Andrew Davis

Wonderful to have Great Great Grandfather JFGoodey thanked in #graffiti on the #Colchester #Rec some 150 years later @AncestryUK @WDYTYA_UK #Genealogy #Goodey #Essex #history #Newtown

A British egg in 1955 came from a hen that had been outside that morning. The hen had eaten grass, slugs, beetles, worms, and whatever the farmer's wife had thrown into the run from the kitchen. The yolk of the egg was orange, occasionally so deep an orange it looked almost red. It stood up in the pan when you cracked it. The white was thick enough that you could lift the egg by its yolk on a fingertip if you were careful and the egg was fresh enough. The hen produced perhaps 180 eggs a year. The flock was small, twelve to twenty birds, attached to the farm or the smallholding or the back garden. Eggs were seasonal, abundant in spring and summer, scarce in autumn, almost absent in winter. A British family in 1955 ate eggs when the hens were laying and ate something else when they weren't. A British egg in 2026 comes, in the overwhelming majority of cases, from a barn of 16,000 birds confined under artificial light at carefully controlled temperature, fed a formulated diet of soy, wheat, and synthetic vitamins, producing 320 eggs a year per hen by extending the lay through the winter dark months. The yolk is yellow because the feed contains a synthetic carotenoid called canthaxanthin, dosed to produce the colour the consumer expects. The yolk does not stand up in the pan. It collapses under its own weight, spreading thin across the surface like a slow puddle. The pasture-raised egg contains roughly three times the omega-3, twice the vitamin E, considerably more vitamin A and D, and more folate than the commodity egg. The peer-reviewed literature has been saying this for twenty years. The egg has been the standard breakfast protein on the British plate for four hundred years. The modern egg looks like the old egg, costs roughly the same, and delivers approximately a third of the nutrition. The British shopper, examining the box at Tesco, has no way of knowing this. "Free range" means the hen had access to a door that was theoretically open at some point during her productive life. A pasture-raised egg from a small producer at the farmers' market costs approximately 50p. A commodity egg from Tesco costs approximately 25p. The price difference is the entire reason the system exists. Find a small producer. Pay 50p. The yolk will tell you what an egg used to be.

Melania Trump says Jimmy Kimmel should be canceled. Last week her husband commented on Robert Mueller’s death: “Good. I”m glad he’s dead.” Said Pretty much the same about my old friend Rob Reiner. People who live in glass houses should’t throw shit.

Americans love banging on about the War of Independence. They’re quieter on the War of 1812. Here’s why. In 1812, America declared war on Britain. The plan was to march into Canada and annex it. Thomas Jefferson said it would be “a mere matter of marching.” It wasn’t. The Canadians sent them packing. Two years later, the British sailed up the Potomac. American forces collapsed at Bladensburg in what’s still called “the Bladensburg Races” because of how fast they ran. President Madison had already fled to Maryland. The British walked into Washington unopposed. They sat down in the White House, ate the dinner Dolley Madison had laid out for forty guests, used the President’s silver, then set fire to the building. Then they burned the Capitol, the Treasury and the Navy Yard. A freak thunderstorm put the fires out the next day. The British left when they were ready. It’s still the only time a foreign army has captured the US capital. You can see why it doesn’t come up much.

UK tax is going to be the highest since 1945. But public spending won't increase; in fact most of us will experience a decline in public services. Here's why - in a thread that I'd love to be completely wrong.

EXCL: Nigel Farage was given an undisclosed £5m by crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in general election @Annaisaac reveals theguardian.com/politics/2026/…

Claims that a postman dumped Reform Party leaflets in the bin are now being investigated, to make sure he put them in recycling

The British Vitamin D problem is not new. Britain sits between 50 and 58 degrees north. London is on the same latitude as Calgary. Edinburgh is level with Moscow. From October to March, the sun does not rise high enough above the horizon for the UVB wavelength your skin needs to actually reach the ground. You can stand naked in February noon sunlight on the south coast and produce essentially zero vitamin D. This is six months of the year, every year, for the entire history of human habitation on these islands. The British have known this, in their bones, for ten thousand years. Look at what was eaten in winter, before anyone had ever heard the term cholecalciferol: Oily fish. Herring, mackerel, sprats, kippers. Three or four times a week from October to March. A single kipper carries roughly 250 IU of D3. Cod liver oil. Spooned into every British child between 1850 and 1980, a teaspoon at a time. Distributed free by the Ministry of Food in the war on the explicit understanding that British children needed it through the dark months. Rickets fell by 90 per cent between 1940 and 1960. Cod liver oil was the reason. Liver. Eaten weekly in working households until 1985. Egg yolks from hens that had been outside in the summer. Grass-fed butter, made from cream from cows on summer pasture, the fat-soluble vitamins banked into the cream and eaten through the winter. The British solution to the British problem, evolved over centuries by people who could not articulate the biochemistry but knew, with absolute certainty, what kept the children growing through the dark months. Then between 1955 and 2010, the British removed almost all of them. Cod liver oil reduced to a niche supplement. Liver dropped from weekly to never. Oily fish consumption halved. Eggs rationed by the Department of Health on cholesterol grounds since retracted. Butter replaced with margarine carrying no fat-soluble vitamins at all. Result, by 2020: roughly half of all British adults are vitamin D deficient by the end of winter. A third of children. Rickets has reappeared in British paediatric wards. The NHS now recommends every adult take a supplement from October to March. This is the NHS recommending in 2026 what the British diet was doing automatically in 1926. The geography has not changed. The latitude is the same. The sun is still inadequate from October. The food used to handle it. The kippers are still being smoked at Craster. The cod liver oil is on the chemist's shelf. The liver is at the butcher. The butter is in the dairy aisle, behind the spreads. The sun was always seasonal. The food was the backup. The backup got thrown out. Get it back.

King Charles: I cannot help noticing the readjustments to the East Wing. I'm sorry to say that we British of course made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814.

One of the greatest stand-up bits ever, Rowan Atkinson as the Devil is pure genius.

Trump is trying his toxic beta-male handshake, and Charles is having absolutely none of it.

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.

The best thing is, they'll never forget it 👍

Falklands live scenes…

Respect to @tomburgis & Guardian team for this solid - & exceptionally difficult to publish - effort to shine a light on Reform’s biggest funder, a highly litigious crypto billionaire who is currently suing @WSJ

Do you see the £25m figure for Christopher Harborne? Now read today's brilliant piece by @tomburgis about him. The future of the UK (and the world!) in the hands of a stranger who threatens the media with the ferocity of a dog against a postman. 🔗theguardian.com/politics/2026/…

China is desperate for a trade deal with the EU, it has invested more time and resources in trying to obtain one than any other in history. Today the EU made clear to Beijing any deal is contingent on them cutting ties with Russia. China must choose - Russia or the EU.

Here's rapist Conor McGregor with Farage, and with Putin, and here's Farage with Andrew Tate. It is not well-known that Tate has spouted pro-Russian propaganda. Then of course there is Farage and sexual predator Donald Trump, who has persistently favoured Putin. What is it about Farage, Russia and sexual predators?

RFK Jr claimed mercury in vaccines caused autism Mercury was removed Autism went UP He claimed Tylenol in pregnancy caused autism It didn't.he had to walk back on the claim Maybe..just MAYBE...he's just an anti vaxxer who doesn't *actually* know what he's talking about?

Reform UK quotes in the banned Labour political broadcast. It was banned by Ofcom, so please share far and wide!!! 👇👇👇