John O'Connor

Software Engineer. My kids say I'm a contrarian. I disagree. Love music, esp. Opera. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ps 122:6

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@UKWX_ @GBNEWS @bbcnewsline Midnight in Moira, Co. Down

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@manning_of @spikedonline Lol. Not even close to labours result. And less than what the BNP got.

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

A dog?! That wasn't part of our deal Burnham!

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

Very well written article by @cahillbooks

[Máiría Cahill @cahillbooks]

"There was not a hint that anything was wrong, except one time some years ago when an Irish government adviser showed up at my home. They had just visited Donaldson. His wife, Eleanor, was there.

“That is not a happy home,” they said when they arrived at mine. It was such an unusual remark that it stayed with me."
https://t.co/jygmQBb3d9

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@Sir__Walsingham The first is very likely within weeks.
Maybe it will be the only popular act @Keir_Starmer does?

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

"I have accepted Keir Starmer's resignation as my chief servant and have invited Andy Burnham to lay out details for how many meals a day he'll give me"

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

This Greta Thunberg post turns 8 today.

Time flies. 🥹

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

In England, you're allowed to clear about 20 metres of silt and rubbish out of a river on your own. Anything past that needs a permit from the Environment Agency. Paul Powlesland's volunteers cleared a 250-metre stretch of the River Roding with a hired digger, which is why a barrister who hauled out 200 bags of trash is now under criminal investigation.

The Roding runs through east London. Powlesland lives on a boat moored on it, and for years he and a group of volunteers have pulled out shopping trolleys, needles, old appliances, even weapons. Kingfishers, herons and dragonflies came back to water that used to be buried under junk. This one job took 10 days and a digger that cost £1,000 to hire.

The rule that caught him is oddly specific. Under England's water rules, scooping silt off the bottom of a river the agency officially manages counts as a "flood risk activity", and the law treats that the same as building a structure in the water. Do it without a permit and the offence carries up to two years in prison. The agency says it is also looking at waste the volunteers left on the floodplain. Powlesland is an environmental lawyer who has used these exact laws to protect rivers and trees, and a conviction could cost him his licence to practise.

The agency's reasoning isn't unreasonable. Dredging done badly can push flooding onto people downstream and wreck the habitat that protected animals need, which is what the permit is meant to prevent. The 20-metre allowance is there for small jobs. And no decision to prosecute has actually been made.

While investigators were knocking on a volunteer's door within a week of his cleanup, water companies discharged raw sewage into England's rivers and seas for a combined 3.6 million hours in 2024, more than 400 years of spilling packed into a single year. Only 14% of English rivers are in good health. Between 2015 and 2025, the Environment Agency investigated water companies for pollution 11,474 times. Fifty-eight of those ended in a prosecution. For serious pollution over the last five years, the number of water companies actually taken to court and convicted is zero.

So the message comes out backwards. Spend ten days and a thousand pounds making a river cleaner and an officer turns up within the week. Pump sewage into that same river for years and the chance of seeing a courtroom is close to zero.

[Mark @MarkMiddleton37]

Being a train driver of many years, I’m aware of the scenarios that might’ve have caused the rail collision near Bedford today. However, I won’t be speculating.

For those who are, especially those who don’t work on the railway, please stop.

Just let RAIB do their job.

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Does anyone know if @AndyBurnhamGM likes cats?

[Brian Spurrell @BrianSpanner1]

Telling the grandkids this is the original Star Wars.

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@PaulMcCloud46 @BasilTheGreat Probably true. Reform need to work on their candidates

But 7% for Restore while greater than expected isn't really something to celebrate. It's more an assurance as long as you are there Reform can't tip the balance. Which maybe is what you want.

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@ryanbo87X @BasilTheGreat Such an accurate prediction lol.

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@connellgm51 @BasilTheGreat Well that certainly didn't happen. Quite a stonking labour majority actually.

[Jonathan Eric Lewis @LewisJonathanE]

Anyone who knows me and my work knows that I don't make Nazi analogies lightly. Indeed, it's only on rare occasions that I would choose to do so

This is one of these occasions

Irish author Sally Rooney, in saying that the "liberation of Palestine represents the liberation of the world" is employing rhetoric straight out of the Nazi playbook

The implications are as deranged as they are terrifying: that the Jews, as a collective, must be disenfranchised & eliminated in order for the world to be "free"

It's the same thing as "the Jews are our misfortune"

But one cannot solely blame Rooney for her rhetoric, for she exists with a vast ecosystem of hate within both Ireland and the broader literary community, which has succumbed to the darkest impulses of mankind

[UN Watch @UNWatch]

The U.N. Human Rights Council just opened its June session. With a special debate targeting Israel.

Condemnations all time:
🇮🇱 Israel 116
🇸🇾 Syria 45
🇰🇵 NKorea 19
🇮🇷 Iran 18
🇷🇺 Russia 14
🇸🇩 Sudan 6
🇵🇰 Pakistan 0
🇸🇴 Somalia 0
🏴‍☠️ Hamas 0
🇹🇷 Turkey 0
🇨🇳 China 0
🇶🇦 Qatar 0
🇨🇺 Cuba 0

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

Elon Musk is a trillionaire. I am not a trillionaire. This strikes me as unfair. Nobody should be allowed to have more than me. The amount of money a person should be allowed to have is exactly the amount I currently have, and no more. I am smart. I really am. I’m serious.

[Andrew Snowden MP 🇬🇧 @A_J_Snowden]

Keir Starmer: "We don't have £4.5 billion for defence."

Keir Starmer the next day: "I’m announcing £4.5 billion for more cycle lanes and zebra crossings."

He’s just reached the point where he’s just laughing at us all now.

You really couldn't make it up.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Je vais partir du principe que tu es de bonne foi, parce que ton raisonnement est intuitif et que 90% des gens le partagent. Mais il repose sur trois erreurs factuelles, et ça vaut le coup de les regarder calmement.

Erreur 1 : la fortune d'Elon n'est pas un tas d'argent. C'est de la propriété d'usines, de fusées et de satellites. "Prendre la moitié de sa tune", concrètement, ça veut dire forcer la vente de la moitié de SpaceX et Tesla. L'argent ne sort pas d'un coffre, il sort des entreprises elles-mêmes, qui passent sous contrôle de fonds étrangers ou d'États. Tu ne redistribues pas du cash, tu démantèles un outil de production. C'est la différence entre récolter des pommes et découper le pommier.

Erreur 2 : "ça résout énormément de problèmes dans le monde". Cette expérience a déjà été tentée, en vrai. En 2021, le directeur du Programme Alimentaire Mondial de l'ONU a affirmé que 6 milliards de Musk pouvaient "résoudre la faim dans le monde". Réponse d'Elon : décrivez-moi exactement comment, comptabilité publique à l'appui, et je vends mes actions Tesla immédiatement. Le PAM a publié son plan. Verdict : ce n'était pas "résoudre la faim", c'était nourrir 42 millions de personnes pendant un an. Un an. Puis il faut re-payer, pour toujours. Le PAM avait d'ailleurs levé 8,4 milliards l'année précédente, et la faim était toujours là. Les ONG traitent les symptômes en boucle, jamais les causes, parce que leur financement dépend de l'existence du problème.

Erreur 3, la plus importante : tu cherches ce qui sort vraiment les gens de la pauvreté. Bonne nouvelle, on a la réponse, et elle est massive. En 1990, 36% de l'humanité vivait dans l'extrême pauvreté. Aujourd'hui, moins de 9%. Plus d'un milliard de personnes sorties de la misère en 30 ans. Par quoi ? Pas par la charité ni par l'aide internationale (plus de 1 000 milliards versés à l'Afrique en 60 ans pour un résultat à peu près nul). Par l'ouverture des marchés, l'industrialisation, le commerce. La Chine seule a sorti 800 millions de personnes de la pauvreté en abandonnant le collectivisme, pas en taxant ses entrepreneurs.

Donc fais le calcul complet. Option A : tu confisques 500 milliards, tu finances quelques années de programmes, l'argent est consommé, et tu as détruit la machine qui produisait les fusées, les voitures électriques et l'internet des zones rurales. Option B : tu laisses le meilleur allocateur de capital de sa génération réinvestir 100% de sa fortune dans des industries qui baissent les coûts pour tout le monde et emploient des centaines de milliers de personnes. L'option A soulage ta morale pendant 18 mois. L'option B sort des populations entières de la pauvreté pour toujours.

La pauvreté ne se redistribue pas. Elle se résout par la création. C'est contre-intuitif, c'est frustrant, mais c'est ce que disent 200 ans de données.

[Mike Gardner @mikegardner_wb]

America is building rockets that can go to Mars and is taking AI to new levels.

Meanwhile, in Britain, our Government is banning underfloor heating and wants to regulate our use of towel rails.

I despair for our future under these student socialist imbeciles.

[John O'Connor @jcoconnor]

@connellgm51 @BasilTheGreat That would be interesting but the polling doesn't indicate it's going to happen. Guess we will have to wait and see.