My 14-year-old said to me: "You're really smart, just not naturally smart. You know a lot because you've been around for so long."

Before you ask, yes, that's a figurative dagger in my heart. And yes, I've changed my will and I'm leaving everything to the donkey sanctuary.

Decades ago we were looking for a nonce in the local park. Back then his description would have stood out like a sore thumb; nowadays that look is exactly what people picture as a nonce in a park. I had my camera as part of my disguise. Took this and nicked the nonce. A good day.

It popped up on my Google photos timeline. The good old days when we used to look for criminals and tried to prevent crime, instead of just responding to it.

In 1941, a Spaniard walked into the British embassy in Madrid and offered to spy on the Nazis.

The British turned him down.

So he went to the Germans instead, pretended to be a loyal fascist, and got hired as a German spy. His plan was to lie to them for the rest of the war.
anyone could have imagined.

His name was Juan Pujol García. Before the war he had tried his hand at running a chicken farm and a movie theater. He had no spy training. What he had was a deep hatred of both fascism and communism after the Spanish Civil War, and an incredible imagination.

The Germans gave him a codename, invisible ink, money, and orders to go to Britain and recruit spies.

He didn't go to Britain.

He went to Lisbon, Portugal, and made everything up.

Using a tourist guidebook, maps, magazines, newsreels, and a British railway timetable from the library, he wrote long, detailed reports about life in England. Military movements. Morale. Ports.

He'd never been there. He made mistakes. He didn't understand British money. He once reported that dockworkers in Glasgow would do anything for a liter of wine.

The Germans loved him anyway.

Then British codebreakers reading German messages noticed something strange. The Germans were hunting for a convoy that didn't exist, based on a report from some agent in Britain they'd never heard of.

The British went looking for this mystery spy. They found Pujol. In 1942 they finally took him on and brought him to London.

Now he had real help. MI5 gave him the codename Garbo, after the actress, because they thought he was the greatest actor in the world.

Together with his British handler, Pujol built a fake spy network for the Germans. It eventually had 27 imaginary agents. Each had a name, a personality, a job, and a backstory. A Welsh nationalist. A Venezuelan student. A Greek sailor. Some of them recruited their own imaginary sub-agents.

When they needed to explain why one agent had gone quiet, they killed him off. They even put a fake obituary in a Liverpool newspaper. The Germans reportedly paid a pension to his widow.

Who also didn't exist.

Then came D-Day.

Hours before the landings, the British let Pujol send a message warning the Germans that the invasion was coming in Normandy. It was timed so it would arrive too late to matter, but it made him look brilliant.

Three days later he sent the most important message of his career. Normandy was a trick, he said. The real invasion was still coming, at Calais, led by a huge army under General Patton.

That army was fake too. But the Germans believed him.

German forces that could have been rushed to Normandy were held back near Calais for weeks, waiting for an attack that never came.

The Germans were so grateful they awarded him the Iron Cross.

A few months later, King George VI made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

He's one of the only people known to have been decorated by both sides of the war.

After the war, afraid of revenge from surviving Nazis, he faked his own death from malaria in Africa and disappeared to Venezuela, where he lived quietly running a shop.

For decades the world thought he was dead.

In 1984, a British writer tracked him down. Pujol came back to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day and met veterans who had landed on the beaches.

Some of them thanked him.

If Elon Musk hadn't purchased Twitter, we wouldn't have known that migrants were burning down Paris..

French maths test question:

Gaspard has thrown 17 stones at three police cars and set fire to four town halls.
How many pairs of trainers does he have?

Half term in a caravan on the English coast. It's absolutely hammering down. The rain is making a racket on the roof. Reminds me of my family holidays as a child. I couldn't be happier.

The Nazis thought of destroying this historic city hall. And decided against it. These bastards have just done it.

Look.

They're just concerned French schoolchildren worried about their education, okay?

Stop being FAR RIGHT.

One in five Norwegian women have been raped.

Every night of the year a Norwegian woman is raped in Oslo.

The police in Oslo have now confirmed every single woman raped in the city over the last three years was raped by a migrant.

Is diversity still our strength?

Arab doctor removed two women's ovaries without their consent, without telling them and with no medical purpose.
NHS gave him a talking to and he is still a doctor seeing young women today.

In a healthy country he would be hung for this.

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

We still have good teachers out there. 🤓

Seriously, how barbaric must these people be to put an Israeli flag on a donkey and abuse an innocent animal just because they are blinded by hate?

Look at how they hit him with their shoes. Savages.

Activist: "The difference is nothing died for my dinner."

Farmer: "What did you have?"

Activist: "Rice, roast veg, hummus, a bit of bread. Oat milk in my tea."

Farmer: "The rice."

Activist: "Grown in a paddy."

Farmer: "A flooded field, drained for harvest. Frogs, fish, dies in the mud. Then the combine. The veg?"

Activist: "Carrots, peppers, courgettes."

Farmer: "Carrots are a ploughed field. I've ploughed. The gulls follow the tractor because of what comes up in pieces. Peppers and courgettes are a polytunnel. Slug pellets, and a hive of bees trucked in to pollinate them, then the hive's left to die at the end of the season because it's cheaper than feeding it. The hummus?"

Activist: "Chickpeas."

Farmer: "Sprayed with something to kill the plant so it dries evenly for the combine. I've done that too. Whatever's living in it dries out with it. Mice, voles, leverets, partridge chicks. Twelve miles an hour, a blade eight metres wide. The bread?"

Activist: "...Wheat."

Farmer: "Same field, same machine, plus the rats in the grain store and what's done about them. Your oat milk's the same again, with a factory on the end."

Activist: "Those are all accidents."

Farmer: "I've killed more voles with a plough than I ever have with a bolt gun, and I'm the one with the bolt gun. One bullock off that hill is one death and a year's dinners. Your plate's about forty and you didn't see any of them."

Activist: "At least I didn't choose it."

Farmer: "You chose to be the only one at the table who didn't know."

Not one female Labour backbencher turned up to Parliament for the debate about dumping 1,200 illegal male migrants in an army camp in Piddington.

Labour have so far, refused to meet a single woman from Piddington.

Labour only care about women when it’s convenient for them.

Hola, soy palestino. 🇵🇸
Y como la honestidad es poco común en mi política, permítanme confesar algunas cosas.

1947. La ONU me ofreció un estado. Junto a Israel. Fronteras, independencia, reconocimiento. Dije que no. Mis líderes prometieron que la guerra "arrojaría a los judíos perdí todo y lo llamaron catástrofe. No porque no me ofrecieran un estado, sino porque lo rechacé.

1948–2025. Los estados árabes podrían haberme integrado, dado derechos, pasaportes, dignidad. En cambio, me encerraron en campos de refugiados durante generaciones, para que siguiera siendo un arma contra Israel. Construyeron palacios para ellos y cárceles para mí. Me usaron como propaganda, no como personas.

1967. Tras otra guerra perdida, podría haber construido un estado en Cisjordania y Gaza. En cambio, insistí en "ni paz, ni reconocimiento, ni negociaciones". Tres noes. Cincuenta años después, sigo sin Estado. Resulta que el rechazo no paga el alquiler.

Oslo, década de 1990. Israel dijo: «Intentémoslo». Me dio autonomía. Armas para la policía. Miles de millones en ayuda. ¿Qué hicieron mis líderes? Robaron el dinero, armaron milicias y lanzaron una intifada. Atentados suicidas en lugar de escuelas. Cohetes en lugar de fábricas.

Gaza, 2005. Israel se fue por completo. Sin colonos, sin soldados. Tuve la oportunidad de convertir Gaza en un Singapur mediterráneo. Voté por Hamás. La convirtieron en Mogadiscio junto al mar. ¿Miles de millones en ayuda? Túneles, cohetes y palacios para sus líderes, mientras mi gente come comida enlatada en la oscuridad.

¿Democracia? No he tenido elecciones en casi 20 años. Hamás mata a los disidentes en Gaza. Fatah los encarcela en Cisjordania. Mis líderes cancelan elecciones porque están demasiado ocupados luchando por el poder.

Religión. En lugar de construir un futuro, pongo a clérigos en televisión enseñando a los niños a odiar a los judíos. Glorifico a los "mártires" que hacen estallar autobuses. Crío a mis hijos con canciones de sangre y fuego en lugar de libros y ciencia. Cambio la esperanza por la guerra santa.

Mundo árabe. Los regímenes árabes me llaman "hermano". Pero pregúntenles cuántos palestinos pueden vivir libremente en Líbano, Siria, Egipto o Kuwait. Me excluyen, pero celebran mi muerte, porque mi muerte es su excusa.

Absurdo. Sigo diciendo que quiero "construir un estado". E irónicamente, justo al lado está Israel: el vecino que construyó una democracia próspera, una potencia tecnológica, granjas en el desierto, ciudades de polvo. Sin petróleo, sin riqueza infinita, solo coraje. Podría haber aprendido, copiado, colaborado. En cambio, elegí la envidia y la rabia.

Obsesión antijudía. Podría haber aceptado a los judíos como vecinos. Podría haber dicho: "Dos naciones, dos estados". En cambio, repito: "Del río al mar". En lugar de exhibir el honor, la hospitalidad y la rica cultura árabe, mostré solo la cultura de la espada: la ira, el extremismo y la sangre. En lugar de gritar salaam (paz) a los israelíes, grité muerte a los judíos. Y luego finjo sorprenderme cuando los israelíes no confían en mí, cuando están enojados, decepcionados y convencidos de que no quiero coexistencia en absoluto.

Responsabilidad. Culpo a Israel de todo. Siempre. ¿Mis líderes roban miles de millones? Culpa de Israel. ¿Hamás dispara cohetes desde hospitales? Culpa de Israel. ¿Glorifico la muerte más que la vida? Culpa de Israel. La responsabilidad no es mi fuerte.

Soy palestino.
Podría haber construido una nación, muchas veces. Elegí el rechazo, la corrupción y la guerra sin fin. Podría haber vivido en paz con Israel, pero elegí vivir a la sombra de su destrucción.

Así que sí, soy una víctima. Pero con demasiada frecuencia, soy víctima de mis propios líderes, de mis propias decisiones y de mi propia negativa a abandonar el odio.

Y esa, querido lector, es la tragedia que nadie quiere admitir.

You can be sad the man died and glad the tiger survived. Hope that helps 👍

HERE IS DEMOCRATS DIVERSITY IN ACTION!

Pro-level shoplifters. It is an amazing sight. Watch for this in a store near you and then do the right thing.

These are the pro-Pals standing on top of the Battle of Britain memorial chanting everyone hates the police in French. Do these idiots know any history?

It's his work-issued phone. The phone belongs to our employer and is ultimately paid for by the taxpayer. At best he's a cretin at worse a deviant. As my mum used to say, "Good riddance to bad rubbish."