No DMs. Politics from a conservative and Christian perspective. Pro-sovereign UK and Brexit #TCOT English Blogs below. Eco realist.
United Kingdom
Joined January 2012
- Tweets117K
- Following2.9K
- Followers3.4K
- Likes27.2K
Tom O'Brien retweeted
Obecny atak na Trybunał opiera się na potrójnym bezprawiu:
1. Pani Anna Korwin-Piotrowska nie jest sędzią TK, bo nie złożyła ślubowania wobec Prezydenta.
2. Nawet gdyby poprawnie złożyła ślubowanie, nie mogłaby jako jeden z kilkunastu członków Trybunału swoją decyzją odsunąć od obowiązków prezesa i wiceprezesa Trybunału.
3. Nawet gdyby prezes i wiceprezes zostali prawidłowo odsunięci, najstarszy stażem sędziowskim jest sędzia Wojciech Sych i to on powinien być p.o. prezesa.
Każda z tych trzech przesłanek wystarczy żeby stwierdzić bezprawie działania rządu, a występują wszystkie trzy na raz‼️
Tom O'Brien retweeted
If you want to understand Poland.
Imagine Biden lawfully appointed some Judges Trump hated. Trump gets elected and tries to sack them. Can't.
So illegally appoints his own fake Judge and sends armed men to seize the Court building.
Tusk is the Tyrant.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: POLISH PRESIDENT STORMS HIS OWN HIGHEST COURT AT 1 AM 🚨
Karol Nawrocki just walked straight into the Constitutional Tribunal building after turning his plane around mid-flight from Senegal.
He looked the pro-EU judges in the eye and told them they are NOT judges.
Their attempted takeover is OVER.
“You are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal!”
🔥🔥🔥
This is the elected President of Poland personally ending a coup in real time.
Donald Tusk’s camp declared the Tribunal’s president (Bogdan Święczkowski) “suspended,” sent police to surround the building, and tried to seize control with judges who were never sworn in by the President. Nawrocki cut his trip short, flew home, arrived after midnight with the head of the Supreme Court, and forced his way inside through the pushing and scuffling at the doors.
He is not backing down.
Poland’s highest court was being hijacked. The President just took it back. 🇵🇱
Go get ’em, Mr. President! 🇺🇸
This is what standing up to a power grab looks like.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
We must stand with Free Poland once again.
🚨POLAND: A COUP IS UNDERWAY🚨
Vice-President of the Constitutional Tribunal, Judge Bartłomiej Sochański, with a strong statement to the World (in English).
Share this!!! UDOSTĘPNIJ
@Telegraph @CNN @AP @nytimes @Jerusalem_Post @DailyMail @el_pais @elonmusk @timesofindia @News24Aust
Tom O'Brien retweeted
Listen now to the story of the two brothers Hing and Ming...
Each was devoted to the search for ultimate wisdom, but they differed greatly on how it was to be found.
One day their pet chicken fell ill, began to molt, and soon lost all of its feathers!
The brothers decided that this would be an ideal test case and agreed to each spend two months trying to cure the chicken.
Hing immediately went back to the university. Having boned up on ornithology and traditional Chinese medicine, he decided that the answer was a prescription of gum-tree leaf tea. He gathered bushels of the tea leaves, brewed gallons of the tea, and poured it into the chicken for two months.
Meanwhile, Ming traveled all around China, praying at the shrines of his ancestors. One night he had a dream. His ancestors appeared and told him to feed the chicken tea made from gum-tree leaves!!!
Ming, aware of his brother’s lack of success, decided that the problem was quantity. He gathered whole CARTLOADS of leaves, and brewed BARRELS of the tea, and poured them into the chicken for the two months. At the end of the time, the poor chicken was still as naked as a bowling ball.
Moral: All of Hing’s courses, and all of Ming’s kin, couldn’t make gum tea re-feather a hen!
Tom O'Brien retweeted
This is the key point.
As Tusk's coup backfires (he needs to be arrested). They will attempt to 'both sides' this.
But Tusk illegally appointed fake Judges.
Only one sides Judges are lawful. And Tusk's are not.
The difference: the second set of judges — the ones approved by Brussels and favored by PM Tusk —is not legally appointed because PM Tusk lacks the votes to override the presidential veto and install them.
The judges recognized by the president were constitutionally appointed. Brussels disapproves because those judges see the Polish constitution, NOT the EU diktats, as the supreme law of the land.
Imagine that!
Tom O'Brien retweeted
Nearly two years ago I settled accounts with Donald Tusk unsparingly. With his actions today he has confirmed every warning I issued:
“Mr Tusk, politicians like you are the greatest threat to European nations. While you were in opposition you attacked your own country’s sovereignty with the help of the EU.
Now that you are back in power you are destroying the rule of law in Poland. Opposition figures are being hunted down and politically inconvenient court rulings are being overturned. Your media coup was illegal, and now you are threatening even more censorship on the internet. This increasingly resembles a regime.
In a single year you have committed more breaches of the rule of law than PiS dared to attempt in eight years. The EU lets you get away with all of it, because you were always Brussels’ most obedient servant.
And now you threaten to extend your work of destruction to the whole of Europe – mass migration, censorship, geopolitical escalation, wokeness, the Green Deal.
You are one of the chief architects of all of this, even if you now pretend to know nothing about it.
You are a Polish Angela Merkel. You are a Polish Ursula von der Leyen. And the worst part is that you are proud of it. That is bad for your country, Poland, and it is bad for our continent, Europe.”
Tom O'Brien retweeted
A brief explanation for those with no knowledge of Polish politics:
A year ago, the Polish people elected a conservative president, Karol Nawrocki.
Poland currently has a left-liberal government, which, however, does not yet control the courts.
Tusk government is attempting to take illegal control of the courts in order to undermine the election of President Nawrocki.
Only in this way can Tusk secure absolute power for himself. Tusk knows he will lose the 2027 elections, so he is attempting to undermine the state’s constitutional order and to remove a president beloved by the Polish people.
This is literally a war of cynicism and evil against sincerity, the voice of the people, and goodness.
Pray for Poland and president Nawrocki.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
This suggests an Economist editorial of old, when it had something of importance to say and what it said mattered. In fact it’s just mundane milquetoast. Nobody cares. Its editor should spend less time trying to be a TV inquisitor, which she is not cut out to be, and give her magazine some robust intellectual backbone, which it sadly lacks.
Britain is a parliamentary democracy and the prime minister has its confidence. Rather than remaining beholden to his predecessor’s manifesto, he has three years to be as bold as he chooses economist.com/leaders/2026/1…
Tom O'Brien retweeted
OMG 😳 Today I learnt about Truck drivers life no body told you about 😳😮😱🚛🚛 Jesus Christ 🤯Ehhh
Tom O'Brien retweeted
Here we have a Socialist who is unhappy with the effects of Socialism.
🙄
Poundland has filed to enter administration, putting 11,000 jobs at risk just weeks before Christmas, including here in Brixton.
I stand with Poundland workers and @UsdawUnion.
The owners must engage with workers and ministers, exploring every option to save jobs and shops.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
I would like to share a memory and I hope @AllisonPearson doesn't mind. Cats may look at kings (and queens, at times) and all that. When I was sacked from The Telegraph, I was on holiday, in Spain. I got a mention in Private Eye, which described me as a "shire Tory" - since I lived in Hackney at the time, this felt odd. But also nice to see my name.
I'd never missed a column - the four years I had a piece on Saturday mornings I'd never missed one. It's not stressful like proper working is stressful, but it's extremely *suddenly* stressful for two-to-three hours at a time, like the time Sally phoned me when I was in Philly for my actual, non-writing, work, and it was 3am in the morning there, and I had to write a completely new column because "Charles is doing that." (My column usually appeared underneath or round the page from the inestimable Charles Moore, so I understood why he got first dibs at a topic, but on that occasion, forgive me Lord Moore, I cursed you!)
And the constancy is stressful. Even proper work allowed me to book annual leave, and I honestly found having to churn out 850 words a week - plus the 3+ blogs we were expected to produced for Telegraph Blogs - regardless of what else was happening in my life more stressful than running a department of 150 people in five countries (check me! but it's true.)
Anyway, much as I honestly didn't really enjoy pretending to be a columnist, there are a few things that have stuck with me, even 10+ years later. They are obviously the people. Sally, Chris, Robert, Damian and Will - the "editors" in Comment - all of them more skilled with words than I could ever hope to be, and all of them kind (except on those 3am calls!)
The other thing I remember is how horrible it was to be sacked! In my mainstream "statistical" life, I more or less enjoyed a monotonic improvement in status over the years. Writing is *very* different - sharp discontinuities out of the blue. With hindsight, both aspects are some of the best things ever to happen to me: that I was given the chance to write a newspaper column - that goes without saying - but being dismissed, too, was probably good for my soul.
Finally, and back to Allison. She among the excellent columnists was the kindest, most fun, and most supportive. Above I asked her forgiveness for writing - eventually! forigive all the late-night memories along the way - about her, and this is why: you're a star woman, Allison. I will never forget how you went out your way at the Sophie's Poirot party to make me feel good about myself, just after my dismissal. In my un-heterosexual way, I fell in love with you then, and your bravery in your writing since has only increased my ardour. Maybe you're Reform, maybe I'm a Tory: who cares. You're a writer, one who *matters*. Unlike with me, the Telegraph will live to regret the loss of you.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland).
You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
I do not want us to 'claim global climate leadership' at all.
Especially when The World doesn't give a Flying Fig what we do.
It has shown that it really doesn't care about 'climate'.
And certainly are going to bankrupt themselves just to satisfy Mr Miliband's Superhero fantasy.
Your thoughts?
Approving Rosebank would be a disaster for our climate commitments, and would do nothing to improve our economy, I said to The Guardian yesterday.
You cannot claim global climate leadership while approving new oilfields simply because you’ve already 'penciled in' the tax receipts. Tax ‘receipts’ that will be the operator’s estimate and not necessarily actual Treasury revenue.
Read the article here: theguardian.com/environment/…
Tom O'Brien retweeted
This is not correct @ReutersFacts: "From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and sold into slavery by European traders."
The Africans were captured and made slaves by other Africans and then sold to the Europeans. And if the abductees weren't sold to the Europeans, they were sold to east to the Muslims.
Ahead of Mr. Lincoln's War—decades after the US and Britain ended the Atlantic slave trade—there were as many slaves in West Africa as there were before the Atlantic slave trade was ended.
When it comes to slavery, no racial or ethic group has clean hands. The only innocents were those who were abducted.
A good book to read on this topic is "Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World."
reuters.com/world/uk/king-ch…
Tom O'Brien retweeted
When ministers signed off German @axelspringer_ buying @dailytelegraph was the deal they sack fine right wing columnists like @AllisonPearson @LiamHalligan Commercial suicide
Tom O'Brien retweeted
What’s happening in Poland?
In a nutshell there are two political blocks: Law and Justice (PiS), led by Jarosław Kaczyński (nationalist, socially conservative, and skeptical of certain EU policies) who were in power from 2015 to 2023, and Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (and its partners), pro-Eu and have been in government since late 2023.
PiS reformed the Constitutional Tribunal (court) which argues Polish law has precedence over some EU law.
Tusk thinks all Polish law should be subordinate to EU law.
Despite the Polish Constitution stating the Tribunal’s position is final, Tusk has been ignoring it.
A Tusk appointed Judge on the Tribunal has - seemingly with Tusk’s support - suspended the President of the Tribunal and another PiS appointed judge, causing the present crisis.
What is in fact behind this is that Donald Tusk is trying to make the upcoming 2027 elections all about the EU.
He is ideologically committed to ensuring the EU dominates Poland while the PiS does not want to leave the EU, but want to retain some Polish autonomy. Tusk is trying to create a minor crisis and present it as the right’s fault and position himself as the guardian of Polish membership of the EU.
It’s up to the Poles, but should they really trust a man who creates a crisis to help him make sure Poland becomes fully submissive to Brussels? I think not.
Tom O'Brien retweeted
The two families with small children I know best face a constant struggle.
Both sets of parents work flat out, full time, to pay the bills and make sure the kids don’t feel poor.
They pull in good money which would guarantee a nice life in most countries.
Not in broken Britain where hard work is penalised and idleness rewarded.
“The Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank says this will be the worst decade for household incomes since the Second World War. Are we capable of drawing a line from the individually popular spending increases to this dire fact?”
dailymail.com/debate/article…
