SimmeringFrog

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Dartmoor's hill ponies have grazed those commons for longer than there has been a country called England. Fewer than a thousand are left, down from six thousand a generation ago. The United Nations listed them as endangered in 2023. So, naturally, the body charged with protecting nature has decided to get rid of nine in ten of the survivors.

There is a process, obviously.

Natural England's new grazing contracts now count the ponies in the same bucket as the cattle and sheep. A commoner with a fixed quota has a choice: keep a semi-wild pony worth nothing at market, or use the slot for a lamb he can sell. Guess which one survives the spreadsheet. The rest are gathered in the autumn drifts, and with nowhere to put thousands of unhandled moorland ponies, the next stop is the abattoir.

Natural England would like it noted that it has not ordered a cull. It has merely built a machine whose only output is a cull, switched it on, and handed the bolt gun to a farmer so the fingerprints land elsewhere. Very tidy.

And now the funny part. The pony is the best tool on the entire moor for eating Molinia, the coarse purple grass strangling Dartmoor into a brown monoculture. Cattle and sheep won't touch it. The ponies hoover it down and clear the ground for the orchids, the wildflowers and the insects behind them. Remove the ponies and the moor chokes into precisely the lifeless scrubland the contract was meant to prevent.

So the conservation strategy, in full: protect the habitat by deleting the animal that maintains the habitat. A masterclass.

Better still, Natural England's own Fursdon review looked at this exact question and told them, in plain English, not to lump ponies in with cattle and not to cut pony numbers. They read it, praised it, said they fully supported it, then did the precise opposite.

Four thousand years these animals have run Dartmoor with no committee and no contract. They could be gone within one, and the people who did it will write it up as a win for nature.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@brendanmjones Wonderful, so pleased for you!

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@darthcaro That is such a lovely thing to impart. Sometimes horrible things you hear stay with you. Sometimes nice things you hear stay with you. Your brief story is in the second camp. Thanks for a heartwarming little story to remember ❤️

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@PippyBing This is well summarised.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@ShabanaMahmood “Those responsible can expect to face the full force of the law“ she said without a trace of irony 🙄

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@RupertLowe10 Am I the only one who does a silent “Go Rupert! Go Rupert!” sitting jig at my desk every time I see one of these posts? 😂

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@itvcalendar And she’s wagging with gratitude 🥰

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@anon_opin Good. I saw public sector workings up close on more than one deployment from the private sector, and the incompetence, bureaucracy and waste were infuriating. A whole bunch of pointless paper-shufflers.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@Nigel_Farage That’s a pathetic excuse. You either couldn’t be bothered, or you actually think the entire scandal and cover-up is acceptable. Neither is acceptable for an MP, let alone one trying to be PM. You are losing support, and for good reason.

[Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar FSHC @BishopDewar]

As a Bishop, I cannot stay silent. I have today drafted and sent an open letter to His Majesty King Charles III, the text of which reads as follows:

To:
His Majesty, Charles III,
King of the United Kingdom and the Realms,
Supreme Governor of the Church of England,
Bearer of the ancient title Defender of the Faith.

Your Majesty,

I write to you neither as a politician nor as a commentator, but as one of your loyal subjects who, as a bishop of Christ’s Church, cannot remain silent while the Christian foundations of this kingdom are steadily dismantled.

Sir, there are moments in the life of a nation when silence becomes a form of betrayal. If I refused to speak to Your Majesty now, this would be such a moment.

For more than a thousand years the Crown of this realm has stood in solemn covenant with the Christian faith.

The laws of this land were shaped by it.
The liberties of our people were nurtured by it.
The conscience of our civilisation was formed by it.

From the abbeys of medieval England to the parish churches of our villages, from the preaching of the Reformers to the missionary zeal that carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth, the Christian faith has not merely influenced Britain — it has defined her.

Yet today that inheritance is being quietly but deliberately eroded. Across the institutions of this nation there is a growing hostility toward the faith that built them.

Christian belief is mocked in the public square. Christian morality is dismissed as intolerance. Christian institutions are pressured to surrender doctrine in order to conform to the ideology of the age.

Within the very Church that bears the name of England, voices have arisen that appear more eager to mirror the spirit of the age than to proclaim the eternal truth of the Gospel.

Meanwhile, beyond the walls of our churches, powerful political movements openly speak of removing Christianity from its historic place within the life of this nation.

What would once have been whispered is now proclaimed openly: that Britain must become a post-Christian state.

It is in this context that I write to you, Your Majesty. For the British Crown does not stand apart from this crisis.

The Sovereign of this realm bears a title that is not merely historic but sacred in its origin and meaning: Defender of the Faith. Those words are not decorative. They are a charge.

They speak of a monarch whose duty is not merely to preside over the ceremonies of the Church, but to stand as a guardian of the Christian inheritance of the nation.

Yet many among your subjects now ask, with increasing anxiety: “Who will defend that inheritance today?”

They see a nation drifting from its foundations. And they ask whether the Crown will remain silent while that inheritance is dismantled.

Your Majesty, may I be so bold as to observe that your coronation oath was not a poetic formality. It was a solemn vow made before Almighty God to maintain and preserve the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law.

Those words bind the conscience of the sovereign. They remind the Crown that its authority is not merely constitutional but moral. The monarch is not merely a symbol of national continuity, but a custodian of the spiritual inheritance that shaped this realm.

History records moments when kings and emperors were confronted by the Church and reminded that their authority was accountable before God. In the fourth century Ambrose of Milan stood before the Emperor Theodosius I and reminded him that even the ruler of an empire must bow before the moral law of Christ.

That tradition of prophetic witness has never disappeared. Nor should it. For when rulers forget the foundations upon which their authority rests, the Church must speak — not with hostility, but with holy clarity.

And so, I write to say this, Your Majesty: The Christian character of this nation is under profound and accelerating assault.

If the Crown does not stand visibly and courageously in defence of that inheritance, history will record that the guardians of Britain’s institutions watched in silence as the foundations were removed.

The issue before us is not nostalgia. It is civilisation. Remove Christianity from the story of Britain and you do not create a neutral society — you create a moral vacuum. And history teaches us that moral vacuums are never left empty for long.

Your Majesty now stands at a crossroads that few monarchs in modern history have faced.

For the erosion of Britain’s Christian inheritance will not ultimately be judged by speeches made in Parliament or debates in the press. It will be judged by whether those entrusted with the guardianship of our ancient institutions chose to defend them — or merely preside over their quiet surrender.

You may preside over the quiet dissolution of Britain’s Christian identity. Or you may rise to the ancient responsibility entrusted to the Crown and speak with clarity about the faith that built this kingdom. The first path requires little courage. The second will require a great deal. But it is the path that history honours.

Your Majesty’s subjects are not asking for religious coercion. They are asking for leadership. They are asking that the sovereign who bears the title Defender of the Faith remember what that title means.

They are asking that the Crown hear the growing cry of anguish from Christians across this land who feel that the spiritual inheritance of their nation is being surrendered without resistance. And they are asking whether the Crown will stand with them.

For the faith that shaped Britain is not merely a cultural ornament. It is the wellspring from which our laws, our liberties, and our moral imagination have flowed. If it is cast aside, the nation will discover — too late — that it has severed itself from the very roots that sustained it.

Your Majesty, to many the Crown is a symbol of authority. But before God it is also a symbol of stewardship. And stewardship carries with it the duty to defend what has been entrusted.

May Almighty God grant Your Majesty the wisdom to discern this hour, and the courage to fulfil the sacred duty entrusted to the Crown.

Yours faithfully,

Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar FSHC
Missionary Bishop
Diocese of Providence
Confessing Anglican Church

@PhilHs10 @RevBrettMurphy @revwickland @BishopRobert1 @GBNews @TalkTV @danwootton @Jacob_Rees_Mogg @LozzaFox @BackBrexitBen @RupertLowe10 @KemiBadenoch @JohnCleese

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@RijhwaniSheetal I think your post indicates you don’t have children. When you do, the deal is not some quid pro quo, and them having busy, independent and fulfilling lives is not a cause for regret or self-concern, it’s a blessing.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@RabbiPoupko If I could like this many times over, I would ❤️

[Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch @BabakTaghvaee1]

#Breaking: The Islamic Regime of #Iran has decided to begin mass executions of arrested protesters. Executions are set to start on Wednesday. The names of some protesters scheduled for execution have already been announced. One of them is Erfan Soltani, who is to be executed in Karaj. He was arrested on January 9 and is scheduled to be executed on January 14. He was allowed to meet his family today for the final time, for just 10 minutes.

There are hundreds of other protesters reportedly planned for mass execution. If this regime is not overthrown, this number could rise to thousands. The regime has officially admitted to arresting more than 10,000 protesters, though the real number may be three to four times higher.
#IranProtests

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@davidvance Oh stop it David, they have been BUSY 😡

[Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ @sappholives83]

A study from 1988 found that 54% of sex killers investigated were transvestites.

Other studies have found a transvestism rate of 40% among sexually sadistic murderers, a “high frequency of…gender dysphoria in sexual homicide perpetrators,” and a link between gender dysphoria and sexual sadism.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@Keir_Starmer @YvetteCooperMP YOUR information and intelligence failures, you mean.

[Adam Ma'anit @adammaanit]

Two days ago, Laila Soueif, mother of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, shared a Facebook post claiming that the hostages “were not subjected to systematic torture”.

My cousin Tsachi was taken hostage alive after watching his firstborn daughter murdered in front of him. In captivity he was denied medical care, denied visits from the Red Cross, starved, tortured, and ultimately murdered. His body was returned to us so mutilated that forensics had trouble identifying him.

My MP @sianberry never once contacted my family when Tsachi’s remains were finally returned earlier this year. No condolence. No acknowledgement. Just silence.

Yet she is content to stand smiling beside the mother of an extremist who now shares posts denying the torture and mistreatment of the hostages – lies contradicted by the detailed, harrowing testimony of survivors who lived through those abuses and the forensic evidence of those who were murdered.

Soueif’s son called for the killing of Zionists. He called for the expulsion of Jews from Israel. He praised Yahya Sinwar and other terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit deal as “heroes.”

As her constituent, and as someone whose family has paid in blood, the contrast is devastating – silence for the murdered, smiles for those who excuse their tormentors.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@TRHLofficial She’s not cockney, she’s a Northerner, and it’s a spoof.

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@zarahsultana Meh… the NHS is so cash-strapped, I think a sandwich is a more cost-effective option 🤔

[SimmeringFrog @simmering_frog]

@Keir_Starmer Just go. You are hated.