Martin Longley #NHSLove #FBPE 3.5% #DoGooder

I think I’ve found where Kier Starmer’s Dad worked.

In football there's always something new to invent.

They keep saying migrants are the reason you cannot get a home. Sit with the numbers for a second. There are 242,000 people in England facing the worst forms of homelessness. Around 32,000 asylum seekers are in hotels. That is the figure they want you to picture. That is the image they repeat. Now look at what they leave out. There are 998,000 empty homes in England. Over 265,000 have been sitting empty long term. Entire streets. Entire blocks. Locked up while people are told there is no space. Then there is land. Not green fields. Not the last bits of nature left around towns. Brownfield land. Former industrial sites. Places already built on and abandoned. Reports show almost 1.5 million homes could be built there. So the truth is uncomfortable for them. This is not a shortage created by migrants. It is a system that leaves homes empty while people sleep in temporary accommodation. It is a choice to ignore brownfield land while threatening green space. It is a failure of policy not an invasion of people. The numbers do not support the story they are selling. Every person in temporary housing and every asylum seeker in a hotel could be housed without touching a single piece of greenbelt. The capacity already exists. The land already exists. The homes already exist. Blaming migrants is easier. It is louder. It gets headlines. Fixing the system would require actually doing the work.

May 16, 1963. Gordon Cooper was orbiting Earth alone inside a capsule barely big enough to turn around in, moving at 17,500 miles per hour. He had been up there for over a day. Then the warnings started. First a faulty sensor screaming that the ship was falling — it wasn't. He switched it off. Then something far worse: a short circuit knocked out the entire automated guidance system. The one that kept the capsule steady. The one that was supposed to bring him home. Without it, reentry was nearly impossible. Too shallow an angle and the capsule would bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Too steep and it would incinerate. The margin for error was razor thin — and every computer that was supposed to hit that margin was dead. Down on the ground, NASA engineers watched the telemetry in silence. They could see everything going wrong. They could fix nothing. Cooper didn't panic. He uncapped a grease pencil and drew lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon. He looked up at the stars he had spent months memorizing and used their positions to orient the ship by eye. Then he set his wristwatch. Because when you have no computers left, you become the computer. At exactly the right moment — calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars outside — he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shook. The sky turned to fire. For several minutes, no one on Earth could reach him as plasma swallowed the ship whole. Then the parachutes opened. Faith 7 hit the water just four miles from the recovery ship — the single most accurate splashdown in the entire Mercury program. The man with a wristwatch and a few pencil marks on a window had outperformed every automated system NASA had. We talk a lot about technology saving us. And it often does. But Cooper's story is a quiet reminder that behind every machine, there still has to be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under pressure, and decide what to do next. The final backup was never the software. It was him.

Brexit absolutely was a mistake, a fucking disaster, a monumental fuckfest, a twatknacking shitshow. Retweet if you agree Like if you agree

I watched Dirty Business and expected the sort of outcry that followed the Post Office Scandal. Tumbleweed. The water companies are stealing from us and poisoning our environment. Where’s the outrage? #C4News

@Telegraph Imagine talking nonsense like this in such a convincing way. If there was a drop in vaccine takeup it can only have been for MenAandC vaccine. Men B vaccine (the Men that is in Kent now), was not ever administered to teens on the NHS.

Luxembourg is the world’s first nation to offer free public transport for all, tackling traffic and climate change in one bold move. Luxembourg has pioneered a bold new era in urban mobility by becoming the first nation on Earth to eliminate fares across its entire public transport network. This groundbreaking policy covers every bus, tram, and train route nationwide, offering free rides to residents, cross-border commuters, and visitors alike. Financed through general taxation rather than ticket sales, the initiative was designed to tackle the country's severe traffic congestion—once among the worst in Europe per capita—and to sharply cut carbon emissions from road transport. By removing the cost and hassle of tickets, Luxembourg effectively turned public transit into a basic public service, as essential and accessible as clean water or electricity. The impact has been profound and measurable. Ridership surged as people left their cars behind, leading to noticeably less road traffic, shorter commute times, and a meaningful drop in urban air pollution. While first-class rail options remain a paid upgrade for those wanting extra comfort, the standard second-class system is now truly seamless: hop on, hop off, no barriers. Luxembourg's experiment has demonstrated that removing financial obstacles can drive a genuine shift toward sustainable travel habits. It has also served as an inspiring model for other countries and cities grappling with sprawl, gridlock, and climate goals. In an age when radical solutions are needed to address the mobility-climate crisis, Luxembourg proves that treating public transport as a universal right is not only feasible—it can be genuinely transformative.

Should children leave school with a basic understanding of money? Carol Vorderman, "I spent two years writing a report, funnily enough for a Conservative government" "And one of the things we found was that those children who were below the standard level at aged 11, never ever changed relatively as they went through" "The current maths curriculum is wrong" "I studied engineering at Cambridge, my daughter is a research scientist" "What the universities say to the exam board, is that for a student to study engineering, they have to study this this and this, and that sets the A'Level curriculum.. Then you go down to GCSEs" "I argued that for most students they don't need to know trigonometry, algebra, etc" "They need to know their numbers and so many leave school and they don't realise it" "They are confused by finance" "They are confused by politicians who quote numbers willy nilly" "They're confused about tax: if you're self employed split the money into two accounts because you're going to pay half eventually in tax" "They're confused about credit, student loans" "And they're open to scams all the time" "I would say, it should be in the curriculum, and take out other parts of the curriculum" "You need the basic understand of how the numbers works"

Well done @MichealMartinTD - speaking up for European allies. Speaking up for @Keir_Starmer Speaking up for Ukraine. And doing it in a way that kept the Orange Man Boy for several minutes. Happy St Patrick’s Day

Iran has asked FIFA to move its World Cup matches to Mexico after Donald Trump said the Iranian team would not be safe in the USA. FIFA appears to have refused their request. The World Cup needs to be removed from the USA, let Mexico and Canada host it alone.

@MichaelRosenYes The lack of motivation for reading due to the miserable changes to English since 2015 I’d what I call ‘The Gove Effect’.

Belgian MEP Marc Botenga, "Most of you don't condemn, or even support, Trump and Netanahu's war on Iran" "Yet you claim to stand with the Iranian people" "I dare you to say that to the eyes of the 7 year old girl, her backpack still beside her desk, when a US tomahawk missile hit her elementary school" "I dare you to admit to the 167 other victims in that school that you are offering European bases to US killing machines" "Tell the families of Tehran, a city of 10 million people that you support chemical warfare of Israel as they poison the air with toxic fires and black rain that will cause cancers for decades" "Tell the Iranian people how much you really love them, while western bombs damage cunturies old cultural heritage" "Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq, your bombs never brought democracy and never will" "They bring chaos. Death. Destruction" "And the unbearable silence of children who will never come home"

If you're accused of 'hate speech', you're nearly twice as likely to be found innocent by a jury than if your case is just heard by a judge. The British people know right from wrong. It's a disgrace that this Government wants to cut them out of the justice system.

I am tired. Tired of war. Tired of anger. Tired of death. Tired of lives lost. Tired of hope destroyed. Tired of unnecessary grief. Tired of the destruction of well-being. Tired of forced migration. Tired of tears. Tired of children living in tents, denied the childhood they deserve. I am tired of the political excuses offered for war. I am tired of racial hatred. I am tired of human lust for power wrapped up in theocracy. I am tired of talk of defence that excuses aggression. I am tired of biased reporting I am tired of being told that people who have died on one side of a dispute are lives lost and that on the other, they are just killed. I am tired of a failure to recognise that any life lost unnecessarily is just that: it is a life lost unnecessarily. I am tired of the belief that war will ever solve anything. I am tired of the assumption that after war everything will go back to normal. I am tired of the cost of conflict always being borne by anyone but those who started it. I am tired of those who think we don’t have a duty of care to everyone, whoever they are, wherever they come from, whatever they believe, whatever their skin colour, whatever their gender, whatever their age. I am tired of those who think that others don’t matter. Most of all, I am tired of those who destroy hope, I live in hope. Hope of a better day. Hope of a better life for everyone. Hope that I might live to see that. Hope that everyone might then share hope. Is that too much to hope for?

I am the face of Modern England. I'm not a racist tw@t and I despise Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch. I also want to see Boris Johnson in jail for failing to prevent 200, 000 deaths due to his incompetent response to Covid. Please RT if you agree.

Legend says they’re still looking for the ball.. 😂

A while back, I learned something mindblowing about the geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, and I just can't get it out of my head. Now I'm going to make it *your* problem too. Sorry. Hang onto your hat. This gets wild. 1/

.@ZackPolanski in Peckham today: “I’ve never taken a penny from oil and gas companies, gambling companies, or private healthcare *round of applause* “I appreciate that, but I want to point out that it’s absurd, that a politician is praised for *not* being bought and paid for”

BREAKING : After Spain, now Belgium also revolted against US-Israel “Not one of our soldiers, not one of our weapons, should go for Trump’s war in Iran. We must say NO to Trump, like Spain did” 🔥 Today it’s Spain & Belgium, soon it will be ‘World against War’ 🫡