Derek Lonsdale

Horse racing fan. Lucky enough to share my life with wonderful whippets. Value my family and friends. I like to smile...and drink wine! 😊

[Net Zero Watch @NetZeroWatch]

Britain has been forced to pay 17 times more to import energy from Europe during the heatwave. The UK paid nearly £1,400 per megawatt hour on Wednesday evening to obtain emergency supplies from the Continent, in a move set to add £11m to bills, after a shortfall in energy generated from domestic solar and gas-fired power stations left the UK scrambling for supplies.

#CostOfNetZero

[Tim White @TWMCLtd]

I wasn't going to publish this but followers urge me to.

A Russian mother (her daughter is blurred out in the back seat), completely loses it after spending hours queuing for fuel. But now no gas, no battery, no keyfob

Good news: her tyres & lips are still inflated as normal

[Tim White @TWMCLtd]

Russians continue to flee Crimea by the thousands

The number of vehicles waiting on the Russian side of the bridge to reach Crimea: 0

Number of cars waiting to leave occupied Crimea via the bridge: 900*

*Bridge chiefs aren't allowed to admit queues of 1,000 so it will be more

[Derek Lonsdale @Raceboy29]

@Jonfanti Can't ever read an Easterby runner !!! Best as always JF.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

By their words ye shall know them:
Wes Streeting: If there’s a leadership contest I will definitely be a candidate.
He’s not running.
Keir Starmer: If a leadership contest is triggered I will definitely be a candidate.
He’s not running.

[David Frost @DavidGHFrost]

If only our government could learn to live with Britain being an independent country, rather than keep returning to Brussels with the begging bowl and get back just patronising hectoring from EU nonentities.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

I seem to remember rather a lot of shouting and moaning from Labour about the Tories replacing their leader and demanding a General Election! Saying it left the government with “No mandate” and the “public should have their say.

Here’s a list of all those MPs now strangely silent as Labour attempts to get rid of their own PM.

Er hello???? Cat got your tongues?

Keir Starmer
Angela Rayner
Rachel Reeves
David Lammy
Wes Streeting
Yvette Cooper
Ed Miliband
Pat McFadden
John McDonnell
Richard Burgon
Ian Murray
Mary Foy
Catherine McKinnell
Alex Davies-Jones
Ruth Jones
Catherine West
Fleur Anderson
Lisa Nandy
Bridget Phillipson
Jonathan Ashworth
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Lucy Powell
Shabana Mahmood
Peter Kyle
Steve Reed
Thangam Debbonaire
Louise Haigh
Preet Kaur Gill
Tulip Siddiq
Darren Jones
Chris Bryant
Chi Onwurah
Clive Lewis
Dawn Butler
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Zarah Sultana
Kim Johnson
Mick Whitley
Ian Byrne
Rebecca Long-Bailey
Rachael Maskell
Nadia Whittome
Rosena Allin-Khan
Barry Gardiner
Sarah Owen
Paula Barker
Kim Leadbeater

Hmm …

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Just to remind these same folk:
You’ve not lifted 1/2m kids out of poverty. You’ve just moved them over a bureaucratic line on a Whitehall spreadsheet.
Your ‘workers rights’ are destroying entry-level jobs, hitting young people disproportionately, where unemployment is now over 16%.
You have not transformed the NHS. It’s still the same old wheezing leviathan, just with a lot more dosh and still dismal productivity.
And you’ve nationalised steel and rail before. It was not the prelude to an economic or industrial miracle. Plus you will now have to include their demands for capital/subsidies among all the other priorities already crowding in on the public purse.
Other than that your reminder was useful. Thank you.

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

Worst-ever Chancellor Rachel Thieves ( including Lamont) is briefing that Healey was suggesting schools and hospital budgets be cut to pay for defence.
That’s crap.
Abandon Net Zero ( estimated £15-30bn) and we’d have all the bombs and bullets required.

[Britain Unbound @BritainUnbound]

The headline takeaways from the Bloomberg Brexit analysis published today:

⚫️ The NBER 8% figure is garbage
⚫️ The Customs Union would add less GDP than the value of the UKs trade deals that it would lose
⚫️ The cost of membership in 2028 is higher than the expected GDP add

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The Mandy Files — 2. May 2025
Another zinger from Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden to Mandelson:
‘Every meeting I have is “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”. They’re asking the wrong questions.’
Wow! Just wow!!

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

This pic makes it clear why it was so easy to miss the camper van parked beside her mother in law’s house 🤣
And why even if she saw it, she’d think it was the neighbour’s 🤣
But it doesn’t explain why she never said to her mother in law — you happy having that hulk parked so close to your house? How long will it be there? 🤣

[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.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Brilliant, only another £1 BILLION so Ed can guarantee profits for private energy companies.

“cheap energy” now requires subsidies, compensation and industrialising the countryside.

Give it 6 months before opposing Net Zero becomes “hate speech” 🤡

[Kira Rudik @kiraincongress]

Three key priorities are driving the work of Ukrainian politicians today: securing part of the €90B EU support package to help cover the budget gap, obtaining more ammunition for Patriot missile systems, and continuing Ukraine’s path toward the EU through the necessary reforms and steps.

@TVPWorld_com

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

UK households to face steepest summer rise in energy charges in four years as government’s energy price cap for Great Britain rises 13%.
The average gas and electricity bill will increase to the equivalent of £1,862 a year from July until the end of September, largely (but not entirely) to take account of the rise in global energy market prices caused by the war on Iran.
The cost of living is now back at the top of the political agenda.

[Iain Martin @iainmartin1]

Scotland and Britain’s lucky escape. This pair - Sturgeon and Murrell - were the very people who were supposedly going to create a new central bank, currency, armed forces and state. What could possibly go wrong?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

And now he’s pleaded guilty to the whole caboodle. Does this mean he obstructed the investigation by lying for years?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The UK borrowed another £24.3 billion in April, above the £20.9 billion forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility. 
The ONS said the debt interest bill rose to £10.3 billion last month – the highest on record for April, which marks the start of the new financial year. The government is paying more than £100 billion a year to service its debts. Yet a cacophony of Labour and Green pols think we should borrow even more.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

IN plain English: we’re going to send a ton of money to the warmongering Kremlin regime for fuel while refusing further exploitation of our own oil and gas in the North Sea. Brilliant.