Polly Fox

facts please

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Nobody has ever laid a glove on a single number in Clarkson's Farm. So they go after Clarkson instead.

The shape is always the same.

- He is rich, therefore the £144 does not count.
- He bought it for a tax break, therefore the tax break does not matter.
- He is not a real farmer, therefore the crop did not drown.
- Amazon pays for it, therefore the losses are staged.
- He wrote a column about Meghan Markle, therefore the TB never happened.
- He drives a Range Rover, therefore the fertiliser tax is not coming in January.
- He has a film crew, therefore the council did not refuse the car park.
- He presented Top Gear, therefore an imported sausage does not cost 18p.
- He sells candles, therefore a third of British farms did not lose money in 2024.

Every one of those is an argument about a man. Not one is an argument about a figure.

And it keeps happening because the figures are unarguable. They come from planning files, Defra statistics, a government-commissioned review and the farm's own accounts read out loud on camera. There is nothing there to dispute, so the only move left is to dislike the messenger loudly enough that nobody checks the message.

It has not worked, and here is how we know.

Waitrose sold 193 percent more British thick-cut sirloin after series four. Acceptances onto agricultural degrees rose 8 percent in 2024 and are up around a fifth since 2019. Farm shops have queues down country lanes. Thirteen thousand people stood in Westminster over a tax on farmland, and the government eventually handed back £130 million a year.

An Environment Secretary told the Commons he was changing planning law over the frustrations of a certain very famous farmer in Oxfordshire, and in May 2024 he did it.

None of that happened because the public decided they liked Jeremy Clarkson. Most of them made their minds up on him twenty years ago, one way or the other.

It happened because they finally understood what a farm earns, and they did not need to admire the man holding the accounts to read them.

They are still debating whether the witness is credible.

The country stopped listening to the cross-examination and went and bought the beef.

[Polly Fox @pollykfox]

@thamesclippers The vessel with the broken machine has apparently not had a working machine for the past month so do hope it can be fixed before another month elapses

[Polly Fox @pollykfox]

@thamesclippers quite incredibly the coffee machine is again out of order on the east bound service 630am from Putney. When will it be fixed please?

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Jeremy Clarkson has been refused permission to sell food he grew himself, twice. In the same window, central government overruled a Lincolnshire council to put solar panels across 1,214 hectares of grazing land, an area the size of Heathrow.

Run the two columns side by side, because the pattern is the whole story.

He asked to open a restaurant in his own lambing shed. Refused.

He asked for a car park for the people already blocking the lane. Refused.

He asked to sell food produced more than sixteen miles away. Capped at sixteen.

He asked for a barn to store his own harvest, so he would not have to sell at whatever price August offered. Full application required.

He asked about the restaurant again. Enforcement notice, and six weeks judged ample to put the building back as it was.

Now the other column.

Had he covered those same fields in solar panels, the council could have refused and been overruled from Whitehall, as Lincolnshire was in October 2025.

Had he grown maize to feed an anaerobic digester, nobody would have written to anybody.

Had he taken £532 a hectare from Defra to grow a legume fallow, he would have been paid to leave a crop standing that may not be harvested, grazed or sold. Defra cut that rate this year and gave the reason in writing: it had become attractive enough to take land out of food production.

Had he sold the lot to a data centre, a battery park or a Chinese pig unit, all four of which he listed in his column last week, the paperwork would have moved considerably faster than a farm shop's.

There is your planning system. Every use of English farmland is easier to permit than farming.

Two hundred of his acres grew nothing at all this year, and the queue of people who want that ground for something other than food is already forming.

He is not being stopped from developing the countryside. He is being stopped from feeding it.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Today, many were shocked by yet another video of the drone “safari” Russians are carrying out against civilians in Kherson. A Russian drone deliberately hunted down a man selling vegetables and detonated right next to him. The Russians even admitted to the crime, showing zero regret and openly boasting about tormenting people. The man was wounded in the blast. Every single day, ordinary people in Kherson face these Russian "safaris."

The world must see this. It must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad and that its soldiers take pleasure in killing and abusing civilians. Without pressure on Russia, the dismantling of its capacity for aggression, and real security guarantees, it is simply impossible to imagine the world being able to coexist with this evil. We must remain resolute in defending life. We must act and support life in ways that force Russia to seriously think about peace rather than expanding the range of its drones.

This is not just about Ukraine. Russia’s campaign against human life must be stopped here in Ukraine before it spreads further. Finland and Kazakhstan, the Baltic states and Poland, the countries of the South Caucasus, Romania, and Moldova—all should work together to ensure real security guarantees and bring Russia’s war to an end. Peace is needed, which requires cooperation among everyone in the world who truly values peace. Thank you to everyone standing with Ukraine!

[Laura Trott MP @LauraTrottMP]

I disagree with almost everything in Lucy Powell’s oped today in the Times. Here is a brief rundown of some of the problems with it:

1/ Lucy blames rising numbers of NEETs on Conservative education reforms (Gove’s legacy apparently 🙄), then a few sentences later acknowledges those same reforms improved state schools and raised standards.

This makes no sense.

2/ The rise in the number of children who are NEET is ascribed in this article purely to education. This is clearly nonsense. The rise has coincided with massive hikes in the costs of employing young people/failure to reform incentives to go onto benefits. The recent rises in youth unemployment are NOT a problem caused by education.

3/ She says the education system is failing the most disadvantaged, but these children were the ones damaged by the previous round of vocational GCSEs, see @daisychristo ‘s brilliant substack

4/ The Education Secretary says the system has been too “single minded”, but the European countries most admired for vocational education do not give up on the academic side. Pupils continue studying subjects including science, history and foreign languages until 18.

5/ The Education Secretary has also shown her hand on assessment, she says it is a bad thing that “pen and paper exams prevail”. But pen & paper are vital for learning. Underestimating the importance of testing knowledge is wrongheaded. It matters.

This is education vandalism dressed up as progressive reform and Labour need to start pointing to evidence to make the argument.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Everyone can see the ballistic missile threat posed by Russia – and this threat is growing. At the same time, Russian enterprises that manufacture ballistic missiles are still not subject to strict global sanctions.

Some key Russian enterprises involved in ballistic missile production are not under sanctions imposed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, and other jurisdictions. Of the seventeen key Russian enterprises involved in producing ballistic missiles, most, unfortunately, can exploit sanctions loops in the jurisdictions of various partners. We need greater coordination, daily engagement with partners on sanctions, and greater synchronization of sanctions.

Unfortunately, one of the worst consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine – and of Iran’s tactics as well – is that potential aggressors around the world can see how much harm ballistic missiles can inflict on human life. The global ballistic missile threat will therefore continue to grow, and all anti-ballistic defense capabilities must grow as well.

Our FREYJA can become a shared European system providing integrated protection. FREYJA will be quick to produce and battle-tested. Ukraine is capable of manufacturing both the missile itself and the launcher. The decisive factor is cooperation with those European countries and companies that have the radars, sensors, and everything else required for an effective anti-ballistic system. And we already have agreements in place with all of these companies and all the necessary countries.

These are the ten countries participating in the Anti-Ballistic Coalition: Ukraine, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom – as well as twelve manufacturers that have already joined. The Anti-Ballistic Coalition and the FREYJA project are open to other participants capable of making a genuine contribution to security across Europe.

From an address at the meeting of heads of Ukraine’s foreign diplomatic missions. (4/7)

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Today, Iranian regime hanged him in secret in Shahroud، no warning, no farewell. His family was told to come at 3am to collect his body.

Arvin Kheirkhah was 20 years old. This is his last words to his family:

"Don't let me be forgotten. Don't let the path we walked go silent."
💔

[Polly Fox @pollykfox]

@thamesclippers the coffee machine is still
Out of
Order on the 630 ferry from Putney. Last week you said it would be fixed

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Beyond sad. He’s been given a second life, but the reason want to kill him anyway. We need your help.
This young man, was scheduled to be executed alongside two other protesters in Iran on Tuesday. But before hanging him, his heart gave out from pressure. They rushed him to hospital, not out of mercy, but to keep him alive long enough to hang later.
His name is Alireza Sepahi. He is still alive.
We need international media to talk about this war being imposed on unarmed Iranians.
#StopExecutionsInIran

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

True that technical education needs more attention.

Not true that we need schools spending less time teaching kids maths and English after age 14.

It just isn’t true that all of our kids are academically excellent!

The basics - maths and English GCSEs- last year 40% failed to pass.

Meaning 40% of kids in schools did not hit the approx 20% pass rate for maths GCSE.

Are we these great academic intellects?

Is Burnham just saying ‘look, these kids just can’t learn this stuff so let’s give up on them?’

I kind of see why he might think that. But is it the right call? Are schools really not capable of getting our kids to learn 20% of the maths GCSE content?

Maybe not. But it does seem a little sad to just give up.

[Polly Fox @pollykfox]

@thamesclippers Your barrister is very talented so his coffee is a highlight

[Polly Fox @pollykfox]

@thamesclippers no working coffee machine on RB6 from Putney 630 this am. When will it be fixed?

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

A man who spent thirty years reviewing sports cars has taught this country more about its own food than every minister, union and campaign of the last fifty years combined.

Here is what five series of Clarkson's Farm put in front of the public, and not one line of it is opinion.

- A thousand acres, worked flat out for a year, made a profit of £144. Under forty pence a day.
- By year six the same farm was losing money, weather and prices turning a projected £37,000 into a five grand loss.
- A crop can drown in the field after months of work and take everything with it, and nobody is coming to help.
- The farmer is the only man in the food chain who sells at a price he does not set. The supermarket sets it. He takes it or he takes nothing.
- The council can shut his restaurant, refuse his car park and stop him selling his own food off his own land.
- The subsidy he was told to lean on can be closed overnight, the big estates first through the door, the small farms locked out.
- One outbreak of bovine TB can lock a farm down for months, banned from buying or selling a single cow, through no fault of its own.
- Rear pigs with real care and the butcher's maths can still make them a loss, so the animals go and the loss stays.
- The margins are so thin that a rich man buys farmland not to earn from it but to shelter money that earns elsewhere. The shelter exists precisely because the farming does not.

Now hold that against the story you were sold. Greedy farmers. Subsidised for doing nothing. Wrecking a countryside they are somehow also the custodians of.

There is no profit. That was the reveal. A show that set out to be funny accidentally filmed the slow strangling of the people who feed us, and the country watched it happen and finally understood what its cheap food actually costs.

Clarkson has now admitted the plainest part out loud: it is the television money keeping Diddly Squat alive, and most farms do not have a television show. Britain grows about sixty per cent of its own food and the average farmer is past sixty. That is why both numbers are heading the wrong way.

It took a Lamborghini tractor and a man doing it for a laugh. Fifty years of earnest campaigning could not manage it.

[Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis]

Pls spread word. Three digits can help protect you from scams: 159. If you're suspicious of a 'call from your bank', politely hang up and dial 159. It connects you to a switchboard that puts you through to your bank's real number. Watch the video for why its extra protection

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

Yet another flood of videos from Russians weeping over the "shock" and "unfairness" of strikes on a Wildberries warehouse.

​It doesn't cross their minds how unfair it felt when we were just living our lives, bothering no one, in our own country and our own homes, right up until their missiles started tearing our cities apart on a chilly winter morning.

​You want to talk about unfair? People lived in Donbas, built businesses and raised families, until russian nazis arrived with Girkin and his thugs, declaring those people couldn't live there anymore. People evacuated, leaving their homes to Girkin's mob for pennies or nothing at all. They moved to Kharkiv, kept paying mortgages on Donetsk apartments that russians stole or destroyed, because credit history mattered, and rebuilt from scratch. They bought new homes, started new businesses. But bloodthirsty russian bastards found them here too, ruining their lives a second time. Bombing them for years, killing, burning. That is what’s unfair.

​When peaceful families have to hide from Russian bombs inside a theater, that feels unfair. When, hoping for a shred of humanity in their attackers, they paint "CHILDREN" in massive letters outside, and russians bomb it anyway, slaughtering everyone inside, isn't that unfair? When survivors crawl out of the rubble, stepping over neighbors' bodies and the ashes of their homes, only to be dragged into filtration camps, stripped naked, robbed of every even remotely valuable thing, and also basic human dignity just for the "privilege" of fleeing the ruins of their own city, is that not unfair?

​It is overwhelmingly, fucking unfair when a young woman can't hear a drone over her own exhaustion from never ending russian attacks. Now she lies trapped in her bed, pinned by a collapsed ceiling. She’s alive, but can not move because of the rubble. She smells smoke from the spreading fire, hears her neighbors screaming as they burn alive, and all she can think is that dying under the ceiling would have been a mercy compared to burning alive.

​It’s unfair when an elderly woman and her goats are murdered by a first person view drone for the sick entertainment of a some russian operator. It's unfair when a 2-year-old child is hunted and butchered on his grandparents' porch for the crime of being a Ukrainian child in Ukraine, and only for that.

​And a stupid Wildberries warehouse? That’s not unfair. It isn't even close.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

The Moscow region. Our long-range sanctions have produced results against logistics facilities and an oil depot. Thank you to the warriors of the Unmanned Systems Forces, our intelligence services, the Missile Forces and Artillery, and the Special Operations Forces. The targets were more than 400 kilometers from our border. Two shadow fleet tankers and four cargo ships were also struck in the Black Sea.

We are responding, justly, to every Russian strike against our cities and communities. This war must be brought to an end, and that is only possible by increasing the pressure on the sole cause of this war – Russia.

[UAVoyager🇺🇦 @CrimeanVoyager]

Look at this, world. Don't look away.

This is Kyiv tonight.

A European capital. Home to more than 3 million people.

Under a massive russian ballistic missile barrage.

This isn't the first time. Unless russia is stopped, it won't be the last.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Overnight, Russia carried out one of its largest ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv. The enemy launched more than 40 missiles of various types – most of them against the capital – and 120 attack drones.

As of now, one person has been reported killed in Kyiv and the region, and 16 others have been injured. My condolences to all their families and loved ones. Everyone affected is receiving the necessary medical care. Emergency response efforts are continuing at three locations, with nearly 600 first responders involved. The relevant services are also working in the Odesa region.

In total, over the course of this week, Russia has used around 1,450 attack drones, more than 1,640 guided aerial bombs, and 99 missiles of various types against Ukraine. People were injured in the Odesa region and Zaporizhzhia, and there was damage in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions. This week, the Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Cherkasy regions also came under Russian attack.

Protection against ballistic missiles is our constant and top priority right now. Interceptors are needed every day, and I am grateful to everyone who takes our agreements seriously and ensures the delivery of anti-ballistic capabilities. Right now, these packages are literally saving lives during every massive Russian attack. It is also essential that pressure on Russia continue alongside our work on anti-ballistic capabilities. Delays in adopting new decisions give Moscow the opportunity to plan not only new attacks against our people, but also ways to circumvent new sanctions. Thank you to everyone who is helping.

[Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @jurgen_nauditt]

Today, the Russians once again "defeated" purely civilian targets—ordinary public buses in Odesa, ordinary residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, an ordinary hospital in the Kharkiv region—said Zelenskyy regarding the attacks on Ukraine.

And the whole world sees this—it sees that Ukraine needs more air defense and greater protection for human lives, and that the Russian leadership has lost its mind due to the war and is refusing, in a completely irrational manner, to end the conflict.

Yet the pressure on Russia must take effect. New sanctions against the aggressor, new support packages for Ukraine, new projects—such as our European project for ballistic missile defense, FREYJA—all of these measures must be implemented effectively.