🧵1. The pandemic was weaponised to create government weakness and mayhem. It was a vile era in our political history.

What is about to happen in the US should have happened here, with a top to bottom reappraisal and reform. Covid sent the revolution off course [for a while, maybe]. 2. There's been long standing unhappiness with the status quo: the only cohort content with it were the politicians, happy for other institutions to do the thinking & heavy lifting, whilst they legislated on minor issues & faffed with social policy.

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1. The same story in the US. Hotels in central Massachusetts being used to house thousands of asylum seekers. The National Guard protect some. 3 have burnt down, cause unknown, possibly poor fire regulation? 2. Legal migrants are angry because they came to the US by legitimate process & received none of the assistance given to those in the hotels: accommodation, meals, healthcare, stipends. Americans are angry because there's no consent for what's happening.

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1. Legislation for welfare & benefits legislation should be provided to the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) prior to it being laid.

This did not happen. 2. The Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations were laid during the summer recess, thus it circumvented the SSAC due to parliamentary holidays.

Winter Fuel Allowance #WinterGate

1. During the summer recess, when parliament wasn't sitting, the government laid the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payments Regulations 2024. 2. A House of Lords scrutiny committee criticised this action, describing it as "poor practice". There was no DWP impact assessment to accompany the statutory instrument nor any account taken of the 10% increase in fuel prices when the energy price cap is removed this autumn.

1.
Well!

My best mate called round to use the bathroom scales to weigh holiday suitcase.

I've known her for donkeys years & she's a good soul. We get along really well, but in many ways share little in common, other than living in the same village & being of similar age. 2. She has a daughter who is in a relationship with a trans 'lesbian' who is also old enough to be her grandfather.

She has a vegan son who wears yoga pants, smokes lots of weed & has a man bun.

They're as lefty as they come.

Best mate and her man bun son voted for Reform!

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JUST NOT SEXY ENOUGH

1. Like furious Jack Russell's burying bones in sand, the legal entities of X trot out excuses to cover the poxy arses of those who deserve to be exposed for what they are: self serving gits who saw no political capital in the plight of sub Postmasters 2. "They were private prosecutions, the CPS/DPP didn't know, stupid".

Really? How feasible is that?

It's considered the biggest mass miscarriage of justice in Britain, yet it allegedly went unnoticed by the CPS top brass for years.

🧵IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON RURAL ECONOMY

1. I moved to the land of the Barley Barons (Lincolnshire) in the 90's. The land around here is mostly flat and productive. Cereals are the main crops, with some veg grown a few miles outside the village where the land is freer draining. 2. When I moved here there were 4 farming enterprises. 3 large and 1 small farm, but all were family owned. The largest, a multigenerational enterprise comprised a few farms with small estates of farm workers cottages.

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1. Protestors deviated from the pre agreed route.

2. The pre agreed finish time was ignored.

3. Protestors mobbed a politician at Victoria Station & followed him some distance, shouting & intimidating along the way. 4. Monuments were used as climbing frames, again, & Palestinian flags were wrapped around statues.

5. There were pockets of violence & widespread intimidation.

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1. I'm old enough to remember when coppers were coppers. Not all of it was good & some exploited their power.

My parents kept a busy country pub, back in the days when licensing hours were mandatory & opening/closing times were set in stone. 2. Sunday night was early closing, 10.30pm instead of 11pm. My parents used to look forward to the early closing as it meant, if they were lucky, they could catch a few minutes tv before the tv stations closed for the night.

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1. We sat and watched the BLM protests. Thousands behaving badly, defacing statues, injuring police, to punish a country that held no culpability for the murder of George Floyd.

Guilty by association, I presume? 2. Shush, be quiet racist, these [non] peaceful protests are a right, can't you see you're the problem?

Sat at home, subject to Covid restrictions, watching in bewilderment, wondering what price multiculturalism?

1. They don't 'welcome refugees'. It's just a cop out phrase by those who won't take international organisations to task.

They'll happily call perfectly respectable citizens fascists, but don't have the bottle to admit current Conventions are woefully out of date & need reform. 2. It's nothing to with xenophobia, it's to do with collapsing infrastructure where public services cannot cope with the volume of people entering Europe. It's resulting in a dilution of living standards & heritage.

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1.
The Pill
Periods
PMT
Miscarriage
Pregnancy
Post natal depression
Prolapse
Piles
Bladder weakness
Endometriosis
Menopause

It's not all jam & Jerusalem.

Women only organisations provide a soft social service to biological women. 2. Many women would feel uncomfortable talking about the above in front of biological males. Not only that, there's nothing a biological male could add to those intimate discussions as he will never experience most of those problems.

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1. The 15 minute city idea.

It's going to kick off big time isn't it?

I fully get the gist of what heavy traffic can do to a city, particularly an historic one with fantastic architecture, but it's not about pollution or noise if petrol/diesel vehicles are to be phased out. 2. So 15 minute cities as a solution to pollution doesn't seem to be the reason.

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1. The only people who were surprised at the fall from grace of the SNP & Sturgeon were the politicians and the press.

The remaining 99.9% of the population saw it coming a mile off, ages ago:

The open hatred towards the rest of the UK. 2. The obvious dangers in their Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

The mistaken belief that harsher, longer coronavirus restrictions would be interpreted by the electorate as an administration that cares more for its people.

🧵
1. The most important words said during the inquiry into Boris Johnson.

Harriet Harman stated:

"There has been much comment on whether the Committee is relying on the Sue Gray Report Material. We are not relying on any such material, nor will we." 2. That statement is entirely at odds with the Committee of Privileges, Fourth Report of Session 2022-2023, published just 3 weeks prior to Ms Harman's statement.

Boris Johnson press release, copied from @GuidoFawkes

‘I am grateful to the committee for their work over the last ten months. I believe that their labours have helped establish the obvious truth: It is clear from this report that I have not committed any contempt of parliament 2. It is also clear that what I have been saying about this matter from the beginning has been vindicated. That is because there is no evidence in the report that I knowingly or recklessly misled parliament, or that I failed to update parliament in a timely manner.

1. It seems to me that world events have forced perspective. Whilst the UK has been kicked from pillar to post since 2016, it became clear that our leaving the EU rocked the core of the Brussels institution. 2. The EU did what it always does: insults, bullies & makes a lot of noise. It created a hostile atmosphere with entrenched views on both sides & sometimes irrational behaviour (see Article 16 invoked/not invoked - let's pretend it didn't happen).