Mel 🐼

Crafter • Music addict • Poet • Animal lover • Horror enthusiast • Constant Reader • Mental Health Advocate 🐰🐶🦜📷🧀☕️

[Mykhailo Rohoza @MykhailoRohoza]

At a dinner in the White House, Charles III told Donald Trump: “I’ve noticed your changes to the East Wing. I must say, we Brits also, in our own modest way, tried to renovate the White House back in 1814.”
I didn’t know that myself, but looked it up — in 1814, the British burned the White House.
The king also gave Trump a bell from a decommissioned British submarine named “Trump”: “Ring it if you ever need us.”
And this one:
“You recently remarked, Mr. President, that if it weren’t for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Allow me to say that if it weren’t for us, you would be speaking French.”
But the king didn’t just joke — he also reminded Trump about support for Ukraine and the role of NATO.
Overall, Charles devoted his entire speech to subtly trolling Trump — in a very British way, so refined that it went right over the heads of MAGA supporters. They even applauded him for it!
A British king and an American jester — that says it all.
I love British humor!

[It's a lawyer's life @itsalawyerslife]

In public, Queen Elizabeth II was always ‘The Queen.’

It’s said she believed God had given her a destiny and she was determined to fulfil it to the best of her ability.

So, she never sought to dilute her position.

Whether you agreed with a monarchy or not, no one was in doubt about who she was, what she represented and the weight of history her role carried.

That her identity was woven into the Daily fabric of British life but she personally remained unknowable is quite a feat.
Her standing, around the globe, was, imo, due to this.

Many public figures now don’t seem to understand their role. Movie stars, for example, share every last intimate detail but then want the audience to think they have some mystique.
The old style movie stars knew that’s not how it works. Joan Crawford famously said, if you want the girl next door, go next door.

Politicians try to create a false ‘matey’ interaction with constituents by oversharing what they think makes them ‘relateable’ but then, when they try to assert their authority, it doesn’t quite work.

The Queen met more people than any politician or movie star ever does.
She was friendly, warm, kind, made people and their work feel valued. But she didn’t try to fake a false intimacy. Ultimately, imo, people respect the honesty of that.

As Helen Mirren said of her, ‘with or without a crown she was the epitome of nobility.’

#QueenElizabethll100

[PortHarcourt Sailor @GodsgreatG]

When he died eight days ago, his face was everywhere. Every platform carried his photo. Everyone had something to say. The timelines were heavy with grief. For two days, it felt as though the whole country paused.

But eight days later, the noise has faded. His name is no longer on people’s lips. His image has been swept aside like dust in harmattan wind. Life has continued, as it always does. Only his family still sits with the real weight of it. Only they feel the ache that does not trend and does not expire.

Are we meant to mourn forever? But there is something sobering about how quickly the world moves on when a person dies. It reminds you that applause is brief, attention is fleeting, and the crowd does not stay long.

So laugh while your lungs are strong enough to carry it. Cry when you must. Love deeply and allow yourself to be loved in return. Travel if you can. Eat good food. Sit with friends and merry. Forgive quickly. Carry no hatred in your chest; it is too heavy for such a short journey.

Do that thing you have been postponing. Stop telling yourself “one day.” Help someone. Share what you have. Give, even if it is small.

All we truly have is now. The present hour. Make every second, minute, and hour count. Live your best life.

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

Worth making a mental note of this given Farage has talked about wanting the NHS to move to an insurance-based model…

[Claire 💙 @clairebubblepop]

I’m hearing the we must privatise the NHS argument again. FFS listen!

Said it before and I’m gonna say it again. Private hospitals do NOT have A&E, they use NHS ambulances, in emergencies they use NHS Drs. Why TF do you think using the private sector will save our NHS? Tories admitted it cost more to use agency staff than just give NHS staff a pay rise. You KNOW this will cost more. Who do you call in an emergency? You call the NHS. Just pay them fairly and you’ll retain staff. Using the private sector costs MORE money and they will never be as qualified as our already existing NHS. Omfg.

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

LEAVING THE ECHR

Does almost nothing on migration despite the constant lies

What it can mean though is removal of
- State Pension
- Minimum Wage
- Sick P[ay
- Holiday Pay
- Maternity Pay
- limited working hours

Who benefits - well it damn sure ain't the workers

[Callum Lyon @CallumLyon]

Minimum wage in 2005 was £5.05 and a Freddo was 10p. Meaning that one hour of work got you 50 Freddos.

Fast forward to 2025, minimum wage is £12.21 and a Freddo is 35p. Now one hour of work will only get you 34 of them.

That's a 142% rise in pay but a 250% rise in frog shaped chocolate bars.

If wages had kept up with the price Freddos, the minimum wage would be £17.50 an hour.

The economy’s in shambles and yes I’m measuring it in chocolate frogs. But this post is about more than that. Too many people are working full time and struggling to survive because absolutely everything is increasing faster than wages.

Something needs to change.

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

It's quite early on a Sunday morning, but I woke up thinking about flags. 🤷‍♂️

I was force-fed, yet another Tommy Robinson video last night with a woman challenging some guy in a hard hat and high-viz, who was putting flags on lampposts.

The lady in question asked if the man was a local to the community, to which he replied “I'm local to this country, I'm a law-abiding citizen”.

I'm not sure what it was about the phrase, but it occurred to me that these men that are being paid to travel the country and put up flags, are, most likely, the same men that stared barging into council offices with copies of the Magna Carta, during Covid.

Here's my assertion: this 'movement' that are illegally putting up flags, are the same people that cut down ULEZ cameras, the same people that shouted about 'protect our monuments', the same people who held anti-lockdown protests and the same people who claimed that the police couldn't arrest them for breaching Covid laws because … Magna Carta.

Right?

Now, I wonder, who could be at the centre of all of these, so called, movements?

Do some Googling, Groking or whatever you use nowadays, and the name Tommy Robinson pops up amongst every group I just listed. He's always the loudhailer that amplifies this stuff.

The next question I have is — does Yaxley-Lennon do these things for free? Ha! Of course, he doesn't. So, who pays Tommy Robinson to act as a disruptor to peace in the UK?

Well, that pushes us into some murky territory — what is described as the grey zone by those in intelligence circles. This is from the UK Parliament website.

“Grey zone activities can include:

Disinformation and Propaganda: Spreading false narratives via social media or state-backed outlets to incite domestic unrest, as seen in Russia's amplification of anti-immigration content during the UK's 2024-2025 riots.”

Hmmm … does that sound familiar?

Let's just think about my little, non-exhaustive, list above — every single one has limited objective but to disrupt. There may have been a few of the less … let's say intellectually blessed, amongst those brandishing shoddy print-outs of the Magna Carta, that actually believed it.

But, for the most part, they understood that this was about challenging authority, pushing boundaries and seeing how far they could go. Same with cutting down ULEZ cameras. Same with making our streets look like a silver jubilee celebration from 1977.

Disruption is the name of the game.

Does Tommy Robinson work for Russia? Possibly. There are documented links, for sure. Does he work for Israel? Almost certainly. What is his job?

Yaxley-Lennon is a highly compensated disruptor, and quite likely, paid for by foreign states. He's the Poster Boy of Propaganda. The Desperado of Disinformation.

I know that this isn't new information, but it bears repeating. The man is a toxic mess and spreads hatred at every opportunity. It's no coincidence that the vitriol about the artwork in Canterbury Cathedral was hugely amplified/started by Robinson — disrupt.

He's the nexus of the far-right, receiving instructions from above that he then disseminates to his foot soldiers.

It will be interesting to see if he gets more prison time next week, but I doubt it. Then follows his much vaunted trip to the paymasters in Israel. What happens after that, we can only wait and see, but when UK politicians align themselves with this man, they are putting one foot into a place they need to be very careful of — the grey zone.

Have a lovely Sunday.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

▪️UK electricity standing charges have surged in recent years and are 150% higher than in 2021.

▪️Energy corporations have pocketed over £420 billion in profits during that time.

The cost of living crisis is the cost of corporate greed crisis. We are being fleeced.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

The rich do not pay tax in the UK

People on the average of £36,920 pay 33%.
People working on PAYE earning £250,000 pay 47%.
People with income of £2,000,000 pay only 19%.
Billionaires pay only 11%.

The rich need to be taxed MORE than everyone else, not 1/4 as much.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Leaving the ECHR would allow the State Pension, the Minimum Wage, Sick Pay, Maternity Pay, Paid Holiday and working hour limits to all be abolished.

They would make hundreds of billions from this.

That is what they want.

[𝙋𝙝𝙞𝙡 𝙈𝙮𝙚𝙧𝙨 @PhilMyers53]

Our fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers fought FACISISM

WHY ARE YOU VOTING FOR IT?

Decent people don't vote Reform

[Simon Miln @sequi_simon]

The only people in the country who should have digital IDs are our members of parliament so that we can keep tabs on how they are spending our money.

[Femi @Femi_sorry]

Farage is applying for a job.

That job is Prime Minister.

The only thing on his CV is Brexit.

He campaigned for it for 27 years.

So his only real track record is making everyone poorer & damaging the NHS.

If you hire Nigel & Reform, you must want this company (UK) to fail.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

Brexit wasn’t a pint of British
sovereignty 🍺🇬🇧

It was a Russian cocktail 🍸 mixed with Kremlin influence, US hedge funds, and media moguls.

And public got the hangover as elites pocketed the profits.

Brexit reality: toxic mix brewed to weaken Britain and Europe.

#Brexit #Russia #TheGreatBetrayal

https://t.co/Hck1xVyuLv

[Chris Littlewood @chrislittlewoo8]

Digital ID for every adult is not progress. It is the end of a free society dressed up as convenience.

I am a cyber security specialist. This is my take.

They are selling it as a fix for illegal migration. That is bollocks.

We spend hundreds of billions a year on cyber security and yet the volume of breaches is breaking records. The threat is growing faster than the spend.

Digital ID will not stop boats. It will not stop trafficking gangs. It will not fix a broken border.

Criminals will work around it.

Honest citizens will pay the price.

It builds giant data banks that track where you go, what you buy, what you read and who you speak to.

It links your identity to every checkpoint in daily life.

One breach and your life is exposed.

Look at Jaguar Land Rover and the airports in recent weeks. Now imagine that at national scale on an ID system tied to everything you need to live your daily life.

Here is the risk that ministers will not admit.

Ransomware seeded through a supplier or an insider:

It lies quiet for months.
It rolls through the backups.
On trigger day the register and the recovery sets are both encrypted.

Payments fail. Health and benefits stall. Borders slow. Citizens are frozen out until a ransom is paid or the state rebuilds from scratch.

Centralise identity and you centralise failure.

Do not fall for the pitch.
Function creep is certain.
It starts as login.

It becomes access to money, travel, speech and public services.

It turns rights into permissions controlled by the state and its contractors.

It creates a single point of failure for criminals, insiders and hostile states to target.

It will punish the elderly, the poor and anyone who is not always online.

It will centralise risk and outsource blame.

It will not stop fraud.

It will not stop illegal migration.

It will build the machinery for a social credit system by stealth.

If ministers cared about the border, they would enforce current laws, resource patrols and processing, close loopholes and remove those with no right to stay.

You do not need a national ID to do any of that.

We scrapped ID cards in 2010 for a reason.

Britain does not need a central register to prove age or status.

Yes to privacy first proofs. No to a database state.

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

Just remember this

Farage announced a massive ill thought out unfunded, uncosted migration policy based on dubious data on Monday.

By Wednesday he had the entire internet focused on Paracetamol and migrants eating swans

That's how they work

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

Farage’s plan to scrap indefinite leave could collapse the NHS…

Which would be incredibly good news for someone wanting us to move to an ‘insurance based system’

FYI the average American pays £480 per month for private healthcare

Please wake up folks.

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

First wife Irish
Second wife German
Long term partner French
Worked for Russia today
Idolises Americans
Spent decades loving and working in EU
Works for a Dubai based company
Claims EU pension in two years

Tells you foreigners are bad for you

[Daniel Kebede @DanielKebedeNEU]

I was on the antiracist demonstration against Far Right Tommy Robinson from start to finish – including the police kettle on Whitehall. Some thoughts:

1. There were not millions on the TR demo. He is, and always has been, a pocket-sized Pinocchio.

2. The turnout was higher than the police figure of 100k. It was the size of a big Palestine solidarity demo – around 250–300k.

3. It was, without doubt, the biggest Far Right demonstration in British history.

4. I’ve been saying for weeks it would be. Robinson has been doing the podcast circuit to build it, and of course it’s been backed by the richest man on the planet.

5. Tommy Robinson works for the interests of the super-rich. Musk wants a divided Britain, as do the super-rich broadly, so they can keep getting away with profiting from gross inequality.

6. Musk doesn’t care about free speech – Tesla is the only major American car manufacturer whose workers aren’t represented by a union – but then, fascists don’t like unions.

7. Nor do Robinson and many of his supporters, who sought to target antiracists exercising their free speech at the other end of Whitehall.

8. The violence from Robinson’s street thugs was significant: openly clashing with police, throwing bottles and flares, and more.

9. There should have been far more than nine arrests. Of course, Robinson’s supporters aren’t pensioners with Palestine signs – so the mass of those guilty of violent disorder live to fight another day.

The bottom line is this: we have to turn the tide on the Far Right radicalisation happening in Britain.

And with foreign billionaires backing them, it is not going to be easy.

We will have to do things differently, and be different, to mobilise the antiracist majority in Britain.

But doing nothing is not an option.