Andy 🇬🇧🇺🇦

It's never too late.

[Malcolm Clark @TwisterFilm]

Meet James Purnell, Andy Burnham's Chief of Staff. In 2018 he devised the BBC's LGBT+ Plan. This enforced 'preferred pronouns' and greater portrayal of "LGBT+ identities". The man behind the glut of drag queens on TV is Burnham's right hand man. Dearie me.
https://t.co/rEK5UE0KSc

[Defence Index @Defence_Index]

🇩🇪 Germany Built This Pistol More Than 100 Years Ago, And It Still Looks Factory New Today 🔥

The legendary Mauser C96 "Broomhandle", first introduced in 1896, is now over a century old. Yet this remarkably preserved example still appears as if it just left the production line.

A weapon that witnessed empires rise and fall, world wars, and decades of history, still standing as a testament to engineering built to last.

Over 100 years old. Still operational. Still turning heads.

They don't make them like this anymore.

[Andy 🇬🇧🇺🇦 @learnanduse]

@Defence_Index I had a similar Action Man version. The Colditz escape attache case. Happy days lol 😆

[UK Defence Journal @UKDefJournal]

Lagan Airport Maintenance has completed works at Glasgow Prestwick to host the RAF Voyager fleet under Project MACE, with the first Voyager arriving earlier this month while Brize Norton undergoes resurfacing. Click image for more.
https://t.co/Qe5Cemd7bn

[Andy 🇬🇧🇺🇦 @learnanduse]

Net zero bus

[GB News @GBNEWS]

London electric bus bursts into flames as heatwave lights vehicle on fire
https://t.co/eqOFwvKP5f

[Eurojust @Eurojust]

🚨 Operation Endgame strikes again.

🇩🇪🇧🇪🇩🇰🇫🇷🇳🇱🇬🇧🇺🇸🇨🇦, Eurojust & @Europol joined forces to take down malware infrastructure.

🔒 326 servers neutralised
🌐 142 domains taken down
📂 27 million compromised data sets recovered
👉https://t.co/RvjCbeCTbE

[AFP News Agency @AFP]

Australia's social media ban for under 16s has had little impact on teenagers' scrolling habits, researchers said Thursday in one of the first evaluations of the world-leading measures.

https://t.co/htoI6AV1tf

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The Manchester Model. What It Actually Looks Like Up Close.

Andy Burnham is asking the country to trust him with Downing Street on the strength of what he calls the Manchester Model. Eight years of integrated public services and progressive governance that he says Britain should adopt nationally. Before the country decides, it should know what that model actually produced.

Start with the money.

£578 million in public money was lent by Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker. A tribunal found that GMCA failed to obtain a statement of assets and liabilities from Whitaker before lending, exposing taxpayers to a risk the tribunal described as potentially wiping out the public funds. A meeting between a senior GMCA officer and Whitaker at which loan terms appear to have been agreed produced no minutes or notes. Court papers allege Renaker presented high profit figures to the GMCA when seeking loans and low profit figures to Manchester City Council when seeking exemption from affordable homes requirements. The Court of Appeal is considering judgment on whether the loans were lawful.

Out of 11,000 homes built with that public money, 503 are classed as affordable. Less than five percent. Whitaker's personal fortune grew from £140 million to £698 million during Burnham's mayoralty. The luxury towers were marketed to Chinese buy to let investors through Hong Kong estate agents. Hundreds of flats have been sold to Asian investors according to Telegraph analysis of Companies House filings.

Now the transparency.

In April 2026 the Information Commissioner issued a practice recommendation to the GMCA for failing to publish Freedom of Information compliance statistics. Greater Manchester Police, under Burnham's authority as Police and Crime Commissioner, was separately issued with an ICO enforcement notice for 850 overdue FOI requests, more than 800 over six months old. The oldest had been waiting two and a half years.

Now the transport flagship.

The Bee Network has absorbed a £30 council tax precept increase in two years to subsidise its operation. The £115 million Clean Air Zone was scrapped after £211 million in public funds was received and only £22.5 million returned. Burnham's own transport commissioner acknowledged the network remains twenty two years behind London. The board of Be.EV, the company holding the Bee Network's public EV charging contract, includes Burnham's wife, who joined the company six years into his mayoralty and was appointed to the board as his Westminster ambitions became increasingly visible.

Now the promises.

Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping by 2020. Rough sleeping rose. Today 18,000 people across Greater Manchester have no permanent address. He promised Platt Bridge a flood solution by 2018. The area flooded in 2015, 2021 and on New Year's Day 2025. The projected solution is now 2028. When asked on Question Time why he would not apologise, he said it was before his time. He became Mayor in 2017. The promise was made in 2018.

Now the politics.

Labour's candidate to replace Burnham as Mayor is Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council, the body that accepted Renaker's low profit figures and granted the affordable homes exemption. The mayoral by-election on 30 July will be fought under the supplementary vote system rushed through the Lords two days before Burnham's Makerfield victory, designed to consolidate left of centre second preferences and lock out Reform.

108 Labour councillors lost their seats in Greater Manchester in May's local elections. The region Burnham governed for eight years delivered the most devastating local election result in Labour's history.

This is the Manchester Model. These are its documented facts. The country is being asked to implement it nationally. It should read the small print first.

Bev Craig. Labour's candidate to replace Burnham. Leader of the council that granted Renaker's affordable homes exemption.

[Things From the Past @pastarchive]

Ruth Handler - the inventor of Barbie. (1961)

[Jody McIntyre @jodymcintyre_]

🚨We now have further information on Burnham’s incoming team.

His chief of staff will be James Purnell, ex-chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

In 2002, Purnell was hosted by the Israeli state in Tel Aviv. Now, he will be the most senior adviser in the British government.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

This is a disgrace.

Labour’s lame duck Attorney General, Lord Hermer, is once again trying to force through his vindictive pet project: the Chagos Island surrender.

Hermer is the only person who wants this deal. Conservatives rejected it. The Americans have serious concerns about it. And the British people do not want it.

Conservative would use the money Labour put aside for the Chagos surrender to fund our defence.

You do not make Britain safer by giving away strategic assets and paying for the privilege.

Conservatives have stopped this deal before. We will stop it again.

We will not let Labour weaken Britain.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

Hundreds of British soldiers to start drone and electronic warfare training at vast Canadian site

Read more 🔗 https://t.co/kEhhr58DxM

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Brilliant! 💥

[David Frost @DavidGHFrost]

I may have missed the first half of England-Ghana to do it, but it was a sacrifice well worth making to be able to speak in this debate and put the boot into Ed Miliband's deranged and damaging net zero National Suicide Pact.

[James Esses @JamesEsses]

🚨The government just voted down an attempt by the Conservative Party to cancel the puberty blockers trial.

Make no mistake about it, Labour are putting virtue signalling and ideology before the wellbeing of our most vulnerable children.

They bring shame upon our nation.

[Andy 🇬🇧🇺🇦 @learnanduse]

@BloodyPolitics @realMaalouf Yep!

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

GERMANY: Police officers were attacked and jumped on by a pack of migrants after trying to arrest one of them for making sexual advances toward a young underage girl in a park in Hamburg.

They all rushed in to ‘protect’ their friend. Unbelievable.

[Jerome Starkey @jeromestarkey]

🚨 The UK must be ready to strike Russia within 30 mins w "much greater numbers of remote and autonomous systems on the eastern flank"

–per CGS Roly Walker

"The cost we impose on that aggressor must be felt immediately & preferably before they get out of their assembly areas."

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

The country is not being governed and Labour say there won't be a Prime Minister till September.

Keir Starmer is off on a farewell tour and Andy Burnham wants a summer holiday. Neither is thinking about our national security.

We need to cut welfare and fund our military.