Tom O'Brien

No DMs. Politics from a conservative and Christian perspective. Pro-sovereign UK and Brexit #TCOT English Blogs below. Eco realist.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room.

She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill.

Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final.

Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat.

Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped.

She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won.

By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million.
One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

[Peter Clack @PeterDClack]

A staggering 7 to 8 billion solar panels have been deployed globally—but up to 90% of them are currently on a direct trajectory toward disposal.

While modern solar panels are technically made of roughly 95% recyclable materials (glass, aluminum, copper, and silicon), recycling currently runs at a steep economic loss.

* The cost: Processing runs $500–$1,000 per tonne ($10 to $40 per panel).
* The yield: The value of recovered materials doesn't even cover the transport fees.

Compared with minimal landfill fees, economics dictate that burial is the default option. But the world is rapidly running out of room, and governments are beginning to panic.

We are already seeing a preview of this crisis in the wind sector, where an expected 43 million tonnes of turbine blade waste by 2050 has led several European nations—including Austria, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands—to actively ban decommissioned blades from landfills.

Solar is hitting the same wall. Panels built over two decades ago are reaching the end of their 20-to-24-year lifespans, while many more become economically obsolete and are replaced long before that.

This has created a massive regulatory catch-22: To prevent heavy metals like lead and cadmium from potentially leaching into groundwater, jurisdictions like Victoria, Australia, have implemented strict bans on putting solar panels into landfills, classifying them as hazardous e-waste.

Yet, with recycling remaining economically non-viable, we are creating an impossible bottleneck. While industry bodies like the IEA maintain that leaching risks from broken panels are negligible and within safety limits, the sheer volume of impending waste tells a different story.

If it costs too much to recycle, and it is illegal to landfill, where do several billions of panels go?

The 'clean energy' solution is rapidly staring down the barrel of a multi-generational hazardous waste problem.

Image: Last year, the world built more new solar capacity than every other power source combined - Shutterstock.

[Matthew Marsden @matthewdmarsden]

I want to give a message to the people of Great Britain.

For hundreds of years, the island that I was born and raised on has punched above its weight.

It has produced some of the most exceptional human beings ever to walk the earth.

From Thomas Moore to Winston Churchill. William Shakespeare to Isaac Newton. Chesterton and Lewis to name but a few.

I could also wax lyrical about the great contributions its citizens have made to the world, but I do not have enough time or the words to do it justice.

Great Britain is great because of its people, and right now it is in such a dreadful state that I felt compelled to write this post.

To remind the people of that wonderful nation that they can turn this dysfunctional situation around.

That great things are expected of great people.

They do not have to apologize for being who they are or what their heritage is.

And their culture is something worth fighting for.

Time to lead the way again, GREAT Britain.

[alex kershaw @kershaw_alex]

D-Day is underway. Some would argue that what's happening right now is the most daring and ultimately successful operation in the history of military Alliances.
Note: the majority of troops are friends of the US from eight countries. Eisenhower has been told that three-quarters of the 23,400 airborne troops will be lost. He's hoping that the prediction will be wrong.

[Tom O'Brien @obritom]

@KathrynPorter26 Stay strong. With this Government, indeed the whole polity and most media, your analysis is vital.

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

Hated Starmer using the Novak family by inviting them to No.10 in full glare of the nation’s media rather than holding a secret meeting at a small hotel in say Hampshire where a photo could be taken.
Quite understand it’s the PM’s job to show the nation’s compassion towards the parents of poor Henry.
But to see them wandering alone out of Downing Street and into bustling Whitehall while still gripped by grief with their minds spinning was wrong.

[John Connell @JohnCon72636524]

Every year here on the Ayrshire coast there’s a 50KM ultramarathon from sunset to sunrise. Just passed a guy when walking my dog. He’s on the phone and says “Aye 50KM, and I’m fuckin last” I told him he’d done well but inside I was buckled 😂😂😂

[🤔Muser🧐 @muserL12]

The over reach of these idiots because they wear a uniform!

[Alex Phillips @ThatAlexWoman]

A serious country does not swap its greatest leader on its banknotes for little animals

Imagine India ditching Gandhi for a monkey. Or the USA dropping Washington for a racoon

This is the rot that is eating away at our confidence, identity and cohesion:

Bank dropped Churchill after being told he was ‘elitist’

https://t.co/SuovuH1DEU

[Steve's Law 🇬🇧 @MaximusChud]

Matt Styler, the 50 year old man beaten by the cops, is being charged with assault.

His crime? Sitting on a wall. The officer pulled him off the wall and tried to throw him to the ground but failed, so a dozen of them dogpiled him and beat him bloody.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The phrase "the enemy within" was used by Margaret Thatcher to describe the miners' strike in 1984 and by others since to describe various threats to British institutions. But those were identifiable, external and ultimately resistable. What has happened over the last fifty years is different in kind not just in scale.

What is different now is the depth of the capture. Previous threats to British institutions came from without and were identified and resisted. What has happened over the last fifty years is a capture from within, conducted incrementally, institutionally and in plain sight, by people who understood that controlling the language, the training, the hiring and the oversight was more durable than any external assault could ever be.

The greatest threat is always the one the institution cannot name. And the labelling apparatus exists precisely to ensure it cannot be named without consequence. That is what makes it so effective. And that is what makes naming it so necessary.

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

Read this extract from Douglas Murray’s Spectator column; “ And we also know that “racism” has , for 30 years, been an entirely one way street.
“ Only someone who is a minority can be the victim of racism and only someone who has the misfortune to be from the majority racial group can be the perpetrator.
“ Even if the accused is bleeding out in front of you.
“ I get the sense the weather is about to change on all of this. About time.”
I do hope do. Although I’d still hate to be white and work in a large NHS hospital.

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Sad to hear Anthony Head has passed away.
The Gold Blend “will they, won’t they” ad campaign was a cultural phenomenon, an ongoing saga that lasted for 6 years, captivating audiences of 30 million. The inevitable kiss even made front page news. A landmark TV moment.
RIP Anthony

[David Marshall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @Sausageandeggx]

They broke his bones, gouged his eyes out, cut out his tongue and castrated him. He died of a heart attack after being set on fire and dragged himself 50 meters across the floor.

[Dave Scarangella @DaveScarangella]

Tonight, as I do every year at this time, I’ll be raising a glass to a scared young man, who 82 years ago was preparing to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy as part of an event code-named Operation Overlord.

D-Day.

I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I’d be scared to death and I’m sure he was too. But in that first wave was a 21-year-old Private First Class from Henry County, VA by the name of Allen Homer Sink.

Fortunately, he would survive that initial wave, participate in battle until it ended in August, then come home to marry and raise a family of four, including two daughters after the war ended.

He would also become my father-in-law until his death in 2006.

His nickname for some reason was “Hank” and when I asked him how he got it, he said some guy in the Army said he “looked like a Hank.” From the time I first met him, he was a salt-of-the-earth man who was never afraid of anything. He was a carpenter by trade, and he’d stand up on the tallest roofs, grab bumblebees with his bare hands when they tried to persuade him to move elsewhere, and never be bothered by anything.

His hands were tough and leathery, but he was a softie. He spoiled his children, complained when my mother-in-law would gripe about something involving one of his alleged misdeeds, and always thought he was fooling everybody when he snuck around the back of the house and lit a cigarette, a habit everyone opposed but he could never part himself from.

He could talk your ear off for hours at a time, and I always suggested he become a greeter at Wal-Mart when he retired because then he could talk all day to strangers and none of them would – like his wife and daughters often did – tell him to be quiet for a few moments. Yet for all his love of talking, there was one subject he just wouldn’t discuss.

June 6, 1944. Omaha Beach.

In 1998, when he was 76 years old, the subject came up again. The movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out and the beginning was gruesome. Reviews said it was incredibly realistic to what really happened that day. I asked Hank if he wanted to go see it.

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see any of that again.”

He did offer that he remembered the night before when troops were loaded into the boats for the amphibious assault. He said it was raining and that once everyone was in place, they gave everybody ice cream and told them to try to get some sleep. Then the next thing he knew, they were waking everybody up telling them to stay low and head for the beach.

No, that doesn’t sound like somebody drugged the ice cream. Not at all.

That’s all he would say about the subject, and he never said another word about it until the final months of his life. Alzheimer’s would gradually rob him of his mind, and as his condition deteriorated, memories of the past would briefly spill out. One evening he thought I was his commanding officer and he was back at Normandy. It is the only time I ever saw him where he appeared to be scared. Ever.

It reminds me every day of something I had unknowingly taken for granted. The greatest generation did fight in and win World War II, then did incredible things over the next 50 to 60 years after the war. But many carried unspeakable memories from the War, ones they would never talk about and carry inside them to their graves. Those veterans lost a piece of themselves in battle they would never, ever, get back.

I mean, how can you at the tender age of 21 storm a beach, see friends die only a few feet from you, wonder each night if you will wake up alive the next morning and then return home a year later and try to pick up on the same normal life you had before you left? I told him once that after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, I understood why he was never afraid of anything; after you’ve made it through something like that, everything else pales in comparison.

So tonight, I raise a glass to Hank and the 150,000-plus men, who like my father-in-law, were very young, very scared, and still charged that beach, paying a price that even for the survivors would last the rest of their days.

Rest In Peace...

[Kathryn Porter @KathrynPorter26]

A thoughtful take by Tony Sewell. Most people just want fairness. The job of the police is to catch criminals and prevent crime not to address historic social harms

One of the things I think that's getting lost in the current "two tier" discussions is the growing perception that the police are more interested in culture than crime...

So five armed officers go to arrest a comedian getting off a plane (one of the few places you can be confident your "suspect" won't be armed)

Heavy handed responses to what people write on X rather than dealing with violent shoplifting

People getting shorter sentences for the worst crimes against children than for "hate" speech

Allowing pro Palestinian marches to go through Jewish communities but restricting Reform marches

Then we have politicians agitating about the "far right" when for the most part it's people saying r@pe gangs should be properly investigated and illegal immigrants shouldn't get a better standard of living with luxury hotels and same day dental care than British citizens do

Until @UKLabour recognises the real anger is because people increasingly feel the criminal justice system and so many aspects of the way the state interacts with them has become essentially unfair the anger will grow

It doesn't need stoking. People aren't angry because @Nigel_Farage told them to be. They are angry because the state isn't working and when they complain, the government essentially calls them Nazis

https://t.co/UygNEtjVSp

[Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306]

Davey supported all the mad bullshit over BLM, convicted criminal George Floyd, ‘structural racism’ and all the maddest bullshit from the maddest parts of California’s communist loony bin.
He supported all the changes to police and every other institution which have made us an international joke.
He supported the Boriswave and the importing of thousands of sex criminals.
He supported the continued coverup of the grooming Gangs which is why he wants to ban X and impose censorship.
Davey Starmer etc need censorship so they can continue importing millions from Africa and the worst parts of South Asia.
Until we retire them they will continue wrecking the country

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.

Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger. One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse.

It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody—nobody—should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.

[Tom O'Brien @obritom]

@the_iceman64 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Very well said!