Linda Wilkinson

At least now little girls who dream of Olympic medals will know that biological males can't cheat their way onto their podium...or punch them relentlessly in the face and get a medal for it. Credit to Sharron Davies and Martina Navratilova, who spoke up despite attacks from those who should've known better. They spoke up when it was easier to stay quiet and paid the price in lost income and support.

@TheDailyCPEC Of course he does

🚨BREAKING: Türkiye calls on Gulf nations not to join the war against Iran.

@newstart_2024 He’s right

A guy in London looked straight into the camera and said what a lot of people are quietly thinking: “I was born here. I remember how it used to be — the energy was fantastic. Now the people are just shells. They’ve been muzzled so much, everything sucked out of them. It’s out of their hands, it’s out of their control. Man, I pray for the UK.” It’s raw, nostalgic, and hits hard if you’ve watched the change over the years. Have you noticed the same shift in energy and spirit in your own city or country? Or do you still feel the old vitality is there, just buried? Your thoughts 👇

🚨 Former @glaad Pres. Graddick reportedly admits, “I just think that we should completely stop doing anything that might harm children, even if it [means we admit] that we got something really wrong, and my understanding is that we have.” 🖊️ @benappel Link in comments ⬇️

@we_are_LBL Organic.

We shouldn’t have to tell you this. You’ve spent millions on a pointless “czar” and now another panel of “experts”. If you actually employed the right people — and listened to staff and customers — you wouldn’t be wasting everyone’s time and money on yet another consultation.

🚨Breaking: Hungary EXPOSES the European Union's Reason to Flood Europe with Migrants: "This is George Soro's Plan it is to Flood the European Union with Migrants." Do you stand with Prime Minister of Hungary, Orbán Viktor 🇭🇺? A. Yes B. No

@Amandalavan1 @simonmontefiore Pigs the lot of them

The Islamic regime has confirmed the death of 18 year old Melika Azizi was carried earlier today. Melika told the judge: "You let so many young people bleed. How can I remain silent? I don't care just kill me" She was a brave young lady! Now gone. A crime to humanity.

Dont argue with me! There are only 2 Genders, one goes to a Gynecologist, the other goes to a Urologist! The rest need to go to a psychiatrist!

@RedLineReportt Yes

Legendary Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling claims that transgender women are not women, but simply men pretending to be women. Do you agree with J.K. Rowling? YES or NO?

@Councillorsuzie May 7th or is this an old poster?

We should be voting for things affecting Britain not anything else!

Serica Energy says an estimated five trillion cubic feet of gas lies under the seabed west of Shetland, where there is already infrastructure for piping it back to the mainland. Serica’s CEO said: “It’s equivalent to supplying every household in the UK for five years. And yet, some people continue to say that the amount of gas we can produce in the UK is not significant.” The claim will pile fresh pressure on Ed Miliband to allow drilling in the North Sea. #CostOfNetZero

I still haven’t come across an image which captures the problem in Birmingham more perfectly than this one.

Hearing reports that the International Mathematics Committee will today announce their policy of two and two making four.

@RadioGenoa Bring back mental institutions

He wants to block London to show British people who's boss.

🚨 While you were asleep, the war shifted. Here’s how... OPERATIONAL UPDATE: ISRAEL U.S. WAR WITH THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC - 3/25 to 3/26 • Israel sustained a broad overnight strike campaign inside Iran, with Reuters reporting a wide new strike wave and your outbox capturing repeated explosions and reported air activity in Isfahan, Shiraz, Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Najafabad, Khomeini Shahr, and other locations. • Iran’s direct fire into Israel remained dangerous but uneven. A missile fell near Hadera in what appeared to be an attempted strike near the Orot Rabin power station, while additional Iranian missile waves hit central Israel on Thursday morning. • Hezbollah kept the northern and central threat picture active, with Israeli and Jerusalem Post reporting indicating rocket fire toward northern Israel and the Tel Aviv area while Israel continued strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon. • Diplomacy did not meaningfully advance. Reuters reported Tehran is reviewing a U.S. proposal while rejecting the idea of actual negotiations, demanding formal control of Hormuz, guarantees against renewed attacks, and Lebanon’s inclusion in any ceasefire framework. • The Gulf and wider regional fronts stayed central. Kuwait’s airport fuel tank was hit by a drone, Gulf states told the U.N. Iranian attacks pose an existential threat, and your transcript underscored Tehran’s messaging that it intends to tie any endgame to Hormuz and potentially wider maritime pressure. The defining narrative in this reporting window was not a single headline strike but the shape of the war itself. Israel kept pressing deeper and wider inside Iran, Iran remained defiant in public while signaling maximalist terms through intermediaries, Hezbollah stayed fully engaged, and the Gulf front continued to harden. Tehran’s messaging was not the language of de escalation. It was the language of a regime trying to preserve leverage through Hormuz, Hezbollah, and regional coercion even as the military pressure on its own infrastructure intensified. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ IRANIAN MISSILE ATTACKS ON ISRAEL The clearest operational signal on the Israeli home front was the missile that fell near Hadera. Times of Israel reported that the impact was in an open area near the IEC’s major power station and that no infrastructure damage was caused. That matters because the targeting logic appears to have been strategic infrastructure, not just another general population area. Open source intel reporting strengthens that reading with reporting tying the strike area to the Orot Rabin facility, later messaging that Iran had publicized the plant’s coordinates and described the earlier impact as a warning shot, and repeated confirmation that no major infrastructure damage was reported. At the same time, Reuters reported that by Thursday Iran had launched multiple new missile waves at Israel, with sirens in Tel Aviv and other areas and at least five people injured. That suggests the broader pattern is not that Iran has lost the ability to strike, but that its direct fire is becoming more intermittent and less dominant than earlier in the conflict. Reuters also cited CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper saying Iranian drone and missile launch rates are down by more than 90 percent. That is the important distinction this morning. Iran can still generate painful and politically charged attacks, especially when it tries to threaten energy or symbolic infrastructure, but the cadence looks less like sustained strategic pressure and more like punctuated salvos inside a broader degradation trend. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ STRATEGIC AIR CAMPAIGN OVER IRAN The main operational story overnight was the continued spread of strikes across Iranian territory. Reuters reported that strikes hit a residential zone in Bandar Abbas, a village outside Shiraz where Tasnim said two teenage brothers were killed, and a university building in Isfahan, while the Israeli military said it had completed a wide scale wave of strikes targeting infrastructure in Iran. Open source intel adds the operational texture mainstream coverage only partly captured. It logged eyewitness and opposition sourced reporting of explosions or low flying aircraft in Malard, Shiraz, Tehran, Isfahan, Najafabad, Khomeini Shahr, Qeshm, Talesh, Bandar Abbas, and Aligudarz. It also captured claims of a possible targeted assassination attempt against senior Iranian naval figures in Bandar Abbas and reporting of smoke over the port city after a reported U.S. attempt on a senior figure. Those Bandar Abbas details remain less firmly confirmed than the wider strike wave itself, but they fit the pattern of pressure on Iran’s southern maritime and naval infrastructure. This is the key point. The strike campaign continues to broaden into much more than a narrow nuclear file. It is hitting military infrastructure, industrial capacity, maritime assets, command nodes, and whatever leadership or specialist personnel Israel and the U.S. assess as essential to Iran’s ability to keep fighting and regenerate capability. Reuters’ reporting that Israel completed another large infrastructure wave is consistent with that larger pattern. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ LEBANON / HEZBOLLAH FRONT Lebanon remained fully tied to the main war. Reuters reported that Iran told intermediaries Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire arrangement, which is one of the clearest strategic indicators yet that Tehran sees Hezbollah’s position as inseparable from the end state it wants. On the ground, Hezbollah remained active. Jerusalem Post’s live coverage led with two injured after Hezbollah rocket fire in the north and referenced a missile near Hadera as part of the same broad war picture. Reuters separately reported Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem rejecting talks with Israel under fire and vowing fighters would continue “without limits.” Open source intelligence adds the tactical layer: Hezbollah had launched about 120 rockets from populated neighborhoods in Tyre since the start of the operation, that the IDF struck Hezbollah targets including a command center in Dahieh, and that Israeli aircraft eliminated a Hezbollah cell after it launched rockets at IDF forces in southern Lebanon. The practical takeaway is that Hezbollah is not behaving like a secondary theater waiting for diplomacy. It is still an active front and, diplomatically, one of Tehran’s key red lines. That makes Lebanon both a battlefield and a central piece of the bargaining struggle now underway. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ GULF / HORMUZ / ENERGY WAR The Gulf front remained one of the most consequential dimensions of the war. Reuters reported that a drone hit a fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport, causing a fire but no casualties. Reuters also reported Gulf Arab states told the U.N. Human Rights Council that Iranian strikes now pose an existential threat. Reuters also reported that Iran is demanding formal control of the Strait of Hormuz as part of its position on ending the war, while AP described Tehran’s counterproposal as including sovereignty over the Strait and continued insistence on its own conditions. Reuters further noted that the Strait remains effectively closed and cited ADNOC chief Sultan Al Jaber calling Iran’s restriction of passage “economic terrorism.” Iranian state messaging framed Hormuz sovereignty, reparations, and guarantees against resumed attacks as core ceasefire conditions, and also warned of broader maritime pressure, including possible escalation around Bab al Mandab, which is highly relevant as a reflection of the regime’s messaging line. This is why the Gulf theater matters so much this morning. Tehran’s leverage is no longer just missiles into Israel. It is also maritime chokehold, energy disruption, and the threat of widening economic pain across the region and beyond. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ POLITICAL / DIPLOMATIC DEVELOPMENTS Diplomatically, the most important development was not progress but clarity. Reuters reported that Iran is reviewing a U.S. ceasefire proposal but says there are no negotiations, while Iranian officials publicly mocked Washington’s claims that talks are under way. Reuters also reported the U.S. proposal contains sweeping demands ranging from dismantling Iran’s nuclear program and curbing missiles to effectively handing over control of Hormuz, while Tehran is demanding guarantees, compensation, formal Strait control, and Lebanon’s inclusion. Iranian state television also carrying language that Tehran will end the war when it decides to do so and only on its own conditions showing the regime is posturing and why a quick off ramp still looks unlikely. On the Israeli side, the government approved a reserve call up ceiling of up to 400,000 reservists, according to Times of Israel. That does not mean all are being mobilized immediately, but it is a strong indicator that Jerusalem wants maximum flexibility for a conflict that still spans Iran and Lebanon simultaneously. In related news the Knesset committee move toward a special military tribunal for October 7 perpetrators and a separate death penalty push. Those are not central operational developments for the war front, but they do show the political system continuing to harden in parallel with the regional conflict. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *⃣ WHAT MATTERS MOST RIGHT NOW What changed in the last 24 hours is that the war kept widening sideways even as Iran’s direct military pressure on Israel looked less overwhelming than earlier phases. ➡️Inside Iran, the strike campaign remained broad, geographically dispersed, and increasingly focused on infrastructure that matters to long term war capacity. ➡️Against Israel, Tehran still showed it can threaten high value targets and generate fresh missile waves, but the pattern looks more episodic than dominant. ➡️In Lebanon, Hezbollah remained active and politically central to any prospective endgame. In the Gulf, the war’s economic and maritime dimension kept hardening, which may now be one of Tehran’s most important remaining pressure tools. ➡️And politically Tehran is not signaling real compromise. It is signaling defiance, maximalist conditions, and an attempt to preserve leverage through Hormuz and Hezbollah while absorbing continued military punishment. That is the signal leading this morning. Not that the war is cooling. It is that Iran’s center of gravity is continuing to shift from sustained direct fire toward a more distributed strategy of intermittent strikes, regional proxy pressure, and maritime coercion while Israel keeps trying to cut deeper into the infrastructure that makes those options possible. **Special thanks to @Michael_Wgd for your continued contribution to the open-source intel picture behind these updates. If you aren't already, give him a follow and stay informed.

My favourite moment from yesterday. @NECircuitleader giving the Minister a reality check on Labour’s nonsensical plans to limit jury trials to address the backlog.

@NJ_Timothy @sandieshoes Reasonable argument

"It is a reminder of what is at stake for the future of our country." In the Spectator diary, I explain why I stand by what I said about the mass ritual prayer on Trafalgar Square. spectator.com/article/i-stan…

British livestock welfare vs the rest of the world: Growth hormones in beef: UK - Illegal USA - Legal and routine Brazil - Banned on paper, compliance varies Routine antibiotic use for growth promotion: UK - Illegal since 1999 USA - Legal until 2017, still loosely regulated Majority of global producers - Ongoing Slaughterhouse CCTV: UK - Mandatory USA - No federal requirement EU - Not mandatory Sow stalls (gestation crates for pigs): UK - Banned since 1999 USA - Legal in most states China - Standard practice Live export for slaughter: UK - Banned 2024 EU - Still permitted to non-EU countries Britain is not perfect. But the gap between British welfare standards and global welfare standards is not a small gap. When you buy British, you are buying inside a legal framework that most of the world has not yet built. That's worth something.