Please sign & share our @lionaid petition to ban lion trophy imports into the UK. We are now closing in on 700K signatures so please also RT for #lions 🦁🦁 #fridayfeeling 🦁🦁 #FridayVibes 🦁🦁 change.org/p/ban-lion-trophy…

Hedgehogs Need More Than Public Love — They Need Legal Protection - Sign the Petition! c.org/cRBbjJ6kjL

I’m not passing on a post. This is me. I’m furious. 😡 I worked. They took NI off my wages before I ever saw it. My employer paid in too. For years. That was not a favour. That was money ripped out of work I actually did, on the promise it would be there when I was old. People paid the same and dropped dead before they collected a penny. That money didn’t vanish. The government spent it. Then they have the cheek to look at the rest of us like we’re scroungers for wanting it back. They never put their own money in. Not a pound. They took ours, blew it, and when it was our turn they changed the word. “Entitlement.” As if I crawled in begging. Then they moved the line. Retirement age up. Then up again. Work till you drop. Wait till you’re worn out. Hope you live long enough to see what you already paid for. That’s the con, empty the pot, shove the age back, and let more of us die waiting. And some of the young ones sneer. Talk as if we stole their lives. As if we sat on our backsides. We paid in when the deal was 60 or 65. We didn’t invent this mess. We grafted and now we’re the villains while they raise the age and spend the money elsewhere! 😤 It was never locked away with my name on it. I know that. They used it like a slush fund and expected us to swallow it. Look at them. Fat packages. Weeks off. Sick pay. Sorted. Then look at pensioners on a fixed state pension, counting every coin, filling in bloody forms, being told there’s nothing left. Veterans. People who built this country. Our own. Treated like an inconvenience. Meanwhile the spongers sit on it fit to work, won’t work, know every loophole, take and take while the rest of us paid in. And still they find money. Hotels. Benefits. Lawyers. Welcome packs for boat after boat coming over. People who never paid a day’s NI here. Never put a pound into the pot I funded for decades. Don’t tell me we can’t afford our own. Don’t tell me the cupboard is bare for the ones who worked, then fling it open for spongers and arrivals who contributed nothing. Don’t push the retirement age up on people who already paid, then let kids be told we’re the ones draining the country. Billions abroad. Billions here on people who put nothing in. And the ones who paid get lectured, delayed, and spat on. Now they want to tax it as well. Take it off you on the way in, spend it, make you wait longer, call it an entitlement then tax what’s left when you finally get it. Steal it twice. Three times if you count the years they added to the retirement age. Don’t call my pension charity. Don’t call it welfare. Don’t preach at me about kindness while you rob the people who funded the lot. I paid it. In work. In tax. In years I don’t get back. They spent what was meant for later on spongers, on foreign aid, on boatloads who never paid in, then shoved retirement further away, told the young to blame us, and now they’re coming back for another cut. It is my money! I earned it! 🤬 vowaleswren

The triple lock should stay. But the state pension is NOT a benefit. So, it should be separated from benefits and solely for state pension for those who have made the necessary contributions. Benefits is for those who havent. Then you get the true cost of benefits here.

I completely reject the way the BBC has framed this argument, and particularly the suggestion that the triple lock is somehow becoming unsustainable because pensioners’ living standards have improved more quickly than those of working people. That is an extraordinarily narrow way of looking at what has actually happened. There is a rather important part of this story that is being conveniently overlooked. Successive Conservative governments froze the personal tax allowance, and the present Labour Government has continued that policy. The consequence for pensioners is particularly stark. Their State Pension rises, as it should, yet the amount they are permitted to receive before paying income tax remains frozen. They are therefore being steadily dragged into the tax system through fiscal drag, with an increasing proportion of their pension becoming taxable. Indeed, we are now reaching the absurd position where the full new State Pension itself is likely to exceed the personal tax allowance. The Government will increase the pension under the triple lock and then, because it refuses to raise the tax threshold, begin taking part of that increase back in taxation. If we are going to talk about a “ratchet effect”, perhaps that is the ratchet effect we ought to be discussing. Nor are these payments some unexpected act of generosity bestowed upon pensioners by the state. These are people who have worked and paid National Insurance contributions throughout their lives on the understanding that, when they reached retirement, the State Pension would form part of their income. For millions of people, that was part of the social contract between the individual and the state. We should also remember how that contract has already changed. When many of today’s pensioners began their working lives, the State Pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Those ages have since been increased. People have already been required to work longer and wait longer before receiving the pension towards which they spent decades contributing. Against that background, to portray a State Pension of around £250 a week as evidence that pensioners are somehow becoming too prosperous is frankly absurd. Nobody could seriously describe that sum, from which people must meet the ordinary costs of living, as an extravagant retirement income. The triple lock was introduced for a reason. The value of the British State Pension had been allowed to fall behind earnings over many years, while pensioner poverty became a serious national problem. It was designed to prevent that happening again and to ensure that pensioners shared, at least to some reasonable extent, in the rising prosperity of the country rather than being progressively left behind. So the question should not be whether Britain can afford to honour the triple lock. The more pertinent question is why governments believe it acceptable to increase the State Pension while deliberately freezing the tax threshold until that pension itself becomes taxable. After a lifetime of work and contributions, pensioners are not asking for charity. They are asking for the settlement they spent their working lives paying towards to be honoured. That distinction matters.

What an excellent evening with @PeterBleksley tonight in Sheffield. Great insight about working undercover. Huge respect for your position on meds. Catch him on tour if you can. The date & location of the final show are very meaningful too, all the best. entertainers.co.uk/shows/the…

My show is back on the road tomorrow. Sheffield, Llanelli, Harlow and Great Yarmouth this week. Full schedule below. Tickets available here; entertainers.co.uk/shows/the…

I don't care what anybody has been through personally on the jury, it' not about you or your experience. It's about the evidence in front of you. #thejuryc4

Just seen someone with L plates on make a hash of reverse parking on our road. 6ft from the car in front & less than a foot away from the car behind. Plus a foot off the kerb. Then I see one of our neighbours getting in for a driving lesson!!! More drivers to be aware of.

I know Freddie will be having a fabulous & flamboyant heavenly 80th party up there, but we've definitely missed out on some outrageous photos really. Hard to believe it's 35yrs since his death. #FreddieMercury

Pleas share this. #HelpFindBen

I've seen it all now. A guy who lives near us, drives 2 different small cars with another guy (obviously delivering) comes home early morning or late at night. Just got into a driving school car, so wonder if he has passed his test because he drives on his own!!

Practicing my name…Not really! I’m signing 8,000 autographs for the Special Editions of my newest memoir “IN MY DARKEST HOUR”!

Congrats to Spain. Thoroughly deserved the victory. 👏🏻 🇪🇸 Argentina were a disgrace throughout the game with cynical fouling, and showed their true colours after the final whistle as sore, ugly, petulant losers. Don’t even deserve their runners-up (silver) medals.

Dear Argentina. You are absolutely despicable and should be ashamed of yourselves. You don’t play football, you cheat. You have zero class and the entire football loving world (that isn’t Argentinian) is so happy that you lost. Yours sincerely, Everyone (that isn’t Argentinian).

I bet the players are fuming in the dressing room. Can we go back out yet?? #WorldCupFinal

Incoming: France 5 England 4 #ENGFRA #FRAENG

A musical genius!🎶🎹 Remembering Mr Jon Lord June 9, 1941 July 16, 2012 Deep Purple/Whitesnake

We were in London last week & talking to the taxi driver about "The Knowledge" & how strict the interviews are & how hard it is to pass. They have to take the instructors through journeys naming all the roads. Back home in a taxi, I gave our road name & he asked for the postcode