Desperate???, or what???

Norway have qualified for their first World Cup since 1998, and the first thing they did was ship in their own cheese, fish and 6,000 oranges. A touching show of faith in the American food supply. Start with the cheese, since they hauled 116 kilograms of it across the Atlantic. Dairy in the United States can come from cows injected with a growth hormone called rBST, which has been banned across Europe for years and does not even have to appear on the label over here. Norwegian cows never go near it, so the players would sooner bring their own. The fish follows much the same logic. A good deal of American tuna is treated with carbon monoxide, sold to the trade under the lovely name "tasteless smoke," which fixes that bright red colour and keeps it looking fresh long after it has quietly stopped being so. Europe banned the practice in 2003, while America still permits it. Then the oranges, all 6,000 of them, because the US happily lets growers spray the skins with Citrus Red 2, a dye the World Health Organisation's cancer agency calls a possible carcinogen, all so a slightly green orange can pass for a ripe one on the shelf. Europe will not let it anywhere near food. So when a side with one shot at a World Cup takes a long look at the local cheese, fish and fruit and flies in a tonne of their own instead, you can understand how they got there. A ringing endorsement of American food, obviously.

Yesterday was an excellent day.

Got ace #motorcycle recognition skills? No? Well, join us anyway, Monday at 7pm (UK) and have a little fun with like-minded guessers in our Mosaic Quiz. We tweet a mosaic of a Classic #Motorcycle and you tell us what it is. See you there, good luck👍

𝗣𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗲 The name change will make it easier for the village's millions of English tourists to pronounce. Full story here: walesoncraic.com/p/pontarddu…

Sorted

Mr Black Round And Sticky has arrived. Michelin Road 6's are going on.

𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝘆𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗮𝘀 𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝟮𝟬 𝗺𝗽𝗵 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 Sightseers will now be able to admire the queuing traffic both visiting and fleeing the country. Full story here: walesoncraic.com/p/speed-lim…

Trying to work out what was the briefing for the World Cup opening ceremony. So far I'm thinking it was put together by a few 12 year old girls for their mates.

Raising a Liberal Dog youtube.com/shorts/CZ5JUMSPt… via @YouTube

No ha empezado el Mundial y Noruega ya tiene las 3 mejores fotos de equipo. La primera antes de viajar, disfrazados de vikingos. La segunda, su foto oficial, con la camiseta de Noruega, todos perfectamente alineados. La tercera, ahora, todos los jugadores con las camisetas de su primer club. Qué grandes los vikingos.

JERSEY JAILED THE MAN WHO TRIED TO SAVE ITS CHILDREN Stuart Syvret @StuartSyvret was Jersey's Health Minister. In 2007 he started asking uncomfortable questions about what was happening to children in the island's care homes. He said he was sacked for whistleblowing. Jersey said he was sacked for his behaviour. That's the kind of framing you get when the institution decides the story. Syvret had been collecting his own evidence since 2006. In May 2008 he made a formal complaint to police claiming senior civil servants had perverted the course of justice by covering up abuse in care homes. So what happened to him? His house was raided. His computers and papers were taken. He was hit with a superinjunction, a secret gag order that was later exposed by UK Parliament, and imprisoned three times in connection with his efforts to expose what he described as horrific crimes across the island. The Independent Jersey Care Inquiry eventually confirmed that children in care on the island endured 553 offences between 1947 and 2004. Most occurred at the notorious Haut de la Garenne children's home. The inquiry concluded that survivors were left with devastating and life-long consequences. A constant theme in the inquiry report was the "Jersey Way" - a culture of ignoring and downplaying uncomfortable issues, which allowed abuse to continue without full investigation. One UK judge called Syvret "a thorn in the side of the Jersey establishment." A Liberal Democrat MP accused Jersey's judiciary of misusing the Data Protection Act to silence critics. Syvret eventually left Jersey fearing for his life, having received death threats for years. He ended up in an undisclosed location in the United States. His conclusion, years later: the obstructions to the original police investigation were "astonishing." And those who blew the whistle paid the price while the system stayed intact. Think about that. The man who raised the alarm about child abuse on a British Crown Dependency got jailed, gagged, and exiled. If this case matters to you, share it. These children deserved better than this. Sources: @BBCJersey @BBCNews @JEPnews @guardian

Got ace #motorcycle recognition skills? No? Well, join us anyway, Monday at 7pm (UK) and have a little fun with like-minded guessers in our Mosaic Quiz. We tweet a mosaic of a Classic #Motorcycle and you tell us what it is. See you there, good luck👍

Oscar isn't bothering with the Formula 1.

This past week, on a test bed in Britain, a Rolls-Royce jet engine ran at full take-off power on pure hydrogen, putting out water vapour instead of carbon. Nobody on Earth had managed it before. It is the sort of thing that ought to stop the country in its tracks, and it will be forgotten by the weekend. Leave aside the recent paroxysms of renewed net-zero insanity from Derelict Ed and the pervasive atmosphere of offended envy that greets much homegrown achievement nowadays in Britain. This engineering is a wonder, and it's British to the bone. We gave the world the jet engine in the first place - Frank Whittle, a Coventry man and an RAF officer, patented it in 1930 while the Air Ministry assured him it was a curiosity. Rolls-Royce is today one of perhaps three firms anywhere that can build a large aero engine at the outer edge of the possible, and it has just done what most of the industry swore was twenty years away. As usual, you marvel at how little the people who govern us had to do with it. The engineers in Derby are world-class; the stewardship above them is third-rate. They pulled off a global first while paying the most expensive industrial electricity in the developed world to keep the power on over the bench - a weight no German, American or Gulf rival has to carry. We produce frontier brilliance on the shop floor and fritter it away at the despatch box, and we have done for two generations. That is the maddening shape of modern Britain: brilliance from below, sub- (or, indeed, ultra-) mediocrity from above. The people here who actually make things are still among the best in the world; the state that is meant to back them treats a firm like Rolls-Royce as a photocall today and a takeover target tomorrow, and prices its energy as though it would prefer the next plant were built in Texas. Progress starts from the other end. Give these people what every rival government gives its champions and we beg ours to do without: the cheap, abundant power their competitors already enjoy, a supply chain built around them, and a state that guards a national asset rather than auctioning it. The hard part of a British revival - the talent, the nerve, the engineering - is already done, and was done again this week, by people who deserve a far better country than the one currently sitting above them. We just taught an engine to breathe fire and exhale water. The least we owe the men and women who managed it is a government and a state as brilliant as they are.

If you think 18,000 supermarket job losses is bad, you aren’t paying attention Since Labour came to power in 2024 ▪️400,000 payroll jobs have gone ▪️155,000 fewer jobs vacant ▪️163,000 jobs to be lost in 2026 ▪️1.7 MILLION now unemployed ▪️8.3 MILLION on UC And rising 🔥

The BBC reports that healthy life expectancy in the UK has fallen by about two years in a decade. Excellent news for anyone who enjoys working until 67 while their knees take permanent sick leave at 61. Britain's brave new world of enjoying longer shitter lives. Brace yourselves for a 🧵bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20q…

Oscar hasn't played like this for about 3 years. Having the tumor removed is obviously making him seem so much better. I am delighted. 🙏 😊

Well done @CPFC . Great result.