PAUL SHALLCROSS

Retired Aerospace Engineer UK USA. Projects include UK elements of F-35 Lightening II & UK Hawk Trainer. Grandad, Blues Guitarist & 60's nut!!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

In Peru, a growing trend is transforming traditional funerals into festive celebrations through "dancing undertakers" (los portadores bailarini), offering a cheerful alternative to solemn mourning.

[ClarksonsFarm @ClarksonsFarm1]

Of course.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

The Green Party has complained about this cartoon of Zack Polanski by the The Times.

They’re deeply unhappy with it. Whatever you do, do not repost!

[Patriotic 🇬🇧 Nation @HoodedClaw1974]

Amazing scene from Yes Prime Minister where PM Jim Hacker unknowingly lied in parliament due to the civil service.

Sir Humphrey as usual tries to blind him with big words.🤣🤣

You can just picture this sort of thing going on with Starmer behind the scenes about Mandelson.

[Aphra Brandreth @AphraBrandreth]

At a @CommonsForeign session in November 2025, I directly asked Sir Oliver Robbins whether the FCDO had a different view of who should be recommended for the posting of US Ambassador. His response? "It was clear that the Prime Minister wanted to make this appointment himself."

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

🚨WOMAN GOES ON EPIC RANT AT KEIR STARMER

This is AMAZING 👏

"ARE YOU LISTENING KEIR STARMER?"

- He's a man who doesn't love Britain
- He ERASED our National Identity
- He has betrayed the British people

Listen to this
She speaks for MILLIONS 🔥

[Pete Sanford @PeteSanford]

MORGAN McSWEENEY: POLICE STATEMENT:

Arrest: INCOMING:

The Met Police are now INSISTING McSweeney gives a Full Statement regarding the "stolen" Mobile Phone.

The Content, if available, would Destroy:

His circa £250K Payout
Wife's Career as a Labour Politician
Keir Starmer's Dictatorship
Mandelson's Liberty
The Labour Party

"Morgan McSweeney’s government phone was 'stolen' only days before he was forced to release it and its contents? "

Writes: Kevin Hollinrake MP

Come off it.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven. What are the Government trying to hide?

The Public Are No Fools.

Publish everything. Now.

THE POLICE NEED TO USE ALL THE TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT AND SKILL SET, OWNED AND RUN BY THEIR COLLEAGUES IN THE SECRET SERVICES, TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS GOVERNMENT-LED ATTEMPT AT WHITE-WASHING THE WEIRD AND CORRUPT MCSWEENEY-STARMER-MANDELSON 3-WAY.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

The Prime Minister is telling porkies🐷

The reason Keir Starmer didn’t answer the question is because it would have proved he didn’t tell the truth.

[Patricia🇬🇧 @Patricia344130]

So these incompetent clowns led the decision not to support the US.

Starmer letting himself be overruled by these 3 idiots.

No leadership just a shambolic mess.

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

EXC: My Iran deep dive, which the Telegraph has splashed on this morning
🚨Starmer wanted to let the US use Dieo Garcia to attack Iranian missile sites last Friday. The defence secretary John Healey supported him at the NSC. But his ministers, led by 'petulant' Ed Miliband, stopped him
🚨Chief of the Defence staff had to tell the Americans how to frame their request on Saturday so ministers could agree it on Sunday. 48 hours lost and with it UK credibility with allies
🚨We've have all thought Richard Hermer was the main blockage. Actually it was Milband, Reeves, Cooper and Mahmood. A PM who can't carry his own war cabinet
https://t.co/zib9ZknQlW

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

France Is Defending Britain's Base. Let That Land.

RAF Akrotiri is British sovereign territory. It houses British servicemen and women. It flies the British flag. And it took a French aircraft carrier, Greek F-16s and Israeli jets moving toward the eastern Mediterranean before Keir Starmer sent a single British warship to defend it.

When he finally acted, he sent the wrong ship. HMS Duncan was ready to sail immediately. Starmer chose HMS Dragon, which is in dry dock and needs three days to mobilise. Even his eventual response, squeezed out of him by French and Greek action, managed to be slower and less capable than the situation demanded. Dragged kicking and screaming toward doing the right thing, as Nigel Farage put it, and then doing it badly.

The humiliation does not stop there. Donald Trump, speaking to The Sun, said of Starmer: "He has not been helpful. I never thought I'd see that from the UK." He then compared the Prime Minister unfavourably with Emmanuel Macron. France and Britain have spent the better part of three centuries competing for influence, prestige and the ear of Washington. That an American president would look across the Atlantic and conclude that France has been the more reliable partner in a Middle Eastern crisis is not a footnote. It is a historic verdict on what this government has made of Britain in less than a year.

Trump did not stop there. He invoked Churchill, the name that above all others defines Britain's place in the Western alliance and its finest hour of resolve, and used it as a rebuke. The implication was unmistakable: that the Britain of Starmer bears no resemblance to the Britain that stood firm when it mattered. It is difficult to think of a more devastating thing an American president could say to a British Prime Minister, or one more richly deserved.

Trump has form with countries he judges to be unhelpful. He said it plainly of Spain, whose prime minister Pedro Sánchez rejected the strikes, that there would be consequences. He applies diplomatic and economic pressure without hesitation and without apology when he believes an ally has failed the test. Starmer would do well to understand that the language being used about Britain right now, disappointed, unhelpful, took far too long, is the language that precedes consequences. The special relationship is not a fixed asset. It has to be earned, crisis by crisis, decision by decision. This government has been spending it down at speed.

The pattern is now unmistakable and the excuses have run out. Starmer said no to Diego Garcia. He needed a drone on his own runway to say yes. He sent the wrong warship, three days late. He told the Commons Britain does not believe in regime change from the skies while France was repositioning its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. He has managed, in the space of seventy-two hours, to disappoint Washington, alarm Gulf allies, cede moral leadership to Paris and leave a British base dependent on foreign air cover.

This is what managed decline looks like in real time. Not a single catastrophic failure but a sequence of hesitations, miscalculations and wrong ships sent too late, adding up to a picture that allies are already drawing conclusions from. If Starmer does not grasp the severity of where Britain now stands in American eyes, the consequences will not arrive as a warning. They will arrive as a fait accompli.

"Trump did not stop there. He invoked Churchill, the name that above all others defines Britain's place in the Western alliance and its finest hour of resolve, and used it as a rebuke."

[Nigel Farage MP @Nigel_Farage]

Today, Keir Starmer has colluded with Labour and Tory councils to cancel 30 council elections on May 7th.

Millions of people’s right to vote has been taken away.

Reform UK are fighting this denial of democracy in the High Court.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

🚨BREAKING: HIGH COURT BLOCKS KEIR STARMER FROM CANCELLING ELECTIONS

They will allow Reform UK to bring their challenge to court

The hearing will take place in Feb 19/20th

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Finally, the Darlington nurses have won their case.

This is a victory for the safety and privacy of women and girls. Never again should biological men be allowed in female only spaces.

The fight isn’t over: Head to https://t.co/W73vRu8Psm to find out more.

[Laila Cunningham @policylaila]

I’ve announced today that I’m standing to be the next Mayor of London. I’m in it to win it!
London deserves a Mayor who finally puts Londoners first! 🇬🇧

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

It is madness to put our brave veterans in the dock for serving our country, at the same time the PM plans to deploy troops in Ukraine.

Starmer should pull the Northern Ireland Veterans Bill, and put British interest first.

We will always stand up for our veterans.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There's a line in a democracy that, once crossed, changes everything: when elections cease to be an obligation and become a variable. That line has now been crossed in Britain, and it's the state's own elections watchdog saying so.

The Electoral Commission has been explicit: Labour's justification for delaying local elections is not legitimate. Not unwise. Not clumsy. Illegitimate. Extending mandates damages public confidence, undermines local legitimacy, and creates a clear conflict of interest by letting councils decide how long they can avoid voters. In any functioning democracy, that would end the matter. Here, the government presses on regardless.

That's the scandal. This is no longer a party political dispute or a row between Reform and Labour. The referee has intervened and said the game is being rigged, and the players have decided to ignore the whistle. When a government continues with election delays after being told by the independent authority charged with protecting electoral integrity that its reasoning does not hold, the issue stops being reform and becomes power protecting itself.

The language Labour uses is revealing. Elections are framed as an inconvenience. Voters are framed as an administrative burden. Democracy is reduced to a cost-saving exercise, something to be postponed if the spreadsheets look untidy or the reorganisation plans are mid-flow. Ministers speak of "capacity constraints" as if the right to vote is a luxury item that must wait until the filing cabinets are rearranged. In a democracy, administration exists to serve elections. Elections do not exist to suit administration.

The conflict of interest identified by the Electoral Commission should alarm anyone who still believes in democratic norms. Councils are being asked whether they would like to delay the moment they must answer to voters. That's not consultation. It's self-dealing. No serious system allows those in power to decide how long they may remain there without consent. Yet this is now presented as a "locally led approach," as though outsourcing democratic suspension makes it virtuous.

Worse still is the uncertainty. Candidates have been selected. Campaigns have begun. Money has been spent. And with months to go before polling day, the government is still dangling the possibility of cancellation. The watchdog describes this uncertainty as unprecedented. That word matters. Democracies rely on predictability. Once elections become provisional, subject to last-minute ministerial approval, the entire process is degraded.

When challenged, ministers retreat into condescension. Chris Bryant waves away concerns as conspiracy and insists that "ordinary people" would think elections are "a bit daft." This is a familiar trick: speak for the public while denying them a voice. Redefine democratic rights as common-sense nuisances that sensible adults should stop fussing over. It's the rhetoric of managed democracy, where participation is tolerated only when it produces the correct outcome.

None of this is happening in isolation. Mayoral elections have already been postponed. Now council elections are being pushed back again. The pattern is clear. When the polls turn hostile, the timetable moves. When voters become unpredictable, the vote is delayed. Governments confident in their mandate do not need to buy time. They face the electorate and take their chances. Labour is not doing that because it knows what the numbers say.

The danger is not just that millions of people may be denied a vote next year. It's the precedent now being set. Once a government learns it can delay elections after the watchdog objects, after campaigns have begun and candidates are in place, the principle is broken. Elections become conditional. Democracy becomes something you are granted when those in power feel safe enough to allow it.

"Chris Bryant waves away concerns as conspiracy and insists that "ordinary people" would think elections are "a bit daft.""

[Julia Lopez MP @JuliaLopezMP]

At today's PMQs, Kemi asked the PM what he's delivering for all that extra tax everyone's paying.

PROMISE - Labour will cut your energy bill by £300
➡️ It's gone up £187.
PROMISE - Labour will deliver 6500 extra teachers.
➡️ There are 400 fewer.
PROMISE - Labour will recruit 13 000 more police officers.
➡️ Numbers are down by 1300.
PROMISE - Labour will end doctors' strikes.
➡️ 93 000 appointments lost to strikes since the 28.5% pay deal.

And instead of delivering, all his Cabinet Ministers are jostling for his position. That extra tax is causing so much pain for people and businesses, and they're not getting anything for it.

[Charlie’s Voice Rising @CharlieK_news]

🚨 VANCE JUST ASKED THE QUESTION EUROPE IS TERRIFIED OF 🚨

JD Vance skipped the fake smiles, the diplomatic fluff, the “shared values” slogans…
and went straight for the jugular.

How can Europe pretend it stands with America
while throwing people in prison for what they post online?

His line hit like a hammer:

“Do you really think American taxpayers will tolerate it if someone gets jailed in Germany for a mean tweet?”

Exactly.

You can’t claim a partnership while:

• Arresting citizens for saying the “wrong” thing
• Criminalizing border debates
• Canceling elections you don’t like
• Silencing voters instead of trusting them

Call it what it is:
not democracy — insecurity dressed up as policy.

Vance said the part every diplomat is too scared to say out loud:

Real alliances require real values.
Free speech isn’t optional. It’s the foundation.

America didn’t shed blood defending Europe
so Europe could jail its own people for their opinions.

And that’s why this moment hit so hard:
because every word of it was true.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There's a quiet coup under way in Britain, and it's not being led by mobs or tanks. It's being carried out by a government that has found a cleaner route to power: remove the public from politics, shutter the ballot box, and rule without interruption. Starmer's administration has delayed four mayoral elections for two years, on top of the previous postponements that already pushed votes back by a year. Add up the constituencies and timeframes, and you reach the blunt fact: millions of citizens are being stripped of the right to cast a ballot until the government chooses to permit it.

The excuse – "local authority reorganisation" – is the bureaucratic fig leaf regimes have always used to hide naked political self-interest. Labour claims it needs more time to "streamline" councils, as if democracy can be put in storage while Whitehall rearranges its paperwork. Yet if reorganisation were the real aim, the delays would be months, not years. Two years is not "administrative delay." It's a quarantine imposed on the electorate so the public cannot punish its rulers.

This is how democracies rot in the West. Not through force, but through rulers learning they can govern without consent. Starmer and his ministers talk endlessly of "restoring trust." They do the opposite. They extend councillors' terms from five years to seven. They install new super-authorities with no mandate. They insist votes can wait until the government has finished imposing reforms no one ever voted for.

The pretence that this is about "cost-saving" insults the public. Britain's ruling party has found £40bn for tax hikes, billions more for boondoggles, consultants and pet schemes, but claims it cannot afford elections because boundaries are "in transition." The truth is simpler: elections are expensive for governments that are losing. They cost legitimacy. They cost power. They cost heads.

What is corrosive is the normalisation of this power. Postpone one vote, then another, then a third, and the right to elect local government becomes conditional, subject to political convenience. A former Labour minister has admitted that trust has been "squandered." That is polite language for a colder truth: this government has decided the public must not interfere.

Britain isn't a dictatorship – yet. But the road bends that way. Centralisation. Mergers. Extended terms. Elections pushed into the long grass. A government that promised competence has discovered a harsher creed: power, once taken, will not be surrendered.

They claim to be reorganising councils. In truth, they are reorganising the people who vote for them. The public is being told to wait, to shut up, and to accept rule without voice.

Labour isn't reorganising democracy. It's rationing it. And once a government learns it can suspend elections without paying a price, it will do it again. And again. Until voting becomes a novelty, not a norm.

Democracy delayed is democracy denied. Britain is now learning how easily both can be done – with a press release and a shrug.

"Add up the constituencies and timeframes, and you reach the blunt fact: millions of citizens are being stripped of the right to cast a ballot until the government chooses to permit it."