Peter Yates

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There was a time, not that long ago, when 70/30 ground beef was the standard cut at every butcher counter. Not the premium. Not the specialty. The standard. The default the butcher handed you when you said "a pound please" without specifying further. Thirty percent fat by weight, because that is the ratio at which ground beef actually tastes like beef, holds together on a grill, drips through the grates onto charcoal and smokes the patty from below, and feeds a family of five for what a coffee costs today. The Sunday burgers depended on it. The Wednesday meatloaf. The Friday chili that simmered all afternoon and tasted better the next day. The neighborhood cookout where dads stood around the grill with a beer and a spatula and a sense of purpose. A whole summer rotated through 70/30, and nobody got fat, and nobody had heart attacks at fifty-two, and nobody asked the butcher whether it was lean. He wouldn't have understood the question. Lean was for the dog. Then 1977 happened. The McGovern Report came in. The food pyramid followed. "Extra lean" appeared as a category. The default crept down. 70/30 became hard to find. 80/20 quietly replaced it. The children grew up not knowing it had been anything else. Then 80/20 started disappearing. 85/15. 90/10. 93/7 marketed as "extra lean" with a heart-check logo and a markup. Ground turkey next to it, beige and apologetic, the color of a hospital wall. Now the floor at most supermarkets is 90/10 and the ceiling is whatever the butcher will grind for you if you smile and ask. 80/20 has been quietly reframed as "the fatty option." The upscale grocer's butcher will warn you about 70/30 with a small chuckle, as if you'd asked for arsenic and he had a duty of care. You have asked for the cut your great-grandfather grilled in the backyard after he came home from the war. He has been trained to advise you against it. So. Plainly. Find the 70/30 where you can. Local butchers will grind it on request. Farm stands will do it. The good neighborhood carnicerias often have it as their default, because their customers actually cook. If you find a place that sells it, tell them you'll be back, and be back. Where 70/30 isn't available, use 80/20 as the floor. Not the ceiling. The floor. Anything leaner has been engineered for a market that has been quietly turned against the food it was built to eat. Your great-grandfather crossed an ocean for a country he had never seen and ate 70/30 in the same year. You can ask for it at the counter.

We’re paying people on benefits to do nothing while our parks and streets look like this. Instead of just handing out cash, give them community jobs cleaning litter, fixing local areas, pay them in vouchers. It builds dignity, cleans Britain, and saves taxpayer money Thoughts?

BIGAMY IS ILLEGAL IN OUR UK. Why do we...... * Allow Muslim men to take 2+ wives? * Provide each wife with social housing? * Provide each wife with housing, unemployment & child benefits? WHY ARENT WE ARRESTING AND PROSECUTING THEM? @ShabanaMahmood @Keir_Starmer @RachelReevesMP

Dr Drew absolutely loses it over the Hantavirus hype !! ‘It’s not a respiratory virus. Stop it. Stop it now….its been around a long time’ One has a greater chance of being struck by lightening. We are not doing this again.

Tourist: "Why are there goats in the supermarket car park?" Local: "They live on the headland. They come down sometimes." Tourist: "Shouldn't somebody do something?" Local: "They've been here longer than the supermarket." Tourist: "But they're eating the flowers." Local: "They're keeping the verges down. Council saves about £8,000 a year." Tourist: "Don't they spread disease?" Local: "Less than the seagulls." Tourist: "What's that one doing in the bus shelter?" Local: "Sheltering. It's about to rain." Tourist: "From the bus?" Local: "From the rain. The bus comes through every twenty minutes." Tourist: "Does it move when the bus arrives?" Local: "Eventually. Goat operates on its own schedule." Tourist: "This is the strangest place I've ever been." Local: "You're in the goat's town. You're the strange one."

Gary MacArthur gave 15 years of his life to Sainsbury’s in West Wickham, south-east London. He wasn’t some troublemaker. He was the worker who stayed late to make female colleagues feel safer. The worker who performed CPR on the store’s only security guard after he suffered a suspected stroke. The worker who had already previously LOST TEETH after being punched by a thief while trying to protect the store. But after tackling an allegedly aggressive repeat offender known for targeting the branch and stealing bottles of Moët, Bollinger and Veuve Clicquot Sainsbury’s sacked him for gross misconduct. This was after colleagues screamed there was an “aggressive Champagne thief” in the store. According to reports, the shoplifter later smashed bottles and hurled them at staff. Yet Gary MacArthur a man who dedicated 15 years of loyalty, protected colleagues and even helped save a life that same day — was told he should have acted only as a “visual deterrent.” Absolutely disgusting. Supermarket workers are being punched, threatened, abused and terrorised by repeat shoplifters on a daily basis… yet the staff who actually step in to protect colleagues and customers are the ones losing their jobs. Gary MacArthur at Sainsbury’s. Walker Smith at Waitrose. Sean Egan at Morrisons. Gavin Ramsay at Asda. Decades of loyalty thrown away because they refused to stand by while thieves ran riot. What kind of country are we becoming where the people trying to protect others lose everything… while the criminals walk straight back out onto the streets?

Terrible News. @reformparty_uk are fixing potholes by using one of our greatest ever British manufacturers machines. British councils buying British machines to fix British roads employing British people in Britain. Truly shocking.

@elonmusk @grok can you turn this glamorous gay idea into a Ru Paul drag race theme at the London Paladium?

Congrats!

@WolfgangRichtEU @afneil As a gay man I have to disagree. His downfall is down to his own shortcomings and insincerity not because he is gay.

@afneil Dear Andrew, Mandelson was targeted for extra vetting because he is gay. He did nothing wrong, and everyone has the right to a private life, including having Russian friends. The queerhating in the British press is just out of control. All the best, Wolfgang

So now we learn that the Cabinet Office argued that Mandelson didn’t need security vetting.

@stengel We are not a medium sized nation. We are a tiny spec of a nation in a massive world, yet most of the world’s innovation came from this tiny spec. As regards Brexit. Do your homework. Even after leaving the corrupt unelected bloc we punch high and still managed to be as good

I've got nothing against King Charles personally—in fact, he seems like a decent and thoughtful man—but why the heck are we inviting the 77-year-old monarch of a medium-sized nation that committed something close to national suicide with Brexit to address a joint session of Congress? "Of more worth is one honest man to society," wrote Thomas Paine, "than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived." We are the nation that threw off a crowned ruffian and ended hereditary privilege to create a republic where the people rule. Happy 250th Birthday America.

@WolfgangRichtEU @afneil As a gay man I have to disagree. His downfall is down to his own shortcomings and insincerity not because he is gay.

@PaulMargerison @afneil That’s the only way you will get him to move out of number 10. It should have happened sooner

Breaking: From the man who wants ‘X’ banned and has had 1600 Brits arrested for social media posts- In a post on X, Starmer said: “Any attack on democratic institutions or on the freedom of the press must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. What a vile hypocrite this traitor truly is.

"Vegan wool" is plastic. Specifically, it is acrylic: a synthetic fibre spun from polymerised acrylonitrile, which is a derivative of propylene, which is a derivative of crude oil. Manufactured in factories in China and Turkey using a known liver toxin as a solvent, dyed with petrochemical compounds, and shipped halfway around the world to be sold as the ethical alternative. Every wash releases roughly 700,000 microplastic fibres into the water system. The fibres reach the ocean, the soil, the rainfall, the fish, the salt on your kitchen table, and the bloodstream of newborn babies, where they have now been detected. Wool is a protein. Keratin. Grown by a sheep, on a hillside, from grass and rain, over the course of a year. She grows it whether or not anyone shears her. If she isn't sheared, she overheats in summer and dies of fly strike. The shearing is a service she needs. The wool can be washed with hot water and soap, spun into yarn, dyed with plant compounds humans have been using for 4,000 years, and turned into a jumper that will keep you warm for forty years and biodegrade in three when you bury it. The campaign tells you the jumper that took six months in a Chinese chemical plant is the ethical option. It tells you the jumper grown by a sheep on a Welsh hillside is not. The sheep, meanwhile, is in the field, quietly producing next year's jumper. She is unaware that her work is now considered a moral failure by the demographic that will wear crude oil derivatives to the climate march. She'd probably find it funny if you told her.

FOR SALE: My White Privilege card. Now 57 years old but in mint, unused condition. Selling because I’ve never figured out how it works—no free college, no free medical care, no free housing, no free food, no free anything. I’ve worked every day of my life to support my family and pay taxes for those who don’t have White Privilege cards. Will consider an even trade for a Victim Card, which seems to come with countless benefits. Serious inquiries only!

We're not saying that Charlottesville itself is a "hoax." We are saying the SPLC allegedly *HELPED* to engineer the conditions for it happening, and then materially aided-and-abetted a Unite the Right organizer and thereby promoted a clash between protesters and counter-protesters. Then the SPLC fundraised off it, successfully, and the Democrats weaponized it to push a bogus narrative in the 2020 election. So the SPLC benefited financially and the Democrats benefited politically. That is why the Biden administration shut down an investigation into the SPLC after banks flagged its suspect activities. I don't know why you leftists continue to pretend that we're all stupid. It's a tired act. When you flail with these vapid counter-arguments, it just makes you look like a huckster, in addition to a race grifter.

Liver and onions was on the kitchen table of roughly every British household in the country, at least once a fortnight, from approximately 1850 to approximately 1985. A Tuesday meal. Whatever day the butcher had lamb's liver in, or pig's liver if you were further down the week, or ox liver if the household was stretching the budget. Your mother bought it that afternoon. Still warm, or nearly. Deep burgundy, slick and glossy on the butcher's paper. Half a pound. Tuppence. Change from a shilling. She sliced it quarter of an inch thick, dusted it in seasoned flour, and laid it in a pan where a pound of onions had been going soft in bacon fat for twenty minutes. Two minutes one side. Two minutes the other. The middle still faintly pink. Overcooked liver was a mortal sin in a British kitchen, spoken of by grandmothers with genuine sadness, the way a priest might discuss a lapsed parishioner. Pan juices deglazed with water and Worcestershire, poured over. Mashed potato. A pile of cabbage. A rasher of bacon laid across the top if it was a good week. The whole thing cost, in 1962, approximately 8p per serving. It delivered, in a single plate, the highest concentration of bioavailable vitamin A in any food on earth, more B12 than any supplement will ever contain, haem iron at absorption rates a plant source cannot match, copper, zinc, choline, folate, and selenium. Nobody called it a superfood. Nobody called anything a superfood. It was called Tuesday. Then, between 1985 and 2005, liver quietly disappeared. Mothers stopped buying it. The butcher stopped ordering it. The supermarket stopped stocking it. By 2010, most British adults under thirty had never knowingly eaten it. The word now carries a faint cultural embarrassment. A food your nan ate. Something to move past. Meanwhile, 20% of British women of childbearing age are anaemic. The NHS prescribes them ferrous sulphate tablets that cause nausea and take six months to address a deficiency one plate of liver a fortnight would correct in weeks. The women taking the tablets are, in many cases, the granddaughters of the women who ate the liver. The deficiency is cultural amnesia with a prescription attached. Your butcher still has lamb's liver in the counter. Ask him. He will be delighted. He might throw in the kidneys. Flour. Bacon fat. Onions. Four minutes total. Worcestershire. Mashed potato underneath. The grandmother is gone, but the dish remembers her, and so do you, whether you knew her or not. Eat it. Pass it on.

A wool jumper, made in 1985, washed in cold water once a month, worn through three decades of British winters, would currently be sitting in someone's wardrobe doing fine. A polyester fleece, made in 2026, machine-washed weekly, will start to lose its structural integrity within three to five years, shed an estimated 700,000 microfibres per wash into the water system, and end its life in landfill where it will persist for approximately 200 years. The wool jumper: - Came from a sheep - Required grass and rain - Will biodegrade entirely within three years of being buried - Will keep you warm when wet - Will not melt if exposed to a flame - Will probably outlive you - Cost £80 in 1985, which is £230 today, and represents the entire jumper budget for the next forty years The polyester fleece: - Came from an oil refinery in Texas - Required hexane extraction, polymerisation and dyeing in three different factories on three different continents - Will not biodegrade in any human timeframe - Will get cold and clammy when wet - Will melt against your skin if exposed to a flame - Will be in landfill within five years - Cost £40 in 2026, which means you'll buy ten of them across the next forty years for a total of £400, and the planet will still be eating the residue in the year 2226 But yes. The sheep is the problem. The sheep, standing in a field in mid-Wales, growing a renewable fibre from grass and rain. The sheep is the problem.

Twenty years before Atkins, fifteen years before the Mediterranean diet, and forty years before anyone in the NHS would utter the phrase "low-carb without flinching", a Hampshire physician was treating obesity, asthma, migraine and gout with butter, bacon and steak. He sold two million books and was politely forgotten. Richard Mackarness ran Britain's first clinical obesity and food allergy clinic at Basingstoke District Hospital from 1958 to 1983. He had read Banting. He had read Stefansson. He tried the low-carbohydrate approach on himself, lost weight without hunger, and decided it was time a British doctor put it into a book. He called it Eat Fat and Grow Slim. The title was a deliberate provocation, in a country where rising American influence insisted that fat would kill you. The protocol: meat, fish, eggs, cheese, butter and green vegetables freely. Carbohydrates under 60 grams a day. Eat fat to satiety. Do not restrict calories. Across 25 years he kept meticulous records. Average weight loss 14-20 pounds in the first three months. Sustained weight loss at 12 months in approximately 60% of patients. At five years, approximately 40%, which is remarkably high for any dietary intervention. Other outcomes: resolution of asthma in roughly one-third of affected patients, reduction in migraine in roughly half, and complete resolution of gout in nearly all who adhered to the protocol. His 1976 second book, Not All in the Mind, documented hundreds of cases in which chronic symptoms resolved completely when specific food triggers were removed. The most common triggers: wheat, refined sugar, pasteurised dairy, industrial seed oils, caffeine. His clinic was closed in 1983 when Basingstoke District Hospital was reorganised. His approach, which had treated thousands of patients successfully, was not institutionalised anywhere in the NHS. He retired and emigrated to Australia. He died in 1996, aged 80. His books are out of print in Britain. Current NHS obesity treatment costs: £6.5 billion a year. Mackarness's clinic treated 3,500 patients for under £50,000 a year in 1960s pounds. The cost-benefit analysis has not been run. The result would be too uncomfortable to publish. He was right. He was British. He was ignored in Britain. Then exported to Australia, where he died in quiet retirement. This is how Britain handles its medical heretics. It has not improved.

Chips fried in beef dripping were a different object to what passes for a chip today. Walk into a Whitby chippy in 1978. The fryer has been on since 11am. The fat in it is beef dripping, held at 180 degrees by a man in a white apron who has been frying chips since he was fifteen. There are no seed oils in the building. The idea would not occur to anyone. Thick-cut Maris Pipers, ninety seconds in the dripping. Dark gold at the edges, fluffy inside, crisp in a way that sets your teeth against them. Salt. Vinegar. Paper. Two bob. You eat them walking home along the harbour wall. The chip tastes of the chip and also of something underneath the chip, something deeper, something you don't have a name for because you are nine and nobody names it, it is just what chips taste like. That taste was beef dripping. By 2002, 90% of British chippies had switched to rapeseed, palm, or sunflower oil, on the advice of public health officials citing research since quietly retracted. A stable saturated fat used for ten thousand years, swapped for an industrial oil invented in 1911, oxidised at fryer temperatures for twelve hours a day. A seed-oil chip is lighter, flatter. The crust doesn't hold. The flavour stops at the potato. No deeper note. No roast beef on a Friday. Ask a British person under thirty what chips are supposed to taste like and they will describe, with complete sincerity, the chip they have always eaten. A chip their great-grandfather would have considered a practical joke. They cannot miss it, because the reference point was removed from the national palate before they were born. A handful of chippies still fry in dripping. The Magpie in Whitby. A few survivors in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Black Country. Go. Drive. Queue. Eat them standing up, out of the paper. You will understand, in one bite, what was taken. The cow is still in the field. The suet is still at the butcher. The fryer could be switched back tomorrow. A whole country forgot what a chip was.