Giant Cactuar

The Irish Tea Sock

[Erdmute Wendlinger @wendlingere49]

I live in Cornwall & have done since the 70ties.All this talk about the North being left behind, no one ever thinks of us in the SW.Young people have to leave if they want a highly paid job, locals have been priced out of houses because of second homes
but no one cares.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

I hear that a backbench MP will be reintroducing the assisted suicide bill.

I cannot think of a more tone-deaf thing to do at a time of national malaise, particularly as the bill divides the Labour Party, and has been rejected by every medical royal college that took a view.

[Dr_Rebecca @Dr_Bekka_UK]

This happened in Australia. 61% of Australian kids found ways around the ban. It has nothing to do with protecting children. After failing to push digital ID through the front door, Labour is now trying to force it through the back door under the guise of protecting children.

[Cat @catdeans]

This is awful. The last ever Denby Pottery going to the kiln. Why is there not uproar? Where’s the government in this?? We all have Denby in our homes, in family heirlooms, as our history and now it’s closing through lack of support, such a sad sad day. #SaveDenby @denbypottery

[James Wright @JPBWFarm]

Natural England wants to remove 90% of Dartmoor’s ponies.

Our Exmoor ponies are next. These animals have been here for thousands of years.

A government quango, destroying the countryside and its heritage.

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@SarahWoods66 We went a couple of times years ago but had the exact same experience. I would recommend RHS Hampton Court show instead - larger, more room to manoeuvre. If you can afford it you can go to the preview evening - quieter again and cooler too

[sarah 🇵🇸 @sazza_jay]

shout out to this councillor who had to listen to a new reform colleague call for ufo monitoring at his first council meeting

[Withnail Jones @withnailjones]

I’m hearing that Andy Burnham has purchased a meal deal at WH Smith in Euston station. Beth, Sam and Sophy are en route to ask the checkout assistant what flavour crisps he chose.

Meanwhile Nigel Farage trousered a £5m bung and didn’t declare it.

Back to the crisps story.

[mariana Z @mariana057]

Interviewer: What is this 4 year gap in your resume?

Me: That's when I went to Yale.

Interviewer: That's impressive, you're hired!

Me: Thanks, I really need this yob.

[Ed Cumming @edcumming]

Without proper training, looking directly at this level of Tatler can cause permanent damage

[Johnny @htownrocket78]

What about second Easter?

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Tunnocks got the sponsorship deal again I see

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@anxietymsgs Buy a house

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

People have been telling me I’m being overly negative about this country. Too pessimistic. Too doom-laden.

I thought I was holding back. So let me lay it all out.

Welcome to the age of compounding crises.

Housing. Average home costs 8x the average salary. A generation locked out. Prices can’t fall without crashing the banks. Can’t rise without locking out more people.

Water. £85 billion extracted in dividends since privatisation. £70 billion in debt loaded onto companies sold debt-free. Victorian pipes leaking billions of litres. Raw sewage discharged for 3.6 million hours in a single year. Bills rising 36% by 2030.

Energy. Net importer. No sovereign strategy. One Gulf crisis and it costs the taxpayer £78 billion in emergency subsidies.

Pensions. One of the worst state pensions in the developed world. Trillions in unfunded public sector liabilities off the books. Median private pot £32,700. You need ten times that. 43% undersaving. The triple lock ratchets costs up automatically with no mechanism to bring them down.

NHS. 7.25 million on the waiting list. Staff leaving. Buildings crumbling. Cancer targets missed. Social care barely exists. A two-tier system emerging. A demographic wave about to make it all worse.

Transport. HS2: £66 billion for 140 miles. Spain built 2,500 miles for $70 billion. We pay 8.5x the European average and deliver a fraction of the result. Roads falling apart. The North still waiting.

Local government. Over half of councils expect bankruptcy within five years. Funding cut 29% in real terms since 2010. Libraries, youth services, social care… gone or going.

Public finances. Debt approaching 97% of GDP. Interest payments exceed the defence budget. Taxes at their highest since the 1940s. Spending plans include cuts the OBR says may be undeliverable.

Productivity. Flat for eighteen years. Worst record since the Industrial Revolution.
Economic inactivity. 1 in 5 working-age people not working. 2.8 million out sick, a record. The only G7 country with lower employment than before the pandemic.

Food. We import 48% of what we eat. 83% of our fruit. 12% of households are food insecure. One supply chain shock and the shelves thin out. We’ve seen it twice already and fixed nothing.

Education. School buildings crumbling. Teachers leaving. £267 billion in student debt, most of which will never be repaid.

Defence. Procurement Parliament called “broken and repeatedly wasting billions.” Equipment plan £19 billion short. A war in Europe and no money to respond properly.

Prisons. 72% overcrowded. Hit 99.7% occupancy. Nearly 40,000 released early because there was nowhere to put them. 23,000 cells don’t meet fire safety standards. Cost to fix: £2.8 billion. Allocated: £520 million.

Car finance. Biggest mis-selling scandal since PPI. 12 million agreements with hidden commissions. £7.5 billion in expected compensation. Another bill landing on an industry already stretched.

Regional inequality. London pulling away from everywhere else. A country where your postcode determines your life expectancy, school quality, job prospects and access to healthcare.

Underneath all of it, the same pattern. Sell the asset. Load it with debt. Extract the value. Defer the maintenance. Hand the bill to the next generation.

None of this is unfixable. This country has the talent and the people to turn every one of these around. But that requires a political class willing to be honest about the scale of what’s broken. What we have instead is a political class that would rather keep us fighting each other than confront the structural failures staring them in the face. Because fixing them is hard, unpopular, and takes longer than an electoral cycle. So they commission a review, blame the last lot, and nothing changes.

I’d love to be more optimistic. And the history and people of this country still make me somewhat hopeful. But our politics needs to drastically change if we’re going to get anywhere.

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@HiroyaTsunekawa Lovely buttons! It’s like a sailor style collar but all in black?

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@iSlimfit Transport in London is good, elsewhere not so much. If you can afford to run a car, there’s so much beautiful countryside to see but food and attraction costs are very high.

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@MalditaSummer Used to do that all the time as a kid here in the UK.

[Mr Pomble @realmrpomble]

The ruler is beefing with the pope, his legions have fought to a stalemate with Persia, now typhus is breaking out in a major city, oh yeah it’s late antiquity out there

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@asahi_so_prod That’s a cool tshirt - I love the little fish bottles!

[Giant Cactuar @zingiber2000]

@intrvrtdintrvrt It’s blowing a gale out there. That wind would skin you alive.