Sam 🇬🇧 🇺🇦

@fleurmeston Why would you!?

Full body sweats

That’s the last time I take health advice from twitter my mouth is on fire

Starmer and Hermer Built the Machine Together. Now They Run the Country. In 2007, two barristers worked without pay on a case that would change the legal landscape for every British soldier who had served in Iraq. Keir Starmer and Richard Hermer appeared as interveners in Al-Skeini v Secretary of State for Defence, representing eleven human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Liberty. Their argument was that the European Convention on Human Rights should apply to British forces operating overseas. They lost in the Court of Appeal. They appealed to the House of Lords. They lost again. But the legal principle they had argued for eventually prevailed at the European Court of Human Rights, and what followed was the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, sixty million pounds of public money, seven years of investigations, and not a single prosecution. The soldiers it pursued were, in almost every case, found to have acted properly. Starmer believed in it enough to do it for free. Johnny Mercer, who spent years dismantling the consequences, put it plainly. Starmer had insisted on doing it for free. That is not the behaviour of a barrister following the cab rank rule. That is ideological conviction. Hermer's conviction, it subsequently emerged, was not without financial reward once the machinery was running. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that having helped establish the legal architecture pro bono in 2007, Hermer then used that same architecture to pursue Iraqi claims against British soldiers at £450 an hour, fifty percent higher than the only other KC involved in the group action. He set his success fee at the maximum level permitted, one hundred percent of his normal rate. The MoD's own lawyers challenged his fees as excessive and said he was too junior to command that rate. He is thought to have earned around six figures from the broader group action. The claims he was pursuing were eventually ruled to be deliberate lies. The soldiers were fully exonerated. Sergeant Richie Catterall had been cleared of wrongdoing by the British Army in 2003 for a fatal shooting in Basra. The Army found he had acted in self-defence. The legal precedent Starmer and Hermer established triggered two further investigations spanning thirteen years. A 2016 inquiry again concluded he had acted in self-defence and found a false document had been created to shift blame onto the military. Catterall was finally exonerated. He told the Telegraph he was gutted that Starmer had helped bring the case against him and that the Prime Minister owed him an apology. Starmer is now Prime Minister. Hermer is now Attorney General, appointed by Starmer personally, elevated to the House of Lords specifically for the role, chosen over Emily Thornberry who had held the shadow brief. The former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, has said Hermer's role in the Al-Sweady claims was tantamount to treason. A former commanding officer of 22 SAS said Hermer must step down. The Bar Standards Board has been asked to investigate. Nigel Farage has reported Hermer to the House of Lords standards commissioner. The Troubles Bill that is now subjecting Northern Ireland veterans to the same lawfare is not an accident of policy. The process that drove Fred, a special forces veteran, to attempt suicide after his medical records were handed to terrorists' families was not an oversight. The machine that cost sixty million pounds and produced no prosecutions was not a mistake. Starmer and Hermer built it together, one working for free out of conviction, the other later working for maximum fees out of the same conviction, and now both occupy the positions from which they can ensure the machine keeps running.

Wonderful news, me and other Europeans can finally immigrate to Bangladesh

@wallaceme Alistair Campbell, a disingenuous hypocrite, you say?

The House of Lords: a story in two acts.

@peterboghossian How are you with DIY?

Me or a free breakfast at Denny's?

@AtticumFloreat Manly.

Just shaved off my beard. Kept the moustache though. Now look like Kurt Russell in Tombstone.

❤️

@peter_sarris Expensive. Hang.

Deport.

Legend of St. George’s on altarpiece! Made in Spain about 1393-1410. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 V&A London

It’s such a typical identikit post-religious, post-national sort of a message. Starmer genuinely has nothing positive to say about St George’s day so he throws in a load of generic diversity/tolerance stuff and then rounds it off with an attempt to kick those he disagrees with

A very happy “no he wasn’t Turkish” day to all who celebrate.

Today is that special day where the worst people in the smug media blob try to “well ahktually” us by telling us that a Greek soldier living in Asia Minor in the 3rd century was a Turk.

Spicy.

@DPJHodges She wants him to remain in place?

Setting aside the fact he lied again, that was objectively a good PMQs session for Keir Starmer. For some reason Kemi Badenoch failed to pick him up on the Doyle appointment, or the incredible claim Robbins stated he was put under no pressure over DV.

@peterrhague 😂

Yeah but OTOH nobody every got cucked by the self service machine at Asda

In 1995, 45% of British milk was delivered to the doorstep before seven in the morning by a milkman in an electric float. In 2026, it is 3%. The milkman has been effectively abolished inside one human generation. The supermarket walked in, undercut the cost by a few pence per pint, and the daily ritual of British household life, glass bottles clinking on the step at half past six, was gone by the time the children of 1995 had finished secondary school. The cost to the customer was a few pence per pint. The cost to the system was, in rough order: the glass bottle that was washed and reused hundreds of times, replaced with a plastic bottle that is used once and recycled imperfectly. The local dairy that supplied one town, replaced with a national processor that supplies half the country. The milk that arrived four hours after milking, replaced with milk that arrived three days after milking after a journey of 200 miles. The conversation on the doorstep, replaced with a self-checkout beep. The milkman himself, incidentally, had the lowest recorded rate of heart disease of any male occupation in Britain. He walked approximately 12 miles a day, finished work by 10am, and ate a cooked breakfast. He has been replaced, in the same delivery role, by a zero-hours Amazon Flex driver sitting in a Ford Transit. A small piece of British daily infrastructure was quietly demolished. Nobody was consulted. The milk is still being produced. It is just being produced further away, transported further, kept in plastic, and sold at a different margin, by a different business, to a customer who never sees who milked the cow. The milkman knew your name. The self-checkout does not.

@andy_given1 We need to bring back the market square stocks to publicly humiliate fly tippers and other litterers.

Delightful discovery this morning on the middle of Chobham common during early morning dog walk. Clearly the rubbish fairies will take away all of the shite left here by the lazy people who couldn’t be bothered to clear up after themselves!?!

@Gentleman_Ways Funerals.

Basic manners lesson: There are still places your phone doesn’t belong: -Public restrooms -At meals -Checkout lines -Museums & libraries What would you add to the list?

My friend Günther is one of the richest men in the Netherlands Last weekend I visited him in his 39m2 penthouse just an hour away from Amsterdam “How to be rich like you Günther?” I asked He poured me a glass of tap water and smiled “I pay 120% tax” he said “Wow, more than you earn?” “Yes, every month I transfer extra to my government so they can invest on my behalf” “So you give them all your savings?” “Yes, and I receive the best return on my investment” he proudly said He is right. Public transport, healthcare, smooth integration with foreign cultures The EU government is truly incredible I took the train home inspired This is exactly the European mindset Americans are too primitive to understand