Tim Whittome

[Scottish Conservatives @ScotTories]

They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

This is who John Swinney chooses to platform at his party’s conference.

We are clear: Israel has the right to exist.

[History Girl @HistoryGirlBW]

Peggy the spaniel runs the bar at a Brighton hotel in 1944. She fetches the beer, clears up the spillages, and settles a fight by bringing a mallet. Then she rings the bell for last orders.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Your body is hunting equipment from the skull to the heel, and you have been using it to carry shopping.

Your brain burns a fifth of your energy sitting still. Nothing that expensive gets built on leaves. It was paid for in meat and fat, and it was built to plan a kill.

Your eyes face forward, like every animal that chases and unlike every animal that gets chased.

The whites of them are on show so the hunter beside you can follow your gaze without a word being said.

You have two to four million sweat glands and no fur. You are the best-cooled animal on land.

An antelope cannot pant and gallop at once. You can sweat and jog all afternoon.

You have a ligament running up the back of your neck whose only job is to hold your head steady at a run. No ape has it.

Your shoulder throws at ninety miles an hour. A chimp, far stronger pound for pound, manages twenty.

Your backside is the largest muscle you own, and it hardly switches on until you break into a run.

Your Achilles tendon is a long spring that hands back energy on every stride. A chimp barely has one.

In the Kalahari, men still run a kudu to a standstill in the midday heat. It takes a few hours and the kudu loses.

In mid Wales every June, people race horses over twenty-two miles of hill. People have won it three times.

A brain to plan it, eyes to aim it, a cooling system, a throwing arm and a spring in each heel.

Nobody has ever needed any of that to creep up on a blackberry.

[(((Coca Camhi))) @CocaCamhi]

Hola, soy palestino. 🇵🇸
Y como la honestidad es poco común en mi política, permítanme confesar algunas cosas.

1947. La ONU me ofreció un estado. Junto a Israel. Fronteras, independencia, reconocimiento. Dije que no. Mis líderes prometieron que la guerra "arrojaría a los judíos al mar". En cambio, lo perdí todo y lo llamaron catástrofe. No porque no me ofrecieran un estado, sino porque lo rechacé.

1948–2025. Los estados árabes podrían haberme integrado, dado derechos, pasaportes, dignidad. En cambio, me encerraron en campos de refugiados durante generaciones, para que siguiera siendo un arma contra Israel. Construyeron palacios para ellos y cárceles para mí. Me usaron como propaganda, no como personas.

1967. Tras otra guerra perdida, podría haber construido un estado en Cisjordania y Gaza. En cambio, insistí en "ni paz, ni reconocimiento, ni negociaciones". Tres noes. Cincuenta años después, sigo sin Estado. Resulta que el rechazo no paga el alquiler.

Oslo, década de 1990. Israel dijo: «Intentémoslo». Me dio autonomía. Armas para la policía. Miles de millones en ayuda. ¿Qué hicieron mis líderes? Robaron el dinero, armaron milicias y lanzaron una intifada. Atentados suicidas en lugar de escuelas. Cohetes en lugar de fábricas.

Gaza, 2005. Israel se fue por completo. Sin colonos, sin soldados. Tuve la oportunidad de convertir Gaza en un Singapur mediterráneo. Voté por Hamás. La convirtieron en Mogadiscio junto al mar. ¿Miles de millones en ayuda? Túneles, cohetes y palacios para sus líderes, mientras mi gente come comida enlatada en la oscuridad.

¿Democracia? No he tenido elecciones en casi 20 años. Hamás mata a los disidentes en Gaza. Fatah los encarcela en Cisjordania. Mis líderes cancelan elecciones porque están demasiado ocupados luchando por el poder.

Religión. En lugar de construir un futuro, pongo a clérigos en televisión enseñando a los niños a odiar a los judíos. Glorifico a los "mártires" que hacen estallar autobuses. Crío a mis hijos con canciones de sangre y fuego en lugar de libros y ciencia. Cambio la esperanza por la guerra santa.

Mundo árabe. Los regímenes árabes me llaman "hermano". Pero pregúntenles cuántos palestinos pueden vivir libremente en Líbano, Siria, Egipto o Kuwait. Me excluyen, pero celebran mi muerte, porque mi muerte es su excusa.

Absurdo. Sigo diciendo que quiero "construir un estado". E irónicamente, justo al lado está Israel: el vecino que construyó una democracia próspera, una potencia tecnológica, granjas en el desierto, ciudades de polvo. Sin petróleo, sin riqueza infinita, solo coraje. Podría haber aprendido, copiado, colaborado. En cambio, elegí la envidia y la rabia.

Obsesión antijudía. Podría haber aceptado a los judíos como vecinos. Podría haber dicho: "Dos naciones, dos estados". En cambio, repito: "Del río al mar". En lugar de exhibir el honor, la hospitalidad y la rica cultura árabe, mostré solo la cultura de la espada: la ira, el extremismo y la sangre. En lugar de gritar salaam (paz) a los israelíes, grité muerte a los judíos. Y luego finjo sorprenderme cuando los israelíes no confían en mí, cuando están enojados, decepcionados y convencidos de que no quiero coexistencia en absoluto.

Responsabilidad. Culpo a Israel de todo. Siempre. ¿Mis líderes roban miles de millones? Culpa de Israel. ¿Hamás dispara cohetes desde hospitales? Culpa de Israel. ¿Glorifico la muerte más que la vida? Culpa de Israel. La responsabilidad no es mi fuerte.

Soy palestino.
Podría haber construido una nación, muchas veces. Elegí el rechazo, la corrupción y la guerra sin fin. Podría haber vivido en paz con Israel, pero elegí vivir a la sombra de su destrucción.

Así que sí, soy una víctima. Pero con demasiada frecuencia, soy víctima de mis propios líderes, de mis propias decisiones y de mi propia negativa a abandonar el odio.

Y esa, querido lector, es la tragedia que nadie quiere admitir.

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

The FT with a very helpful graph on understanding why diesel prices are high. Trump's got the wrong war in mind. https://t.co/SQHWVEQud3

[Steve Loftus @LoftusSteve]

There's constant talk online of the lack of new reservoirs in England. It's become symbolic of a failing water industry to a certain section of social media.

They will tell you a lack of new reservoirs is due to chronic under investment due to privatisation. But they are wrong.

[Tim Whittome @TimWhittome]

@TheGentsGuild And now they own Holland & Holland

[European Greens @europeangreens]

Our statement on the recent Green Party of England and Wales motion 'Zionism is Racism'.

https://t.co/XXx2xo6cpe

[The Knowledge Archivist @KnowledgeArchiv]

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”

— Johann Sebastian Bach

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

To truly understand the Birmingham Tapestry, I have asked a doctor of Anglo-Saxon History to take us all through it.

Step forward, Conservative Party Deputy Leader, Dr @alexburghart .

[PATRYCJUSZ NRD @PatrycjuszNRD]

Chyba nie można lepiej zobrazować różnice GenX vs Milenias

[Rachel Moiselle @RachelMoiselle]

Brenda Power is a rare voice of moral clarity amongst the Irish commentariat on this issue. In under a minute she eviscerates Ireland’s hypocrisy.

‘There wasn’t a single peep of protest to the Irish cricket team voluntarily playing Afghanistan last month, where women are treated worse than battery chickens. It is the most extreme humanitarian crisis in the world right now, as far as I can see, the gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Not a word of protest.’

‘Where was your indignation when we played [Afghanistan]? England wouldn’t play them, South Africa wouldn’t play them, New Zealand wouldn’t play them. The great humanitarians in Ireland had absolutely no difficulty. We’re hypocrites.’

[Tim Whittome @TimWhittome]

@allchronology The irony of a socialist complaining about labour camps.

[Tim Whittome @TimWhittome]

@1968Tv Barry Davies was easily the best

[Ameer Kotecha @Ameer_Kotecha]

This is such a good letter in the Spectator. Sums up how the insanity plays out on the ground @toadmeister

[Outpost @OutpostStudios]

Why We Mock Christianity but Fear Islam.

This week's Brazier, with @ColinBrazierTV.

Only on @OutpostStudios.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

MP: "It only affects the wealthiest estates. Most family farms won't pay a penny."

Farmer: "Mine's 300 acres. Grass is making £8,600 an acre. Do the sum."

MP: "That's £2.58 million, so you'd be just over the threshold. A very small bill."

Farmer: "The farm made £9,800 last year. Whose money pays the small bill?"

MP: "There's an interest-free option over 10 years."

Farmer: "Interest-free on money I haven't got, paid out of an income I haven't got, for 10 years. That's not a concession. That's a repayment plan for a mugging."

MP: "Land values reflect real wealth."

Farmer: "They reflect what a solar developer offered the man next door. I've never sold an acre. His price became my tax."

MP: "You could sell a portion to settle it."

Farmer: "Sell 60 acres and the herd no longer fits. Sell the herd and there's no farm. So the portion is the whole thing on a delay."

MP: "The policy targets people using farmland as a tax shelter."

Farmer: "Then look at who buys the 60 acres. A pension fund. A fund doesn't die. It'll hold that field for a century and never pay a penny of this tax."

MP: "..."

Farmer: "So the tax lands on the one owner who keeps farming until he's dead, and it hands his field to the one owner who can't be taxed by dying."

MP: "The Treasury has to raise revenue."

Farmer: "From me it won't. I'll sell the good ground before I go, there'll be no tax event, and you'll have lost the farm and the money in the same afternoon."

MP: "That seems a drastic reading."

Farmer: "Which of us is the loophole? The man who feeds you off it until he dies, or the fund that never has to?"

[No Farmers, No Food @NoFarmsNoFoods]

Jeremy Clarkson. 🎯

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

Random public high school required reading list from 1978

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

London is healing.

This depressing post-war block in Kensington was torn down and replaced with a neo-Georgian terrace, similar to what stood there before it was hit by an aerial bomb.

The post-war blight had previously been designated a Grade II listed building in 2007, on the basis of its "simple but forceful expression of the Modernist principles of form and function."

Fortunately, this was later revoked citing a "procedural error."

What we have now is a beautiful, white-stucco-fronted townhouse, complete with porticoes and balconies just like its neighbours. Life restored to the otherwise intact square.