; Movies@Malmesbury; Minety Rugby Club; & Bustard Productions (the Blunsdon Blog).

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@TobiaszMusielak @ipswichspeedway Congratulations Tobi. Top man!

[Gordon White @TheOtherGordon]

World temperatures going up a couple of degrees C may be livable in Ireland, but not in Saharan Africa.
Sea levels rising a couple of meters may be livable in Ireland but not in Bangladesh or The Maldives.
Think of others before you belittle the impact of Climate Change.

[Socialist Opera Singer @OperaSocialist]

The reason why the UK is on its arse is not because of Keir Starmer.
A big reason is that too many people believed some bollocks on a bus 10 years ago.

[suzan king @suzanwking]

In a political age too often defined by noise and ego, he brought decency, integrity and seriousness.

Thank you @Keir_Starmer⁠ for your service to our country.

You always put country before self.

You deserved better.

[Ricky Davila @TheRickyDavila]

Yep.

[jm @jeaneri]

reminder

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@SpeedwayGP Has to be MJJ for those wonderful inside lines on turns 3 and 4.

[RobertFella 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 @Bonkavision5]

Too on point not to share. This is great, but too bad the Orange Felon’s enablers won’t let him see it.
This Australian's reply to #Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect.
"Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth."
- Tony Locke

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@Stephen78857051 Simply the best; a lovely man who was a pleasure to work with. Never forgotten!

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

*BRITISH WRITER PENS THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF TRUMP*
Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless or female – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy' is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and most are.
• You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@autosport Brilliant effort. Massive congratulaions Sylvain.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@TomaszLorek3 @CKM_Wlokniarz @motorlublinpgee @EkstraligaPL Well done, Jeff. Looking forward to the book. Travel well.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@MeadowShrew A thoroughly miserable experience, the "highlight" being two drunken Shrewsbury fans brawling in the row in front of us.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@bobxski @SNSactiongroup Happy days indeed!

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@bobxski @SNSactiongroup The news broke when we were preparing the track for a meeting. I can remember everyone sitting in silence in our little bolt hole (called Number 96) behind the pits. It was a very sad day for Swindon and the sport.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@20th_Centurygal Toto, Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Rainbow.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@FoxesSpeedway Well done to all involved. Fingers firmly crossed that it will be a huge success.

[Graham Cooke @ghcooke56]

@crockpics Deep Purple. March 1976. Wembley. The opening chord, before "Burn" pushed us back into our seats; unbelievable!