Steven Norman

Conservative leader says Reform have overseen year of "chaos and toxic behaviour" at Staffordshire County Council lichfieldlive.co.uk/2026/05/01/con… via @lichfieldlive

Not bad for a council-house estate, comprehensive-school educated lad, now MP for the part of Bristol in which he grew up. A face of modern Britain.

Farage received £5m from donor before he became MP bbc.in/49bQDqf

Google Maps ensuring the cow remains anonymoos.

Nigel Farage visited a social housing estate in Wales by helicopter, but pretended he had driven. A Merthyr Tydfil resident told Novara Media that when the Reform leader visited the town as part of his general election campaign, he “landed in the next valley over so that nobody knew he’d come by helicopter”. “This isn’t what people in Merthyr travel by,” she added. Watch our full report from Merthyr Tydfil on our YouTube channel now, directed by @JMSBraverman.

True😂

Star of the day @darrenpjones. Great speech. Excellent rebuttal of the childish nonsense of opposition. Loyal and thoroughly on top of his brief. Been in parliament for a lot less time than some of his (SCG) colleagues. But he gave them a lesson in how to behave in Government

The famous French actor and writer Jean Reno has written a novel about Ukrainian children abducted by occupying forces. The main character of the book “L’Évasion” (“The Escape”) is Emma, a former massage therapist who works for the French intelligence agency DGSE. According to the plot, she goes undercover to Siberia and tries to infiltrate a so-called “rehabilitation camp” for Ukrainian teenagers in order to gather evidence of Russian crimes. In an interview with the French outlet Télé 7, Jean Reno said that the motivation behind the book was real stories of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, as well as his desire to draw global attention to the issue.

congratulations to these brave officers for their use of robust policing to take down this terrorist in Golders Green today - let’s show them 100pc support

That would be chic!

This man just tried to kill any Jewish people he could find in Golders Green. Two Jewish men have reportedly been stabbed, let’s pray for their survival.

IN HONOR OF CALIFORNIA’S 175TH ANNIVERSARY, WE WILL BE ROLLING OUT A VERY SPECIAL DRIVER’S LICENSE FOR EVERY CALIFORNIAN THIS SUMMER! IT WILL FEATURE A HANDSOME, HIGH-QUALITY PHOTO OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM. MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING IT’S THE BEST LICENSE EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. THIS IS ABOUT CELEBRATING OUR BEAUTIFUL STATE (IT IS NOT ABOUT ME, DESPITE THE VERY HANDSOME PHOTO!). ENJOY! — GOVERNOR GCN

Mark Gatiss: "I don't understand the antipathy towards Keir Starmer" The actor – currently starring in a play lampooning fascism – argues that the PM is doing a good job, but from the press he gets "you'd think he was Vlad the Impaler".

THE JOURNALIST WHO BROKE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA WAS THANKED WITH A £1 MILLION LEGAL BILL Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla exposed one of the biggest political scandals in modern British history. Cambridge Analytica. Brexit dark money. Possible Russian influence in UK democracy. The kind of journalism that wins Pulitzer nominations and keeps people in power very nervous. So what happened next? Arron Banks the man who made the biggest single political donation in UK history at around £9 million to Brexit campaigns, sued her personally. Not The Observer, which published her work for years. Not TED, which hosted her talk. Her. Individually. A freelance journalist. The suit was over one sentence in a 2019 TED Talk and a single tweet, in which she said Banks had lied about a secret relationship with the Russian government. Banks denied it. He had, however, admitted meeting Russian embassy officials multiple times more than he originally told a Parliamentary committee. The Guardian, her own publisher, declined to fund her defence. She crowdfunded her legal costs from 29,000 members of the public. She faced potential costs of up to £1 million. She eventually won on the main issues in the High Court in 2022, but lost on appeal on one narrow point. She was ordered to pay Banks £35,000 in damages, issue an apology, and delete certain tweets. She was also hit with a costs order of over £1 million. The woman who exposed how democracy gets bought had to beg the public for money to stay solvent while doing it. Seventeen press freedom organisations called the case an attempt to intimidate and silence public interest journalism. The UK government eventually introduced anti-SLAPP legislation. Partly because of what happened to her. In the UK, you can crowdfund a journalist's survival costs after she exposes the possible corruption of a referendum. Or you can fund the laws that protect journalists before they get financially destroyed. We chose the first option. Sources: The Guardian/Observer/Press Gazette and others.

A pregnant French schoolteacher walked alone into the Gestapo headquarters in Lyon, France, sat down across from one of the most feared Nazi torturers in occupied Europe, and talked him into letting her marry her condemned husband — all to set up the escape she had already planned. Her name was Lucie Aubrac. She was 31 years old, five months pregnant, and she had exactly one weapon: nerve. By the summer of 1943, Lyon had become the most dangerous city in occupied France. The Gestapo had taken control. Klaus Barbie — the man they called the Butcher of Lyon — ran his operation out of the Hôtel Terminus, where prisoners were taken for interrogation and often never seen again. The city was full of informants. Every café, every street corner, every apartment block was watched. Lucie and her husband Raymond had been living double lives for three years. On the surface they were a history teacher and an engineer. Underneath they were two of the most active Resistance organizers in southern France. They had founded their own underground network — Libération-Sud — out of nothing, starting with chalk graffiti on walls and building it into a real fighting force. On June 21, 1943, Raymond was arrested at a secret Resistance meeting. He was taken to Montluc Prison and sentenced to death. The Nazis were in no hurry to kill him — they wanted information first — but the end was not in doubt. Lucie understood exactly what Montluc Prison meant. She had seen what happened to the people who went in and did not come out. So she went to see Klaus Barbie. She walked into the Hôtel Terminus alone. She told the receptionist she needed to speak to the officer who had sentenced her fiancé to death. She was admitted to Barbie's office. She sat down. And she told him a story. She was not Raymond's wife, she said. She was his fiancée. She was pregnant with his child. She was a respectable woman in a desperate situation. All she wanted was to marry him before he was executed — to give their baby a father's name, to save what little honor she had left. The story had just enough tragedy in it, just enough simplicity, that Barbie agreed. He granted permission for a prison wedding. What Barbie did not know was that Lucie had already assembled a commando team. On October 21, 1943, Raymond and fifteen other prisoners were loaded into a vehicle and driven through the streets of Lyon following the brief prison ceremony. They were heading back to Montluc. They never arrived. Resistance cars moved in from both ends of the street, boxing the convoy in. Armed fighters opened fire. Six German guards were killed in the ambush. The prisoner vehicle was smashed open. Raymond and the other prisoners were pulled out, bundled into waiting cars, and driven to safety. Lucie was six months pregnant when she led that raid. It was the only time during the entire Second World War that Gestapo personnel were attacked on the street in occupied France. After the ambush, the Aubracs fled to London, where their second child was born. Charles de Gaulle became the baby's godfather. After the war, a Vietnamese nationalist leader named Ho Chi Minh became godfather to their third child. The couple returned to France and lived ordinary and extraordinary lives side by side — teacher, engineer, parents, grandparents, witnesses to a century. Raymond and Lucie remained together for 68 years. Lucie died in Paris in 2007 at the age of 94. Raymond died five years later in 2012 at the age of 97. At the time of his death he was the last surviving member of the eight Resistance leaders arrested at that June 1943 meeting. In his final years, Raymond was asked many times what he wanted people to remember about Lucie. He always gave the same kind of answer. He said she was not reckless. She was not acting out of passion. She was a historian. She understood exactly what was happening and exactly what it meant. She just refused to accept it.

Here’s Green Party candidate Zak Khan currently en route to Gaza on the Flotilla and wearing a Palestine Action hoodie. A proscribed organisation in the UK that beats up police and has attacked our own RAF base. He says @TheGreenParty sent him on this vile mission. Shocking.

28 April 1931 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Rachel Opdenberg, was born in The Hague. In July 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered after selection in a gas chamber.

standing ovation after King Charles sings the praises of NATO and says "that same unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine"

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The bandwidth sucked up by the Mandelson non-story is embarrassing. A minor appointment taken in what was perceived to be the national interest. Astonishing that the Westminster bubble is still obsessed but then tittle tattle started to define British politics a long time ago