wagonwayman

grateful dweller aside Queen's Wood Highgate in the world's greatest city, with northern roots.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@Gabriel_Pogrund You’re not up to the honours of the insight tradition.
Irrespective of the Farage investigation as an Insight Q journalist you shd have recused given your declaration that you despise Farage.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@Gabriel_Pogrund once upon a time Insight was a first rate journalist elite. Established back in the day by Harry Evans.
You’ve dishonoured the Insight prestige: I hold no brief for Nigel Farage but you dropped the objective ball declaring you despise the subject of reportage.

[Inevitable West @Inevitablewest]

Ann Widdecombe:

"No one has the right to live their lives being protected from offence or hurt feelings - it is an occupational hazard of living in a society. If you can't take it, become a hermit."

May she forever rest in peace.

[Queen Bee @KingBobIIV]

Fifteen years ago, as a die-hard Corbynite, Labour voter, lefty and Remainer, I'd probably have scoffed at the death of Ann Widdecombe, if I'm honest. I loved Andy Hamilton's Old Harry's Game on BBC Radio 4, and she was the punchline in what felt like every episode.

Looking back, I'm quite ashamed of that version of myself. It wasn't real morality, it was performative virtue.

The last decade has been quite a journey for me, both spiritually and politically, and I don't think the two are unrelated. Watching people rush to celebrate her death, only to frantically delete their posts when it emerged she had been brutally murdered, made me realise how grateful I am not to be that person anymore.

I'm meeting more and more people who've travelled a similar path and arrived at much the same place.

Whatever your politics, don't let hatred become part of your character. Try to pull people up to your level, rather than allowing yourself to be dragged down to theirs.

RIP Ann. You were quite some human being.

[Sunday Sport @thesundaysport]

How much extra do they charge for that?

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@NickDixon @AllisonPearson @adamboultonTABB @SkyNews
Lowlife, garbage station

[Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie]

Year after year the Conservative Party elevated nobody after nobody to the House of. Lords but it refused to enoble Ann Widdecombe despite her popularity amongst party members and tireless service on the frontbench. She was simply too willing to criticise Tory ministers doing a bad job and shs was far too independent-minded full stop. We loved her in Reform and so sad there won't now ever be an opportunity to celebrate a Baroness Widdecombe. But Ann's faith was so strong and she's now in the loving arms of her Creator.... and she's undoubtedly giving him a piece of her mind. Or soon will be!
RIP Ann.

[Georgia Leigha Gilholy @llggeorgia]

Those discussing Ann Widdecombe on the news keep referring to her "divisive views".

They say little about her being one of the ONLY MPs untainted by the expenses scandal, how she helped her nephew defeat drug addiction + her concern for animal welfare & persecuted Christians.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@AllisonPearson @BBCNews @adamboultonTABB Boulton lowlife: he’s the supposed journo that wanted other journalists banned

[RLK @RLK303303]

“It is our sacred duty to help cleanse Gaza of Hamas. If Israel falls, the gates of hell will open for all of us. Palestinian state does not exist.”

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@spectator @AllisonPearson Liz Truss’ deep state argument coming into first play.

[The Spectator @spectator]

'Is it all just a little too convenient for the anti-Farage forces?'

Nigel Farage has resigned as MP for Clacton and will fight a by-election in an attempt to turn questions over his finances into a referendum on ‘the people vs the establishment’.

Last year, Dominic Cummings told Michael and Maddie that he predicted there would at some point be a concerted attempt to destabilise Farage on a personal basis.

@michaelgove @madz_grant

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. The greatest footballer who ever lived spent his childhood injecting hormones into his own legs every single night — because his body had stopped growing. This is the medical story behind Lionel Messi, and it's more extraordinary than most people realize.
At 11, Messi had barely grown since he was 9. He stood 4'4". Doctors diagnosed Growth Hormone Deficiency — his pituitary gland, the master gland at the base of the brain, wasn't producing enough growth hormone. Without treatment, specialists predicted he'd never pass 4'7".
The treatment: nightly injections of synthetic growth hormone into his thighs. A small boy giving himself shots while other kids played. The cost: around $1,500 a month — impossible for his family in Rosario for the long haul.
As a physician, let me tell you what those injections actually were.
Growth hormone is one of the most powerful signaling molecules in the human body. It drives bone growth, muscle development, and tissue repair. In a child whose pituitary can't make enough, replacing it isn't enhancement — it's rescue. Without it, Messi's growth plates would have fused early and he'd have lived his life severely short. With it, his body was given the raw material to become what his genetics intended.
This is the same class of medicine I've written about on this platform — replacing what the body can't produce. Insulin for diabetics. Thyroid hormone for hypothyroidism. And now, in the frontier I keep returning to, we're moving toward cell therapies that could one day let a body produce these molecules itself instead of injecting them nightly. Messi's childhood was the old model of that fight — a needle, every night, for years.
Then football history turned on a napkin. At 13, after a trial that stunned Barcelona, sporting director Carles Rexach grabbed the nearest paper he could find — a restaurant napkin — and wrote a promise: Barcelona would sign him and pay for his treatment. The family moved to Spain. The injections continued. He grew to 5'7".
And here's the part that gives me chills as a doctor.
The very thing that nearly ended his dream became the engine of his greatness. That low center of gravity — the short stature everyone once saw as a defect — became the source of the balance, the impossibly quick changes of direction, the dribbling no taller player could replicate. His body's limitation, medically corrected and then weaponized, turned into the most unguardable weapon in the sport's history.
Eight Ballon d'Ors. A World Cup in 2022. The completion of a story that, without a diagnosis, a treatment, and a napkin, almost never began.
I see the medical lesson in this constantly. A diagnosis is not a verdict. A body that seems to be failing you is not a sentence — it's a problem to be understood and, increasingly, solved. Messi's parents didn't accept "he'll never grow." They found the medicine. And Messi didn't accept "you're too small." He turned the smallness into genius.
Every night that boy pushed a needle into his leg wasn't a mark of weakness. It was proof of the discipline that would one day make him the greatest to ever play.
Modern medicine gave him the inches.
What he did with them was entirely his own.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@TimesRadio @gilescoren Little giles shd stick to reviewing eateries within a mile of his drum.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@DannyVet @CountBinface @tomgordonLD Wankers like this totally treat politics as a game.
They’ve never had a job & have no clue

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@edvaizey heard u on Times Radio.
Ok but millions cd do the same. A bog standard minister elevated to the Lords, millions cd do the same.
Aren’t you a bit embarrassed your worship?

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@DPJHodges @edvaizey Remember Odysseus chose mortality rather than eternal life with beautiful Calypso.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@christopherhope Hope wd like this but people don’t exist in the media chat like Hope, or choppers as is re-branded.
Choppers this is not a game.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@GBNEWS @AllisonPearson @MartinDaubney They did this with Johnson, Harman purring.
Re-set.

[wagonwayman @highgatealex]

@campbellclaret @CountBinface Dacre 10, 45 minutes 0