Ali Bond ♀️🟪⬜🟩

@DavidGHFrost @Telegraph Just as well there was no X or Truth Social back in the day.....It's doubtful that Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle etc etc were holding back on their language or threats, they just had nowhere publicly big enough to vent them. And nothing about the EU has been strengthened. Nowt

President Trump's reckless threats this week crossed a moral line and were impossible to support. And his constant disdain for his allies alienates supporters and helps only his opponents. My @Telegraph column tonight. 👇 telegraph.co.uk/gift/8b33a2709…

The Institute for Fiscal Studies @TheIFS has given its 'initial response' to Plaid Cymru's manifesto, including the line: "Plaid Cymru therefore does not appear to have faced up to the fiscal reality facing the next Welsh Government. And if the party knows how it would afford its pledges, it has omitted to explain how in its manifesto" ⬇️ ifs.org.uk/articles/initi…

@SarahjevsEvans Howard bach realising he needs to come to grips with south Wales valley accents pretty sharpish. Welcome home hardd 😘

Howard is home 💖

In 1946 a Hungarian visiting Britain made an observation. 🇬🇧 "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one." He was right. But nobody told you why. It started in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Same factory. Same start time. Same end time. Suddenly everyone needed the same thing at the same time. The queue was born. Then came WW1. Food ran short. People started joining queues without even knowing what they were for. Just in case it was something useful. Then came 1939. Britain stood alone. Everything was rationed. The government promoted taking your turn as a wartime virtue. Queue-jumping became a moral failing. Not just bad manners. Letting your country down. By 1945 it was who we were. The queue is democracy in its simplest form. Your time is worth no more than mine. A duke or a dustman. You wait your turn. In 2011 rioters looted a shop in London. They formed an orderly queue to climb through the broken window. One at a time. Even the rioters queued. 🇬🇧 In 2022 a quarter of a million people queued for twenty-four hours to say goodbye to the Queen. Nobody pushed in. Nobody complained. The whole world watched and didn't understand. That is your history. Nobody is coming to queue for you. Britain's story needs people to show up. Every story on this channel is available at proudofus.co.uk If you want to help us keep them alive: proudofus.co.uk/support Be Part Of Us. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Britain invented the world's first traffic lights. 🚦 1868. Britain introduced the world's first driving licences. 1903. And in 1931, when seven thousand people a year were dying on British roads, a man called Herbert Morrison decided enough was enough. 🇬🇧 No driving test existed. No drink-driving laws. No speed limits in towns. Roads that were absolute chaos. So Britain's Minister of Transport sat down and wrote twenty-one pages. For one penny. The first line was quintessentially British: "Always be careful and considerate towards others." It covered drivers. Cyclists. Pedestrians. Even horse-drawn vehicles. It sold out on the first day. It is now one of Britain's best-selling books. Ever. In 1931 there were 2.3 million vehicles on British roads. Today there are over forty million. Britain's roads are among the safest on earth. Twenty-one pages. One penny. One man who decided to fix it. Britain's roads were broken. Britain fixed them. That is your history. 🇬🇧 Every story on this channel is available at proudofus.co.uk If you want to help us keep them alive: proudofus.co.uk/support Be Part Of Us. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

@BBCBreakfast Lacklustre Cooper dribbling her way through the interview round this morning is a prime example of why the talentless, vacuous Labour Party and government have become a fringe party and a laughing stock

'We want to see Lebanon urgently included in as part of a ceasefire' Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper spoke to #BBCBreakfast after more than 100 Israeli air strikes killed 182 people and wounded 890 in Lebanon - according to the health ministry bbc.co.uk/news/live/clye…

@soniasodha Labour Party is now a fringe party. All by it's own making. Starmer et al and lacklustre, lazy personnel, some sailing very close to criminality, have ruined it and have shown they are unfit to govern. The Green islamofascist alliance is a clear and present danger not just wacky.

A bit depressing that the best pitch I can make for voting for one of the establishment parties (for me, Labour) is that the Greens and Reform are worse. But there we are. My column in today’s Times. 🔗 up next.

RT @ProudofusUK: In 1871 a man sat at a desk and wrote fifteen letters. ⚽🇬🇧 Nobody knew what those letters would become. His name was Cha…

@GroomB Fach or fawr?

Rhondda Valley, south Wales, 1957, photo by Philip Jones Griffiths.

When schoolgirls need a rape alarm there is something very wrong with the environment they are living in. In this Scottish town it is believed that the girls may be stalked by hotel migrants. This is not a civilised society. It is like a script from a horror movie. The residents deserve better and those who have put these young girls in danger need to take accountability.

There's a pub in England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 It's been open for over a thousand years. You can walk in tonight. The Porch House. Stow-on-the-Wold. The Cotswolds. As old as England itself. And when it opened... there was no united kingdom. No parliament. No Magna Carta. Vikings were still raiding the coast. And someone opened a pub. The fire's still going. You can walk in and sit by it tonight. The same space. The same warmth. A thousand years later. There are pubs in England older than the United States. Older than the printing press. Older than the Viking invasions. And they're not museums. No rope. No plaque. No ticket. You walk in. You sit down. You order a pint. Empires rose and fell. Wars started and ended. Kings came and went. And the pub stayed open. A room where anyone can sit. Rich or poor. Lord or labourer. No membership. No invitation. Just a door and a bar and a seat by the fire. A thousand years. And the door never closed. That's more than a building. That's England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 The video you just watched was funded by people like you. Not a company. Not a sponsor. Our people: proudofus.co.uk/support Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Every country on Earth armed their police. Gave them military uniforms. Made them answer to the state. Except one. In 1829, Britain created the first police force in history that carried no weapons. Wore civilian clothes. And answered to the people, not the government. Before that, London had no police force at all. It was the largest city in the world. Over 1.5 million people. And the best they had was a handful of night watchmen who were famously old and frequently asleep. Then there were the thief-takers. Bounty hunters paid per conviction. Many of them were criminals themselves. The most notorious, Jonathan Wild, ran a criminal empire while claiming rewards for catching the very thieves he controlled. The Bow Street Runners were the closest thing London had to real law enforcement. Established in 1749 by the magistrate Henry Fielding. But there were never more than a few dozen of them. For a city of millions. Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel proposed something no country had ever attempted. A civilian police force. Accountable to the public, not the state. Not soldiers. Unarmed. They wore dark blue tailcoats instead of military red. That was deliberate. The Metropolitan Police Act 1829 created the force. One thousand officers began their first patrols on 29 September 1829. People called them Bobbies. After Bobby Peel. The name stuck for 200 years. Two commissioners wrote the founding principles. Colonel Charles Rowan, a Waterloo veteran. And Richard Mayne, a barrister. Nine principles. The most radical idea in the history of policing. Principle Seven: "The police are the public and the public are the police. The police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen." Not above you. Not against you. One of you. No other country on Earth had ever said that. In France, the Gendarmerie nationale had existed since 1791. Military police. Armed. Uniformed as soldiers. Serving the government, not the people. Most of the world copied France. Colonial police forces across every empire were built on the same model. Britain chose consent. For nearly 200 years, British police officers carried no firearms. Just a wooden truncheon, a rattle, and the trust of the people they served. That model spread to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and became the foundation of democratic policing worldwide. Most people in this country have absolutely no idea how rare that is. Or that it started here. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

@BBCr4today @hzeffman Even more than that, Starmer's relationship with the electorate has deteriorated completely. All his running off to the Middle East for photo opps won't save him or his future reputation

"Over the six weeks or so of this conflict... Keir Starmer's personal relationship with Donald Trump has deteriorated significantly." Chief Political Correspondent @hzeffman shares analysis of the state of the UK's relationship with the US and countries in the Gulf.

🇬🇧 Magna Carta had a twin. It was law for 754 years. You've never heard of it. After 1066, the Normans claimed the forests of England. Not just the trees... Villages, farmland, rivers. One third of the country. Land ordinary people had farmed for centuries. Taken. Hunt a deer to feed your family? They blinded you. Cut down a tree to heat your home? They took your hands. 1215. The barons forced King John to sign Magna Carta. The most famous document in English history. But Magna Carta was for the barons. Not for the people in the forests. Two years later. 1217. A second charter was sealed. The Charter of the Forest. This one was for everyone. The right to gather firewood. The right to graze your animals. The right to fish the streams. No more blinding. No more mutilation. For gathering wood. For the first time in English law, ordinary people had rights to the land. Not given by the king. Taken from him. 754 years. It was law until 1971. Every common in England. Every village green. Every right of way. The idea that land belongs to everyone... It started here. 🇬🇧 They taught you Magna Carta. They never taught you this. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

@BBCBreakfast And if we needed a reminder of the abysmal calibre of Labour government personnel.....up pops Sarah Jones. Hopeless, useless and pathetic like most of them.

'Most of us woke up this morning with a real sense of relief to see that ceasefire announced' Government minister Sarah Jones spoke to #BBCBreakfast after the US and Iran agreed a two week ceasefire, if shipping is allowed to move through the Strait of Hormuz bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5yw…

@BBCBreakfast Useless man Starmer will turn up to the opening of a set of curtains if he thinks it'll help him. The man is a complete waste of space and no credit whatsoever to our country.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has welcomed a two week ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran. Chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman told #BBCBreakfast the PM is travelling to the Middle East to meet leaders of Gulf countries bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5yw…

Find him. Prosecute him. Make an example of him. (This is obviously worse than lucy connolly).

A chocolate maker bought 120 acres of Birmingham slums. 🍫 His name was George Cadbury. He didn’t build a factory. He built a world. Every house had a garden. By law. Every single one. 🌿 Schools. Parks. Swimming pools. Cricket pitches. Pensions. Education during working hours. Workers’ committees that ran the factory floor. Then in 1900 he put the entire estate into a trust. 🏛️ It could never be sold for profit. Never broken up. Never privatised. Protected forever. It still exists today. Still run by the trust. One man proved that if you treat people well, they don’t just survive. They flourish. 🙏 Be part of us: proudofus.co.uk Be proud of us. 🇬🇧

@BBCr4today 🎯 Mr Streeting 👏👏👏👏

"Should he be headlining Wireless Festival? Absolutely not." Health Secretary Wes Streeting condemns Festival Republic for standing by its decision to have Kanye West perform, but refuses to comment on whether the rapper should be let into the country.

Last week, my post about Boomer life drew some ire from young people who feel we "destroyed the world and their future." (But lots of fellow Boomers liked it!) So for the young people. Here's a peek at life before the late 70s. The life you DON'T have because of us. 🔹Women were often stuck in secondary roles (you could be a nurse but not a doctor). 🔹Employers could deny a woman a job because “she might get pregnant,” and many had to quit when they did get pregnant. 🔹Birth control was restricted or illegal in many places under the Comstock Law. 🔹A husband couldn’t be arrested for beating his wife; it was a “civil matter.” Marital rape wasn’t even a crime. 🔹Women often needed a male relative to co-sign for a bank account or credit card. 🔹Black Americans in the South lived under Jim Crow. Even after it was outlawed, change was slow. 🔹Gay people could not be openly gay or get married. 🔹Information was scarce. You had to access a big library or buy expensive books. No pulling info up on your phone. 🔹Acquiring skills meant finding someone willing to teach you in person. No YouTube or no AI. 🔹Drive by a river and you’d see pipes dumping bright orange or green factory waste straight into the water. Some toxic landfills were so bad, nothing has ever grown there again. 🔹Heart attack? Often a death sentence. No stents. No pacemakers. 🔹Young men could be drafted and sent to war against their will, then come home to a country that called them baby killers and spit on them. Here's the thing. Every generation gets handed problems. We addressed these. Now it’s your turn to fix the ones you’re facing. Sincerely, Your Retired and Tired Boomer Grandma