Alan H

All things THFC

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

https://t.co/sGfebPkDXR

[Alan H @Hench71]

@TheHomeCurrent Stunner

[Alan H @Hench71]

@TheHomeCurrent My favourite label back in the day.

[Alan H @Hench71]

@RedemptionBrew Get well soon mate

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Another British tradition quietly taken off air. Another shrug from the @BBC. This time it's the Boat Race - first broadcast on radio in 1927, on television since 1938 - dropped after nearly a century. Why? Not low viewing figures: last year's men's and women's races pulled in more people than the Masters and Formula One. Not cost: it's cheap by sports standards and pumps millions into the London economy. The truth is uglier.

Inside the BBC the word that killed the Boat Race was "elitist." The new head of sport was said to be "lukewarm." That single term - "elitist" - is now a licence to scrap anything rooted in Britain's past. It's the same quiet vandalism we've seen around the Proms, Remembrance coverage, and the monarchy. The BBC no longer sees its job as showing Britain to itself. It sees its job as remaking Britain.

The Boat Race isn't a cocktail party for gilded Oxbridge types. It's free to watch, pulls two hundred thousand ordinary spectators to the Thames every year, and has always been a working-class London day out. Rowing may have its posh stereotype, but the event is about rivalry, endurance and spectacle - things any nation should be proud to show the world.

Yet the BBC's cultural gatekeepers have a deeper allergy: tradition that isn't re-branded, rewritten, or apologised for. They can throw millions at "inclusive" events nobody asked for and wall-to-wall virtue TV. But a British crowd on the riverbank waving flags? That's suspect. That's "exclusive."

This is what happens when institutions stop believing in the country that built them. They measure value not by what the public loves but by what fits the new ideological checklist. The numbers didn't matter; the narrative did.

And we pay for it. Every household is forced to hand over a licence fee to a broadcaster embarrassed by its own culture, one that keeps hacking away at the few things still able to unite a fragmented nation.

The Boat Race will survive. Channel 4 has taken it on, proof there's nothing obsolete about it. But the BBC's retreat matters. It's a signal: if something feels too British, too rooted, too recognisable, it's up for cancellation.

A broadcaster that can't celebrate its country is no longer serving it. It's time to ask why we're still paying for our own cultural erasure.

[Alan H @Hench71]

@AdamBLiv Last pair of matching socks 🤣🤣

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

I've warned you guys again, and again, and again...
$112,000 was Bitcoin's top.

It will never go any higher. Ever.

[Cockney Rebel @RebelHQ]

In the 70's it was hotter than this. We went fishing, played cricket, got on a beach and soaked up the sun - no factor 50 then, just Ambre Solaire that made you cook quicker.

Summer is life, stop listening to all the net zero codswallop and enjoy living while you are young - the years go fast, the summers go faster. In the 70's we didn't spend time trying to save a planet that was too big for us to save - we let nature do what it had done for 4.5bn years.

Instead, people wrote great songs like this, and 50m have listened to it just on Youtube:

https://t.co/MdYxUbLWc9

[Alan H @Hench71]

@saifedean A beautiful tribute. Condolences to you and your family

[Alan H @Hench71]

@AdamBLiv Great read to start my day! 👏👏

[Alan H @Hench71]

@knutsvanholm 🤣🤣🤣 great poll!

[Alan H @Hench71]

@FiatHawk 👏👏👏

[Alan H @Hench71]

@RedemptionBrew @Runchers Thanks, see you tonight 👍

[Alan H @Hench71]

@RedemptionBrew @Runchers Hi @RedemptionBrew are you serving food tonight?

[Alan H @Hench71]

@Nebraskangooner Great advice

[Alan H @Hench71]

@nayibbukele @saifedean Truly inspiring!

[Alan H @Hench71]

@raghard @StephenEvans80 Superb work

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The UK is drifting, unhappy, losing faith in previously respected institutions (like the police), buffeted by extremists (often allowed to run amok), dismayed by decline, angry at the inability of the political class to do anything about it, despairing that the Westminster politico/media bubble pursues an agenda, issues and priorities (look at the obsession with Lee Anderson) which are not most people’s — and had enough of being lectured to by a disconnected, de haut en bas chattering class. Yet we have a Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition incapable of speaking up for the moderate majority, who still have pride in their country and are desperate for strong leadership and guidance through the current morass — plus some hope/sign things will get better — all within the bounds of traditional British tolerance and fair play. This vacuum is dangerous.

[Colin Millar @Millar_Colin]

An all-time great football moment. Toby Alderweireld joined hometown club Royal Antwerp last summer, as he always promised he would. Tonight, he has won them their first league title since 1957 with this incredible strike vs Genk in the 94th minute!

[Alan H @Hench71]

@stevecco @YouTube Great footage 👏🏻👏🏻