LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸

Never thought I'd use Twitter but grateful for the community I've found here. Pro-logic, pro-science, pro-kindness, pro-common sense.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Badenoch names the real threat to British sovereignty, and it isn't Brussels

The International Court of Justice has issued an advisory ruling on member states' climate obligations, the kind of decision that sounds technical until you notice what it implies: that the Netherlands-based court could, in principle, put Britain on the hook for billions in reparations to developing countries over historic carbon emissions, and constrain domestic decisions like North Sea drilling in the process. Kemi Badenoch's response to that ruling will be dismissed by critics as manufactured outrage over a non-binding opinion. That dismissal misses the point entirely. The ICJ ruling was advisory. So was the ruling on the Chagos Islands. Advisory is not the same as inconsequential. It will cost Britain £35 billion and sovereign territory. Anyone still treating "advisory" as a reassurance hasn't been paying attention.

This is the argument Badenoch is actually making, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than mocked as climate denial. International courts have discovered a method: issue a non-binding opinion, wait for it to be treated as settled law by lawyers, campaigners and eventually governments too exhausted or too compliant to resist, then watch it harden into precedent nobody voted for. Nobody in Switzerland voted to have their climate targets set by judges in Strasbourg. But in 2024 that is exactly what happened, when the European Court of Human Rights used the right to private and family life to strike down Swiss climate policy as inadequate. A democratic government's economic priorities, overridden by a court applying a treaty article never designed for that purpose.

That is the trajectory Badenoch is pointing to, and it is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition. First a right gets stretched to cover territory it was never meant to reach. Then a court treats that stretch as established. Then elected governments find themselves negotiating not over policy, but over how to comply with a ruling they never agreed to be bound by. Britain has already lived through one version of this with the Chagos settlement. The ICJ's climate opinion is the same mechanism, aimed at a much larger target: national energy policy, drilling licences, and the ability of a government to choose how it powers its own country.

Where the argument gets weaker is the point about Britain being the only permanent Security Council member still accepting the ICJ's compulsory jurisdiction. Framed as "others ignore it, so should we", that's an easy target, and critics will take it. Framed correctly, it's a point about reciprocity rather than lawlessness. A commitment that binds only one side is not really law. It is a unilateral constraint dressed up as a legal obligation, and there is nothing especially principled about being the last country left holding it.

The rule of law argument Badenoch makes is the one worth dwelling on, because it inverts the usual accusation. She is not attacking the rule of law. She is defending it, against a form of judicial activism that invents obligations democratic governments never signed up to. There is a real difference between a court interpreting law and a court expanding its own jurisdiction by increments, daring elected governments to object. Britain's problem is not too little respect for international courts. It is too little willingness to say, clearly, that an advisory opinion is advice, not instruction.

Reviewing the compulsory jurisdiction question, as Badenoch has now asked her Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson KC to do, is not radical. It is overdue. A country that keeps discovering, ruling by ruling, that decisions it never agreed to are being enforced against it anyway is a country that has stopped governing itself and started merely hoping the next advisory opinion doesn't cost it another few billion pounds.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Dear Adam,

I have taken time to think about your apology. Mostly because, having made a mistake publicly before, I was keen to accept yours. It hurts when people don’t understand that you are sorry for messing up. I get that, probably more than most.

But here’s the thing… I’m not sure you understand what you did wrong. And so you don’t really understand what you are apologising for or why. With that in mind, I want to help you.

I didn’t know Ann, except as a powerhouse in politics and that so many people have spoken of her friendship and great loyalty. How lovely, I wish I had known her.

I am utterly disinterested in her sexual prowess or the state of her virginity. But I would have enjoyed hearing you speak of her great accomplishments. Not as a woman, but simply as a human being.

Here’s a list.

She served in the House of Commons for 23 years and won five general elections.

She served as a government minister in Social Security, Employment and the Home Office, where she was Minister of State for Prisons.

She rose to become Shadow Health Secretary and then Shadow Home Secretary.

She was appointed to the Privy Council.

After leaving Westminster, she built an entirely new career as an author, broadcaster, documentary-maker, stage performer and television personality.

Then, at the age of 71, she returned to elected politics and became a Member of the European Parliament.

She was a longstanding advocate for Britain leaving the European Union and, when the political establishment failed to deliver the referendum result, she left the Conservative Party after more than 50 years and stood for the Brexit Party.

She was elected as an MEP and took the argument for British independence directly into the European Parliament.

She was also an unapologetic defender of free speech. She continued to speak openly on difficult and unfashionable subjects when others chose silence, it was easier to do that, she accepted the criticism and hostility that came with it rather than surrendering her convictions.

Her Catholic faith was central to her life. She converted to Catholicism, met Pope John Paul II in Rome and was later made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI for her service to politics and public life.

She remained a powerful public voice well into her late seventies, defending her beliefs despite decades of ridicule and hostility.

That is an extraordinary life of public service, courage and reinvention.

Yet, when asked to speak about her after her sudden and violent death, you chose to tell the country that she was a “spinster”, an “old maid” and a virgin. You discussed a failed relationship and suggested that afterwards she simply dedicated herself to other activities.

Do you understand the reduction involved in that?

You took the life of a highly accomplished woman and assessed it according to whether she had married, whether she had sex and whether a man had wanted her.

That is what was wrong. That is what you should have known.

It wasn’t simply that your words were poorly chosen or badly timed. It was the instinct to view a woman’s entire life through her relationship with men, even when her achievements should have rendered that completely irrelevant.

Nobody discussing the death of an accomplished male politician would think it necessary to tell viewers whether he was a virgin, speculate about his sex life or describe him as an ageing bachelor whose romance had failed.

I don’t want you cancelled. I don’t believe that people should be denied forgiveness when they make mistakes.

But a meaningful apology has to identify the actual wrong.

Ann was murdered after a lifetime of public service. At the moment her achievements should have been remembered, you diminished her to an unmarried woman who apparently hadn’t had sex.

She deserved better than that. And I’m still not sure you get it. But every woman who watched you speak of her and then read your apology does.

Bernie.

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

The UK last built a public water reservoir in 1992.

The population has increased by over 10 million in the intervening years. Including a surge of immigration.

Now, the state has the cheek to announce a hosepipe ban. Why is that necessary?

Because no infrastructure has been built to cope with the expanding population.

It rained for the whole of January but not enough reservoirs to catch the water.

Our governments have been absolutely and unrelentingly crap. Short-termist.

Only interested in importing cheap labour. Not a care for the people who live here and want things to work as they do in a civilized country.

The next reservoir, in Havant, is not scheduled for completion till the early 2030s.

Prepare for more hosepipe bans and collapsing sewers.

Britain urgently needs an effective ruling class before we slide into a failed state.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@KemiBadenoch Competence should certainly be the baseline for any politician, but what I would love is something more. Aspire to boring - no scandals, no soundbites. My ideal government would quietly get on with doing a good job so I don't have to think about them so much, just run my business

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

322 Labour members of Parliament have nominated Andy Burnham for leader.

He will become PM unchallenged. This is still unacceptable right @DavidLammy?

We need a General Election NOW.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@SakSaee51723 There has been a c.20% increase in the number of homes in the region served by Anglian Water since 2012 (last ban) but no new reservoirs since the 1970s. I don't think the weather is the problem.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@RomeoXrayBravo @AnglianWater There has been a c.20% increase in the number of homes in the region served by Anglian Water since 2012 (last ban) but no new reservoirs since the 1970s. I don't think the weather is the problem.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@LeonieGreene @AnglianWater @ColchesterLab @MarchforWater There has been a c.20% increase in the number of homes in the region served by Anglian Water since 2012 (last ban) but no new reservoirs since the 1970s. I don't think the weather is the problem.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@Hudsonweather There has been a c.20% increase in the number of homes in the region served by Anglian Water since 2012 (last ban) but no new reservoirs since the 1970s. I don't think the weather is the problem.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Wool is a technology so good that if a startup unveiled it tomorrow, it would raise a fortune.

Run through the spec sheet with a straight face.

It keeps you warm even when it's soaking wet, which almost nothing else does. It is naturally flame-resistant. It doesn't catch and melt onto your skin like plastic does. It chars, refuses to sustain the flame, and puts itself out when you take the fire away. It manages moisture, breathes, and resists smell so well you can wear it for days. It bends tens of thousands of times without snapping.

And when you're finally done with it, you can put it in the ground and in a matter of months it's gone, rotted back into the soil, feeding it nitrogen on the way out.

Then there's the supply chain, which is the part no engineer could ever replicate. It grows back. Every year, on its own, on nothing but grass and rain, on a sheep that was going to stand on that hillside anyway. A self-renewing, fireproof, compostable insulation fibre with a production input of weather.

We replaced it with polyester. Oil, spun into thread, that melts on you in a fire, sheds plastic into the sea with every wash, and sits in landfill for centuries when you're done.

We had the better version the whole time. It says baa.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Running an ice cream cone under steaming hot water and it resists melting, eventually it washes away

Many ice creams in America will no longer melt because the ingredients have been changed, they are actually engineered to not melt. Modern ice creams have:

- Higher Levels of Stabilizers and Gums
- High percentages of Vegetable Oils and Fats instead of Dairy Fat
- More Air than standard ice cream, sometimes over 100%
- More sweeteners, maltodextrins and other solids adjust the freezing point

Many ice creams can’t even legally be called ice cream anymore in America

Our food is a science experiment

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Investigation, please

[Concerned Citizen @BGatesIsaPyscho]

🚨🇬🇧 UK Debt just surpassed £3 Trillion & nobody’s talking about it.

UK GDP Per Capita is now lower than the poorest state in America - Mississippi.

Most people have no idea what this means.

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Solar panels are overheating amid soaring temperatures, leading to gas power stations across the UK being ordered to fire up production to make up the shortfall. https://t.co/y0RfOxtgZH

[Emma Kenny @emmakennytv]

@ZackPolanski UK has its hottest June day on record, with temperatures reportedly hitting 35.7°C.
The previous June record was 35.6°C, set in 1957 and matched in the legendary summer of 1976…..so literally 69 years ago and 50 years ago it was this hot!

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@JamesMelville @AndyBurnhamGM Dream on! It sounds wonderful, but it won't happen under Burnham any more than Starmer.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@JamesMelville As bad as he has been - and he and his government have been abysmal - I fear his replacement will be worse.

[LouisianaSwampPeach 🌸 @peach_swamp]

@KemiBadenoch I'm so fed up with politicians treating governing our country like some kind of game. UK citizens deserve better.

[dejanira @dejanirasilveir]

🚨🚨LA ÉLITE GL0BALISTA NO TE DIRÁ ESTO, pero la ciencia es clara.

Un estudio de la Universidad de Nebraska DEMOSTRÓ que las vacas influyen positivamente en el ambiente, debido a que las pasturas utilizadas para alimentarlas absorben más carbono del que emite el ganado, DESMINTIENDO la narrativa contra la industria ganadera.

Las vacas producen más oxígeno que el metano y carbono que emiten.

La MACABRA IDEA de eliminar las vacas es una de las mentiras del Psicópata Gates. Ese hombre necesita ser arrestado. ES UN PELIGRO GRAVE PARA LA HUMANIDAD.🔥

[Kevin Edger @KEdge23]

There’s always a tweet.

Labour have done nothing that they promised. They lied their way into power and have betrayed the nation.

An incompetent and rotten government.

We need to start demanding a General Election at the end of this Labour leadership saga.