If you are old enough to remember driving in Britain in the 1980s, you will remember the windscreen. You could not see through it by July. A journey from Leeds to London in August ended with a front bumper that looked like it had been through a war and a windscreen that needed a proper scrubbing with a sponge at the services. Insects on the headlights. Insects in the wing mirrors. Insects packed into the radiator grille so densely that mechanics had to fish them out. This was simply the weather of the British summer, the cost of moving through a country that was still, in living memory, full of flying things. Get in a car now. Drive the same route. Stop at the services. The windscreen is clean. The Bugs Matter survey, run by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife since 2004, has been measuring exactly this. Volunteers clean their numberplate, drive a journey, count the splats on a grid. Between 2004 and 2021, the UK average fell by roughly 59 per cent. England alone: 65. Kent: over 70. The 2024 update found a further 63 per cent drop on top of that. The windscreen phenomenon has the data to back it up now. And not just the insects. Between 1970 and 2024, the UK Farmland Bird Index fell by 62 per cent. Turtle doves down 99. Grey partridge down 94. Tree sparrow down 90. A generation of British children has grown up without ever hearing a turtle dove call, because there are, in functional terms, no turtle doves left to call. Defra's own bulletin lists the causes without embarrassment. Loss of mixed farming. The switch from spring to autumn sowing, which took away the winter stubble the small birds had been feeding on since the Neolithic. The grubbing up of hedgerows to make fields bigger for bigger machines. Increased fertiliser. Increased pesticide. Specifically, the pesticides. Neonicotinoids on oilseed rape. Glyphosate sprayed as a pre-harvest desiccant on wheat and barley. Chemicals applied in combinations and volumes that would have seemed psychotic to a farmer in 1950, applied to grow the crops that feed directly into the plant-based shakes marketed to people who believe they are helping the environment. The insects died in the fields where the crops were grown. The birds that used to eat the insects, starved. The windscreen, accordingly, is clean. None of this happened on the permanent pasture that cattle graze. A herb-rich meadow grazed by cattle has more pollinators, more ground-nesting birds, more beetles, more everything per hectare than the arable field next door. The South Downs and the Welsh uplands and the Cotswold commons where sheep and cattle have been grazing for a thousand years are the places British biodiversity is still, just, holding on. The countryside did not empty because of the cow. It emptied because we replaced the cow with the combine harvester, the meadow with the oilseed rape, and the hedgerow with another half-acre of monoculture that needed spraying fourteen times a season to keep it alive. When someone tells you eating a steak is destroying British wildlife, ask them what was on the field before it became the soy farm, the rape farm, the wheat farm that produced the oat milk in their fridge. It was grass. And on the grass, there were cattle. And when the cattle were there, the windscreen needed cleaning.

There is no way the UK should be allowing the USA to use British bases to,carry out these attacks. They would be War Crimes. Please RT if you agree.🇬🇧

The govt's Student Loan Plan 2 repayment freeze in April 2027 must be reversed. It isn't moral. I'm concerned that my debate with Kemi Badenoch this morning distracts from the most immediate problem. In April 2027 Rachel Reeves will freeze the Plan 2 student loan threshold until 2030 which by then will increase graduate repayments by £300/yr more. This is effectively a unilateral negative breach of the student loan contract. Students were told the threshold would rise with average earnings. No commercial lender would be allowed to do this. The govt shouldn't do it either. Changing the terms of future students loans is a political decision - people may not like it but it is transparent. Negatively changing the terms of contracts already signed, and long in place, is a breach of natural justice.

I spent my Sunday fact-checking politicians. The results were disturbing. 🕵️‍♀️🇬🇧 Today, I took a closer look at the claims being made by senior Conservative politicians on social media. I wanted to see if their posts stood up to scrutiny. What I found was not just "spin"—it was a coordinated ecosystem of disinformation relying on specific, dangerous propaganda techniques. Before looking at the examples, it is important to understand the methods they are using to manipulate your perception: ⚠️ DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. ⚠️ Gaslighting: Rewriting recent history to make you doubt your own memory. ⚠️ Malicious Cherry-Picking: Selecting isolated data points while hiding the context to fuel anger. ⚠️ Strategic Omission: Deliberately leaving out the root cause of a problem to blame someone else. ⚠️ Institutional Theatre: Using official-looking props (like letters) to manufacture a fake sense of scandal. Here is how these techniques were deployed in just a single afternoon: ❌ Kemi Badenoch: Malicious Cherry-Picking 🍒 She is actively framing the Motability scheme (a lease system paid for by disabled people's own allowances) as "taxpayer-funded free cars." She strips away the context to incite public anger against the vulnerable. This is not oversight; it is a calculated distortion to punch down. ❌ Robert Jenrick: Strategic Omission & Projection 🙈 He is attacking the government for "slashing jury trials" to clear the backlog. The manipulation? He conveniently omits that it was his party that closed half the Magistrates' courts and cut sitting days, creating the historic backlog in the first place. He is blaming the fire brigade for the fire he started. ❌ Chris Philp: Laundering Disinformation & Gaslighting 📉 He is misleading Londoners by circulating debunked claims and articles about police dismissals to blame the Mayor. He ignores the fundamental reality: 14 years of Conservative austerity and pay erosion are the direct cause of the recruitment and retention crisis we face today. ❌ Mel Stride: Institutional Theatre & DARVO 🎭 He is theatrically demanding the FCA investigate the Treasury for "market-moving leaks," feigning outrage over standard pre-budget briefings. This relies on breathtaking public amnesia. He ignores the fact that his own party's reckless "Mini-Budget" didn't just spark rumors—it crashed the economy, nearly collapsed pension funds, and sent mortgages skyrocketing. The Contrast: I looked for similar levels of blatant disinformation from Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs today. I didn't find them. While all politicians spin, this level of detachment from reality seems unique to the current Conservative strategy. My message is simple: British voters are not sheep. 🐑 We can read. We can research. We can spot when data is being cherry-picked and history is being rewritten. Stop treating the electorate with contempt. We deserve the truth. #FactCheck #UKPolitics #Disinformation #Accountability #KemiBadenoch #RobertJenrick #ChrisPhilp #MelStride #Gaslighting #ToryChaos #BritishVoters #MediaLiteracy

I have to correct you he is not just a dick, he is a blind dick

Rage baiting - because it’s his job to know that this is the last group of people to migrate from long term benefits onto UC. I’ve no words - that I can repeat…

Good morning you lovely lot! The demonisation of disabled people continues! The rise in the numbers of people on UC with no work requirements is not some massive conspiracy, it's a result of the DWP migrating us all from legacy benefits. Steven should know this!

Read and RT Excellent. I am so fed up of ‘racist’ being used to shut down debate and genuine fear of where this country is heading. My daughter is travelling back to college today on a train in that area and the fact she could face an attack like this is terrifying. The first job of Government is to keep their citizens safe and they are failing on so many levels.

Test!

Right, let’s spell this out @Keir_Starmer, shall we? 1 @UKIP @Nigel_Farage & @reformparty_uk etc were always about #Brexit, nothing else. 2 #Brexit gave rise to the massive increase in illegal immigrants crossing the Channel and our necessary exit from the #DublinAccord 3 The rise in popularity of @reformparty_uk is ALL about illegal immigration, and again, nothing else. 4 Therefore, the battleground is still, and always was, about the #EU & #Brexit. So, hit @reformparty_uk head on about this defining issue. Have some principles, man. This is NOT about @UKLabour, this is about the future of this country. I thought it was only the @Conservatives that considered Party above country, not @UKLabour Too simplistic? I don’t think so. Think on.

Addressing the dumbest arguments about tariffs. 1. Tariffs are ALWAYS paid by the importer. Every time. Without fail. The importer has to pay the US Treasury the tariff before it is released from its port. That's what a tariff is. It's how they work. 2. Tariffs are typically passed on to customers. How much they are passed on is called a "pass-through rate. Remember Trump's tariffs on washing machines? The pass-through rate on Trump's 2018 washing machine tariff was between 108% and 225%. And it also raised the price of dryers, since they are usually sold as a set. 3. "Buying American" is a myth. No matter what you buy, the cost is affected by tariffs on some level. Let's say you buy American grown beef. The cattle has to eat, right? So the farmer gets silage from a corn farmer. And that corn farmer needs fertilizer, and that fertilizer probably comes from Canada. So the cost of growing the corn goes up, which causes the cost of feeding the cattle to go, which causes the cost of beef to go up. 4. Even if by some miracle, you found something 100% home-grown in every imaginable way where all the manufacturing parts are also made in America and all the aluminum and steel and raw materials for the parts were made in America (Grok said there weren't any) the prices would STILL go up because the price of all the items needed to produce it would go up because of the laws of supply and demand. 5. Countries don't pay tariffs. Can we stop this stupid-ass argument? There is no transaction between COUNTRIES. An IMPORTER (a private business) imports goods from an EXPORTER (another private business) because people in the importing country want those goods and will buy them. 6. There is a big difference between "tariffs" and "corporate taxes." For starters, not all importers are big corporations. But also corporate taxes are taxes on corporate income, not taxes on costs. If you make the taxes on COST go up you make the sell price go up. 7. Corporate taxes are PROGRESSIVE which means the more you make, the more of your income is taxed. Tariffs are REGRESSIVE, meaning the LESS you make the more of your income is taxed. 8. Taiffs are already starting to affect prices, but we haven't had the full brunt of it yet for a couple of reasons. First, most of the tariffs have only just gone through in the last 2-3 months and it takes time for the ripple effect to hit. Second, many corporations stocked up on imports ahead of the anticipated trade war (hence the negative GDP growth rate in the first quarter, as net exports is part of GDP). 9. It is not about whether tariffs are "good" or "bad." It's about whether Trump's use of them is completely fucking stupid or not. And it is. Fire is a tool, just like tariffs. But if you burn down your house to cook dinner, you're an idiot. Trump's "tariff every product on every country in the world" is like burning down the house to light a match. It's appallingly stupid. 10. I don't have a 10 yet, but I felt I needed to put this here to round it out. Congrats if you read this far.

Hey @grok who was the most famous person to visit my profile? It doesn’t need to be a mutual, don’t tag them, just say who it was.

Chile: This is what the Strait of Magellan looks like from Punta Arenas. Apparently the water has receded. Tsunami alert and evacuations are underway after the M7.4 earthquake hit Drake Passage...

Today has been an incredibly tough one for everyone associated with Rochdale Football Club. We have lost one of our own. Joe Thompson is a Dale legend who represented the badge with pride and passion. The messages from the football family and beyond show the incredible impact he had on so many lives. Football pales into insignificance at a time like this, but today's win was for him, in exactly the way he would have wanted. R.I.P. Joey T 💙 #RAFC

Just this...... #SaturdayVibes

Right, a bit of nature positivity today amongst all the gloom. My annual pilgrimage to find Worcestershire nightingales was a spectacular success today. At least 7 singing birds - more than I’ve ever heard before. This one was almost fetching the leaves off. Just beautiful.

RT @nothing_human: So @RishiSunak says the public don’t want a General Election. Is he right? Do we want a General Election? Vote and RT…

Oliver Dowden says Gary Lineker should stay out of politics. Lets do a little test of public opinion. If Gary Lineker should stay out of politics LIKE If Oliver Dowden needs to get out of politics RT

Just heard the Home Secretary stand up in Parliament and declare that "the British people support the Rwanda plan". I'm sick of these guys telling me what I support. I do not support the "Rwanda plan". If you don't either, please retweet.