Nicely Nicely Jones

1/x Finding myself temporarily lacking in the scratch department and what with things being tough all over, I find myself at Maury's eating the blue plate special, like many citizens who are lacking in the scratch department are wont to do.

@NoContextBrits Of course. Use the money so my friends can buy me drinks. Sorted.

@GilesRocholl @PrivateEyeNews Nope. Still is. And its normally , not always but most of the time, right. As here.

Among those currying favour with Elon Musk, it has become an article of faith that the “mainstream media” ignored the UK’s grooming gangs scandal until the brave truth-tellers of X uncovered it, er, last week. Give over. Feminist writer Julie Bindel first wrote about the disappearance of Charlene Downes in 2004, a year after the Blackpool teenager went missing. And if anyone deserves credit for bringing this story to wider attention, it’s Andrew Norfolk of the Times, who doggedly reported on cases across the north of England, starting in 2011, despite legal pressure and accusations of racism. He won Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism in 2012, with the citation pointing out at the time — almost thirteen years ago — that his work “has prompted two government-ordered inquiries, a parliamentary inquiry and a new national action plan on child sexual exploitation”. Norfolk then bagged the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2013. Subsequent cases, including those in Rotherham, Telford, Huddersfield, Oxford and Oldham, also received widespread coverage. The news even made it to America, with the liberal New York Times running typically ponderous headlines like “Life in an English Town Where Abuse Flourished” and “Indifference to Child Rape” in 2014. That year, columnist Ross Douthat wrote that “what happened in Rotherham was rooted both in left-wing multiculturalism and in much more old-fashioned prejudices about race and sex and class”. Full story in the new Private Eye, out now.

@Tim_Mc_Garry Sigh. Why are we surprised? Pretty much every DUP policy position (with the exception of RHI) for the past 20 years can be summarised thus: "The answer is no. Now what is the question?" Keep fighting the good fight - or at least having people laugh at those in charge.

Sometimes in Northern Ireland you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

@RobertMSterling I did spend some time there. Oh dear. They've really got to you, haven't they? Never mind. Ignore them. They won't miss you.

In case you’ve forgotten what a shithole Twitter used to be before Elon bought it, just head over to Bl**sky. It’s like a Twilight Zone parallel universe over there, where the gangrenous limbs of 2018 Twitter have crawled out of the grave and come back to life, without any of the fun or redeeming qualities we’ve always loved about this place. These guys (I mean “folks,” sorry, I’ll do better about improperly using harmful gendered language) continue to think the Biden-Harris administration has been a resounding success, still believe in the Russian pee tape, and hold out everlasting hope the FBI is going to perp-walk Cheeto Hitler into a GITMO holding cell before the inauguration. It’s like all the people who unironically liked the “Ruthkanda Forever” tweet and carried Robert Mueller tote bags around the Palo Alto farmers market have crowded into the world’s most socially awkward lesbian bar, where you’re only allowed to regurgitate Rachel Maddow-approved talking points and where the bouncer with purple hair, non-binary pronouns, and a Slava Ukraini shirt throws you out if you say anything Jo From Jerzey flags as disinformation. What’s infinitely worse than the NPR-dominated shitlib political milieu, though, is the atmosphere. There’s something about the ambience itself that just feels… wrong. Not truly human. It’s honestly how I imagine East Germany would have felt prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall: a stifling culture of conversational repression and intellectual mediocrity. There’s no room for the spontaneity or risk-taking that serve as prerequisites for flourishing discourse. There are no memes or truly funny jokes (real humor, of course, requiring a tolerance for subversiveness that would undermine the platform’s commitment to “safety”); there is neither the interrogation of grand ideas nor the exploration of great questions. It’s just a never-ending stream of midtwit slop, soulless conformity, and masturbatory virtue signaling. This is what Elon saved us from with his $44B. And not just on Twitter, but across society. Without X serving as the hub of free speech, open discourse, and citizen media, we would have had no hope of withstanding the corporate DEI seminars and the mainstream media struggle sessions, let alone the Silicon Valley FBI liaisons or the government disinformation boards. Free speech itself would be on life support, and the human spirit in our country would shine all the less brightly. Don’t believe me? Go spend 15 minutes on the other app. You’ll see exactly what I mean, and you’ll know this is right. So shine on, you crazy online degenerates. In 2025, keep the memes, offensive jokes, and off-topic shitposts flowing. Lob the craziest stuff you can into the marketplace of ideas, and see what rises to the top. Question the narratives, fact-check the fact-checkers, wrestle with the difficult questions of our age. Wage war for the truth, but always do so with love in your heart, joy in your step, and a smile on your face. Elon spent a king’s ransom to save free speech and bring joie de vivre back to the digital public square. Let’s not squander that—it’s something far more precious than we may realize until it’s gone.

@mcuban @costplusdrugs The UK NHS does a pretty good job negotiating good branded and generic drug prices from manufacturers, because they are buying for the nation and so have some commercial clout. It helps that the UK does a lot of pharma innovation and manufacturing so we know the business model.

Just an FYI, generic drugs are usually far cheaper at @costplusdrugs than they are in Canada, UK and elsewhere around the world. We get emails all the time asking us when we will start selling at those and other countries

@DMaxwell78207 Thank you. I will check in on this in four years time.

Nicely Jones, you are in for the best 4 years of your life. Things will no longer be tough all over for you and honest, hardworking Americans. It will be the Golden Age of America. You will soon be able to order something more expensive than the Blue Plate Special at Maury’s. What the current Administration has taken from you, Donald J. Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk and many more brilliant Americans will correct and you will wake up to affordability, good-paying jobs, safety in your community, law & order and freedom of expression and freedom of worship. God Bless You and God Bless the USA.

So Trump will be president and America will once again be led by the toddler-in-chief. It will be bad, but I hope it plays out for the full four years. Because I can think of only one thing worse. President Vance.

@ME1869 @Mij_Europe (a) You were the one arguing for people to be blocked (b) you disregard Fox, Sinclair, NewsMax and OAN (c) you disregard the BBC board being packed by Tory party (right wing) apparatchiks (d) my point was Musk claims that Twitter is for free speech but then works to drown it out.

But you're fine with the megaphones of CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and other legacy and newer media outlets. You're fine with the old Twitter's manipulation at the demands of politicians and partisans, including officials in institutions that should remain independent. The same goes for Facebook, promoting one-way indoctrination without room for opposing viewpoints. Your stance isn't intelectually serious.

So, JD Vance is saying US support for NATO and the US' commitment to European security depends on the EU's regulatory posture towards Elon Musk.. ? US/EU relations about to enter a very new world independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…

@ME1869 @Mij_Europe You don't get it, do you? He lets us tweet out to our few hundred (or fewer) followers. At the same time, he can say what he wants to 350m followers. Free speech in a town square is all very well, but it's hard to speak freely when only a few people are allowed megaphones.

@NicelyJones @Mij_Europe Musk is a lousy and incompetent dictator; he lets you and others like you say all this dumbshit on his platform when he could just block you.

@neelurao26 @ATRightMovies You are in for a treat!

@ATRightMovies Oh I haven’t watched this movie yet

A great shot from the set of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974).

@ammejo1 @evgrey360 @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove I haven't muted you and you were able to reply to my tweet. What's your concern?

@NicelyJones @evgrey360 @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove When I get muted and yet you still keep asking me questions! When I click into the tweet won't let me reply

Why do Reform supporters hate science? So many of them are climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers? #Reformorons

@ammejo1 @evgrey360 @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove And your point is...?

@evgrey360 @NicelyJones @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove See now they will charge road tax based on weight. Good luck with that on an electric car express.co.uk/life-style/car…

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove He doesn't own it. The UK state does.

@NicelyJones @BoveFromAbove Ed millaband who says NESO is independent but forgets to tell us he owns it!

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove And some in gov love helping people. And some love black coffee. That's how government works. Net zero aspires to save the planet based on hard evidence. The alternative is planetary disruption. I'm sorry you feel that saving the world isn't worth your inconvenience, but tough.

@NicelyJones @BoveFromAbove And some in gov love power and control. Net zero is the control

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove 2/x The great thing about science - proper science - is that it is credible because it can be disproved. Rigorous evidence can prove even the experts wrong. But the evidence needs to be very, very good. Evidence for climate change? Very strong and robust. For denial? Not so good.

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove 1/x Oh. I see... 'The fallacy of experts'. But of course. We can't have experts weighing in because I (or someone on youtube) knows better. Authority in science is earned. So yes, if a professor who has studied something for 40 year says X, then chances are, X is correct.

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove 'Debate' among scientists is a thing - not always courteous. But science has an advantage over other forms of discourse: its debates have winners because they have recourse to theory, hypothesis, experiment and replicable evidence, rather than youtube videos.

@BoveFromAbove The fact there is no courteous debate between scientist is the biggest red flag. You've decided you want to believe climate change is man made and not natural when not even the IPCC confirms it 100% the fact the sun is in a high active phase and we are coming out of an ice age

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove Both may true. So what? If it were true, how do these phenomena explain the current sudden and severe rise in global surface temperatures better than the mechanism described through the pollution model?

@BoveFromAbove We are still coming out if an ice age and the sun is now experiencing a very active phase!

@ammejo1 @BoveFromAbove I rather fear that the explanatory science between solar phases and climate change is indistinguishable from belief in a higher power - even if it could explain the speed of sudden and sustained spike in temperature the Earth is experiencing.

@BoveFromAbove @NicelyJones Your the one who said solar phase are mystical 🤣

@ammejo1 @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove Cars were unaffordable for the masses for thirty-five years until the 1920s. Look: saving the planet may lead to us all having to change our lifestyles somewhat, much like steam power forced people from the fields and sewage made it possible for city living not to kill people.

@NicelyJones @joanybaby77 @BoveFromAbove Electric cars that burst in to flames, electric cars unaffordable to the majority so the peasants can go back to walking can they. You call that progress?