marley jay⚡️

[🧞‍♂️ @Justaboyli]

I like using twitter because none of my friends use it

[Waqas🔶️ @m0w4q45]

The whole country seems to have had an opinion on Middlesbrough this week. Most of it from people who have never set foot here.

So let me tell you about the Teesside I actually know.

I’m an adopted Teessider. I live in Stockton. I run a care company and an accessible taxi firm across the Tees Valley, and I was the parliamentary candidate for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. I see this place at six in the morning and at midnight. I see the people behind the headlines.

Some of the people I care for still receive pensions from ICI. That’s how recent our industrial past is. This was a place that made things. A place that powered Britain. At its peak, ICI employed around 25,000 people at Wilton alone. Then the steelworks closed in 2015 and thousands more livelihoods disappeared with it.

And for four decades, government after government failed to answer the most basic question: what comes next?

That is the part the pile-on misses.

Half of Middlesbrough’s neighbourhoods are now among the most deprived 10% in England the highest proportion of any council area in the country. That did not happen because Teessiders suddenly became bad people.

It happened because industries disappeared, communities lost secure work, too few people were retrained, and generations were too often parked on benefits and handed slogans instead of opportunity.

Then we wonder why things went wrong.

Middlesbrough Council has had to go cap in hand to government just to keep basic services running. Redcar and Cleveland has faced the same pressures. Hartlepool is burning through its reserves.

Three councils are being asked to repair the damage of forty years of economic decline with one hand tied behind their backs.

And yes, there is crime. Cleveland has one of the highest recorded crime rates in England and Wales. I won’t pretend otherwise. I believe criminals should be caught, punished and, where necessary, locked up. I will always back the police in doing that job.

But a town of 140,000 people is not defined by the minority who wreck things.

It is defined by the care worker finishing a double shift.

By the apprentice learning a trade on land where the steelworks once stood.

By the small business owner opening the shutters every morning and refusing to give up.

By families on estates who might not have much, but would still give you their last quid if you needed it.

That is the Middlesbrough I know.

Slagging Boro off is easy. Turning poverty into a punchline is easy. What is harder is asking why successive governments allowed one of Britain’s great industrial areas to decline and then blamed the people left behind for the consequences.

So here is my challenge to everyone in Westminster who has discovered an opinion on Middlesbrough this week:

Come here.

Bring serious investment. Bring skilled jobs. Bring industry back to the Tees Valley. Give our councils the resources to rebuild communities rather than simply manage decline.

Then come back in ten years and tell me what you think of Middlesbrough.

Because this place does not need your pity.

It needs a fair chance.

[𝐵𝑎𝑏𝑦 𝐾 ❤︎ ⋆ ݁ ⸌̑⸍͂ @misskerrington]

i’m really easy to rage bait bc wtf are you talking about and why are you saying it to me

[D̸a̸v̸e̸ @seadave1a]

How the FUCK did a generation raised on South Park and Family Guy become so offended by everything?

[nikk ˚⊹ ݁ @runtohorizon]

being anti ai right now feels like being one of the few unbitten humans in a zombie apocalypse

[Roshay C. @roshaycherice]

This the last year i’ll ever sleep on myself, lowball myself, play with my potential & forget who I really am & what I’mcapable of. I’m coming for everything that’s due to me, owed to me and what I deserve. I ain’t letting up at all!

[¥ @laylanaiim]

I just want my whole nervous system to finally rest in 2026. I want my heart to stop racing every day, I want to get out of that constant fight-or-flight mode, and I just want real peace. I’m begging for a year where my spirit can breathe, my mind can slow down, and my life finally makes sense along with the people that’s in it.

[COCO @TWOTIMESABITCH]

i can’t name a single problem in my life right now money wouldn’t fix

[Ja Leto @_falsi1ke]

The tongue is so powerful, speak good into your life at all times.

[trish @ultragloss]

unfortunately wearing sunglasses immediately takes away both my vision and my hearing. as well as my depth perception and spatial awareness

[The Notorious J.O.V. @whotfisjovana]

Realest to ever do it

[kira 👾 @kirawontmiss]

︎ ︎

[bozo @itsjustbozo]

Labubus look like this