THIS DAY in 1916, the Battle of Verdun ended.

It was France's Somme, lasting from February the whole of the year until December.

303 days made it the longest and costliest battle in human history;

French lost 377,000, Germans almost as many. General Pétain organised day-and-night transport by lorry and taxi, bringing a constant stream of troops into the town.

His narrow victory made him a national hero.

His reputation would be destroyed when in WWII, he collaborated with the Nazis in the Vichy Puppet Government.

The Small Boat Crisis - How do we solve it?

Answer: We don’t. Bear with me.

Because we’re looking at the problem from the wrong end. The small boats are not a crisis, only in that they add to the real problems:

- The rapidly growing shortage of hotels for asylum seekers;

- The interminably long delay for those people to have their applications processed.

By the way, in #London, The #ULEZ Expansion being implemented by Mayor Khan ...

... is by stipulation of the Tory Government in 2020.

1/3. Precisely, by Transport Minister (at the time) Grant Shapps, to Sadiq Kjhan, 14/05/2022, Section 12, Part (h) .. as a part of the Central Government TFL Pricing Agreement.

2/3.

So a Care ‘Charity’ set up by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had 1 employee, who not only had never worked in the arena, but was a former employee of Jeremy Hunt who resigned in disgrace, and who’s now re-employed by Jeremy Hunt, and received 2/3 of the charity’s income as salary. In addition the ''charity' pledged to use donated funds to research and report on Patient Care.

Research completed : Unknown.
Reports published : Zero.

For a few weeks I have been evaluating @bikemap and @komoot as cycle mapping applications.

One or t’other, not both, would get my hard earned monthly fee.

Well, a decision has been made.

Actually, enforced upon me by an unethical business practice. Having used both of the free versions, I had decided to go with @bikemap, until today when having not used the app for a couple of weeks I discovered something absolutely atrocious.

THIS DAY in 1933, a refugee arrived at #Dover with a patchy work history and no ties to this country, fleeing oppression from the #Nazi regime who had burned his books and turned his home into a #Nazi Youth Centre. The UK Authorities misplaced his papers.

His landing card - his only documentation at the time - was lost and only rediscovered in 2011.

The Daily Mail urged readers to boycott his lectures raising money for other refugees from the #Nazi regime.

Just finished Series 1 of ‘Ten Percent’, the UK remake of the fabulous ‘Dix Pour Cent’.

It’s good. Not great, but very good. It suffers only from a cast which is above average but not superlative, and the natural comparison with the original.

Which was always going to happen. If you’ve seen the Stephen Fry comedy ‘Absolute Power’ about the PR firm Prentice McCabe, it has that kind of sophisticated dry ‘aren’t we so clever?’ observational humour.

Even the music and scene-setting b-roll shots are very similar.

I've discovered a solution to the #NHS #Covid Staffing Crisis.

It's simple.

Variable treatment according to status. The Unvaccinated who chose to disbelieve medical science should be cared for in a marquee in the hospital car park by Gavin, a plumber, Steve the trainee, and a random collection of people selected from Facebook and YouTube.

You know ... people they trust.

In case you missed it, a #Brexit Party candidate, Stephen Peddie, was found guilty this week of threatening to shoot #Labour MP Dawn Butler in the Head.

Peddie owns a licensed firearm. @jdpoc Peddie claimed it was justified in response to spending carried out by the MP on her property, reported by Idiot Toby Young @toadmeister … which turned out to be a complete myth.

Young’s post incited the death threat.

The four most famous (in America) “doctors” who are responsible for pushing Covid AntiVax conspiracy theories:

Dr Shaun Brooks, ‘PhD, Oxford’. His doctorate and PhD are in education, not medicine, and from an online company. @jdpoc He has never worked in any medical environment. When he says Oxford, he means Oxford, Ohio, not Oxford University.

Bonehill was a Tory, then a Ukip member, then no party would have him.

He was jailed for multiple offences.

Many, including Far Right Watch, helped to put him there by ID'ing his social media posts and proving his authorship.

https://twitter.com/TweetForTheMany/status/1474450710825689094

Bonehill was a fantasist, and on the autistic scale somewhat, but he was dangerous nonetheless. He's now out of prison.

10th of February in 2022 sees the 50th anniversary of an icon: the birth of Ziggy Stardust, first live performance of the character by David Bowie in 1972 … @jdpoc The performance was at the Toby Jub pub, in #Tolworth, just south of #Surbiton, literally about 200 yards away from where I live. The site has recently been bulldozed ready for redevelopment

THIS DAY in 1983, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from USA, with 4 more missiles behind it. Lt Col Stanislav Petrov, officer in command of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, decided against strict orders to wait for corroborating evidence — of which none arrived — rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command as was procedure.

Best football banner ever.

But it needs explanation: Corinth is the #Tolworth’s Corinthian Casuals, founded 1939 by merger of the Corinthians (1882) and the Casuals (1883), two of Britain’s oldest football clubs.

Lefi is #Surbiton legend ‘Lefi the Goat Boy’. @jdpoc … Seething is a community in #Surbiton famed for its madcap festivals and charity sports events.

‘Torcida’ is South American slang for a group of football supporters: the Casuals have been hugely popular in South America for over a century.

Today I learned this :

In 1962, John Glenn lifted off in Friendship 7 to become the first American to orbit the planet.

Here's a brilliant (and short) true story about something that happened a few days before. Due to multiple computer problems with the (then) new IBM systems, Glenn demanded all the orbit calculations be recalculated by hand, by one person - a brilliant black female mathemetician called Katherine Johnson.

THIS DAY in 2007, Andrée de Jongh died.

Let me tell you about this amazing woman.

In WWII, codenamed Dédée, and aged just 21, she created the famous Comet Evasion Line to get Allied soldiers and airmen back to England. She set up safehouses along the route from Belgium to Spain, procured clothes and false IDs, and ran the entire operation.

She personally made about 24 round trips before 'handing off' to other trusted couriers.

Arrested by the Nazis in January 1943, she did not break.

THIS DAY in 1914, began the six-day Battle of the Marne.

It resulted in an Allied victory against the German armies which stopped the German advance - leading to a stalemate that would result in the trench warfare that followed.

1/4. The Marne was pre-steel helmets.

Images of the time look like they could have come from the US Civil War 50 years previously.

2/4.

09-04, THIS DAY n 1957, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford strode through screaming white students and parents to try to enter High School in #Arkansas, one of the 'Little Rock Nine'.

1/5. A mob of 400 screaming and jeering white parents and children, with the active collusion of the #Arkansas National Guard (under the Governor's orders), stopped her and the others entering.

2/5.

So that’s 93.

93 Uturns : Pledges reversed, policies cancelled, promises scrapped, since these Lying #Tories came into office.

Tories refuse to reveal billionaire donor dinners - a year after promising they would.

mirror.co.uk/news/politics/… So that’s 94.

94 Uturns : Pledges reversed, policies cancelled, promises scrapped, since these Lying #Tories came into office.

#Tories ran in 2019 on a manifesto promise of not increasing taxes or NI.

Now they plan to do so, for Social Care.

Yhread : On simple technical solutions to fighting online racism and other forms of hatred. Last night after the England gane, and the resultant avalanche of racist vitriol aimed at a handful of players, we put out an alert / appeal on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jdpoc/status/1414358494329901056

Enter "to:@MarcusRashford" in your Twitter sarch box, and REPORT EVERY SINGLE RACIST TWEET.

(He seems to be getting the most of it)

At the same time, screenshot everyone you can ID.

Email them to farrightwatch@gmail.com.

If we can ID theim and their employers ... we will. @MarcusRashford How we do this (for the technically curious)

We create custom search pages on the socmed platforms, and run 'wget' in bash/*nix on these every 10 seconds and/or refresh, then pipe (||) from stdout to 'sed' to wash non-ascii ...