Simon West 🇬🇧

Financial Adviser specialising in investments & pensions. Karateka. Proud of Norfolk. Own views.

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

#Bitcoin is not an investment. It’s a
decentralised collective betting game.

The bet is that you can sell your bitcoin for more than you paid for it.

Staked with the real money you exchanged.

There is no bookie.

You’re betting against the other players.
#ZeroSumGame

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@DanNeidle The hate flows through them because they believe they are better people than everyone else. Their beliefs are so tightly held it’s cult like.

They despise anyone who disagrees with their faith or attack their priests.
To do so is a direct attack on their sense of self.

[Rafe Heydel-Mankoo @RafHM]

Only idiots and Britain haters blame Churchill for the Bengal Famine

This myth only became popular in 2010 after a ridiculous book was published by a far-left journalist with no historical training

This is what REALLY happened:

1. A cyclone hit Bengal in 1942, destroying crops

2. They were already suffering from the worst rice brown spot epidemic on record

3. Normally in a famine grain would be imported from Burma, Malaya, Phillipines, Thailand etc. But WW2 ws raging and our Japanese enemy now controlled those areas

4. The Japanese had bombed Indian ports, which also destroyed grain

5. Shipping grain in was hugely dangerous because Japanese fleet was blockading the Bay of Bengal and sinking ships
Remember, the Axis powers were sinking one ship every day and had sunk around a million tons of shipping in 1942.

6. On top of that local Indian speculative traders were unforgivably HOARDING grain. With inflation rife, this was classic wartime speculation as they could make (and expected to make) much more money by hoarding rather than selling immediately.

7. Local government and administrators were slow to act and initially told the UK government there was enough grain in Bengal.
One can blame the democratically elected Government of Bengal, people like Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (Minister of Civil Supplies for the newly formed Muslim League) and Sir John Herbert (the Governor of Bengal) for exacerbating conditions in the Bengal Famine. But not Churchill.

What did Churchill do? Everything he could.

Remember also, he was thousands of miles away in a different continent fighting the Second World War and preparing for D-Day.

Yet despite all his other commitments he worked hard to save the people of Bengal.

1. When the British government found out about the famine’s severity in August 1943, they authorised around 1 million tons of grain to be shipped to India between then and December 1944.

2. Churchill pushed Australia to send wheat

3. Churchill personally requested shipping assistance from U.S. President Roosevelt in April 1944 to transport it from Australia. Roosevelt declined, stating US ships were needed for the Pacific campaign and the upcoming D-Day operations.

4. Thanks to Churchill grain arrived from Iraq (barley), and Canada as well as Australia.

5. Crucially, Churchill was responsible for appointing the man who played such a pivotal role in stopping the Bengal Famine: Field Marshal Wavell. Wavell knew India and its people extremely well and was a magician of logistics. He drafted in the army to move food supplies and halted the famine.

Why are tax payers funding Helen Cammock's ignorant, anti-British propaganda at the @NPGLondon?

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@catdeans @QcWynter @denbypottery This is mad Ed’s fault!

[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!!

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@novaramedia Want to borrow to fund people sitting on benefits doing nothing?
Bond markets will see you and choose not to lend!
Numpty!!!

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@daniel_ashman @afneil Your assertion that these companies are involved in crimes is not correct.
Is the gun manufacturer guilty of murder, or the person pulling the trigger?

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

Every time a German Messerschmitt pilot wanted to escape a Spitfire on his tail, he did the same thing.
He pushed the nose down.
In a dive, the German engine kept running — it used fuel injection. The British Spitfire's engine cut out. For one and a half seconds the Merlin went dead, the aircraft shuddered, and by the time it caught again the German was gone. Worse: if a German was behind a British pilot and the British pilot dove to escape, the German could follow and keep shooting while the British engine was silent.
Pilots were dying because of a carburetor.
The engineers at Farnborough knew about the problem. They were working on a long-term solution — a redesigned carburetor that would take years to perfect and manufacture.
A woman named Beatrice Shilling fixed it with a washer.

She was born in Hampshire in 1909 and was the kind of child who spent her pocket money on Meccano sets and tools. At fourteen she bought her first motorbike. Her mother, with the inspired instinct of someone who understood what her daughter actually was, found the Women's Engineering Society and arranged an apprenticeship at an electrical firm.
She went to Manchester University — one of the first two women ever to study engineering there — graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, stayed another year for a master's in mechanical engineering, and in 1936 joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough as a scientific officer.
By the late 1930s she was one of the best carburetor engineers in Britain. She was also one of only three women to hold the British Motorcycle Racing Club's Gold Star — awarded for lapping the Brooklands racing circuit at over 100 miles per hour on a motorcycle.
She had reportedly told her future husband, an engineer named George Naylor, that she wouldn't marry him until he earned his own Brooklands Gold Star first.
He earned it. They married in 1938.

The problem with the Merlin was specific and lethal. The SU carburetor used a float chamber to regulate fuel flow. Under negative g-forces — the forces experienced in a sudden dive — the fuel flooded to the top of the float chamber and starved the engine for 1.5 seconds. Just enough time for a German pilot to turn the tables entirely.
The RAF had known about this since the Battle of France. The formal solution — a redesigned pressure carburetor — was in development but wouldn't be ready for years.
Shilling was thirty-one years old, working in carburetor research, and she designed a fix in weeks.
A brass thimble with a precisely calibrated hole in the center — later simplified to a flat washer — fitted inline in the fuel line just before the carburetor. It restricted maximum fuel flow to just enough to prevent flooding without cutting off power. The key breakthrough: it could be fitted without taking the aircraft out of service. No downtime. No factory return.
The old guard at the RAE looked at it and called it a plumbing fix. They called her a plumber. The first batch of 5,000 units was made by a Birmingham firm that normally manufactured plumbing fixtures, which they found embarrassing.
The RAF pilots who flew Spitfires with Messerschmitts on their tails called it something else.
They called it Miss Shilling's Orifice. With deep affection.

By March 1941 she had organized a small team and was personally touring RAF fighter stations across England — traveling between bases on her old racing motorcycle — fitting the device to every Merlin engine they could reach. Squadron leaders all over the country were demanding installations. The word spread faster than the official channels could keep up with.
The Germans noticed. They couldn't explain why British fighter pilots had suddenly started following them into dives. They were baffled by the new aggression. They didn't know about the washer.

(More story replies)

[Hiroshi Suzuki @AmbJapanUK]

Happy St George's Day!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Sweden is committing more than €100 million to a sweeping classroom overhaul: replacing tablets and screens with traditional printed textbooks to help reverse falling student performance and sharpen focus.

After more than a decade of embracing digital-first education, Swedish authorities are now pivoting back to paper-based learning. Official data and recent studies cited by the Ministry of Education show that prolonged screen use in class has been linked to shorter attention spans, weaker reading comprehension, and reduced critical-thinking abilities.

Research consistently finds that reading on illuminated screens requires greater mental effort and invites more distractions compared to the calm, linear experience of physical books—factors believed to have contributed to declining academic outcomes in recent years.

Under the new plan, every student will receive printed textbooks for all core subjects, restoring books as the central learning tool. Digital devices and online resources will remain available as supportive tools, but they will no longer dominate daily instruction.

This bold €100+ million investment signals Sweden’s leadership in rethinking the role of technology in education. It underscores a broader, growing recognition worldwide: while screens provide speed and access, the hands-on, distraction-free engagement of physical books supports deeper concentration, stronger memory retention, and more effective long-term learning.

By choosing paper over pixels, Sweden is charting a path toward a more balanced, evidence-informed classroom future—one that puts proven pedagogical principles ahead of unchecked digital trends.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Good question

[Mark Wallace @wallaceme]

North Sea oil and gas:

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

Last year Britain lost a THIRD of its refineries.

Why? A Carbon Tax on industry that Ed Miliband doubled.

We won’t need any less petrol, diesel, jet fuel, ceramics or chemicals - we'll just rely more on foreign imports.

We must axe the Carbon Tax and save British industry.

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@MerrynSW @BBCr4today 😂

[Jack @FFS_WhatNow]

"Hitler was a failed art student and a vegan who blamed all his problems on rich people and the Jews.

"If he was around today, he'd be attending the Green Party conference'

Superb @LeoKearse 👏👏👏

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

RenewableUK.

Greg Jackson from Octopus.

Tony Blair.

The Chair of GB Energy.

All support more drilling in the North Sea.

Thousands of jobs lost, billions in tax revenue gone, more reliance on dirtier imports - all because Ed Miliband is too ideological to admit he is wrong.

[Miss Jo @therealmissjo]

Mégane, a beautiful young woman was in her second floor apartment in Cherbourg in August 2023.

She heard a hammering on her door and thought someone had the wrong apartment so opened it.

She was overpowered by Oumar Ndiaye, an 18 year old Muslim migrant.

He not only beat her but he r*ped her with a 75cm broom handle, before threatening her life if she talked.

She was taken to hospital where she was found to have perforation of the colon, small intestine, peritoneum, and diaphragm, a pneumothorax, rib fractures, and a high risk of septic shock.

She was operated on for hours and then put in an induced coma for a month.

She survived but is traumatised physically and mentally from this attack.

This case has caused outrage in France but barely made the media outside the country. Ndiaye is on trial this week.

At the age of 18, Ndiaye already had a lengthy criminal record: five convictions by the juvenile court for property damage and violence. He was also known for reports of a sexual nature, including a 2019 case of rape of a minor that was dismissed, and an ongoing investigation into the sexual assault of his sister.

Why was he not locked up earlier? Mégane paid the price for this weakness.

[Ros Altmann @rosaltmann]

The Pension Schemes Bill contains dangerous measures that would force pension funds to invest according to Ministerial diktats. The House of Lords will try to throw these measures out next week, they are potentially really dangerous. Read my blog. https://t.co/e8kFyvX6hk

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@sharrond62 Somebody in the NHS needs to be held accountable. For shame.

[Simon West 🇬🇧 @simonwest247]

@AlanJLSmith @FT Supporting bitcoin is anti-capitalist.

[Clean Up Britain @cleanupbritain]

Far too many of Britain’s roadside verges look like this. Our camera surveillance campaign is aimed at instilling uncertainty and fear of being caught in the minds of litterers and fly-tippers. Please donate or share:
https://t.co/QhbpBWaHLc