UK-based wanderer of thought and life. Pondering the universe, one tweet at a time. Let's play🃏♦️
London, England
Joined April 2019
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I wasn't expecting this
While filming Skiptrace in Mongolia in 2014, director Renny Harlin asked local extras to name their favorite Western song. Their answer was surprisingly unanimous: Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” Inspired by their response, Harlin decided to build an impromptu musical scene around the song.
Surrounded by traditional Mongolian ger tents, Jackie Chan began singing as a horsehead fiddle played the melody. Soon, the extras joined in, clapping, singing, and turning the gathering into an unforgettable celebration. What made the moment even more remarkable was that many of the locals didn’t speak English, yet knew the lyrics by heart.
Jackie was already familiar with the song, while Harlin incorporated traditional Mongolian instruments to give the performance a unique cultural touch. What began as a casual conversation became one of the film’s most memorable scenes, proving that sometimes the best moments in cinema happen unexpectedly.
Watching the new John Lewis Christmas ad and I’m fascinated by what it says about our culture. Only in late-stage consumerism does a talking vintage toy guilt-trip a grandma out of giving her grandkids £50 cash because "you can't fit a feeling in an envelope". All to sell a room full of department store disco decor as the only true measure of family love
youtu.be/CbdvIoLx_BQ?is=zPZQ…
In a healthier culture, that John Lewis ad ends very differently. The grandkids put down their phones, sit on the floor with their gran, and actually listen to the stories behind that scuffed wooden dog. No panic-shopping montage, no neon disco makeover. Just a society that knows you don't need to buy a department store to bridge a generation gap.
I’m watching the Overton window shift with every drumbeat of war. Talk of conscription, warnings of attack and advice to prepare for emergencies are becoming increasingly normalised. I wonder how much public opinion is actually changing? Is it simply a shift in what we’re expected to accept.
From the UK, I feel oddly insulated from Europe’s protest wave. There’s an echo of 1848 in that sense of distance. But being across the Channel doesn’t mean we’re immune to the grievances driving it. Our political class must address those grievances.
I’m struck by students and workers in #Italy demanding decent wages, affordable lives and investment in public services not war and rearmament. Their message deserve to be heard. For me, security means a decent future, not bigger military budgets.
thestar.com.my/news/world/20…
I’m struck by young #Germans demanding affordable lives, better public services and peace, not conscription and bigger military budgets. Looting and attacks on police are wrong, but mustn’t drown out the protesters’ message. aje.news/p0wznv
I’m struck by how #Serbia’s students turned grief over the Novi Sad station disaster into a movement that defeated the ruling party. A remarkable demand for accountability but the real test is whether electoral change delivers justice
p.dw.com/p/5OuCQ
Martin Ward retweeted
"When all else fails, they take you to war."
Neil Oliver warns that the desperate push for war against Russia serves as a mechanism to launder money, impose martial law, and justify conscription across Europe, but predicts this narrative will ultimately fail due to lack of public support.
We need a national programme to install walk-in showers, backed by training to build the skilled workforce to fit them. Help people stay independent and wash safely at home, while reducing the need for paid care and easing pressure on social care budgets.
“Russian interference, Russian interference. It was Russian interference again. … There’s nothing I can do, it’s because of the Russian interferences.”
BB BURNES - Ingérence Russe 🎙🤟
(Ceci est un contenu fictif purement parodique et caricatural avec une bonne dose de second degré et d'absurde, réalisé avec divers outils IA)
Parodie de BB Brunes avec vos personnages préférés 🤗
Feat. Gabriel Attal, Jean-Noël Barrot, Édouard Philippe, Raphaël Glucksmann, Prisca Thévenot, Emmanuel Macron, Brigitte Macron, Sébastien Lecornu, Gérald Darmanin, François Bayrou.
#attal #rock #glucksmann #philippe #bbbrunes
The government announced he package as additional to its existing £3bn annual Ukraine commitment
The government can find billions more for Ukraine while British families struggle to heat their homes and put food on the table.
Political priorities are revealed by where the money goes.
UK Gov freezes tax allowances, quietly takes billions through fiscal drag, then offers pensioners a £94 tax break to fix a problem it created.
The trick? Make the tax rise invisible, the giveaway visible, and call it generosity.
Of everything John Healey announced today, my favourite is the Pension Tax Allowance: a tax break for pensioners worth, at the very most, £94 a year, which exists, according to the Treasury's own guidance, to spare them the "administrative burden" of a letter from HMRC asking for "a relatively small amount of tax".
Why would a pensioner living on nothing but the state pension be getting a tax bill at all? Because the personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570 since 2021, Labour has stretched the freeze to 2031, and from next April the full state pension, £13,036.40, sails straight over it. So instead of unfreezing the allowance - the honest thing, the thing you could explain to a child - Healey has built a second allowance on top of the first, to cancel out the damage done by the first, for three years, after which it goes "under review", which is Treasury for "in the bin".
And since nothing this Treasury makes is permitted to work cleanly, the thing tapers away. Between £13,037 and £13,319 a year, every extra £3 a pensioner earns costs them £1.60 in tax. That is a marginal rate of 53%. A 70-year-old doing a few hours a week behind a till will hand over a bigger share of each extra pound than a millionaire does on his bonus.
Meanwhile a 30-year-old cleaner on exactly the same income, £13,036, will pay £93.28 - the very sum Healey's own guidance waives for the pensioner standing next to her at the bus stop.
The freeze costs a full-time worker on the minimum wage £759 a year. Labour signed up to taking that off every one of them until 2031, and today Healey expects applause for handing £94 back to some pensioners, for three years, with an expiry date stamped on the bottom.
Progress would end the freeze outright. We would restore the personal allowance to the level it would have reached had it never been frozen, about £15,480 today, lock it to inflation for good, and make any future freeze impossible without a vote of Parliament. One allowance, for everyone, worth having. The pensioner comes out of tax, the cleaner comes out of tax, and HMRC is spared the administrative burden of writing to either of them.
Peter Hitchens is right to challenge the political establishment’s Ukraine policy. British soldiers are not props for political theatre. We need serious debate about the human cost of prolonging war, Britain’s overstretched resources, and the urgent need for diplomacy over moral grandstanding.
Martin Ward retweeted
🇬🇧🇷🇺 Britain is talking about war with Russia while lacking the military strength to fight one.
Brandon Weichert spoke with Ian Proud, a former British diplomat who served in Moscow and helped authorize UK sanctions against Russia.
And Proud had a rather uncomfortable assessment of Britain's position.
The British Army has roughly 73,000 troops. Russia has around 1.5 million military personnel and one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals.
Yet senior British military figures are increasingly discussing the possibility of confrontation with Moscow.
Proud believes Britain has spent years talking about Russia while largely abandoning the harder work of talking to Russia.
He also described being detained for three hours at Heathrow after attending the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, despite notifying the British government of his trip beforehand.
But his bigger concern is Ukraine.
Proud argues that Russia has the manpower, energy resources and industrial capacity to sustain the conflict far longer than Ukraine and its European supporters.
He believes Moscow could accept a settlement centered on the Donbas, but warns that continued refusal to negotiate could eventually encourage Russia to push farther toward Kyiv or Odesa.
And there's a political problem Western leaders may find even harder to confront.
Proud argues that any eventual peace agreement could leave Ukraine with worse terms than those discussed in 2022, after years of casualties and enormous financial costs.
Britain's leaders may be preparing their population for a confrontation with Russia. Proud thinks they should be preparing them for the compromises necessary to avoid one.
@WeTheBrandon @proud_diplomat
Absolutely right. A serious nation puts elected civilian leadership in charge of foreign policy, recognises the limits of its power, and puts national interests before military adventurism. True strength lies in strategic wisdom and restraint, not reckless foreign wars.
Surely a serious country doesn't allow generals to make its foreign policy. Serious countries also recognise the limits of their power and wealth, and don't commit suicide in foreign adventures. .@jakewsimons .
Martin Ward retweeted
Mr Bean not James Bond
The MI5 boss Ken McCallum was a schoolboy in George's Glasgow constituency. He clearly wasn't paying attention.
Watch #MOATS Live every Sunday & Wednesday 7PM London Time
Follow @moatstv 595 #MI5 #NordStream #Ukraine
Martin Ward retweeted
Publicly owned Royal Mail delivered letters six days a week. After privatisation, bosses tripled their salaries and cut that to three days a week. Yes, it's our old friend 'the superior efficiency of the private sector'.
