Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦

AV Manager, born in Kent, now live in Surrey, but still a Man of Kent. Married with one daughter. Proud British European. Member of the Independent Company.

[Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦 @Ste_Bar]

@premierleague This entire season is ruined, any punishment should have been imposed before the season started.

[Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick]

Party to celebrate Ian Hislop's 40 years as editor of Private Eye & 65 years at the magazine. Has anyone currently in public life held the same job for longer? The Eye is the greatest journalistic institution of my lifetime. Long may Ian and the Eye reign.

[Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦 @Ste_Bar]

@AffinityWater Any idea when your ‘temporary’ hosepipe ban will be lifted?
I do hope you and other southern water companies are working hard on ways to get plentiful water supplies down from the North.

[Michael O sullivan @Michael65108132]

👀

[Lemon @Lemonbryz]

🚨🎙️ Roy Keane on Ryan Gravenberch’s Red Card Against Manchester City;

🗣️"Listen, I’m sitting here absolutely flabbergasted by what I’ve just witnessed. We are talking about Liverpool versus Manchester City at Anfield. This isn't a pre-season kick-around, this isn't a mid-table dead-rubber—this is as big as it gets in world football. You’ve got millions watching around the globe, two top-class teams going toe-to-toe, and the entire match gets ruined because the officials want to be the main event.

Look at the match context! Ryan Gravenberch was having one of his absolute best games in a Liverpool shirt. He’s driving through the midfield, he’s testing Gianluigi Donnarumma with a cracking strike from range, and then literally seconds later, he makes a recovery challenge in the City half on Jérémy Doku. Was it a foul? Yeah, fine, give a free-kick. But to whip out a second yellow card in the 62nd minute for that? It is an absolute disgrace.

The first yellow card early in the second half was soft enough as it was, but to issue a second yellow—effectively killing the entire spectacle—requires a level of common sense and match management that these referees simply don't possess right now. Where is the game management? Where is the understanding of what is at stake? Referee Chris Kavanagh couldn't wait to get his card out. It’s refereeing by a textbook without having a single clue about the emotion, intensity, or context of a massive Premier League fixture.

You treat a big game like a big game! You let the players fight it out on the pitch. You don't send a lad off for a minor collision on the halfway line when neither tackle warranted a sending off. And what happens? The moment Liverpool go down to ten men, the entire balance shifts. City take complete control, Erling Haaland scores two minutes later, Doku gets another, and the game is done.

The decision-making from the officials today was shocking. It robs the fans, it robs the players, and frankly, it ruins what should have been an iconic battle. They need to start applying some real football intelligence out there instead of hiding behind harsh whistle-blowing."

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

NEW: Ten years on, Prime Minister @andyburnham tells @campbellclaret & @RoryStewartUK that there was ‘clear’ Russian interference in the Brexit vote.

FINALLY after years of cover-ups & denials from the highest levels of the UK govt. That in itself deserves an inquiry.
1/

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The Royal Navy switched its sailors from cotton to polyester two years before the Falklands, and the sea put the two fabrics to the test on the afternoon of 4 May 1982.

HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet 70 miles off the islands. The warhead did not go off. It did not need to: the rocket fuel did, and the ship filled with fire and black smoke in seconds. Twenty men died. Many more came out of her with burns, and the burns had a feature the surgeons at Ajax Bay and the Uganda had not been trained for.

The shirts had melted. The new working rig was polyester, lighter and cheaper and quicker to dry than the old cotton, and in a flash fire it did what polyester does at 250 degrees, which is turn to liquid and bond to whatever it is touching. Men were brought off with their uniform fused into their skin, and the first job in the burns tent was peeling plastic out of flesh. Nylon socks did the same thing to feet. Anti-flash hoods and gloves, the white cotton gear every sailor still wears at action stations, had saved the faces and hands they covered and left a line where the plastic began.

The lesson was learned at the Sir Galahad too, at Bluff Cove a month later, where the Welsh Guards were caught below decks and the burns ward at Ajax Bay found the same thing.

Afterwards the Navy went back to natural fibres. Cotton action working dress, cotton socks, the wool jumper that had never left. The US Navy took the same lesson from the Falklands and again from the USS Stark in 1987 and banned polyester and Corfam shoes aboard ship. Then, in 2012, it issued a new blue camouflage working uniform, tested it, and had to announce to its own sailors that it would burn robustly and melt into a sticky molten material. The uniform was nylon and cotton. It had been in service for four years.

Every navy that has ever had a fire has arrived at the same answer and then forgotten it as soon as the accountants came back.

Natural fibre does not melt. A sheep's wool will not catch at a temperature a ship fire reaches, and when it chars it stops. Cotton burns, but it burns off, it does not become part of you.

The shirt that went into a man's skin on the Sheffield is the same fabric as the school polo shirt, the fleece, the gym top, the sofa cover and the sheet on the bed.

The Navy had to be shown it once.

You are wearing it now.

[Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦 @Ste_Bar]

@MarinaPurkiss A really expensive ( for me) bottle of Rioja, but not chilled!

[Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick]

British Musuem chairman George Osborne can't just bask in the champagne-swigging glory of hosting the Bayeux Tapestry, he has to get a grip on this contempt for the public. And Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy should pull her finger out too.

[St Gregory Primary @StGregoryCEVCP]

It’s one week today until our Mini March For Finley and we are so close to our target! If you could spare £1 or £2 to help us reach it please, or share this in any way, then we would be so grateful. Thank you! 💚 @FinleysTouch @almurray
https://t.co/wOFscpprNd

[Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker]

Jim Ratcliffe in a nutshell.

[granddesigns @granddesigns]

Bryony and Matt are spending £820,000 on a modern, high-performance home on the Cornish coast - designed to meet the highest environmental standards.

Will they pull it off?

📺 NEW Grand Designs | Tonight, 9pm | Channel 4

[Battle of Britain Bunker @BofBBunker]

#OTD in 1940, the Luftwaffe launched two major attacks over the South East and London to destroy the RAF. This day would later become known as Battle of Britain Day, owing to intensity and importance.

[James May @MrJamesMay]

It’s Battle of Britain Day, commemorating the salvation of the world by these.

#RepeatPlease

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Your regular reminder: If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.

[Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦 @Ste_Bar]

@bbcpress Pity, I hope the next presenter is as relaxed and open to new ideas and continues to encourage everyone to get out and enjoy being in their gardens and promote wildlife.
And also not shy away from the problems of climate change.

[Stephen Barraclough 🇺🇦 @Ste_Bar]

@TheLight_UK hi, do you have any plans to show the new DeGaulle films?

[Al Murray 🇺🇦 @almurray]

The map is upon us! And
@WeHaveWaysPod Festival is next week!
Tickets remaining for fans of wär wäffle.
See you there!
@James1940

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

It has been left to John Healy this morning to announce that, after 38 gruelling days in the job, he and Andy Burnham have given up.

When Healy resigned in protest at Keir Starmer's defence spending plan, it was part of a coordinated plot to remove Starmer and pave the way for an Andy Burnham premiership.

But after taking office to high fanfare and media praise, the Burnham machine seems to have ground to a complete halt.

This morning, Healy has admitted that they are a continuity government; that they cannot do things differently.

Oh, and you know that devastating defence spending plan that Healy resigned over … they have cancelled plans to increase it to 3%.

I am slightly perturbed by this for many reasons but, primarily, it now feels as though we have gone backwards in leadership.

Like Starmer or loathe him, things had steadied. Progress was slow, granted but, as Burnham and Healy have just admitted, there was no other way to move.

What was the point in this coup? Just a shuffle of deckchairs on the Titanic?

[Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker]

Fair comment.