Cat's Cradle

"See the cat?
See the cradle?"

History does not repeat itself. It rhymes. (Mark Twain)

[Cat's Cradle @MajorCerinthe]

Please consider this. Rog is a proper scientist.

[Rog Tallbloke (Righto/Chief) 🇬🇧 @RogTallbloke]

@Pardalis33 The correlation between UK surface T and UK sunshine hours is a lot more convincing than that with CO2. Cloud albedo controls our climates. Not trace gases.
@petagna

[Edgar Holroyd-Doveton @EdgarHolroyd]

Are the officials at the Home Office working to destroy Britain?
Case after case, after case, officials at the Home Office are making decisions that are harmful to Britain and often curtail the traditions of our democratic heritage.
Where did these people come from, why are they there? They certainly have not been elected
Here is but one of the many damaging diktats they have enacted

[Stavros_D_S @Stavros_D_S]

The Aegean islands of Imbros and Tenedos were ceded to turkey in 1923, with strict conditions of local autonomy of their then 100% Greek population, according to the Lausanne treaty. Similarly Constantinople's 300,000 then Greeks gained protected status by the Lausanne treaty as well, when the city was ceded from allied control to the newly founded Turkish Republic.

In subsequent years Turkey systematically violated the rights and persecuted violently these protected populations in gross violations of the Lausanne provisions. Today a handful of Greeks remain... These violations are legally continuous until full re-instatement of the previous status (plus additional damages to be paid) and until this happens they undermine the legal status of these areas...

Regarding Greek military deployment now, UN resolutions legitimize any defence of sovereign territory under threat. Turkey continuously violates Greek airspace and waters and openly and officially threatens Greece with WAR. So defensive measures are completely justified, warranted and legal.

[Christian @InTheTrenchesUK]

You gave them your money.

You believed they were saving British lives.

You were lied to.

Tonight 6PM: The documents that prove the RNLI is a state-run border operation taking orders from HM Coastguard, funded by civil service payroll, and coordinated with 160 international NGOs to facilitate mass migration across the Channel.

The "volunteers" are paid.
The "charity" is state-tasked.
The "rescue" is transport.

I have the MOU. I have the financial records. I have the names.

Thread 1/4 drops 6PM.

You deserve the truth.

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

Pakistan has its own space programme, yet we send it £133 million a year in aid while shutting down Britain's largest space telescope because we “can't afford” a few million.

This telescope helped inspire generations of scientists.

If we keep cutting investment in our own scientific infrastructure while other nations push ahead, we'll only fall further behind.

I hope this decision is reversed. Britain should be investing in its future, not dismantling it.

[Andrew Parker @AndrewParkerUK]

@PolitlcsUK A Unesco World Heritage site https://t.co/6qWl3JhZHl

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The UK’s largest telescope for studying space is now set to close after the Government pulled its funding

It supported various Apollo missions and tracked Soviet rockets in the Cold War

[William Yarwood @yarwoodwilliam]

The annual operational cost being withdrawn is £2.8 million per year. The daily cost of housing illegal migrants in hotels is £5.77 million per day

One single day of these hotel costs would be enough to fund the telescope for more than two full years.

[Andrew Lawrence @andrewlawrence]

Last week he was pretending to be your mate, this week he's thieving money off your dead parents.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The last overseas shearers Britain intends to let in are on the fells right now, working out the final weeks of their leave.

The door shut on 30 June. No vote, no debate, no announcement, just a date passing quietly in a summer when everyone was looking elsewhere. Those still working the Borders this week are here on leave that expires on 1 October, and when they fly out that is the end of it.

Understand what is walking out.

Six New Zealanders spent three months in one Northumberland valley last year and sheared nearly 90,000 sheep. Fifteen thousand head each, across farms from the Scottish Borders down to County Durham. They have been coming into Coquetdale for over thirty years. Since 2011 a concession has let up to 75 of them in each spring, and between them they take the wool off one and a half to two million British sheep in a window a few weeks long.

The Home Office rejected the application on 2 February. Twenty-six days of farmers writing to their MPs got it reinstated on 10 March for one final year, with a line about the sector having had fourteen years to train British workers and now being expected to transition to domestic labour.

Here is what that sentence is standing on. British Wool trains over 800 people a year, most of those courses are basic level, and most of the people on them are sheep farmers learning to do their own flock. Training was never the bottleneck. A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes, calm hands, no panic in the animal, hundreds a day for weeks on end, and reaching that standard takes years of conditioning and a place in a global trade that follows the season around the planet.

Fourteen million breeding ewes. A few weeks to do them all. A sheep left in fleece gets eaten alive by maggots, so the job is not optional and the date is not negotiable.

Next spring those farms make phone calls that nobody answers.

Seventy-five shearers, once a year, and a government that could not find room for them.

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

Our friends and allies within the EU don't seem to struggle at all to recognise that the UK financial services sector is booming outside the EU, and that it is the flexibilities that came from EU departure that are fuelling that boom.

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

This is genuinely sad to see.

The Government can find the money to increase foreign aid from 0.2% to 0.7%, while we already send Pakistan £133 million a year.

Yet we can't find a few million to keep Britain's largest space telescope open.

It helped support the Apollo missions, tracked Soviet rockets during the Cold War, and inspired generations of scientists.

Our priorities are completely backwards.

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

The Government's trade deal with India means that, for an engineering firm, it's about 10% cheaper to hire an Indian worker than a British one.

And the "deal" makes it easier for companies to bring Indian workers here.

More mass migration. More undercutting of British workers.

[WasAcop @WasAcop]

🚨UK axes £2.8 million from the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank — the UNESCO site that tracked Sputnik and Apollo — shutting down decades of world-leading science.

The exact same £2.8 million went as “aid” to China via the British Council for education, arts and English programmes.

China has its own space programme.

We just lost ours.

[Carl Benjamin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @Sargon_of_Akkad]

Jodrell Bank costs under £3m a year to run, by the way.

We spend a £1bn a month on benefits for foreigners.

[freebooting stevie @BrianSkirrow]

So Burnham flies to Manchester on a 30k flight and is then transported by a whole squad of Met police who have slogged up the M6 in a fleet of armoured Range Rovers.

Nice to see an end to profligate spending.

[Sedd @SeddSezz]

UK restaurant chain Beefeater is closing all of its 106 sites.

The group directly blamed crippling cost pressures stemming from Government policy.

In particular, Reeves's increases in employer NICs and business rates, both of which rendered the traditional pub-restaurant business model "unsustainable."

The cost of living crisis has worsened year after year since Covid, and Labour's tax rises have put the final nail in the coffin.

British industry is crumbling under Labour's watch!

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Er....2026 is the quietest year for wild fires in Europe by some distance.

[Debi Evans @DebiEvansMatron]

😏‼️Well well well 😏
This wasn’t decided in a week was it #OurAndy 😏 how much is that costing 🇬🇧

This is the brownfield site #Manchester where the permanent number 10 North will be. 😲 #ToyrRUs

Credit JarmainUnfiltered 👏👏

Full video ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

https://t.co/GYxNlfrN7C

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

“Unfettered capitalism caused the 2008 crash!”
- paid naked celebrity spreading statist propaganda from a bathtub

No.

The Fed cut rates to 1% and manufactured the 2008 crash.

When a central bank forces interest rates artificially low it sends a false signal that savings are plentiful, so businesses and households load up on debt and the cheap credit races into housing since it’s the sector that responds fastest to rate cuts.

That’s the core process of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory that Mises and Hayek identified decades earlier.

From 2000 to 2003, the Fed drove its target from 6.5% all the way to 1% and held it there for a full year.
That flood of artificial money built the bubble, drove the leverage, and produced the derivatives and Wall Street excesses that still get treated as the root cause.

Distorting the cost of money itself is what produced the crisis.

They shifted the blame onto “unfettered capitalism” and Wall Street and stayed in the business of manufacturing bubbles as if nothing happened.
Now see who they’re blaming next time.

[Strix @strixperegrinus]

You get off the train at Piccadilly, midday.

"Ah, smell that Manchester air!" you think to yourself, not recognising the smell of diesel. You don't linger in it for long, jumping straight into a taxi outside.

"No10 North, please!" you say with pride.

"Where!?" asks Ahmed, your driver.

"Heron House," you say. Ahmed stares blankly at you in the rearview mirror. "Slug & Lettuce, Albert Square" you say reluctantly, and the cab pulls off the rank.

The squalor of Piccadilly Gardens is a sight to behold. Feral gangs of ethnic teenagers dressed all in black on this sunny summer's day, drug dealers operating with impunity, illegal deliveroo riders scowling at passers by, leering at women like an unexpected meal...all of which you would have seen if you'd looked up from your phone. Luckily for you, you're busy. You've work to catch up on. The wifi was patchy on the train from London, so you've lost about two hours.

The cab pulls up at "The Slug", as you're sure you'll soon be calling it, and you begin to alight. Suddenly, you realise it's lunchtime! Honestly, where *does* the time go!?

"Where's the nearest Pret?" you ask Ahmed through the window.

"What?" he says.

"Nevermind. Thanks for the journey," you reply, opening your phone to check maps. Deansgate Pret is...90 seconds away!? That's almost two minutes! How do these savages live like this!? So much to be done for this area, what a good decision this venture was. Since you can't spare that sort of time, you'll have to order in.

You walk past security, using your lanyard as a shield and daring them to peruse it. Upstairs and you see the door, o that wonderful black door! How you missed it on the journey up. And behind it are all the familiar faces from London - phew! You've been in Manchester 6 minutes and seen absolutely none of that famous charm, so it's nice to see a friendly expression at last. "I'm doing a Just Eat order," you say, "who wants what?"

You go round the team, and half an hour later you're ready to check the order. "So it's chicken fajitas for Lydia, falafel wrap for Jeremy, Millie just wants an oat milk matcha latte and Benjamin you're fully immersing yourself in the culture with a couple of sausage rolls from Greggs, is that right?" And the order goes in. Quick, efficient, no-nonsense and authentically civil service.

You open your laptop to get down to business. Oh! Lunch is here! Fabulous, let's set work aside for a moment to check out the new breakout spaces. You enjoy a terrific meal while catching up on all the office gossip. But wait! Look at the time! It's almost 2! You really must dash for the train back.

"Sorry all, would love to stay, but I can't be late picking Arabella up from nursery debating club again"

You get in the nearest taxi and head back to Piccadilly. The traffic's worse than you thought - everyone up here must still be on their lunch break! You're going to have to change workplace attitudes in these parts. You make it onto your train with only 17 minutes to spare and sink into the plushness of your reserved first class seat, safe in the knowledge that you have redistributed power safely and effectively to the regions. You'll sleep well tonight.