Geoffrey Bowles

Dear @SecWar In Denmark, we say that it is perfectly fine not to come to the party if you were not invited. The US did not reach out to its allies, but chose to go to war with Iran without consulting NATO. Now you are scolding us for not showing up — but the reality is that you never invited us. You love to berate Europe and NATO, but you are completely forgetting — or simply do not know — the following: 1. European NATO is rearming and, as agreed, spending more than 2% — that was the target we committed to reaching by 2024, and we are there now. And we are continuing to rearm. 2. You are also forgetting — or do not know — that NATO is a defensive alliance. It has been activated once. That was 25 years ago, when the United States was attacked. Back then, we had a good relationship with one another. We spoke respectfully to each other and we trusted each other. That is what made the United States a superpower — because it had friends it could count on to show up. Now you have repeatedly trashed us, you did not invite us to the party, and yet you are angry that we are not coming. That simply does not make any sense.

Rather than ask this fucking imbecile a question, can a reporter please tell him to his orange face: “JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LYING SACK OF SHIT!” and save us all 10 minutes of collective brain damage. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

@FoxNews This regime has spent 15 months still failing to understand Article 5. An attack on one is an attack on all. The US went to war alone. Nobody joins an adventure they had no part in planning. This may be the single dumbest regime humanity has ever produced.

@JamesMelville Who knows where the time goes. Fairport Convention.

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” ~ The Beatles

@FraserNelson @DCBMEP Fraser, just read the responses to your tweet. Do you not see the depth of anger in this country? People are furious and we have no redress. Democracy is failing us and soon democracy itself will be subsumed by interlopers and it will be too late. Wake up!

This is one of the more striking Reform policies: a UK version of ICE. To deport 2m would require a separate police force and methods more intrusive than anything seen hitherto.

@overton_news He’s gone doolally.

President Trump just told Joe Kernen that if he had been president, he would have WON the Vietnam War very quickly. He then pointed to Venezuela: “I took it over in 45 minutes.” TRUMP: “I would have won Vietnam very quickly, if I were president.” “I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won, because essentially we’ve won here. Okay.” “I mean, people can play games. The Democrats can say, well, we should have done better, no matter what.” “If I did it in one week, they’d say, we should have done better.” “Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes.” “It was basically a 45 minute, and by the way, a very strong military country.” “And we took it over in a day. But let’s be nice. But we basically took it over in 45 minutes. We took it over during the attack in 45 minutes.”

@dominiqueb33 @Microinteracti1 Oui, mais la situation est grave.

@grantvbseech @Microinteracti1 Ils l'ont élu 2 fois....🙃

I don’t believe a continent scarred by thousands of wars is soft. They learned a lesson. Europe can wake up any time. 700 million people pissed at the US is not something you want to wish for.

@residentadviser As I’ve said before, he shared chambers with Cherie Blair. Enough said.

Never mind Prime Minister, how tf did this guy become DPP?

“No one in government has much interest in the majority of children who aren’t disadvantaged. Yet the future of the country depends on these children at least as much as on their more disadvantaged peers. A country that has no interest in educational excellence is showing little interest in its own future.” Important piece by @amanda_spielman

@YvetteCooperMP @FCDOGovUK No sh1t Sherlock! You sound like you’re on a cruise liner at our expense. You are as relevant as John Terry at the Treaty of Versailles.

As we near the end of the agreed 2 week ceasefire, this is a critical diplomatic moment. For the last 6 days I’ve travelled through 5 countries, speaking to more than a dozen foreign ministers and counterparts, to maintain international pressure on opening the Strait of Hormuz.

@Microinteracti1 It looks like you’ve burnt your steak bake.

You have a bacterium in every cell of your body. You always have. About 1.5 billion years ago, a larger cell swallowed a smaller one. Nothing unusual there. Cells were doing it all the time. But this time, something went wrong. Or rather, something went extraordinarily right. The smaller cell didn’t die. It stayed. Over millions of generations, the two became inseparable. The guest surrendered almost all of its genes to the host. The host, in return, let it divide, live, and thrive. What began as a meal became a merger. That passenger is now your mitochondria. Every single cell in your body, around 37 trillion of them, contains what is still, biologically speaking, a bacterium. It has its own DNA. It replicates by binary fission, exactly as bacteria do, not as your cells do. Its ribosomes are bacterial ribosomes. If you took a mitochondrion and put it under a microscope next to the alphaproteobacteria it descended from, you would notice the family resemblance immediately. You are not simply a human. You are a walking, talking collaboration. A negotiated settlement between two ancient life forms that struck a deal so successful it gave rise to every complex living thing on Earth. The biologist Lynn Margulis argued this in 1967. Her peers laughed. Twenty years later, the genome sequencing proved her right. She got the last laugh. So did the bacteria. If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: @Microinteracti1

@brexitblog_info He shared chambers with Cherie Blair. Need I say more?

What mystifies me is how someone so obviously, uninspiring, uninquisitve, unforensic, lacking in attention to detail, incapable of consistency & devoid of leadership qualities came to be the Director of Public Prosecutions. Anyone?

@TheBarmyArmy My cricket spectating goes back 63 years but I have to say Ben Stokes.

You can pick ONE player to have an injury-free career (from beginning to end), who are you choosing?

@SamaHoole @Lizziedl Yes. This was the case in the 1960’s and it cost 5 shillings per week. That’s 25p. We took it all for granted.

A British school dinner in 1975 was cooked on-site, from whole ingredients, by a dinner lady who knew, without consulting a nutritional database, what a growing child needed to eat. The dinner was: roast beef, gravy from the drippings, boiled potatoes, cabbage, and sponge pudding with custard made from eggs and milk. Or shepherd's pie from real mince. Or liver and onions. Or fish on Friday, battered and fried in beef dripping. In a single sitting: haem iron from the meat, calcium from the custard, B12 from the liver, vitamin A from the gravy fat, vitamin D from the eggs, zinc from the beef, omega-3 from the fish, collagen from the gravy, complete protein from every component, and roughly 800 calories dense enough to carry a child through an afternoon of running around a playground in January. Then the system changed. In the 1980s and 1990s, local authority catering was outsourced. On-site kitchens closed. Dinner ladies were made redundant. Central production kitchens began manufacturing meals reheated in convection ovens. The roast beef became a turkey twizzler. The shepherd's pie became a pre-formed disc of processed potato and reconstituted meat product. The liver disappeared entirely. The fish was coated in breadcrumbs and fried in vegetable oil. The custard was made from powder, water, and yellow colouring. The sponge pudding was replaced by a yoghurt tube. Jamie Oliver's 2005 campaign filmed children who could not identify a tomato. Kitchens where the only equipment was a deep fryer and a microwave. Menus that contained less nutritional value in a full week than the 1975 dinner contained in a single sitting. The government pledged reform. But the on-site kitchen did not come back. The dinner lady did not come back. The roast beef and the liver and the custard made from eggs did not come back. The 1975 dinner lady, who had no nutritional qualification and had never heard of a DIAAS score, was producing, at approximately 30p per serving, a meal that contained more bioavailable nutrition than anything the modern system produces at three times the cost. She has been replaced by a supply chain. The supply chain is more expensive. The children are less well fed. The dinner lady knew what she was doing. Nobody asked her.

@Lawrenc09874431 @TrentTelenko Except events are showing that USA does not control the Straits of Hormuz.

美国昨天与摩洛哥签署国防协议，这关乎着直布罗陀海峡 (地中海与太平洋的进出口)。 至此，美国在一年多一点的时间里，完全控制了全球四大海运关卡： 直布罗陀 马六甲 霍尔木兹 巴拿马 我不用说，大家也看得出这是在精心布局，感觉比一带一路要靠谱一点。

@sophieRblake Good luck Sophie. I fully relate to your comments after my own cancer battles. You are not alone. Vive la vie!

Back in hospital for my PET scan. It’s hard to believe it’s coming up to four years since my Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer diagnosis and these moments never get any easier. Living with cancer often means living from scan to scan and hoping beyond hope that the treatment is still working. It can be a strange space to exist, trying to live a full life while carrying that constant weight of uncertainty in the background. I’d really appreciate any positive vibes, good thoughts and wishes today! Thank you 🩷

@Siege_Perilous @bbcnickrobinson It’s far worse!

@bbcnickrobinson That's plain daft. Starmer is a former DPP: u don't get there without a forensic ability to interrogate the evidence. He's a lifelong public servant..his interest is in the benefit of society not the beligerance of what 'he wants to happen'..this isn't Boris Johnson or Liz Truss

The case being made for the defence of @Keir_Starmer this morning appears to be that neither the Prime Minister nor any other minister knew how vetting works & no official pointed this out to them. No wonder @darrenpjones told @BBCr4today it was “quite frankly flabbergasting”.

Well Sarah, I’ve never worked in a clothes store. I’m surprised any store would allow men to try women’s underwear. But if the store was that misguided; (woke), I wouldn’t be a customer. Fuck inclusion. My underwear generally comes in packs of 4. I know my size and have never had to try it before purchase. Would you even buy’tried-on’ underwear? And then take it home to wash? I try on jumpers, suits, trousers, shoes, coats. I can’t think of anything else.

@CoherentMoney @grantvbseech @MartinSLewis @KimberleyJayne4 Must I? Some men “try on” the undies and then put them back. Use your imagination as to what happens before they put them back out in the store.

Today's Poll: When you buy brand new clothes, do you USUALLY wash them before you wear them? (requested by my colleague Liv, she does and wanted to know if this was normal, or she was extra pernickety)