Stephen Long

@Timmysofine No pip

You have 2 children, a girl named Olive, a boy named Oliver. You find out a third child is on the way, what do you name the third child?

@troovus Clem Attlee had the same nanny who’d help raise Churchill, was greatest ever leader……

In 1906, 29 Labour MPs were elected. Among them were: 2 engineers 3 miners 2 shipwrights 1 shoemaker 1 cooper 2 textile workers 2 gas workers 2 railwaymen 3 compositors 1 steel smelter 1 journalist 1 iron moulder What proportion of Labour MPs today are from manual trades? 1/2

@AnnabelleHallUK Rather sit inside pub any day, even it hot weather

You’re not British if you haven’t sat in a beer garden in 9 degree weather because the sun came out for three seconds. Us brits consider blue lips a small price to pay for spring.

@astou_jolie A phone call was an event back then. Now I pretend to not be able answer and text that I’m busy, are you ok?

It’s actually insane that people used to casually receive a giant book with everyone’s home address and phone number in it. 😭

@RaminNasibov New York New York isn’t from Sinatra’s heyday of the 40’s/50’s but a cover from late 70’s

What historical fact sounds fake but is true?

@jimmy_fisher9 @JamesSkellyBand @thecoralband Amazing film. I’m never arsed about nearly being 40 but this made me pine to be 17 in a band again

Just watched @thecoralband film/ rockumantary if you will!! Absolutely incredible and brought back the best memories of being there from the start in the Zanzibar to there first set at v festival where they even played travelling circus. The big top in new Brighton!

@GeordieApe It help create this tribalism where you can only support one team and stick to it. Where policies aren’t even considered

Brexit has destroyed the UK. Before Cameron called a referendum immigration & EU membership was not a key issue. Yet for over a decade now Brexit has seen racism, xenophobia & fascism grow in the UK. The likes of Farage have enabled it with his dog whistle politics.

@TheExtremeMusi1 Love Will Tear Us Apart-Joy Division

What bass line do you find the CATCHIEST of ALL TIME?

@thelastpieonear @Tiger911494404 @djgibbo71 The thing about the BBC is they’re meant to be impartial. Left says they’re right wing bias, right says they’re left wing bias. Maybe they’re impartial?

@Tiger911494404 @djgibbo71 BBC

Would you support this wonderful man taking over the Labour party again.

@PaulEmbery He seemed a great man but like Corbyn, best thing for his legacy was never getting power. It’s a forever ‘’what if’’

On this day 32 years ago, Labour leader John Smith died suddenly. A politician of conviction, decency and integrity.

@LFCJacobb Promotion is always a great season. Means much more if you’re from the place too. It’s like being red, blue or green in trivial pursuit otherwise. Just pick who you want

Genuinely right call me a big 6 twat all you want but, when you’re a yo-yo club like this, is promotion still exciting? like surely the likes of Burnley and Southampton don’t look forward to the prem anymore

@KarenFaz I prefer this by a mile but we’ve been far more successful with the current one. 60’s and modern day

Imagine if Burnley brought back this ❤️

@anon_opin Can’t touch the Smiths, best band of the 80’s but definitely brilliant. Just a shame they’re called Roland and Curt too

Tears For Fears were the best British band of the 80s. Much better than The Smiths. Their first 3 albums are almost flawless. They were huge in America too. They don't get the credit they deserve.

@bing_1773 @GangsterCinema You should watch ‘’The Offer’’, it’s a drama about the making of the Godfather. It’s absolutely brilliant

@GangsterCinema Why was Al Martino casted for such a film if he had very little acting experience ?

In The Godfather, Johnny Fontane was played by nightclub singer Al Martino, who had very little acting experience. That's why he was mostly shot from behind in his scene with Brando, to mask his inability to conjure up emotions. However, his tears were real. According to notes in The Annotated Godfather Complete Screenplay, Brando helped him with his performance... "Alex Rocco, who played the part of Moe Greene, was on the set the day of this scene between Johnny and the Don. He reports that Al Martino (Johnny Fontane) approached Marlon Brando before the scene, obsequiously calling him a great actor and asking for pointers on how to bring out his emotion for the scene. Brando told him not to worry, “I’ll help you.” When they proceeded to shoot the scene, Brando gave Martino a real whack across the face - which indeed helped bring tears to Martino’s eyes."

Bank Holiday Sunday in Burnley town centre. The chain shops are open, the family firms are gone, the Wetherspoons does steady trade, and the Weaver's Triangle stands a hundred yards away as a heritage site, like Pompeii. A century ago this town ran close to 100,000 cotton looms. More than any other town on Earth. Burnley wove the cloth of half the British Empire out of the bottom of a Lancashire valley, and the people who did the weaving came home each evening to streets that they owned, that they had built, that hummed with the activity of a town that knew what it was for. The looms are gone. The activity is gone. The streets are still there. Four decades of slow decline have taken the shops on them one at a time, until what remains is a parade of the same dozen chains you would find in any other emptied town from Grimsby to Stoke-on-Trent. The standard explanation is "globalisation." But this is a lie that has had thirty years to harden into a doctrine. Bavaria still builds cars. Lombardy still spins textiles. Lyon still weaves silk. The Northern European cities that once competed with Burnley are still in the productive economy because their governments decided their industrial base was worth a fight. Britain decided otherwise. Specific people, in specific rooms, with specific names attached to specific Treasury submissions, decided that a country could subsist on financial services and call centres, and that the towns which built it could be left to manage their own decline on whatever Levelling Up grant happened to fall out of the next reshuffle. Many families in Burnley today carry four, sometimes five generations of closure notices: pit, mill, foundry, factory, depot. The decline is intergenerational. It is also a choice that gets renewed every parliament. There is no mystery about what built towns like Burnley. Productive industry, paid honestly, generating enough surplus that a working family could afford a terraced house, a few shillings to put by, and the dignity of a Sunday best. There is no mystery about what would rebuild them. Cheap energy. Real wages. A state that bothers to defend its industrial base when foreign competitors come knocking with subsidies the Treasury is too embarrassed to match. It's time to put talks of 'levelling up' to death. The phrase stinks, always did; it belongs to a class of politicians for whom the town has always been a photograph behind a podium, a mere optimisation problem (and an unappealing one), rather than a working economy. It's time to bring productive industry back to these places, not as a sentimental sop to them, because it can be done, and because it ought to be done. Because the country needs it built, and with the right people in charge we can build it at a scale that makes the return of confident, good work visible in the lifetime of the people now grown tired of being told it that, for them, prosperity is the stuff is pipe dreams.

@stengel It’s that kind of arrogance that let in Trump

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.

@dlswhynot @ZackAttackP1 To be fair Jimmy Page has wrote some decent tunes in his career

@ZackAttackP1 Clapton had the misfortune of living. And he’s continued to release new material. Not bad mouthing him, but what has Jimmy Page done lately?

What's an unpopular opinion you have on any legendary artist? Me: After Blind Faith, Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Derek and the Dominoes, I kinda find most of Eric Clapton's other works to be kinda bland and boring. There's songs here and there I like, but most of it, not really.

@martincowa4230 @afneil I’m not sticking up for Neil but I find this is capitalism at its most extreme. Why should the person attending the place, pay the owners staff he employs? Pay people properly

This true story has generated a lot of untrue responses from the usual know-nothing Twitter pontificators. So here’s the full story. It’s 2013, I hosted a dinner for US contacts and journos in NYC in a rather fancy, expensive restaurant owned by a friend. It was a thank you. Not on expenses. I’m forking out — happily. Good people. A great fun dinner but the bill came to circa $1,000. Gulp. I paid by card and slipped the waiter, a young aspiring actor (as they tend to be in NY), $150 cash. I thought that was quite generous. Especially $150 in 2013 prices. More like $200+ today. Anyway he quickly returned and asked loudly and aggressively if there was a problem. No, I said. All good. Well, he said the tip was ‘bit light’. By now the whole table was looking at me and him. I panicked and bunged him more dollars. He departed without a word of thanks. On the way home my partner saw I was fuming with the embarrassment, almost humiliation. Call the owner, she said. I did. I didn’t ask him to fire the waiter but said it was an embarrassing/humiliating experience in front of colleagues and I doubt I’d go back to his restaurant. Perhaps he could have a word. I learned later he fired him because he had something of a trackrecord in this matter. I lost no sleep over that even if it wasn’t my aim. Ever since I’ve taken no nonsense from aggressive NY waiters. I’m from Paisley and can give as good if not better than I get. One waiter who subsequently complained about his 20%(!) tip found it cut to 10%. Tips are war in NY restaurants. Stand up for yourself. Don’t be mean but don’t fall over in embarrassent when they behave badly. And please don’t import this culture from USA to dear old Blighty. End of.

@BeatlesEarth I know it was in America but MMT is not really a proper album. Any album with Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane would be a classic

Which Beatles album do you prefer listening to? 🤔👇🏼👇🏼

@WelsbyElton Not really a goal scorer but my Grandad watched Burnley for 70 odd years. He always said Tom Finney was the best player he ever saw and he saw them all. Must of pained him as a Preston player too

Greavsie,Der Bomber and the Lawman top my list of greatest ever goalscorers I have seen.