Graham Burgess

#OnThisDay 105 yrs ago in 1920 the destroyer HMS VERDUN sailed from Boulogne with the body of Britain's Unknown Warrior. The Unknown Warrior was buried in @wabbey the following day to remember the unknown British dead from #WW1 (The war to end all wars) #Remember

The V&A. The Science Museum. The Natural History Museum. The Royal Albert Hall. The Royal Colleges of Art and Music. Imperial College London. 🏛️ None of them were built by the government. They were built by the public, coin by coin, in 1850. Parliament refused to fund the Great Exhibition. The press mocked it. Most people thought it would fail. So Albert and Henry Cole asked the British public instead. Shopkeepers. Clerks. Factory workers. Wives putting aside housekeeping money. 💷 Coin by coin, they paid for it themselves. They built the Crystal Palace in nine months. Three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral. Then six million people came to see it. A third of the entire population. 🚂 Working men's clubs pooled their wages for excursion tickets. Churches sent their parishioners. Employers sent their workers. Mary Callinack, eighty-five years old, walked two hundred and seventy miles from Penzance to London on foot, just to see it. People too poor to make the journey at all walked to the railway tracks instead, and lined up just to watch the trains go by. When the books closed, there was £186,000 of profit. Twenty-five million in today's money. They could have kept it. They didn't. They bought eighty-six acres in South Kensington and built the museums and colleges that still teach the country today. 🎓 The Royal Albert Hall still pays them one shilling a year in rent. There are 850 years left on the lease. The surplus has funded 3,000 British scientists, engineers and designers since 1891. Thirteen of them won the Nobel Prize. 🏅 A hundred and seventy-five years later, British research is still being paid for by a coin a shopkeeper put in an envelope in 1850. That's the bet the British people keep making. Pool what they have. Back something bigger than themselves. Leave it for whoever comes next. This channel runs on the exact same bet. ⏳ No sponsors. No advertisers. No one pays for this except ordinary British people who think it matters. Coin by coin. Just like 1850. Be Part Of Us 🙏 👉proudofus.co.uk/support 👈 Be Proud Of Us 🙏🇬🇧

On this day in 1982, RAF Vulcan Bombers attacked Stanley Airport in the first mission under Operation Black Buck. 🇫🇰🇬🇧 At almost 6,600 nautical miles, Operation Black Buck was the longest-ranged bombing raid in history at the time. #Falklands44

Absolute betrayal. DW News confirms the Trump administration abruptly removed the advanced THAAD missile defense system from South Korea, leaving Seoul completely exposed. The South Korean President admitted they are powerless to stop it. Washington is abandoning its allies.

America’s Arms Subscription Service Has Updated Its Terms and Conditions You signed up. You paid the fees. You attended every meeting, bought the branded merchandise, and told your neighbours you were completely safe. Now Washington has sent a letter. The United States has formally warned the UK, Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia that their weapons deliveries will be delayed. The Iran war is consuming American stockpiles at a rate nobody apparently planned for, which is impressive given that America has more defence planners than Estonia has people. This is exactly like ordering a sofa from a furniture company that seemed enormous and reliable, then receiving an email six months later explaining that your sofa has been temporarily redirected to a different customer. A customer they like more. In the Middle East. Estonia is already facing a complete suspension of HIMARS and Javelin deliveries. Not a delay. A suspension. That is not a late sofa. That is the furniture company calling to say they’ve sold your sofa, kept your money, and would you mind sitting on the floor for a while. Lockheed Martin is reportedly planning to increase Patriot interceptor production. In a few years. Which is rather like your car manufacturer announcing they will eventually produce brake pads, but probably not before you reach the cliff. The original warnings covered Baltic and Scandinavian nations. Now they’ve expanded west. The radius of broken promises is spreading like a guarantee written in disappearing ink. The lesson, if anyone in European defence ministries is paying attention, is straightforward. Never build your entire security architecture around a supplier who can simply decide one afternoon that he has other priorities. Particularly when that supplier is currently being run by a man who treats alliances like hotel loyalty programmes he can cancel between tweets. open.substack.com/pub/gandalv/p/…

.@FraserNelson was onto the Reform crypto nexus before it was cool and has a must read column today on its implications for democracy thetimes.com/article/4b0792…

@FraserNelson @MarinaPurkiss

@FraserNelson In 2028 there will be no need for Election Night specials. The new government would have been bought at the oligarchs auction long time before Election Day.

- Two-thirds of Reform's money is wired from Thailand - Ben Delo, pardoned by Trump for breaking money-laundering rules, has given £4m. - Farage's secret £5m bung A new model of politics is meeting an old model of transparency. With dangerous results: times-comment.com/farage123

A wall of crypto money is waiting to flood UK politics, as it did America's in 2024. It now has a vehicle: Reform UK. And Nigel Farage, who took a £5m "personal donation" from a crypto king. This isn't an insurgency: it’s a counter-elite. My column:- times-comment.com/farage123

@ThatTimWalker Another question is who is financing and pushing his publicity. Too much media coverage. Too little policy scrutiny.

Has it really got to the point the politician most trusted to defend us has in his hand a little paper Union Jack and a dodgy £5million in his bank account?

Herein is one of the #UK's key problems. A media bought and owned by foreign interests and influences. #TaxDodgers. Our media should be solely owned by #British tax paying firms. Stop the political manipulation by foreign billionaires or interests, for their own benefit.

Trump is now describing in some detail the Montreal Cognitive Test, which doctors use to spot the early signs of dementia, and which he proudly declared his doctors have made him take three times. He thinks it’s an intelligence test.

@invisiblebone @narindertweets @SundayG62364 @Nigel_Farage All the evidence of Farage’s blatant anti-Semitism is out there. People just need to join the dots. The many allegations of his anti-Jewish behaviour at school are only relevant as it shows how little his views as an adult have really changed. He is a shapeshifting bigoted creep.

@PulaRJS Here's an interesting topic to investigate. What companies avoid paying #UK taxes by "offshoring profits" Who are they? How much is lost? What are the competitive advantages it gives them over domestic firms in same business? And importantly , why are they allowed to get away it

Next Wednesday sees the launch of Double Down Newswatch, a new weekly magazine programme that will showcase the best of independent media. Here I explain why it's needed. youtube.com/watch?v=O8OBmd…

Rogue chip shops passing off catfish as "traditional fish and chips" to cut cost, boost profits. Echoes of the horsemeat scandal which was sold-off as beef. Dishonesty and deception is becoming standard practice. Effective regulation is needed. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

⚡️2 SU-57 + SU and SU-34 aircraft hit at Shagol airfield, 🔥BAVOVNA at Tuapse and Perm refineries, 💥Minus BUK-M3 and Nebo-M radar, ☠️Operation against Akhmat! SUPPORT ME 🇺🇦✅ ☕️ buymeacoffee.com/MAKS22 ☕️ PayPal: maksmu24@ukr.net ☕️ patreon.com/Maks24

In all my years watching BBC political programmes I can’t think of a figure comparable to Zia Yusuf. He has never stood for let alone won an election yet he is platformed more than any elected politician. It’s as if BBC has worked with Reform to make him a household name #bbcqt

As highlighted by @FraserNelson there is a glaring conflict of interest when Farage's funding by crypto tycoons, his advocacy on behalf of that business, and his personal investment in crypto are all combined. This is a huge scandal involving a political leader in broad daylight.