Leon (@Lordofthevan) header
Leon (@Lordofthevan) profile picture

🚚 Courier | 📸 Photographer | 🌍 Traveller Real-world transport & logistics. Experience over ideology. Politics through a practical lens.

Lives as a Kentish Man.
Joined December 2020
Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)Photo by Leon (@Lordofthevan)
92 million people live in Iran.
NEW!! U.S. military warns Iranian civilians to stay indoors and avoid Revolutionary Guard positions if tensions escalate, accusing the IRGC of placing weapons and command centers in residential neighborhoods. 1/2
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El martes cayó el banco, esa noche los banqueros estaban presos y sus bienes embargados; el miércoles se promulgó la ley para adelantar la garantía para ahorristas y hoy Peña ya está destituido y con orden de captura. No está mal, che. Podemos levantar cabeza
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I'm sorry to tell you Cold War Steve but Russell Brand was embraced, annointed & had his feet kissed by the British left - Owen Jones, The Guardian, The SWP, Ed Milliband, The Peoples Assembly, and the RCG all welcomed him in. He even wrote The Revolution book. I was there. Lets not rewrite history lets tell the truth.
The CWS Charity Xmas Cards! Pack of 5 cards £10, with 100% of profit going to the Survivors Trust - supporting specialist rape and sexual abuse services in the voluntary sector. 👇👇👇👇 coldwarsteve.bigcartel.com/p…
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Replying to @TheGNPE
First time anyone's seen a landing strip inside the plane.
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Ce soir, l’incroyable et jamais vu a eu lieu. Le projet de budget du gouvernement a eu 458 voix contre et ….. 0 voix pour. Ça sent le temps perdu et annonce le 49.3 et donc la censure.
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Yeah, like attacking Suez wasn't their decision. Lying bastards.
Israel blames Trump for Iran war: “The decision to attack Iran was the decision of the United States. It wasn’t our decision.”
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They won't be far wrong.
Iranian newspapers tomorrow will declare that the blue wave came from the Strait of Hormuz.
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YESSS!!!
🚨BREAKING: AMY ACTON WINS THE OHIO GOVERNOR'S RACE, BEATING VIVEK RAMASWAMY. FIRST WOMAN EVER ELECTED GOVERNOR OF OHIO. SHE BEAT THE MAN WHO USED HER MOTHER TO WEAPONIZE HER CHILDHOOD ABUSE. VIVEK, GO AWAY.
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Women are perfectly capable pilots. The last female pilot I spoke with, Kath Burnham, had logged over 13,000 hours on the DC3. She often displays Pegasus at UK air shows. She flew her first solo on her 16th birthday. She doesn't drive.
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The reason this scandal hasn't happened already is because councils have cut back inspections. Some care homes have three or four illegals using one fake ID, who work for less than minimum wage, and they do it because they don't expect to be caught.
I'm completely convinced – and have been saying this for years – that in the coming decade there will be a growing public scandal over institutionalised neglect and abuse of patients both in hospitals and care homes at the hands of illiterate immigrant workers. If you know British doctors, nurses, psychiatrists or care workers, talk to them about what they've actually seen in their wards and care homes. They'll tell you about patients left to marinate in their own urine and faeces in beds because there wasn't a nurse or care worker on shift who either spoke English or cared enough to do anything about it and many similar stories. The doctors and psychiatrists will tell you about the persistent nepotism of Indian senior doctors and management hiring their own, a form of endemic corruption, which enables and facilitates incompetence and ethnic hostility between both patients and staff. Many immigrant nurses and careworkers are great people who work hard to care for their patients. But this problem has been bubbling away for years now. If you know anyone in these professions, you've probably heard them mumble about it or even confide in you about it. Even if you don't, the low-level chatter on – for example – subreddits for UK psychiatrists and nurses is also there for anyone to see.
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Writing this in my personal capacity, but I have been flying these types of aircraft for more than 20 years, with over 8,000 hours, and have reasonable familiarity with how the charter world operates. I feel compelled to post after seeing commentary about the Lear 60 crash, from missile strikes to DEI to critiquing this poor woman’s final radio calls. That last part is what I find most troubling. She was the second-in-command (SIC), and while she was empowered to point out mistakes as part of good crew resource management, she was doing her job, communicating with ATC right to the end in a terrifying situation. She likely knew before many of those calls that she was going to die. I have heard final calls from friends, from military pilots with thousands of hours in fighter aircraft, and they are just as heartbreaking because they know the end is approaching. I understand the public interest given the footage and audio. But you do not know the aircraft’s maintenance history, whether there was a structural failure, if any failure was induced by turbulence, overspeed, or overcontrol, or everything happening in that cockpit. I am sure weather will be part of the investigation, but beyond that, it is speculation. The charter industry routinely hires commercial pilots very early in their careers to gain experience alongside an ATP-qualified captain before they move up to the airlines. She would still have the appropriate training, qualifications, and checkouts by an FAA examiner or designee. Let people investigate, learn, and share the facts. Be respectful to those who perished and the families who carry their memories. God bless them and their loved ones.
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"the seizure of Palestinians' money and belongings" The correct word is "theft".
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Some would have to choose between paying the tax or paying the rent.
There is a reason that tax is done once a year. Over a year, you can provide for it. It's difficult, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions. But making freelancers pay tax monthly when they have zero income that month is insane!
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The bottom line here is that government should not meddle in private enterprise - even in these circumstances. Yes, 12000 jobs are on the line, the but job of government is not to pick winners and losers - not least because they usually pick losers. The job of the government is to create the conditions where those workers can lose their jobs on a Friday and be in new ones the following week. It's only shit news for poundland workers because Labour's economic vandalism means these people will be unemployed for months. That is where the policy response must be.
🚨Poundland is a scandal. Here’s why: People have attacked me for taking up this fight, saying ‘businesses go under all the time, that’s just the free market’. Sure, but this is *crony capitalism* and the 12,000 workers deserve better. This is what’s really happening: Poundland’s owners, an American outfit called Gordon Brothers are trying to put the business into administration. They bought it for £1 and have a £30m loan out to it, which they want back. It’s a tough sector, suffering from fierce competition, battered by Labour’s tax increases and customers feeling the pinch. However, the business is solvent, sales grew 6.7% in the last year and 8.4% in the first three weeks of October. It’s about to see the best trading weeks of the year approaching Christmas. This is not a business that has to shut its doors. What’s more, if Gordon Brothers want to walk away, there are others keen to take it on, as a going concern. I’ve spoken to two, highly credible parties today, who have attempted to buy the business. Both tell me they have the money. One, a hugely successful British retail entrepreneur, didn’t even get a response from Gordon Brothers. They would keep the stores intact and keep the positive momentum going. I’ve been inundated with messages from staff and suppliers, all saying how hard they’ve worked in the past year to turn the business around. Instead, Gordon Brothers are risking 12,000 jobs just before Christmas (and retail isn’t an easy industry to get another job in right now) and potentially another 10,000 amongst the suppliers. Poundland has a number of suppliers that only or largely supply them, and who will face an uncertain future without them. Then there’s the loss to the landlords, the rates owed to local councils, tax due to HMRC and the lost footfall on our high streets if 600 stores shut. The wage bill of Poundland is close to £500m, so you can imagine the cost to the taxpayer in benefits if 12,000 people lose their jobs. Could it be that Gordon Brothers, far from being a real ‘turnaround specialist’ is just trying to look after themselves and make a profit at the expense of literally everyone else? Might they be using the administration process to protect their loan? And the advisors who handle administration will also pockets millions in fees. Naturally. Could we see a decent business run down, shelves slowly emptied and then folded, with everyone losing out bar them? Thats what happened with another, similar business, Poundworld. It’s not for nothing that loyal staff emailing me are calling them ‘Greedy Brothers’. Should politicians be interested in this scandal? Too right they should. Frankly I’m shocked more aren’t. It shows how little Westminster cares about working people. You can be pro business, but anti crony capitalism. Reform UK is. The Business Secretary needs to ask searching questions of Gordon Brothers and this administration process, before a 35 year old mainstay of our high streets and 12,000 jobs are destroyed by them.
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Absolutely wrong. If there is a market for discount retail somebody will step in to take it. Dysfunctional businesses die. That's the nature of the game.
Jenrick: Government Should Intervene to Save Poundland order-order.com/2026/11/01/j…
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Leon retweeted
A reminder the FAA secretly monitored real drone flights in the US for a year & found drone owners rarely ever fly at night or in bad weather. People have better things to do. On top of that CISA notes malicious drones will not be illuminated, Leipzig underlined that.
WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE drone pilots were monitored for a year via #RID/#RemoteID for an FAA study. This reveals drone users don't tend to fly at night or in bad weather. This underlines sightings at incidents like Gatwick, Lakenheath or NJ are more likely to be mistakes.
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Not a single party on the right has a policy on this.
🚨 Britain has lost more than 90% of its abattoirs, and farmers fear their businesses could be next The UK's slaughterhouse network has fallen to just 200 today, leaving livestock farmers with fewer places to process their animals READ MORE: farminguk.com/news/nearly-on…
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Ian Dunt and James OBrien turned on Starmer around the same time. Bandied around the ‘cult’ word. Dunt’s article on Substack today may be his first step to realising he’s effed up open.substack.com/pub/iandun…
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The passing of Patrick Stewart is especially sad for me. I was hooked on TNG from the first episode. I bought every VHS tape as it came out, two episodes a month, even when it crept up to £13.99 - which was a lot of money in those days. Every release was a television event. I had the First Contact t-shirt. I built the model kits of the star ships. That programme shaped me and my values. What was particularly special about it was the writing. It was intelligent and it was good English. It was also good storytelling. Even the weaker episodes are better than most TV today. Between that, DS9, Voyager and Babylon 5, I had hundreds of hours of sci-fi on VHS. When the Berman era of Trek ended, I pretty much gave up on television. Battlestar Galactica made the grade but nothing since has captured my imagination in quite the same way. Captain Picard was at the head of it all. Since then, I've usually had TNG or DS9 playing in the background, and I'll put an episode on when I can't get to sleep. For a long time it was all on Netflix but it moved off last year so I bought every season on Google Play. I'm never without it. It's been a thirty six year long relationship. As it happens, I've always thought Patrick Stewart was a bit of a twat, but nobody can take from him his acting ability - to create one of the most compelling, commanding characters with enormous screen presence, authority, and gravitas. The bridge crew of the Enterprise D were people you would aspire to be. That's why newer Trek isn't real Star Trek. It was something really special. While Captain Kirk was THE Captain, Captain Picard was MY Captain. To know that he's gone is just a little bit heart-breaking.
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I started watching Captain Picard in 1990. I never stopped. Genuinely saddened.
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