On my gravestone, please put: She took umbrage with the use of ‘impact’ as a verb, but had no effect.

In the first series of Clarkson's Farm, a young woman told Jeremy Clarkson his sheep would never make money, and the wool cheque proved her right before the year was out. Ellen Helliwell was the shepherd he hired when it became clear he could not manage 78 ewes himself. She lambed them through the night, treated their feet, and told him the arithmetic at the start. Then came shearing. A gang arrives, charges by the head, and leaves a pile of fleeces. Clarkson sent the wool off and learned what every sheep farmer in Britain already knew. The fleece was worth less than the cost of taking it off the animal. For 800 years that fleece was the wealth of England. It paid for the cathedrals and the wars. A sheep was kept for five or six years for her wool, and the mutton at the end was a bonus that fed the country. Now the wool is a disposal problem, so the only thing a sheep can earn from is a lamb sold at five months. One income where there used to be three. Clarkson's flock lost money, and he said so on television. The reason the fleece is worthless is in your wardrobe. The jumper is acrylic, the fleece jacket is polyester, the carpet is nylon, and all of them are made from oil. Ellen could do everything a shepherd has had to do since the Bronze Age, and do it at three in the morning. The thing she could not do was compete with a plastics factory. Check the label in your collar before you ask why British lamb costs what it costs.

Here is a ‘patriotic scarf’ that belonged to my great aunt in WWII. As you can see, it does NOT say ‘keep calm, carry on’. @DrHelenFry #Wrens #WWII

It’s a little known fact that all the words associated with paying to see the Bayeux Tapestry are derived from Anglo-Saxon while all the words for being invited to see it by a corporate sponsor derive from French.

Who had one of these? #vintagetoys #1980s

Our latest free books give-away, open to all worldwide. This time it's 8 books from the last 200 years, and 8 people will be drawn to pick their choice. Retweet this and you're in for the random draw on Sunday 11 October. Proper books these. Details to follow over next few hours!

The Arctic Ocean is 73% polyester, and it got there through a washing machine in Europe. In 2021 a Canadian team sampled seawater across the Arctic, from the Atlantic side to the Beaufort Sea, down to a kilometre deep. Nearly everything they pulled up was plastic fibre. 92% of the particles were fibres rather than fragments, and 73% of those were polyester. Not bottles. Not bags. Thread, the width of a hair, in the shape of a fleece. And the concentration was 3 times higher on the Atlantic side than the Pacific. The fibres were arriving from the east, carried north on the currents from the laundries of Britain and Europe, where every wash of a fleece sheds hundreds of thousands of them and every one goes down the drain and out to sea. So the jacket sold as the outdoor choice is now the single commonest manmade object in the water around the North Pole, and the polar bear is swimming through the fleece. Wool in the same wash sheds too. Wool is hair. It rots on the seabed in months and feeds whatever finds it. The fleece was invented in 1979. The Arctic has been filling up with it for 40 years, and the sea around the Pole will carry those fibres for longer than there has been a Britain. They put a picture of a mountain on the label.

Calling it now but #Bella is going to win. @the_traitors_

“Resting indifferent face.” That’s a secret weapon right there, @RomeshRang 👌🏼 #TheTraitors

This is the kind of incident that makes life in Great Britain so infuriating so regularly nowadays: many people bought tickets for a specific date & time to see the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. While in the queue to enter, they were handed a paper telling them the gallery was closing & their visit was cancelled. A "private event" was scheduled at the museum. Some people had travelled a long way at some expense. Many had gone to considerable trouble to arrange their schedule to spend the day in London. All had paid a large fee for the ticket, which the museum happily accepted, while also accepting a booking for a private event that would make the visit the ticketholders had paid for impossible. The museum invited the ticketholders they turned away to get in contact to reschedule - I imagine this would not be straightforward, as almost all interactions with big institutions these days involve being put on hold for patience-testing amounts of time & then dealing with someone in another country who is being paid tuppence &, while trying their best, may not have English as a first language. Does the museum not realise what huge inconvenience they have caused? Most people's lives are very busy. For many, this was a big event they had planned for & looked forward to. There is such deep thoughtlessness in the decision to turn ticketholders away - I can't help thinking those who work at the museum do not care about their visitors at all. And yet a museum is set up to display its collection to the public. That is its goal. Those in the museum are at the service of the British people before anything else. They ought not to treat those they serve with such cavalier disregard.

I am also fed up of the "we didn't get a true Brexit" or it was "Remainer, May's fault" etc. May was responsible only for the WA (citizens rights, monies owed & the NI border). BJ - with great Brexiter acclaim at the time - changed the NI border part of it, for it to be moved to be between GB & NI to "Get Brexit Done" & win his GE. He then purged his Govt of Remainers. The hardest of (ERG) Brexiters then had full control, with an 80 seat majority, over the 'future relationship' which became the TCA. It was approved by the ERG 'Star Chamber' & celebrated with BJ, Xmas 2020. What else where these now moaning Brexiters expecting from harder borders/barriers to trade? which are funnily enough harder (less choice for more cost) to trade & move across

“Oh, my boys, my boys, we’re at the end of an age. We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in. Shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour...” Richard Griffiths, Withnail & I [1987]

HAPPY MICHAELMAS!!!

@LebanonEmbUK what is your country doing to stop the appalling slaughter of migrating birds happening right now. Its a War On Nature! You are signatory to UN Convention on Migratory Species. @BonnConvention This slaughter has to STOP @CABS_REPORTS @ChrisGPackham @@BirdLife_News

Someone in our office keeps scheduling meetings for 12:01 so they technically aren’t “lunch meetings.” Today I joined one while eating a sandwich. The organizer sighed and said, “I was hoping we could all be fully present.” I said I could either be fully present with a sandwich or partially present while thinking about one. Three people immediately unmuted and started eating. One woman had an entire plate of spaghetti ready beside her laptop. The meeting ended at 12:14 because the organizer said the chewing was distracting. It’s the shortest meeting we’ve had all year. We’re bringing soup tomorrow.

Can we stop calling him ‘Andy’? He’s Mr Burnham or the PM. He’s not ‘Andy’. @UKLabour @MayorofLondon

The National Academy of Sciences. What utterly pointless destruction from Putin. It’s Europe’s greatest challenge right now to rid ourselves of this imperialist monster.

Re #RAFFairford 1.Police can detain terrorist suspects for 14 days, they needed 1 day so it’s reasonable to assume they’re NOT terrorist suspects 2.If explosives were found, they would be charged, they weren’t, so we can assume there were none 3.Leave the police to do their job

Reminder for the retards: no one forced russia or the soviets to invade another country. Not in 1939 when the soviets invaded Poland and Finland. Not in 1940 when the soviets occupied and annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Not in 1956 when soviet tanks crushed Hungary. Not in 1968 when soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia. Not in 1979 when the soviets invaded Afghanistan. Not in 1992 when russian forces directly intervened in Moldova’s Transnistria conflict. Not in 2008 when russian forces went deep into Georgia and occupied Georgian territory. Not in 2014 when russia seized and annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. And not in 2022 when russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And spare me the bullshit about russian “security guarantees” and promises. In 1975, the soviets signed the Helsinki Final Act, committing themselves to the non-use of force, the inviolability of borders, territorial integrity and non-intervention. In 1991, russia joined the Alma-Ata Declaration recognising the territorial integrity of the former soviet republics and the inviolability of their existing borders. In 1994, russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, explicitly promising to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders and to refrain from the threat or use of force against it. Then it seized Crimea in 2014. In 1997, russia signed the Treaty of Friendship with Ukraine, recognising the inviolability of their existing borders, renouncing territorial claims and committing itself to non-use of force. In 1999, russia committed at the OSCE Istanbul summit to withdraw its remaining forces from Moldova by the end of 2002. It did not. In 2003, russia signed a treaty formally establishing and recognising the russia-Ukraine state border. In 2008, russia accepted the six-point Georgia ceasefire requiring russian forces to withdraw to the positions they held before hostilities. The Council of Europe subsequently documented delays and failures in implementing those obligations. If you believe anything russia says, you are either paid by russia, retarded, or both.

Clergy: I don't care whether you are thurible high or smoke-machine low, but please, for the love of all things holy, be *serious*. If you want people to turn up, they should be 100% certain that church will not be naff, cringe, embarrassing or an insult to their intelligence.

When American’s say “could care less” instead of “couldn’t care less.” Nonsensical and has the opposite meaning to that which is intended.