Nic

Teacher. Sex realist. I like a proper roast dinner.

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

'The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him'

Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@LloydPenblwydd @sharrond62 Jeez, we know, they know. You won’t stop banging on about it, like we ‘deserve’ all the third rate crap we have to deal with today because of some guilt about the past. The constant moaning about how terrible Britain is doesn’t help unify the public to look to a better future

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

This past week, on a test bed in Britain, a Rolls-Royce jet engine ran at full take-off power on pure hydrogen, putting out water vapour instead of carbon.

Nobody on Earth had managed it before. It is the sort of thing that ought to stop the country in its tracks, and it will be forgotten by the weekend.

Leave aside the recent paroxysms of renewed net-zero insanity from Derelict Ed and the pervasive atmosphere of offended envy that greets much homegrown achievement nowadays in Britain. This engineering is a wonder, and it's British to the bone.

We gave the world the jet engine in the first place - Frank Whittle, a Coventry man and an RAF officer, patented it in 1930 while the Air Ministry assured him it was a curiosity. Rolls-Royce is today one of perhaps three firms anywhere that can build a large aero engine at the outer edge of the possible, and it has just done what most of the industry swore was twenty years away.

As usual, you marvel at how little the people who govern us had to do with it. The engineers in Derby are world-class; the stewardship above them is third-rate. They pulled off a global first while paying the most expensive industrial electricity in the developed world to keep the power on over the bench - a weight no German, American or Gulf rival has to carry. We produce frontier brilliance on the shop floor and fritter it away at the despatch box, and we have done for two generations.

That is the maddening shape of modern Britain: brilliance from below, sub- (or, indeed, ultra-) mediocrity from above. The people here who actually make things are still among the best in the world; the state that is meant to back them treats a firm like Rolls-Royce as a photocall today and a takeover target tomorrow, and prices its energy as though it would prefer the next plant were built in Texas.

Progress starts from the other end. Give these people what every rival government gives its champions and we beg ours to do without: the cheap, abundant power their competitors already enjoy, a supply chain built around them, and a state that guards a national asset rather than auctioning it. The hard part of a British revival - the talent, the nerve, the engineering - is already done, and was done again this week, by people who deserve a far better country than the one currently sitting above them.

We just taught an engine to breathe fire and exhale water. The least we owe the men and women who managed it is a government and a state as brilliant as they are.

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@Heccles94 Take a gay for a cuppa. Take a Muslim for a pint. Take a diabetic for a cake…

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@annalesueur @Number10cat @JuliaHB1 I’m all for the donkeys rights 😂

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@SPG_UKDK @msjlindsay South Derbyshire. She threatens to block people who disagree with her when she puts out statements on social media that instruct them how to behave. So she won’t be listening to voices that disagree. She will, however, be getting in the spotlight as a pick me woman

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@FondOfBeetles @CarolH_K @SamaHoole @drivebylawyer5 Sorry Emma, you are the best biologist but your pudding knowledge is rather lacking

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@Pipe_Her0 @JonnyRoot_ You are being sarcastic? Yes? Bc the children of those vikings live among us…

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@roseveniceallan Samantha spent too much time listening to her teenage daughter over the years. She is of the opinion that 'trans' is a fun way for teenagers to express themselves.

[💙Fiona Macdonald @Fiona44444]

I have good news. I'm delighted to share that Judge Campbell refused PCS Union's strike out application rejecting their argument that my indirect discrimination case had no reasonable chance of success. You can read my update here: https://t.co/6tWcRAFZK5

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@helpmevroshed @ModeratelyMused @C_m__9 Significantly different from the females… with a sample size of 24

[Behind the Narrative @crimsonit]

You feel this woman's pain?
You did this. Keir Starmer. Owen Jones.
Polanski. Sadiq Khan, Yvette Cooper,
Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway.
You sold out your own people,
British Christians and British Jews alike -
For Qatari money and Pakistani rape gangs.
You are cowards who chose foreign money over your own Daughters and citizens. Shame on you 🇬🇧
England — this is your moment.
The streets are waiting

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A bricklayer in East Yorkshire has spent 35 years putting up barn owl nest boxes on weekends. This year, the region saw 308 owlets hatch.

His name is Robert Salter. He's 56 and does bricklaying full time. In 1990, he saw a piece on the news about a man in Lincolnshire installing barn owl boxes, and decided he'd do the same. He started with five.

He now has more than 350 boxes scattered across fields, farms, outbuildings, and trees in East Yorkshire. Every June, he takes four weeks off from bricklaying and visits them with his wife Sue. Scrambling up ladders, ringing chicks, cleaning boxes, repairing the ones the weather got to. He's a licensed bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology.

In 2024, the region ringed 95 owlets. In 2025, the count was 308. The Barn Owl Trust says that nationally, this year was "pretty poor" for barn owl breeding, but east Yorkshire is the exception, and it's the exception because of one man with a ladder.

The barn owl population in the UK was estimated at 4,000 pairs in the mid-2000s and crashed to roughly 1,000 by the early 2010s. The species is still recovering.

Most of conservation is one person who refuses to give up.

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@D3andZinc @STILLTish Well yes, there is always that. We deal with knives, physical assaults, vandalism - they would be cause to call home

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@STILLTish Can’t disagree with him. Some parents actively deny their child’s involvement in any rule breaking. Even when adults witness it. It’s so frustrating bc that child knows they can get away with anything. Then members of the public get cross with kids running wild on their streets😳

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@SoVeryBritish In the case of my mum (god rest her soul) some homegrown fruit from 1994.

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@CorgiBeliefs @Gaynotqueer1 I spent some time in Australia with family, I learned all the bad habits 😂

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@Gaynotqueer1 @CorgiBeliefs I used to smoke Winnie blues so I’m assuming it’s the ‘strong’ version of the cigarettes. Maybe the equivalent of a Marlboro red for reference!

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@JenniferGa29345 @SoVeryBritish I think I’d be inclined to throw my headphones on and crack open the gin…

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@JenniferGa29345 @SoVeryBritish I sat in my quiet garden and relaxed with a glass of ale. Thank you. I will be getting out the hammock today as a treat ☺️

[Nic @nicgilbert09]

@JenniferGa29345 @SoVeryBritish Hope it wasn’t too terrible for you yesterday with your neighbours. Sounds like you’re quite cross about everything right now.