Renata Giacobazzi

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

Moulin Rouge nightclub at Montmarte, Paris, 1923.

See more rare historical photos: https://t.co/W7jIvOHun5

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

Govt planning c. 100 new data centres by early 2030s, mostly in water stressed areas - with no legal duty to disclose how much water they use. Meanwhile Govt launches £75m publicity campaign to urge us to reduce water use & privatised water companies waste 19% thro leaks. Madness

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

This is a car crash interview from convicted fraudster Louise Haigh, who is now the First Secretary of State.

She denies that 60,000 people storming into Ceuta amounts to an invasion.

Then described it by the very definition of an invasion.

The Oxford definition of an invasion is: “an instance of invading a country or region with an armed force or large numbers of people or things.”

If 60,000 people forcing their way across the border isn't an invasion, what is?

[Don Keith @RealDonKeith]

🚨Notice how Wes Streeting is sweating profusely.

It’s getting harder and harder for these Labour goons to defend giving France 662 million pounds to “assist” with the migrant boats when the video evidence shows them doing the exact opposite.

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

Be this guy.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Your apology for labelling women-only rape support centre Beira's Place 'anti-rights' is a nice birthday present, @AmnestyUK. Cheers.

And congratulations to all the other women's and LGB organisations Amnesty acknowledges having wrongly smeared as 'anti-rights'.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Every autumn, a huge golden cross appears in the forests of County Donegal, Ireland.

3000 Japanese larch trees were planted among pine trees, creating a cross pattern when the larch trees turn yellow.

[No Farmers, No Food @NoFarmsNoFoods]

Well said Clare Balding:

“Farmers keep the countryside looking lovely for our benefit, they produce food for our benefit, so it'd be helpful if they were not required to jump through every hoop known to the government." https://t.co/e2vaKf12D4

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

"Hello mom, please tell everyone the video on State TV was a lie. Tell them my confession was forced, and I didn’t kill anyone."

Those were the last words Amirhossein spoke to his mother before the Islamic Republic

Amirhossein had a physical disability in his hand. He was tortured. He was forced to confess on camera to a crime he denied committing until the very end.

His mother carries his last words now. We carry them too.

[WasAcop @WasAcop]

🚨We never had to live this way before.

Daylight armed robbery.

Middle of the morning, houses getting hit like it’s nothing.

Kids on bikes climbing through windows in broad daylight while one holds what appears to be a sawed-off shotgun, while the rest of us just watch it unfold on video.

This isn’t normal.
And it shouldn’t be.

[Mike David @mikemovies]

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA [1962]
Directed by David Lean
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Surely, when Omar Sharif signed on for this film, he wasn't aware David Lean would gift him with what might reasonably be considered the greatest character entrance in cinema.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

New diversity barriers have been installed around Trafalgar Square. Looks hideous.

@SadiqKhan are they to protect people from Reform UK? GB News? Or the threat you never mention?

[Chris Parry @DrChrisParry]

Could someone kindly explain to me why someone in their 20s who has never or barely worked thinks that they are entitled to the same level of assets as someone who has worked and paid taxes for over 50 years?

Do they not understand the principle of annually accruing value?

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨#BREAKING: The Moroccan Muslims who have invaded the small Spanish city of Ceuta are now BREAKING INTO STORES by the HUNDREDS.

Police are completely overwhelmed.

Migrants can be seen running from one store to the next, grabbing items and running.

WHERE IS THE MILITARY?!!!!!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

These young women are heroines. They're peacefully protesting against the grotesque unfairness of men playing in women's sport. The only people who are "f*cking insane" here are those making a mockery of fair sport for women and trying to bully girls like this into silence.

[Chris Philp MP @CPhilpOfficial]

An illegal immigrant I encountered on the beach in northern France told me to go back to my own country!!!!

He appeared not to appreciate the irony….

A couple of hours later I saw the same man embarking on a boat to the UK - which got across

So right now he’s in a hotel being paid for by British taxpayers

This is why we need to quit the ECHR so illegal immigrants can be rapidly deported

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Now Melilla, Spain’s second Moroccan enclave, is coming under attack. This is a vital early test of Andy Burnham. As long as these migrants believe that they will be able to reach Britain, many will make the attempt.
We don’t have to keep offering a Channel taxi service.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The BBC has had thirty eight years and £3.8 billion a year to explain British farming to the British public. The job was eventually done by an American shopping website, in eight episodes, fronted by the man the BBC itself dropped over a row about a steak.

Countryfile first went out on 24 July 1988, and its origin is the part nobody brings up. It replaced Farming, a programme that had spent thirty years making news for the people who actually did the work. The new show was deliberately widened to take in everybody who merely liked the countryside as well as those who lived off it. Widened meant softened. In 2009 it moved to Sunday evenings, where five to six million people still watch, and it has been settled ever since into an hour of scenery, a ramble, a calendar competition and the weather.

Then in June 2021 a company best known for selling doorbells put out a series about a man failing to farm a thousand acres, and within a week the British public understood the subsidy system.

Look at what an American retailer put on screen that thirty eight years of Sunday nights had not. A thousand acres, a full year of work, £144 profit. A crop drowning in the field with nobody coming to help. A farmer selling at a price he is not allowed to set. A council able to shut a restaurant standing on a man's own land. The accounts, open, with jokes over the top.

James Rebanks, who keeps sheep for a living rather than for a segment, reckoned Clarkson did more for farmers in one series than Countryfile had managed in thirty years. The NFU said the same thing in nicer words.

Now the funding, which is where it gets genuinely funny.

Countryfile is paid for by £180 a year, rising on 1 April, taken from every household in Britain that watches live television, on pain of prosecution. Twenty three million licences. Three point eight billion pounds. Guaranteed money, a captive audience, a national mandate and a prime Sunday slot.

Clarkson's Farm is paid for by people voluntarily pressing play, and it goes out in more than 240 countries.

The nation's farmers had one broadcaster legally funded by them, obliged to serve them, sitting on the biggest slot in British television. It gave them a weather forecast and a photography competition, and when a bloke with a Lamborghini tractor did the actual job for free, the same building's stars went on a sofa to complain about his opening credits.

The BBC had the money, the mandate, the Sunday night and thirty eight years.

It used them to film the view.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Waitrose sold 193 percent more thick-cut British sirloin after the fourth series of Clarkson's Farm went out. Jersey Royals up 89 percent. Red Leicester up 50. Cox apples up 52, Gala up 30, British asparagus up 25. One television programme about a man losing money in a field moved the meat counter of a national supermarket chain by figures no marketing budget in this country has ever bought.

Then look at what happened at the shop itself.

Diddly Squat opened its farm shop in 2020 and people drove across counties to stand in a queue in a field for it. Traffic backed down the lane. Clarkson admitted in front of the village that the place had been swamped, while pointing out that the village shop, the village cafe and the village pub were all taking more money than before.

That is the demand. Now the paperwork.

The shop's planning permission legally caps what it may sell: produce from the holding, or from producers inside a 16 mile radius, or whatever else the council will agree to in writing. His agents asked for 30 miles and were given 16. In January 2022 the restaurant was refused, on the grounds that a farm building on a farm was out of keeping with the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In August that year the council issued an enforcement notice, describing the operation as unsustainable and incompatible with its countryside location, and ordered the dining areas shut. The appeal in June 2023 saved the shop, the cafe and the car park for three years. The restaurant was refused again, and the inspector ruled that six weeks was ample time to put the land back the way it had been.

Six weeks to undo a farm building. Two years to get permission for one.

Now sit with the shape of this. Every government of the past twenty years has stood up and said the words food security, shorten the supply chain, support British farming, buy British. A man then built the shortest food chain in England, forty yards from the field to the till with nobody taking a cut in between, and the machinery of the state spent three years making it smaller.

Meanwhile the country answered the question nobody actually asked it. Acceptances onto agricultural degree courses rose 8 percent in 2024 and are up around 20 percent since 2019. Britain has roughly 1,580 farm retailers employing 25,000 people, and the Farm Retail Association reckons the tax changes could shut as many as half of them.

Nobody in this country needs persuading to buy food from a farmer. They queue for two hours in a field for the privilege, in the rain, in a place with one road in.

The queue formed on its own. It took three years, two appeals and a planning inspectorate to make it shorter.

[Inevitable West @Inevitablewest]

🚨BREAKING: Denmark's Prime Minister has demanded the EU considers suspending Spain from Schengen over Cueta migrant invasion

All European nations are now turning on Pedro Sánchez's Spain. 🇪🇸🇩🇰