Incredibly stormy but we managed the walk. Lifted off our feet more times than comfortable but have sought sanctuary in the Ship Inn with a pint of Holy Isle Bitter. Taking one for the team.
Had to visit Bamburgh & Grace Darling memorial. We have a relative in our family. Although a pensioner she still swims in the sea every day of the year. How? Don’t ask me. These women are made of hardy stuff.
Seahouses was bracing. The old Ship provided an excellent crab terrine & didn’t skimp on the portion size. Not a day to explore the beach or enjoy an ice-cream
Durham & shrine of St. Cuthbert was an enriching 3 hours. The organ pipe exhibit played chant from different centuries. Appreciated the Thom Tallis. The modern Pieta was inspired. Thank you for the evensong but Lincoln outshone you on this visit.
Memories of Lincoln. Belly of Pork, Mash & Apple. Marco Pierre White don’t just do steak. Food was truly excellent as was the service.
Miles Harvey retweeted
US energy company execs have resigned in disgust as the Trump family is caught secretly expediting the funneling of $25 billion from a sanctioned Russian energy giant in exchange for allowing Russians to obtain a natural gas project in Alaska.
According to investigations by The New York Times and Financial Times, Russia's Novatek allegedly concealed its financial involvement in the American project through a UAE-linked intermediary.
Gentry Beach, a longtime Trump ally and close friend of Donald Trump Jr., signed an agreement with Novatek to pursue natural gas development in Alaska. Reuters documented the arrangement in February.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin discussed this cooperation on the Alaska energy project with Trump's representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, during negotiations involving Russia and Ukraine.
The controversy deepened when Polar Train LNG's CEO, Joel Riddle, raised concerns about concealed Russian financing and possible sanctions violations. He departed in September, followed by other senior executives.
The Financial Times also described discussions about a potential arrangement under which Novatek would provide technology for the Alaska project in exchange for sanctions relief benefiting its Arctic LNG 2 development in Siberia.
According to The New York Times, Riddle and two other departing executives warned the Trump administration about the Russian financing and urged officials to investigate.
The White House maintains that the project was mentioned only briefly and that no detailed discussions took place. There is no established evidence that Kushner or Witkoff knew about the allegedly concealed financing. Polar Train LNG denies wrongdoing.
The central question is how a sanctioned Russian energy company became involved in a major American energy venture while Putin was discussing potential economic cooperation with Trump's representatives and a longtime Trump family associate was pursuing a separate agreement with the same Russian company.
Selling Alaska to the Russians or selling Ukraine to the Russians - to the Trump family it's all the same.
ft.com/content/e9cfbfbb-e65a…
Miles Harvey retweeted
Woke, broke and out of control, it’s time to scrap the license fee.
As someone who started my career at the BBC, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to write these words. But let’s face the brutal truth: the British Broadcasting Corporation is a shadow of its former self and needs to be put out of its misery.
Founded in 1922 by Lord Reith with a proud mission to inform, educate and entertain, the Beeb was once the envy of the world. Today it has degenerated into a cesspit of left-wing political bias which the British public are forced to pay under the threat of criminal law.
Even when staring down the barrel of a $10 billion defamation lawsuit from the US President for its misleading edit of his Capitol Hill speech and which triggered the double resignation of its Director-General and Chief Executive of news, the BBC still refuses to admit its bias problem.
And yet the problems were laid bare again over the weekend with more revelations. First, we learned that taxpayer-funded civil servants have been seconded into BBC newsrooms, ‘fact checking’ and writing articles while masquerading as impartial journalists. Second, we discovered that schoolchildren are being brainwashed with left-wing views on net zero and immigration via the BBC Bitesize platform.
No wonder the BBC has plunged to the bottom of the Ofcom league table for impartiality, and that 2.5million viewers have turned their backs on the station since 2020, preferring instead to get their news from elsewhere.
And rather than addressing those problems BBC bosses and government ministers, concerned about the loss in licence fees, have decided to impose draconian measures to force people to pay for something they no longer want and no longer watch.
The tragic irony is that the BBC knows exactly what the problem is. Between 2024 and 2025, three separate internal reviews warned that ‘perceived political bias’ was driving viewers away. As whistleblower Michael Prescott revealed in an explosive leaked memo, "systemic editorial bias" runs deep. The main areas of concern were gender reporting, along with its reporting of Britain’s history, colonial past and in its anti-Israeli stance. Let’s be honest BBC, it isn’t perceived bias, it's real. The Gaza documentary got the BBC sanctioned and its Arabic station was forced to make 200 factual corrections about its wider Israel-Gaza war.
The BBC internal inquiry noted working-class viewers are particularly dissatisfied, finding it ‘out of touch’ and ‘alienating’.
Little wonder when you had ex-Match of the Day pundit, Gary Lineker, on £1.3 million of public money, using the profile the BBC gave him to pontificate about Brexit, Gaza, and Rwanda.
And what about the concerns over two-tier coverage of “Unite the Kingdom" protests and pro-Palestinian marches along with trigger warnings on comedy classics such as Dad’s Army and The Royle Family.
The BBC has been infiltrated and taken over by a left-wing woke metropolitan establishment and it is slowly killing it from within.
The public realise that this culture is so ingrained it will never change. It’s time to end the BBC licence fee.
























