Ian Aldcroft

Interests: still & video photography, beer, whisky, loose cars and fast women. Also cats, particularly Bengal.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

You cannot regulate your way to growth. You cannot tax your way to prosperity. And you cannot build a stronger economy by making life harder for the people who create jobs.

Here are five things that have to change.

[spiked @spikedonline]

Why are Lush and Amnesty celebrating 'top surgery'? It involves the surgical removal of healthy breasts from women who believe they’ve been born in the wrong body. That doesn't sound empowering. That sounds tragic, says Janet Murray
https://t.co/OdMa2AxsKu

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Why do they chose to come to the UK if they feel threatened by our national flag

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

AI data centres: ‘Save the Planet’ net zero hypocrisy:

While governments around the world lecture citizens on slashing energy use, embracing efficiency, and hitting net-zero targets to “save the planet,” they are simultaneously pushing an explosion of AI data centres that consume electricity at a scale that makes individual sacrifices look absurd.

We are told to turn off lights, lower our thermostat, blame cow burps, eat less red meat, drive an electric vehicle, reduce flights, and recycle religiously. Every tonne of CO₂ matters. Yet the same policymakers courting Big Tech investment are presiding over infrastructure that guzzles power equivalent to entire nations — often forcing more energy consumption onto the grid.

This is not incremental growth. It is a fundamental reversal of the environmental sustainability ethos the hypocritical governments claim to champion.

For decades, climate messaging has centred on personal and societal restraint. Reduce consumption. Improve efficiency. Transition to renewables. Meet ambitious targets like net zero by 2050 under frameworks such as the Paris Agreement, the EU Green Deal, or national climate plans.

The Reality: Exponential, unchecked natural resources consumption. AI data centres shatter the net zero narrative.

• Ireland 🇮🇪 ~ a supposed climate leader in the EU — now sees data centres consuming over 21-22% of national electricity (more than all urban homes combined in recent data). Projections point to 30-32% by 2026-2030. Data centres have driven nearly all of Ireland’s electricity demand growth since 2015, swallowing gains from new renewables and threatening carbon budgets.

• USA 🇺🇸 ~ data centre power demand is forecast to more than double between 2025 and 2027, with some analyses projecting 6.7-12% of total US electricity by 2028.

These facilities do not just use electricity — they demand it 24/7 at extreme densities. Cooling alone requires vast water volumes. Billions of gallons are used annually by major operators, with sharp year-on-year increases reported.

Governments are not passive observers here. They actively enable this boom through tax incentives, fast-tracked permitting, zoning changes, and even dedicated power plants (including gas-fired ones in some US cases) to serve data centres specifically.

While the public are guilt-tripped into net zero compliance, these gargantuan AI data facilities operate in a parallel reality of energy and natural resource guzzling and higher electricity bills for everyone, strained grids, and rising emissions — precisely the opposite of the restraint demanded of the public.

Data centres already rival the electricity use of small-to-medium countries. Their growth is geographically concentrated, creating local crises (grid congestion in Ireland’s Dublin region, water stress elsewhere).

Public opposition is rising (as shown in USA & Scotland), with strong resistance to local projects.

This is not technology versus the planet in some abstract sense. It is policy hypocrisy in action. The same governments preaching conservation and net zero are subsidising and prioritising the single fastest-growing source of new electricity demand — one that shows little sign of self-restraint.

That is not progress. It is the most glaring net zero contradiction in modern environmental policy.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Natural England: slaughter the ponies
Environment Agency: prosecute the community cleaners

Is it me or do both of these actions go against their very names? Killing ponies is not natural. Preventing rubbish clearance isn’t environmental.

If they’re not for the environment or nature, what are they for?

Cull the quangos and clean up the arms length bodies.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

I decide to leave Quebec/Canada because:

1) the taxation system is astounding, rendering it nearly impossible to accumulate enough money to truly retire
2) the government's open immigration policies have made it unsafe for my family to remain here (due to the exponential increase in Jew-hatred).

Today I found out that I shall have to pay a departure tax for exercising my right to leave, and the money that will be taken from me (because the obscene amount of taxes that I've already paid in full is not enough) will be given to new incoming immigrants who hate Jews. My taxes funded my forced exit and will fund the harassment of any remaining Jews in Canada.

It would take me 10+ more years of work to save the amount that is likely to be taken via the departure tax.

Is this moral? Ethical? Just? In any case, off to bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

[Richie Taylor @RWTaylors]

🚨 This is Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke, Recorder of Cardiff. She sentenced ex-soldier Daffron Williams a 41-year-old veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffers from PTSD to two years in prison (half to be served in custody) for Facebook posts made in the tense days after the Southport child murders.

His posts referenced “civil war is here” and included anti-Islamic imagery. She acknowledged his military service, good character references, and mental health struggles… but still sent him to prison for words on the internet.

The same judge has also jailed others for social media posts in the post-riot crackdown, including 24-year-old David Morgan who received 20 months for tweets involving Nazi imagery and racist content.

Yet when Rees Newman convicted of the historic rape of a girl under 14 appeared before her for breaching his sex offender requirements, she suspended his two-month jail term, explicitly citing prison overcrowding.

A veteran with PTSD goes to prison for Facebook comments warning about cultural conflict.

A child rapist walks free because the jails are too full.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

If people have to pay reparations for slavery, the British could claim three and a half centuries colonisation by the Romans, and 300 years of colonisation by the French

This would be profitable for us since we were slaves for much longer than our shameful Empire lasted

It is a tribute to the foresightedness of the Muslims that, due to their practice of castrating all slaves, no
candidates exist for reparations for their long periods of slavery

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

Cutting and sterilising 11 year old girls

This is not medicine

It is evil.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Men who claim to be women confidently include themselves in the category of women knowing full well that it’s a lie and most women don’t want them there.

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Not a single woman or child. Only military-age men.

That’s because they are not refugees. They are soldiers, and this is a religious war of conquest.

Europe needs to wake up.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

Oxfordshire County Council has become the first council to start a legal battle to ban residents from raising flags.

The reason given is that it makes ethnic minorities feel "intimidated."

The LibDems don’t speak for me. Keep Raising the Colours everywhere!

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

How was this ever allowed to happen?
So many of our own people desperately need housing and we are doling council houses out to foreign nationals.
No other country in the world is this stupid.
👇

[ZUBY: @ZubyMusic]

One of the craziest things about the UK rape gang scandal is that it's largely considered a 'right wing' concern.

In a sane, serious country, it would be completely bipartisan. In fact, it wouldn't even be seen as a political issue, but one of basic justice and morality.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Cross sex hormones are not HRT. The clue is in the name. Hormone replacement treatment replaces small amounts of naturally occurring hormones that have diminished with age. Cross sex hormones don’t replace anything. They are intended to disrupt the body’s hormonal balance.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

The BBC is under a duty to provide news, not to create it

[Samantha Smith @SamanthaTaghoy]

They aren’t “Asian” grooming gangs.
They aren’t even just Pakistani gangs.

But they are always Muslim.

It is gangs of Muslim men who groomed, abused, raped, sodomised, tortured, kidnapped, and murdered hundreds of thousands little girls across the UK.

Grooming gangs are usually Pakistani. Some gang members have been Iraqi, Afghan, or Iranian too.

But they are always Muslim.

That isn’t Islamophobic. It’s reality.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

And this report is just the tip of an enormous iceberg of evil

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

There is a particular breed of politician who wants to send Britain back to the Dark Ages.

Ed Miliband, with his bans on tumble dryers and underfloor heating.

The Green Party councillors banning leaf-blowers in favour of rakes.

The Malthusian de-growthers like Thomas Piketty who argue that we should impose growth caps on developed countries because of climate change.

What they all have in common is a supreme indifference to the hardship their policies impose on the public.

Ed Miliband has been on a joyless spree of consumer intrusion since coming to power. His spray of Net Zero policies leaves virtually no part of ordinary life untouched.

The cost of electricity, food, housing, tumble dryers, boilers, fertiliser, towel rails and underfloor heating will all rise because of his unshakeable belief that he should decide what is best for you to buy.

These are all features of modernity that make lives better for billions around the world, but does that matter to Miliband? Not a jot.

He believes that Britons should be uniquely punished, forced to wear a hairshirt while our industry is destroyed and our beleaguered consumers piled with even higher costs.

Why? So he can jet around to climate conferences talking about his ‘climate leadership’ and arguing for others to do the same.

It’s not clear who he is going to convince first. President Xi? President Trump? Putin?

No world leader will be persuaded by his spit-flecked proselytising. “I made my country poor! We no longer have any industry and the cost of living is out of control! You should do the same!”

We must be honest that forcing hardship onto British consumers is not saving anyone. It is only acting as a deterrent to the rest of the world who hold Britain up as an example of exactly what not to do.

Under Kemi Badenoch’s and my leadership, we have renounced the mistakes of those who came before us. We would repeal the Climate Change Act and its dogmatic net zero targets in full.

That’s not to reject all clean tech as “stupid”, as some on the right do. There are many consumers who enjoy their heat pumps, home batteries and electric cars. But consumer choice should be king.

Businesses should compete to innovate until they produce what consumers actually want. The public will adopt new technologies when they decide they make their lives better.

And the salt in the wound for the climate zealots? Countries that have seen clean tech through the eyes of consumers, not those of climate bureaucrats, have generally had much higher rates of adoption.

It cannot be right that a few privileged bureaucrats can keep pushing higher costs on a worn-out public.

We have to embrace uncertainty. We have to recognise government’s role is to enable, not to dictate. Consumer choice must prevail.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Well now you have to decide if Andy Burnham is lying, stupid or a mad communist... Because his little victory speech about his position should he become PM is mental!

UK public debt is already nearly £2.9 TRILLION. And he says he will ...
1. lower water bills, energy bills and train fares - what does this mean? how would this be done? who will pay for it?
2. re industrialise the country by forcing government procurement from British companies. Brilliant, that will cost about 50% more. Who will pay for that? And how does that affect daft net zero?
3. guarantee every 16-18 year old a job or apprenticeship. Where? who will pay for this?
4. This agenda will bring the country back together apparently.

Delivering even half of this agenda across the UK would mean enormous additional borrowing and huge tax rises in a shrinking jobs market, it won't raise living standards, it will just make everyone equally poor faster 😂