Ruprecht

@GreggC_CC @laura_lou_44 Ah ok. Sold a dud all those years ago! Still he played 1st class rugby.

@Eight8Ace @laura_lou_44 He played for Queensland against a touring France team, but not Australia.

How is Alf on Home & Away still alive? I swear he was like 60 odd 30 years ago 😳

@GarbageHuman24 Neigh way!

She’s 27

@James_WE_Smith Closing down wellbeck was a shit idea for a start.

I've long thought private military education needs to be rebooted in the UK & US. My experience is that those who have been through it, seem offended & shocked when they discover there is a world of research outside the neat little straight jacket that is PME.

Hydration break.

It’s a strange kind of expectation. I’m fully aware it could go tits up but that is still the what I think is par for this team. I’ve been through the ringer so many times perhaps it’s more indifference. I actually enjoy watching the other teams more and happy to accept that if we’re good enough we’ll win. Right up until it might be possible. Ie. The semis.

@ma32550 @Eight8Ace @MartinKnight_ You’re kidding - this is England!!! I don’t know anyone who’s expecting that!

What’s missing? No England flags on cars. One day before our first match little palpable excitement for the World Cup. Have we fallen out of love with football? Do we think we will be embarrassed? Are people scared to display national fervour? Are flags too expensive?

@TheGriftReport Excellent. Just needs a brain transplant and she’s good to go!

Has Angela Rayner has had a full makeover to make herself look more "Prime ministerial" for the upcoming leadership challenge?

I recently wrote to @CommonsSpeaker to complain about the way ministers and the PM fail to answer questions put to them in the House The specific example I cited was on 2 June when @ClaireCoutinho asked @Ed_Miliband who was responsible for making sure there's no blackout in the UK and what would happen to them if there was He replied to say she was scaremongering, expressed sorrow she no longer supports net zero and made some irrelevant comment about green jobs Today I received the attached response from the Speaker's office basically saying it's not up to them to evaluate the accuracy of answers and that they do not have "the authority to require Ministers to give proper answers to questions" While technically correct, the Speaker can absolutely notice when no substantive answer has been given and remind the minister of their duties to Parliament More broadly their reply exposes the accountability gap. Parliament has a rule or expectation that answers should address the question, but it has very limited machinery to enforce that in real time The practical sanction is political: MPs, the Opposition, select committees, the media, and ultimately the House itself. If the House wanted the Speaker to have stronger powers, the House would need to grant them, probably through changes to Standing Orders or procedure So we need to lobby our MPs to raise this with the Procedure Committee

@larisamlbrown Cutting reserve days? Lol

EXC: Dan Jarvis faces having to make "very significant cuts" inside the MoD if he cannot get more money. - Options on the table last week included reducing investment in drones and artificial intelligence, cutting reserve days, and cutting exercises - the £13.5 bn offer included £3.5 bn made up of contingency money in the MoD put aside for crises  - Number 10 has not ruled out more money for Jarvis thetimes.com/article/94a849…

@AngelaBelcamino Cause dispite being full of utter chods, the user numbers are low and even lower for the age range being targeted.

Explain it to me like I’m 5: Why is Bluesky exempt from the UK’s social media ban?

Your phone charger can electrocute a toddler who pokes a fork into the socket. The British plug cannot. That difference comes from a 1947 engineering project that refused every shortcut and turned a household plug into one of the most deliberately safe objects ever mass-produced. Britain published BS 1363 in 1947, built for the post-war housing boom. The country was wiring millions of new homes at once and needed one standard that would work safely for everyone. They picked the most paranoid option available. The earth pin (the large top prong) is longer than the other two. When you push a British plug in, the earth pin goes in first. Inside the socket, it presses a lever that opens two metal shutters covering the live and neutral slots. A fork pushed into an empty British socket hits only shutters. The shutters block it. The two conducting pins are also coated in plastic for their lower half. A plug halfway out of the wall is still safe to touch. You would have to pull it completely clear before any live metal is exposed. Inside every plug is its own fuse. UK homes wire their sockets in a loop called a ring circuit, which runs at 32 amps, enough to melt a lamp's cord if the cord fails. So each plug carries a fuse matched to the appliance: 3 amps for a lamp, 13 for a kettle. When something goes wrong in your appliance's wiring, only that plug's fuse blows. The standard US plug (flat two-pin or three-pin) has none of the pin coating and no individual fuse. American building codes began requiring shuttered outlets in new construction in 2008, decades after Britain made shutters standard. Even those newer shuttered versions lack pin coating and plug-level fuses. Britain's plug is bulky because a fuse, a shutter mechanism, insulated pins, and three contact prongs all need room. The plug looks the way it does because safety engineers refused to sacrifice any of those features to make it smaller, and that decision is now 79 years old.

@SarahForRuncorn Oh dear

Our Prime Minister has never been to visit our Special Forces HQ to show his support for the outstanding work they do… What does that say about his commitment to the defence of our country?

A few things happening at once that people should connect. Russia is now linked to the arson attacks on the Prime Minister's house and car last year. Shocker. And we all saw what happened the moment that story broke. Our feeds flooded with a different story about who the men were and why they did it. That's the operation. The arson is one half. The disinformation campaign is the other. Flood the zone, muddy the water, get the country shouting at itself instead of asking who is behind it. And at the same time, a chunk of the accounts pushing Scottish independence on X went dark the night Israel hit Iran's nuclear sites. Ask yourself why. Why would hostile states be interested in sowing division across the country? This is exactly what I mean when I say defence is the thread underneath everything now. Again, it isn't tanks on a border. It's an arson attack on the PM's front door and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns in the replies. It's the argument about breaking up our country being run out of Tehran. This is why resilience matters. And it's bigger than just factchecking a tweet. It's energy we can rely on. Industry we actually own. Institutions that are rock solid. Communities that don't split and fracture the moment someone pushes them. A country that is built to take a punch. That's the job now.

@history99917180 Staying at your grandparents and having to resort to the readers digest.

To the youngsters losing their social media access. When I was a teenager we used the opportunity to discover the excitement of your mums Littlewoods catalogue. It was a good day when it landed in your post box. The catalogue taught many a young lad what women were wearing.

@gregbagwell Agree but not forgetting tbey absolutely should be able to resign if they don’t feel able to deliver without sufficient resource.

I have a problem with this type of reaction. If the military is to be apolitical then it can t be seen to be entering the political arena. All the Chiefs can and should do is argue their corner and ensure that their tasks match resources (within tolerable risk and reason).

@ZiaYusufUK @Dominic2306 Serco, capita, mitie. Burn them all to the ground.

🚨 Serco - the government contractor that runs large parts of Britian's immigration and justice operation - has taken the extraordinary position of saying it would oppose Reform's plan to deport illegal migrants from Britain. Having read the Telegraph's report making this claim, I have written to Serco's CEO asking him to urgently clarify their position. Serco is the firm the Home Office uses to deposit unvetted men from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq into British housing estates without the knowledge nor consent of local residents. Serco is the firm that launches huge bids for rental homes, outbidding local residents by such a vast amount that lifelong residents - including veterans - have been served eviction notices by landlords. All to house illegal migrants. Serco has expressed no moral concern about any of this. Yet they apparently take exception to our plan to actually uphold immigration law and remove those who break it. Moreover, if the Telegraph's reporting is correct, a company so enmeshed in the British state it even runs recruitment for British Armed Forces, says it will take a hostile position to a duly elected Reform government. If the Telegraph’s reporting is correct, the only reasonable interpretation of Serco’s position is that it now believes itself to be an alternative power base to the duly elected government of the United Kingdom, and is willing to act contrary to the interests of the British electorate. If this were true, a Reform government would be left with no choice but to view Serco as a threat to national security.  I have given Serco until 6pm to clarify their position. Should they fail to do so, we will take the following steps to decouple the British Government from Serco: 1) On forming a Government, we will initiate an accelerated review of all Government contracting with Serco with the aim of removing Serco as a public contractor within our first Parliamentary term. 2) Where Serco has breached contracts or break clauses are available, we will terminate those contracts and continue to exercise break clauses as they come due.  My full letter below 👇

Russell Crowe on Gladiator 2: ‘They failed, and they failed because they didn’t understand what made the first film so successful: it had a moral core. Here’s the thing, most people want that. On the surface, they might go for entertainment, but if they’re going to love something and keep it with them forever, like that movie? …The love for that thing is because of its moral core. All guys want to be that man who can stay that strong, and all women want a man who can love them in that way.’

When Bobby Robson finished his last chemotherapy session in 2007, Dr Ruth Plummer pulled him to one side at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. Bobby thought it was going to be about his health. Instead, Ruth wanted to talk to him about something else. Her department was too old. There was a new Early Cancer Trials Unit being planned at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, three times bigger than what they already had, with a proper laboratory, modern equipment and room for clinical trials. But there was one problem. They did not have the money to kit it out. So Ruth asked Bobby if he knew anybody who might help. Bobby went home and spoke to his wife Elsie. The next day, they started making calls. Very quickly, what had started as a quiet conversation with Ruth had turned into a committee. Then the idea came up. Use Bobby’s name. He was not comfortable with that at first. He did not want a charity built around himself. But the others told him it would open doors, and once Bobby agreed to it, there was no going halfway. The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation was born. At the first meeting with the hospital, Don Robson got straight to the point. How much money was needed to get started? £500,000. And Ruth needed it by the summer of 2008 because she wanted the facility running by October. That was when Bobby knew what he had walked into. “There could be no slowing down, no pulling out, no getting halfway down the road and turning back.” The original plan had been simple enough. Bobby would lend his name, act as a figurehead, and stay in the background. It did not work out like that. He went to the meetings. He did the interviews. He kept going even when he was not well. Sometimes he would pull Ruth to one side and ask her: “What have you bloody well got me into?” But he never missed a single meeting. The launch was held at the Copthorne Hotel. By then, Bobby was fully in it. “If I’m committed to something, then I’m committed.” And then the money started coming in. Within seven weeks, the first target had already been reached. £560,000. Then people started turning up at Bobby and Elsie’s house. The first donation came from a woman carrying an envelope full of cash. Her husband had recently died, and his final request had been that people at his funeral gave money to Bobby’s charity instead of buying flowers. She handed over £271.74. “What can you say to that?” Then there was Johnny Bliss, a local singer with pancreatic cancer. His doctors had told him he had months to live, but he still held a concert, sold CDs and raised around £10,000 for the Foundation. Bobby met him at the Copthorne. Johnny brought his family with him, and made the men wear their best suits and ties. Bobby could see he was not well. “I could have cried.” And for all the football he had lived through, all the countries, all the clubs, all the games, this became his last big job. “It’s not about beating Portsmouth any more.” “It’s about beating death.” As of today the Sir Bobby Robson foundation has raised over £27 million. #football

@mariejane2020 These were a staple. The one I still can’t believe is the amount of lemon curd sandwiches we were given

Who remembers having paste sandwiches for school ❤️don’t remember tuna and mayo though ❤️