Here to cater to the every whim of Colin the Dachshund.
London, England
Joined December 2016
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Susannah Rayner retweeted
Unbelievably, Iran (yes, Iran) has just been elected to the UN Committee that sets the priorities for women’s rights, counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. This, the country with an almost uniquely violent record of brutalising women, executing peaceful female protesters and of course sponsoring very widespread terrorism.
Equally unbelievably, the UK nominated Iran and although the voting is secret, we must assume it subsequently voted for Iran in the General Assembly. This is the same UK that is nominally run by PM Andy Burnham who declared only a few weeks ago that “we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them.”
If the young women of Iran who dare to remove their headscarves, or sing, or engage in peaceful protest to press for basic democracy aren’t the underdog in their battle with a vicious and murderous regime… who then is an underdog?
I can’t exaggerate how ashamed I am of my country. I’m sickened and repulsed by what it has become. I barely recognise it. Burnham should hang his head in utter shame.
And as for the UN, it has come to embody institutional corruption and gaslighting on a global scale.
It put China, Qatar and Cuba in charge of the body charged with protecting human rights worldwide.
It put China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan (all of which crush/ban NGOs in their own countries) in charge of the body that decides which civil-society groups and NGOs get UN accreditation and access.
It put Syria (under Assad) in charge the body that promotes education, culture, and press freedom.
How long must this continue? The UN has no credibility whatsoever and should be stripped back to the basics- a debating chamber for the big global issues of the day. And nothing more.
How can anyone defend this?
Susannah Rayner retweeted
The CEO of the Fresh Produce Consortium, Nigel Jenney, had some strong words yesterday for the EU Reset:
❌ £300m a year in extra costs
❌ Increase food price inflation
❌ Adding further delay and waste
❌ No gain for biosecurity
"Half of the fresh produce the UK imports comes from outside the EU – citrus, mangoes, blueberries, sweet potatoes, peppers. Under dynamic alignment, up to 120,000 of those consignments a year, destined solely for British consumers, would face EU-style controls they do not need today. That moves the burden somewhere else; it does not simplify anything.
“We are a large, diverse nation that has always depended on food imports as a key part of our food security. For generations we have imported far more than we export. So why put extra costs on the 80 billion portions of fresh produce behind our five-a-day habit?
“We estimate more than £300 million a year in added cost. That is roughly £2,500 for every affected consignment, and it will fall on importers, hauliers and wholesalers and, in the end, on shoppers at the checkout.
“The Government has said this deal will help bring down food price inflation for families. On fresh produce, as drafted, it will do the opposite. Hard-pressed UK consumers are still feeling the cost of their weekly shop, and fruit and vegetables are exactly where we should be making healthy choices easier and cheaper, not dearer. A policy meant to ease food inflation cannot add £300 million to the cost of the fruit and veg aisle and still claim to be on the shopper’s side.
“And for what? The UK’s science-based, risk-led regime already achieves 99.5% compliance across those consignments. The science has not changed; the politics have. Adding cost, delay and waste to a system that works brings no measurable gain for biosecurity.
multimodal.org.uk/article/fp…
Susannah Rayner retweeted
Today 11 November 1999 we will never forget it was the last day Bridget and I saw Mumsy alive at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.
She had just had a bath and her hair washed. She told us her hair was “a right mess”: the hairdresser had cut it too short and saidshe would come back to perm it, but then went on holiday.
Mum chose her food from the menu for the following day, but couldn’t decide on dessert. Bridget said, “They’ve got ice cream, Gran. Why don’t you have ice cream?” A carer sharply replied: “Don’t suggest to Elsie. Let her decide for herself.” We were so taken aback by the aggression that we said nothing. Mum chose ice cream…
We left with no idea what was happening behind the scenes. She was coming home in two weeks and we reminded her we would all be together soon as David was doing well after his transplant.
Completely unaware:
• Dr Jane Barton had cancelled Mum’s regular nephrology appointment for 9 November, as she was too ill to attend the clinic said another appointment must be made when better.
• 11 November Social Services were trying to contact me because they wanted Mum to return home.
• On 11 November, Dr Barton told Social Services that Mum was too ill and had “end-stage renal failure”.
• 11 November Thioridazine and trimethoprim had been started, without our knowledge.
Trimethoprim can raise the measured creatinine level artificially without a true fall in kidney function. Why was it started for Mum, and why were we not told?
December 2002 the case was fast-tracked to the CPS, where justice should have begun. Instead, after 4- years it ended— it’s been a challenging cover-up for this family enduring 100’s letters #VictimsOfGosport
Susannah Rayner retweeted
Forget Rejoining, the EU would gain nothing from that. Burnham is about to give them everything they want on a plate.
Under the Reset the EU can:
1. force all UK food and agriculture companies to obey EU rules, with no vote and no say;
2. prevent the UK from importing food from non EU countries;
3. force the UK to pay the EU for their 'policy works' and pay for the development of poorer EU countries;
4. force UK manufacturers to pay the same ETS costs as EU companies;
5. force the UK to add carbon taxes to important input materials that the UK no longer makes.
The EU will control UK money, UK laws, and even UK borders again, without giving the UK a vote.
This isn't surprising. None of the intermediate docking stations - customs union or single market - is politically viable given the trade-offs involved. Now @andyburnham has reopened the Brexit debate, the political logic was always going to point towards a recommendation for full-fat EU membership
For context: The French are currently opposing any form of decision-shaping - forget decision-making - role regarding the agri-food sector
The Norway option for the whole UK economy was never going to be politically saleable
All roads lead to rejoin
Susannah Rayner retweeted
When Britain recognised a State of Palestine last year, we were assured that good behaviour would follow. Mahmoud Abbas had promised to reform, and the end of cash-for-terrorism was the jewel in the crown.
Reader, it was a con.
A new study finds the PA and the PLO are still paying more than 20 million shekels a month to terrorists in Israeli prisons. The scale still rises with the length of the sentence, from 1,400 shekels a month to 12,000. The bloodier the crime, the bigger the reward.
As for the "reform", well, Abbas moved the payments to a supposedly independent institution created by his own decree and run by his own officials. Then he told the UN it was "social welfare".
In Arabic, they are rather more candid. Last month, Fatah's spokesman in Gaza admitted on a podcast: "We are trying to find another way to transfer the salaries to our Martyrs and wounded."
Meanwhile, Britain sanctions Israel and hands Ramallah another £10 million.
Welfare for the West; salaries for the Martyrs. My latest; link in first reply.
Susannah Rayner retweeted
I look back at what happened to me and still struggle to comprehend it.
I defended women’s rights. I supported JK Rowling. I raised concerns about the medical treatment of children questioning their gender and the influence of commercial interests.
Then came serious allegations, investigations and BBC coverage that I felt presented a deeply unfair picture of me. I even sought advice about an injunction.
The first investigation cleared me, yet I apologised. A second investigation followed, with lawyers involved.
After resigning, I lost the company I had founded and built over seventeen years, a company bearing my own name. I also lost access to my company email, phone and family photographs. The professional and personal consequences were devastating.
I stand by my defence of women’s rights and my concern for children.
When I think about my experience alongside those of Denise Fahmy, Kate Clanchy, Rachel Rooney and other artists, I see a culture in which expressing a belief can put an entire career at risk.
Against the backdrop of allegations concerning prominent men in entertainment, I keep thinking about how the arts respond to questions of harm and responsibility.
Where was that care when women were losing work for defending our rights and raising concerns about children?
How the fuck did we get here?
Susannah Rayner retweeted
Little did Peter @MarchForRejoin know a few weeks ago that when he was debating Steve Wright on GB News, that he was actually talking to his twitter nemesis and serial mocker Gully Foyle.
Hope you're well Peter 😘
youtu.be/FrRO2cMsCQo?is=QURY…
Susannah Rayner retweeted
On Monday, Ed Miliband took to social media to lament that rain had waterlogged tents in Gaza. "Heartbreaking," he called it, vowing that Britain "will not rest until we bring an end to the intolerable suffering".
Meanwhile, 13 American states with a combined GDP of more than $6 trillion have threatened economic retaliation over our sanctions on Israel. Their attorneys general accuse Britain and the Netherlands of having "aligned themselves with the policy objectives of terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah". British firms could be barred from state contracts and American public money pulled from British businesses. On the BBC? Not a dicky-bird.
And for what? Israel has downgraded our consulate in East Jerusalem and shut British officers out of the Gaza coordination hub in Kiryat Gat. Having just returned from Israel, I can tell you that Britain is now seen there as a comical irrelevance.
The ultimate irony? Reports from Gaza suggest the tents may have flooded because Hamas obstructed a project to provide sturdier shelters.
Milibandism, if you will. My latest column for the @Telegraph:
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/11…
Susannah Rayner retweeted
In each photo, one children's writer and one author of a book about teaching. One set were called child abusers and drummed out of publishing. The others were feted and given millions of pounds. Which is which? @RooneyRach
Susannah Rayner retweeted
RAF pilot Kevin Latchman lifted a transport plane carrying 377 people off the runway early to clear a bus.
In August 2021, during Britain’s evacuation from Afghanistan, Latchman and his crew were getting people out of Kabul after a suicide bombing at the airport.
By the time everyone was aboard, the runway lights had gone out.
The plane was doing nearly 100 miles an hour when three vehicles turned onto the runway about 1,000 feet ahead.
Latchman and his co-pilot agreed they were too close to stop.
They were also too close to reach their planned take-off speed before hitting the vehicles.
Latchman lifted the plane early.
A crew member watching from a window saw the bus pass under the engines and reckoned they had cleared it by less than ten feet.
Remember Kevin Latchman for the decision he made in those few seconds to get 377 people safely into the air.
Susannah Rayner retweeted
REVEALED: An illegal Albanian drugs criminal has won the right to stay in Britain, six years after the Home Office ordered his deportation.
He spent a year in Belgium without claiming asylum, came to Britain in a lorry, and was jailed for growing cannabis within a year.
He didn’t claim asylum here until 2025. It was refused. The judge rejected all of his claims, including that he was trafficked and that his family was caught up in a blood feud in Albania.
But the Home Office failed to provide any evidence that his drugs offence caused harm, and quoted a 2007 Gordon Brown speech instead.
The judge said a “standard few paragraphs” from a police officer would have been “more than sufficient” to deport him. stevenedginton.com/p/illegal…
Susannah Rayner retweeted
We had a look around Ayer Itam War Memorial Park (officially the Memorial to the Penang Chinese Transportation Volunteers and the Penang Chinese killed during the SWW) is located near the Air Itam roundabout in #GeorgeTown, Penang.
It honours the local Chinese community, #SookChing massacre victims, and the brave volunteer drivers and mechanics who died during the Second World War.
The memorial park’s narrative focuses on the Burma Road Transport Volunteers:
In 1939, businessman Tan Kah Kee mobilized over 3,200 volunteer drivers and mechanics from British Malaya—including 358 from Penang—to haul vital supplies along the dangerous Burma Road under continuous Japanese aerial bombardment.
Bronze Sculpture & Relief Wall / Mural:
Added in 2011, the park sculpture and Murals depict transport volunteers physically pushing a supply truck up a slope along the Burma Road. It also features a detailed relief wall and mural depicting volunteer drivers, mechanics, and truck convoys under attack by Japanese warplanes, alongside relief operations carried out during the war.
It all began with a 49-foot (15-meter) tall white obelisk, as the centerpiece of the park. It was erected by the Penang China Relief Fund and unveiled on Armistice Day in November 1951. The base features seven steps representing 7 July 1937, the date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War.
This is interesting as it is now argued by historians that the SWW didn’t start in 1939 but in 1937.
Beneath the obelisk lie the cremated remains of roughly 800 Sook Ching victims exhumed across Penang Island.
(No commentary in video)
Susannah Rayner retweeted
🇪🇸🕯️ Spanish National Police dog Deny, a 3-year-old German Shepherd, also lost his life in the Oviedo explosion while working alongside his handler, Officer Juan José.
Deny was an active member of the police department's Canine Unit and was deployed to the scene to assist during the operation before the booby-trapped backpack detonated.
Both the handler and his K9 partner died together in the line of duty.
🇪🇸 Police officer killed, and another loses a leg in backpack explosion in northern Spain
Officers found the backpack at the entrance of a house after responding to a shooting call in the Villafría neighborhood of Oviedo. The suspect fled and is considered armed and highly dangerous. A 17-year-old girl was shot, wounded, and hospitalized.
To protect residents, officers moved the backpack with a booby-trapped explosive device outside.
It exploded while being defused.
The injured officer was from the TEDAX bomb disposal unit and had a leg amputated. According to the Jupol police union, the officer who died was a junior inspector from the canine unit.
Yeah, but Boris was given a birthday cake. Let’s keep a sense of perspective here about Prime Ministerial wrong doing.
643 people sent me a DM yesterday about my post exposing how Andy Burnham’s Manchester council machine secretly intercepts emails from the public.
I believe this new revelation is going to trigger an even bigger shockwave.
Manchester City Council is currently fighting tooth and nail to keep a massive urban regeneration contract hidden from taxpayers.
The corporate partner is a Hong Kong-based developer called Far East Consortium. The funding is a staggering £120 million of public money, including £34.1 million handed over directly by Burnham’s combined authority.
Here is the specific detail that exposes the absolute arrogance of the modern political class.
When a local resident filed a request to read the document, the Chinese developer actually consented to its publication. It was the British council that intervened, heavily redacted the contract, and officially branded the taxpayer’s request for basic transparency as "manifestly unreasonable."
We are operating in a geopolitical environment where foreign powers routinely use infrastructure and property investment to build leverage inside Western cities.
Yet local Labour authorities are handing nine-figure sums of public wealth to Chinese-linked conglomerates, while deploying the full weight of their legal departments to keep British citizens in the dark.
They are perfectly comfortable outsourcing the regeneration of a major UK city to foreign capital. They are just terrified of the people funding the project ever seeing the actual terms.
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Susannah Rayner retweeted
The Haitian gang leader who hijacked a bus full of American missionaries in 2021, an 8-month-old baby on board, and swore on camera he'd put a bullet in every one of their heads unless he got $17 million is now writing letters to the UN asking for peace talks.
He finally ran into somebody who won't pay.
His name is Wilson Joseph, and his gang is called 400 Mawozo. On October 18, four Salvadoran air force technicians got ambushed out on the same plain east of Port-au-Prince that his letter came from. Nobody has claimed it, and the four haven't been seen since.
Bukele's answer went out three days later, written in Haitian Creole and aimed straight at the gang bosses. If those four came back hurt, he'd finish Haiti's gangs the same way he finished the ones back home. Then he laid out the other side of the deal. Bring them back alive and every Salvadoran soldier leaves Haiti that same day.
About a week later he had 2,000 troops on the ground, with El Salvador picking up 90% of the tab.
Kidnapping down there works like a business. A hostage is worth whatever the other side will give up to get him back, and the people who track Haitian gangs read this ambush as a play for exactly that, a way to force talks and keep troops out of gang neighborhoods. Bukele took that leverage off the table in public, on day three.
Which is how you get the letter. It's dated November 1 and addressed to the UN Secretary-General, and it calls 400 Mawozo a "rebel group" that "officially raised the white flag" back on August 20. That would be two full months before the ambush.
The letter also spends a good chunk of its two pages worrying about the safety of children. His UN sanctions listing cites recruiting kids.
A few days later somebody tagged Bukele in a post that supposedly showed Joseph's house, and Bukele replied asking for the exact address so they could destroy it. The gang's next letter called that house a symbol of peace.
Think about how big a swing this is for El Salvador. It's a country of about 6 million people with an army of roughly 20,500, so it sent close to one out of every ten soldiers it has to go get four guys. The UN-backed gang force the rest of the world has spent a year building has about 2,000 of the 5,500 troops it was promised, and El Salvador matched that in a week. The UN's history in Haiti makes the comparison sting even more. Its last big mission there ran 13 years and cost more than $7 billion, and its own peacekeepers brought in a cholera outbreak that killed close to 10,000 Haitians.
The UN says receiving the letter doesn't mean it recognizes or endorses anything. Joseph is still under UN and US sanctions, and now his gang has gone to Haiti's own disarmament commission too, asking for military operations to stop in some areas.
Those four technicians still haven't been found three weeks in, and none of this is a win until they come home. Kidnapping only pays when somebody on the other side is willing to deal, though. Joseph built a whole career on that, and right now he's the one waiting by the phone.
> Haiti gangs snatch 4 Salvadorans
> they think they just bought themselves a negotiation
> Bukele goes public saying bring them back or you're done
> they try to hand him 4 random bodies and say it was them
> he calls out their bs
> sends 2,000 troops into Haiti
> tells the leader to gather their gangs so he can fight them
> gangs run to the UN for a deal
> refuses all deals
> ignores the UN mandate
> pushes into gang territory and starts cleaning them
> does more in two weeks than the UN did in 13 years
Bukele might be the greatest leader of the 21st century
Susannah Rayner retweeted
DECISION CHANGED.
After much deliberation, and mainly relentless bullying from my wife and friends, who have called me daft, stupid and several other things I can’t repeat here, I’ve decided to return.
No drama. No fuss.
I’ve just finished another trip to France and I’m currently on the ferry back to Dover with 1% battery remaining in my electric car, which has decided it no longer wants to charge.
Looks like a tow truck home.
Five years of electric motoring without a single issue, and when it finally happens, it happens spectacularly. But that’s life.
This latest trip included:
Two riots in Lille
Three migrant boat crossings
One boat slashed
Escorted out of Belgium
Stopped four times by Belgian police
Threatened with arrest
Hit in the head with a rock during a riot
Hit by a firework
An illegal migrant coming after me
Told Leica cameras are only for dentists
A battery bank launched at my head
Tear gas. Lots of tear gas.
Some absolutely incredible 360° footage
And to top it all off, sick as a dog with man flu
My clothes are soaked, I’m absolutely exhausted, and my car is effectively a very expensive paperweight.
But I’ve loved every minute of it.
For once, I’ve been shooting purely for myself. No deadlines, no expectations, no pressure. Just me, my cameras and whatever unfolded in front of them.
I’ll share everything once I’m home.
Thank you for all the messages of support. They’ve meant more than you probably realise.
And to those who were disappointed when I said goodbye, I apologise.
Apparently, I’m not quite finished yet.
Adrian
P.S. A special thank you to my good friend @ioannisAlexopo3 for the incredible capture. Give him a follow for some superb photography, even if he is a press photographer. Nobody’s perfect.
Susannah Rayner retweeted
On the eve of Remembrance Day, the Woman of the Day is Kate ter Horst (1906-1992), the Angel of Arnhem, who provided refuge to over 250 wounded British paratroopers in her home for eight days non-stop during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, finding them water while her home was under fire and comforting them as they lay dying.
Kate, her husband and five children lived in the rectory house next to the Old Church in Oosterbeek just outside Arnhem. She was overjoyed when she saw British paratroopers landing near her home on 17 September 1944.
“Crazy with joy, we walk through the garden and climb on the roof so we can see more and understand what is happening. We can hardly believe it. Will it really be true? Is this the long awaited end of our grief that now falls from the sky? Does this now mean freedom?”
German resistance was far greater than expected and the paratroopers were driven back to the Old Church. The casualty rate was high. A captain asked Kate if they could use the rectory house as a first aid post for the wounded soldiers. Her husband was out with the British in the forests, acting as a guide, and Kate had her children to care for, but she agreed. More than 250 soldiers were brought to her home.
“Everywhere, the injured - the dining room, the study and garden room, the transverse corridor, even under the stairs and in the toilet they are. There is no corner left. Oh, if only I could be a hostess. If only I could give them a hospitable bed and at least fresh water…At the same time, a hurricane of explosions burst out over us. Shake the walls. I hear crackling, the house across the street is ablaze. Phosphorus, flashes through my head. The injured lie back, without a complaint, helpless. Now leave them alone? But I have to go downstairs: five children are longing for me right now, trusting that I will be unharmed to protect them.”
When the water supply was disrupted, Kate used the boiler and the toilet cistern to give the men precious drops of water. Needs must. She kept an English Bible in the house and read Psalm 91 to the soldiers who were dying. Together, they said the Lord's Prayer. A temporary cemetery was set up in the garden, and 57 soldiers were buried during the fighting.
General Frank King later wrote: “I noticed that an entire room was reviving when she came in. A seriously wounded soldier summarised it before he died. After Kate ter Horst talked to him for a moment, he said, ‘She is fantastic. She’s just like my mum.’”
After the Battle of Arnhem, the Ter Horsts were evacuated along with the other residents of Oosterbeek, but they returned after the liberation. Their eldest son, Pieter, was the last victim of the Battle of Arnhem. He was killed in November 1947 when he stepped on an anti-tank mine on the floodplains behind their house.
In 1980, Kate and her husband were appointed Honorary Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for their valour and heroism.
Brave, brave woman.
Susannah Rayner retweeted
Lib Dem Josh Babarinde is tabling a Ten Minute Rule Bill tomorrow to put "Black English" and "Asian English" on the next census.
He's got Lammy and Cleverly backing him. The idea: "English" shouldn't sit only under White.
Scotland and Wales already have "Scottish Asian" and "Black Welsh". England doesn't.
Here's the bit they skip. Anyone can already tick English as their national identity. This is about rewriting ethnicity boxes. Ten Minute Rule Bills almost never become law. It's a stunt.
Englishness isn't a spreadsheet category for MPs to redesign.
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