Steven Kirkley

Motorcyclist, Leeds United season ticket holder, classic cars, rock music connoisseur and lover of food and beer.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Andy Burnham is the political equivalent of that supply teacher who bounds into the classroom flashing a matey grin, drops a couple of half-decent gags and attempts a bit of street slang he clearly rehearsed in the car park. For the first lesson, the class is charmed; he seems human, approachable, almost one of the lads.

Then the novelty quickly evaporates. The jokes start landing like wet socks, the “down with the kids” act begins to look faintly desperate, and it becomes painfully obvious he has neither the quiet authority nor the steel to keep order. The classroom eventually descends into chaos: paper aeroplanes in flight, someone has set the register book on fire, and half of the class is climbing out the window heading for the chip shop.

[Wilkie (Richard Wilkinson) @WilkieisBack66]

Slave reparations!

I’m all in!

I’ve decided to personally gift £1 million Sterling to every single person my family ever enslaved.

Please form an orderly queue and bring:
• Ironclad documents proving my family personally enslaved you (bonus points if they include my great-great-grandpa’s signature and a Polaroid).
• Your birth certificate proving you were born before Britain abolished slavery on 1 August 1834.
• Proof you’re still alive (the gift can only be claimed in person, no ghosts, no estates, no “my ancestor told me so”).

Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe swing by the local cemetery with a shovel. I’m sure those poor souls buried since the 1800s would appreciate being dug up for their cheque. They’ve waited long enough, right?

Look, if we’re doing “reparations” for historical slavery, let’s do it properly: only to the actual victims. Not their great-great-great-grandchildren who were born free in the 20th or 21st century, sipping oat milk lattes while tweeting about “trauma.”

This isn’t justice, it’s a cosmic-level grift.

It’s like demanding the Roman Empire pay for the roads they built because some distant ancestor got conquered by Caesar. Or billing modern Italians for every Gaul who got turned into a slave 2,000 years ago.

Newsflash: No living person in Britain today was a slave under British law, and no living person in Britain today owned slaves under British law.

The people who suffered are dead. The people who profited are dead.

Their descendants, Black, White, Asian, mixed, whatever had zero say in it.

Chasing “reparations” from random taxpayers (including the descendants of abolitionists, coal miners, and people who arrived after 1834) isn’t healing historical wounds. It’s creating new ones while opening the most hilarious Pandora’s box in human history:

• Should Ireland demand reparations from Britain for the Potato Famine?
• Should Britain demand reparations from Denmark for the Viking slave raids?
• Should Italians bill Mongols for the sack of Baghdad?
• Should every African nation start invoicing each other for the centuries of tribal warfare and slave-trading that predated (and supplied) the transatlantic trade?

Where does the grievance chain end? 1066? The Bronze Age?
Lucy the Australopithecus getting stiffed on her cave rent?

Slavery was a universal human horror, practised by every civilisation from the Egyptians to the Aztecs to the Arabs to the Africans themselves (who sold millions into the trade).

Britain didn’t invent it.
Britain ended it, at massive cost, with the Royal Navy spending decades hunting slave ships while other empires kept right on going.

Demanding cash from people who never owned slaves, to give to people who were never slaves, isn’t “reparations.” It’s retroactive time-travel cosplay with other people’s money. It’s the ultimate participation trophy for historical victimhood: “My ancestor suffered, therefore I deserve a payout… even though I live in a free society with more opportunity than 99.9% of humans who ever lived.”

If you want actual justice, how about this radical idea:
Stop obsessing over who owes whom from 200 years ago, and start judging people by what they do today. Work hard. Build. Create. Don’t inherit grievances like their family heirlooms.

The desire for slavery reparations isn’t righteous anger. It’s lazy, entitled, historically illiterate greed dressed up as moral superiority, demanding a lottery win for a suffering you never endured, from people who never caused it.

My £1 million offer stands.
Just bring the paperwork.

And a time machine.

#Reparations
#Slavery

Oh, and fcuk you Lenny Henry.

[Steven Kirkley @kirkley_steven]

@MichaelMLds @henrywinter Need top 2 still as we always lose playoffs.

[John Aziz @aziz0nomics]

Capitalism works

[Jack @jackunheard]

BREAKING: It is being reported that X is making people more Conservative over time.

Yes, that is what happens when narratives aren't controlled and the truth isn't censored.

People are realizing the Left has gone completely off the rails.

[Virginie Sigonney 🇫🇷 @GinieSigonney]

In 1940, British pilots were dying without ever being hit by the enemy.

The cause was purely technical.

They were flying the Spitfire—already an exceptional aircraft in terms of aerodynamics and maneuverability—but one critical flaw remained: engine fuel supply under strong negative acceleration.

During a steep dive to escape a Messerschmitt, negative G-forces caused fuel to surge into the carburetor.

The mixture instantly became too rich.

The engine lost combustion, spluttered, then cut out completely.

A few seconds were enough to turn an agile fighter into a stationary target.

German aircraft, equipped with direct fuel injection, retained full power in dives and pull-outs.

The tactical advantage was real, measurable, and deadly.

RAF engineers were well aware of the problem.

But the “ideal” solution required a complete redesign of the Merlin engine—unrealistic in the midst of the Battle of Britain.

That is where Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling came in, an aeronautical engineer and recognized specialist in high-performance mechanics.

Accustomed to pushing engines to their limits in motorcycle racing, she approached systems not as abstract theory, but under real extreme conditions.

Rather than redesigning the engine, she carefully analyzed the fluid dynamics of the fuel delivery system.

Her diagnosis was simple and rigorous: the issue was not combustion, but an instantaneous excess of fuel flow.

She calculated a critical threshold.

The engine had to receive enough fuel to maintain maximum power, but never enough to flood the carburetor under negative G.

Her solution was brutally effective.

A simple brass flow restrictor, drilled with millimetric precision, installed upstream of the carburetor.

A passive component, with no moving parts, no failure risk, dimensioned exactly to the Merlin’s requirements.

She personally validated the device, then traveled from airbase to airbase to have it installed.

No committees, no delays—tests, measurements, results.

Once in place, the engine remained fueled during dives.

Spitfires could maintain power, follow the enemy through vertical maneuvers, and finally exploit their full aerodynamic potential.

Officially, the device became known as the “R.A.E. restrictor.”

On the airfields, pilots simply called it “Miss Shilling’s orifice.”

It was not an elegant solution in the academic sense.

It was a performant, robust, immediately operational solution.

Exactly what war demanded.

Without flying an aircraft or firing a single shot, Beatrice Shilling turned a critical disadvantage into a measurable tactical gain.

A striking example of what engineering can achieve when guided by technical mastery, sound calculation, and the courage to act quickly.

©️ Eric Fdl / Imperial War Museum / National Geographic
History
📷©️Wikipedia

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Sheep thrive on land that would produce nothing else for human consumption.

The Shetland Islands: Rocky, windswept, thin soil, short growing season. Agriculture is basically impossible.

Shetland sheep have lived there for 2,000 years. They:

- Graze native grasses
- Survive on minimal inputs
- Produce exceptional fine wool
- Maintain the landscape
- Provide meat

You cannot grow crops on Shetland. The terrain won't support it. The climate won't support it. The soil won't support it.

Remove sheep and you have: Barren landscape producing zero human food.

Keep sheep and you have: Renewable fiber and meat from land that can't produce anything else.

But environmentalists want to "rewild" these islands and import all food from industrial agriculture elsewhere.

This isn't environmentalism. This is geographical illiteracy.

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

This may be the most disgusting thing Starmer has ever done 👇

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

The report in the Telegraph today about how Starmer gave up his free time to hound a British veteran in the courts, a man who had already been cleared twice, is sickening.

It’s worth reminding yourself of how Starmer built a career on fighting for Britain’s enemies 👇

['Seeing is believing' @dave24144975]

African man👇👇👇in London...

"Let's blow a whistle to frighten the horse"

🇬🇧Kings Guard

Sick of using the word fatigue!!!

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

In 2024, Tom Kerridge was one of 120 business leaders included in an open letter giving their backing to Labour in the general election ‘to achieve the UK’s full economic potential.’

Now his ‘business rates are going up over 100%’ thanks to Labour.

Buyer’s remorse is very real.

[lotte_lufc 🦚 @lottielufc8]

Happy new year everyone 🍻🔵⚪️🟡 #lufc

[James Freeman @james_freeman__]

SPREAD THE WORD FOLKS - SHARE THIS WITH PUB LANDLORDS AND RESTAURANT OWNERS

[Shrodingers Borderline Normal @JeremyCordite]

Truth bomb. 💣

@ Jameypaint

[Iron Maiden @IronMaiden]

London… that was a night that will live with us for eternity. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts!

Glasgow! You’re up next! Get rEddie to #RunForYourLives

#IronMaiden #RunForYourLivesWorldTour #KillerKontent #McMurtrie

[Stewart Michael @MikeStewart79]

You make a sale of £1200 in your business.
£200 is VAT.

You have £1000.
You pay 25% corp tax on it.

You have £750.
You pay it to yourself as a dividend and pay 20%.

You have £600.
You spend it, and £100 of the spend was VAT.

You have something worth £500.
You die and pass that thing onto your kids, and your estate owes 40% in taxes.

Your kids have £300.

Are you seeing why it's nearly impossible to get ahead in the UK? This is why people are leaving. And it’s even worse in SNP Scotland, where higher taxes and relentless bureaucracy crush ambition further.