Martyn Bolt @martynbolt

Jeremy Corbyn Still today… hands down, the best heckle ever in the House of Commons. “Who are you”? Notice Andy Burnham?

82 years ago this morning, a man of 31 from Middlesbrough waded onto Gold Beach in Normandy and, before the light went, did the thing that would make him the only man awarded a Victoria Cross for the actions of D-Day itself. His name was Stanley Hollis. Before the war he had driven lorries and worked as a sandblaster. On 6 June 1944, a company sergeant-major in the Green Howards, he spotted a German pillbox his company had walked straight past. He went at it himself, up the open slope into the machine-gun fire, cleared it with a Sten and grenades, and took a second position and its occupants prisoner. Later that day, near a village called Crépon, two of his men lay pinned in the open under a German field gun and as good as dead. He went back out for them, into the fire, and brought them in. He had taken them in there, was his reasoning, so it fell to him to get them out. That is more or less the whole of it. No speech, no pageant, no press release. A lorry driver from Teesside decided that other men's lives were his to answer for, and walked into the guns, twice, to make it good. My dad was born in '61. We often sit and marvel at the fact that he is the full-way, and me half-way, through our fighting ages as men, and neither of us have ever been called up to war. We are the lucky few. But it is worth being honest, on this morning of all mornings, about what has thinned out between the country my dad and I have known, and Sgt. Major Hollis'. Hollis did not wait to be told. He did not film the pillbox and tag the relevant authority. He saw what needed doing, judged it his to do, and did it. That mortal reflex - take responsibility, act, and expect no official to come and save you - was once an ordinary thing here, bred into ordinary men. Two generations of being managed and waited upon have quietly bred much of it not out but into deep dormancy. The men of that generation did not cross the Channel in 1944 for a Britain that waits for permission to act, nor for one that watches its own dying boys handcuffed on the pavement. They did it for something they felt in their bones and would never have trusted to an institutional memorandum: a free people, fit to govern and defend itself, worth the dying for. We owe them more than a poppy and a minute's silence. We owe them the vision of that country. Stanley Hollis came home, kept a pub, and died in 1972. There are barely any of them left now, very old and very quiet. The decent thing would be to become a country of which they might be proud.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

In a corner of parliament at the far end of the Royal gallery a box lies permantly open containing sand from all five Normandy beaches -a reminder to both houses of the sacrifice & the cause of freedom fought for by brave service people on DDay June 6 th 1944. #DDay

We will remember them. 💂🏻‍♀️👋🏻🇬🇧🙏🏻💐. Thank you for your service and sacrifices ladies and gents. 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺🇧🇪🇨🇿🇫🇷🇬🇷🇱🇺🇳🇱🇳🇿🇳🇴🇵🇱🇿🇦🇿🇼 All these countries either took part, or physically supported Operation Overlord. Thank you to you all. 💂🏻‍♀️👋🏻🇬🇧🙏🏻

It was a privilege to cover the funeral of Jack Meacham, a Portsmouth WWII veteran who died aged 106. Serving sailors and former personnel lined the route to the Crematorium in tribute to his service. The family described the experience as 'phenomenal' ♥️

@BigBearF1 You too , have a good one

Boots carried by her horse🕊️ An emotional farewell was bit to Lance Bombardier Ciara Sullivan as her coffin travelled to The Guards Chapel

Like every other SNP parliamentarian, I gave the party £250 per month from my personal income after tax. Adding my party membership fees (paid at an enhanced rate) , I think it came to £35,000 over ten years. The £250 sub was an obligation for all MPs and MSPs, but I was happy to pay, as I believed it was going to the cause - not to keep Sturgeon in Smythson handbags and Mountblanc pens (stolen goods she was pictured with in this @TheSun report 👇). I had a good salary. But what of all the decent working people - as @joannaccherry pointed out today - who could ill afford the £10 or £20 donations they made to @theSNP ? It’s disgusting, and requires an internal investigation. Or rather an independent investigation. Who was monitoring the spend within the SNP? How come the former volunteer treasurer and former volunteer officials who questioned the finances were slapped down by @NicolaSturgeon and her acolytes? There remain good people at the top of the party ( of which I remain a member BTW) and I hope they will now abandon their misplaced loyalty to the former leader whose position meant she signed off the accounts, as I understand it. Finally…..well done to @WingsScotland for triggering the investigation - pilloried from all sides but vindicated today.

Chris Musson @ChrisMusson

2 weeks ago

EXCL: Nicola Sturgeon refused to comment and sat in silence for hours during her police interview - despite publicly claiming to be "cooperating fully" with cops thescottishsun.co.uk/news/16305227/…

313 2K 6K 962K 175

HMS Hood' Seaman Robert Tilburn of Roundhay (1921–1995), Leeds, one of the three survivors of HMS Hood (out of 1,418), out for a walk with his young brother, June 1941

85 years ago today, in the freezing grey water between Iceland and Greenland, the most famous warship in the world died in under three minutes. HMS Hood. 48,000 tons. The pride of the Royal Navy for twenty years. The ship British schoolchildren drew in their notebooks. "The Mighty Hood." She was hunting the Bismarck. At 05:52 on 24 May 1941, Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland gave the order to open fire at 26,500 yards. He was closing the range hard on purpose, because Hood's weak deck armor could not survive shells falling from above at long range. He needed flat trajectories, and he needed them fast. He was three minutes too slow. Bismarck's fifth salvo straddled Hood as she turned to bring her rear guns to bear. A single 15-inch shell punched through her thin armored deck and detonated her aft magazines. Witnesses on Prince of Wales described a column of flame that rose higher than the mainmast, eerily silent at first, the sound arriving a moment later. Hood broke in two. Her stern rose vertically out of the sea, guns still pointed at the sky, and slid under. Her bow followed. Of 1,418 men aboard, three survived. Signalman Ted Briggs, Able Seaman Bob Tilburn, Midshipman Bill Dundas. They floated on a raft of debris in near-freezing water, watching their ship's oil burn around them, until the destroyer Electra found them two hours later. Briggs was 18 years old. He lived until 2008, the last man who had stood on the Mighty Hood. The Bismarck won the battle. But Prince of Wales, only just commissioned with shipyard workers still aboard fixing her main guns, had landed three hits before retreating. One ruptured a forward fuel tank. Bismarck began trailing oil across the Atlantic like a wounded animal. Churchill's order to the fleet was simple. Sink the Bismarck. Every available British warship turned to the chase. Three days later, at the edge of the Bay of Biscay, a Swordfish biplane from HMS Ark Royal, flying through a gale at near sea level, dropped a torpedo that jammed Bismarck's rudder hard to port. She could only steam in a slow circle, straight back into the Royal Navy. King George V and Rodney closed at dawn on 27 May. They fired on her for ninety minutes. Bismarck absorbed over 400 shells and at least a dozen torpedoes before she rolled over and went down with roughly 2,200 of her crew. The Royal Navy answered for Hood in 72 hours.

The Daily Record’s splash - Nicola Sturgeon as Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

On This Day — May 25, 1948 They put a bullet in the back of his head. The man they executed that day was Witold Pilecki — the only person in history who voluntarily walked into Auschwitz. In 1940, this Polish cavalry officer deliberately got himself arrested during a Nazi roundup in Warsaw. Using a false identity, he entered hell as prisoner #4859. For two and a half years, Pilecki lived as a starving skeleton in striped rags while secretly building a resistance network inside the camp. He smuggled out the first detailed eyewitness reports of the Nazi death machine to the Allies — gas chambers, selections, medical experiments, and the systematic murder of Jews. While he was there, more than 1,000 Jews per day were being gassed and burned. At its peak in 1944, the killing rate reached more than 6,000 per day. He saw it all. He documented it all. He risked everything so the world would know. In April 1943, Pilecki escaped by overpowering a guard at a bakery outside the wire. He rejoined the fight, battled in the Warsaw Uprising, and later resisted the Soviet occupation of Poland. For his courage, the communist regime tortured him, staged a show trial, and executed him on May 25, 1948. One of the great heroes of the 20th century. Remember his name: Witold Pilecki.

Hi Music People, I’m looking for a “the gibson A2” mandolin. If you have one and want to sell, leave a photo and contact in the message section! 👍🏻

@mumwhynot @Mr_Andrew_Fox Crap at remembering stuff for exams but just run through most of this from memory Im a cafe with a few mates

#OnThisDay in 1971 the IRA murdered Michael Willetts, 27, married father of 2. Bomb in case about to explode thrown into Springfield Rd RUC station 8:24pm. Children & adults present. Bomb exploded as Army Sgt Willetts, on guard duty, helped evacuate. paradata.org.uk/people/michael… #OTD

@FrDidymus @AlastairBruce_ What was the recessional tune

@filemot @FrDidymus Often thought eulogies are deserving

@BloodNelsons Whose land is it ? Who is milking the tourists

@RenownVet21 In Memorium Lieutenant Commander Glen Robinson of Mirfield was among casualties when the destroyer was attacked

@Mr_Andrew_Fox Thanks