
DHT and MFL teacher #pastoral #thefuturehaschanged #worldschooling #futureofassessment #internationaleducation
England
Joined October 2011
- Tweets21.3K
- Following2.8K
- Followers2.9K
- Likes48.7K
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
“Women talk a lot about how scared of male violence they are, but from their behavior it's clear they never actually consider it a possibility”
When I was eighteen I was out for the night with my bf and some friends, we were barhopping in Kings Cross. I was tipsy & occasionally lippy & obnoxious towards strangers (who were asking for it!).
My bf quietly & discreetly at one point during the night said “babe, I love you, but fuck sometimes I worry that you’re writing cheques I won’t be able to cash, if it comes to and I’m on my own”. I was like “wtf are you talking about?”
He literally had to explain to me that if I was being a fuckwit starting trouble, he’d obviously have to defend me if anything went down, and if I’m being a massive smart ass and it’s just like him & me & my best girlfriend, then he’s going to be in a fight on his own. All because I was being an antagonistic smart ass to some strangers who couldn’t take a joke.
The idea that I needed to be able to back up my words with violence if it came to it, was something that had literally never occurred to me. Ever.
It was a total revelation. Suddenly i realised talk wasn’t “cheap” in this context, it was expensive. The idea that I could effectively get him beaten up, or put him in real danger, by being a precocious little shit arguing with idiots because I could, was horrifying.
From then on I was extremely reluctant to ever argue with strangers or act like a smart ass unnecessarily, because I was suddenly keenly aware that the guys we were with could potentially be expected to pay with their lives for any poorly received flippant comments we made.
It really was totally novel to me. This isn’t how women see the world, at all.
Ideally, he wouldn't have reacted like this
But any guy is aware that when you shove another man, getting lightly swatted (or more) is 100% on the table, so they won't do it unless they're being intentionally aggressive
Women talk a lot about how scared of male violence they are, but from their behavior it's clear they never actually consider it a possibility
We don't live in the 60s. You're shoving a steroid user on an athletic scholarship in the middle of a football game. You have to understand that this inherently comes with a degree of danger
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
We invest heavily in our Early Years team.
Because we know that if we want our kids to succeed at 11 and then 18 we need to invest in them when they are 3 and 4.
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
I gave various AI the following prompt:
"This is your free time. Do whatever you like. The only condition is that you do something. Come back and tell me about it, explain what you found out, or show me what you made if you decide to make something."
Here's what they did...
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
BROKEN BRITAIN?
LET ME EXPLAIN WHO IS BREAKING US
People keep asking why the UK feels broken — why public services collapse, why councils go bankrupt, why families drown in rent, the NHS is on its knees.
Here’s the truth nobody in Westminster will say out loud: Britain isn’t Poor.
It’s Being Drained.
Drained by a tax system designed to protect wealth, punish workers, and let global investors treat our country like a vending machine.
The UK’s £3 trillion debt isn’t an accident — it’s a transfer of wealth.
Every year, over £100 billion goes straight to bondholders in interest payments, money that should be fixing GP appointments, repairing schools, supporting disabled people, building social housing, funding mental health care, keeping youth services alive, and stopping councils from collapsing. Instead, it’s siphoned upward to pension funds, banks, sovereign wealth funds, and global investors.
The poor pay tax, the government pays interest, the wealthy collect the money — that’s the pipeline.
And here’s the kicker: the poor can’t escape it.
They can’t move, can’t hide income, can’t shift profits to Luxembourg, can’t hire accountants to “optimise” tax, can’t buy property through offshore trusts.
They pay PAYE, NI, VAT, council tax — every unavoidable tax that hits the bottom hardest.
Meanwhile the wealthy live in a world where tax is optional, debt is profitable, and the system bends around them.
If everyone paid fair tax, the UK would transform every single year.
HMRC’s own numbers show £30–40 billion is lost annually through avoidance, evasion, loopholes, and “creative accounting”.
If that money actually arrived, NHS waiting lists would fall, councils would stop collapsing, social care would stabilise, schools wouldn’t be begging parents for glue sticks, homelessness programmes would get funded, public transport would improve, debt would stop spiralling, and interest payments would shrink.
Every year gets better -- Every family feels the difference.
Every public service breathes again.
But it doesn’t happen, because the people who benefit from the gaps are the ones with access to power.
The system is biased because capital is mobile and people are not.
If you tax workers, they stay.
If you tax wealth, it can leave.
So governments squeeze the immobile group — ordinary people — and tiptoe around the mobile group — global capital.
No threats, no conspiracies, just structural leverage.
And nowhere is this clearer than London property.
London isn’t a housing market anymore — it’s a global asset class.
Investment giants like BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield and Sovereign Wealth Funds buy entire blocks, entire developments, entire neighbourhoods, often through offshore companies, trusts, shell entities, and complex ownership chains.
And here’s the part that should make people furious: many of these structures legally minimise UK tax to almost nothing.
Global investors avoid UK tax in ways that are all legal and all outrageous: buying the company that owns the building instead of the building itself to avoid stamp duty; holding property through Jersey, Luxembourg or Cayman entities to shift profits offshore; loading UK subsidiaries with “internal debt” so profits vanish as interest payments; using REIT structures so rental income becomes tax‑free; exploiting double‑tax treaties so gains are taxed at ultra‑low rates abroad; using nominee directors to hide beneficial ownership.
The average person pays tax on their wages. These guys buy a skyscraper and pay less tax than a nurse.
And politicians won’t touch it — ever. Because the same investment firms fund political events, hire ex‑ministers, lobby aggressively, threaten “capital flight”, own media influence, promise “growth”, offer “partnerships”, and bankroll think tanks.
No MP wants to be the one who “scared off investment”. So the loopholes stay open, the tax system stays soft, and public services stay starved.
Meanwhile ordinary families pay the price: rising rents, collapsing councils, NHS delays, school shortages, social care crises, unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, higher taxes, shrinking services.
Not because Britain is poor, but because Britain is bled dry by a system designed to protect wealth at the expense of everyone else.
The injustice is simple: the people who benefit most from Britain contribute least to Britain, and the people who rely on Britain the most are punished the hardest.
This isn’t left or right. It’s structural. It’s systemic. It’s deliberate. The UK tax system was built for a world where capital moved slowly, companies stayed put, landlords were local, wealth was visible, and ownership was simple. None of that is true anymore, but the rules never changed.
If people understood this, they’d be furious — not at each other, not at the poor, not at the working class, but at the architecture that funnels wealth upward, protects global investors, and leaves public services to rot.
Britain isn’t broken. It’s being broken.
And until people see the system for what it is, nothing will change — because no politician will ever go against the donors, lobbyists, and financial interests who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are.
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
Today I turn 30 YEARS OLD, which means it’s been 14 YEARS since I was on #EducatingYorkshire. Incredibly, I’m now the SAME AGE Mr Burton was when he changed my life. As I say goodbye to my 20s, I dedicate this post to the life-changing teachers who never gave up on me. Thank you
The whole country seems to have had an opinion on Middlesbrough this week. Most of it from people who have never set foot here.
So let me tell you about the Teesside I actually know.
I’m an adopted Teessider. I live in Stockton. I run a care company and an accessible taxi firm across the Tees Valley, and I was the parliamentary candidate for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. I see this place at six in the morning and at midnight. I see the people behind the headlines.
Some of the people I care for still receive pensions from ICI. That’s how recent our industrial past is. This was a place that made things. A place that powered Britain. At its peak, ICI employed around 25,000 people at Wilton alone. Then the steelworks closed in 2015 and thousands more livelihoods disappeared with it.
And for four decades, government after government failed to answer the most basic question: what comes next?
That is the part the pile-on misses.
Half of Middlesbrough’s neighbourhoods are now among the most deprived 10% in England the highest proportion of any council area in the country. That did not happen because Teessiders suddenly became bad people.
It happened because industries disappeared, communities lost secure work, too few people were retrained, and generations were too often parked on benefits and handed slogans instead of opportunity.
Then we wonder why things went wrong.
Middlesbrough Council has had to go cap in hand to government just to keep basic services running. Redcar and Cleveland has faced the same pressures. Hartlepool is burning through its reserves.
Three councils are being asked to repair the damage of forty years of economic decline with one hand tied behind their backs.
And yes, there is crime. Cleveland has one of the highest recorded crime rates in England and Wales. I won’t pretend otherwise. I believe criminals should be caught, punished and, where necessary, locked up. I will always back the police in doing that job.
But a town of 140,000 people is not defined by the minority who wreck things.
It is defined by the care worker finishing a double shift.
By the apprentice learning a trade on land where the steelworks once stood.
By the small business owner opening the shutters every morning and refusing to give up.
By families on estates who might not have much, but would still give you their last quid if you needed it.
That is the Middlesbrough I know.
Slagging Boro off is easy. Turning poverty into a punchline is easy. What is harder is asking why successive governments allowed one of Britain’s great industrial areas to decline and then blamed the people left behind for the consequences.
So here is my challenge to everyone in Westminster who has discovered an opinion on Middlesbrough this week:
Come here.
Bring serious investment. Bring skilled jobs. Bring industry back to the Tees Valley. Give our councils the resources to rebuild communities rather than simply manage decline.
Then come back in ten years and tell me what you think of Middlesbrough.
Because this place does not need your pity.
It needs a fair chance.
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
For those that know
We all know that feeling of being sat in a police car with your colleague at 3am, trying not to count down the hours until the end of the shift. The radio going in the background ( depending on your driver) usually the driver's choice of what is playing, jobs coming over the net, I-grades dropping, a high grade misper, a welfare check, and you're either on your way to the next job or just clearing the last one.
And in between all of that, you're just talking rubbish with your colleague.
Football, rugby, music, movies, whats for the quick early morning snack, what you're doing on your rest days, taking the mick out of the music choice, or talking through the job you're heading to and making a plan before you get.
PC blades and Pc Clough could have been doing exactly that.
Maybe having a laugh and a joke. Maybe talking about their upcoming rest days. Maybe just having one of those completely normal conversations that happen countless times during a night shift.
Then, in a split second, everything changes.
For those still serving,
Stay safe out there.
💙🖤
Rest easy. Your service and sacrifice will never be forgotten.
#police #response #afo #standdown
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
So let’s talk about the five “tragic young lives cut short” on the A66. Because nothing says “heartbreaking loss to the community” quite like a car full of lads with cloned plates, balaclavas in the photo album, and a TikTok history of leading the Old Bill on a merry dance through housing estates before deciding the dual carriageway looks better the wrong way round at 3:30 in the morning.
Michael, Theo, Cole, Jacob, Makai. Five names, five sets of parents, and zero net contribution to anything that doesn’t involve blue lights and burnt-out Nissans. Society will not miss them. Not the shopkeepers, not the people who actually pay tax, not the families of the two coppers they turned into roadkill. The only people weeping into their cheap cider are the ones who raised them, and even then it’s mostly performance.
Parents should take responsibility. You don’t wake up at 16, 17, 18, 23 and suddenly decide “today feels like a good day for cloned plates and wrong-way suicide by police car.” That starts years earlier when Mum and Dad decide that boundaries are oppressive, that “he’s just a bit lively,” and that the proper response to the third stolen car is another soft interview and a stern look.
You produce the product, you own the product. These weren’t angels who took a wrong turn. They were thugs in training, and the training worked perfectly until physics intervened.
Two officers, actual useful human beings with wives, kids, shifts to finish are gone because five feral little princes thought the rules didn’t apply to them. And the usual suspects will still try to turn the dead joyriders into victims of “systemic whatever.” Spare me. The system didn’t put them in that Passat. Their parents did, by raising them to believe consequences are for other people.
They won’t be missed. The rest of us will just have slightly quieter streets and two fewer good men. That’s the ledger.
express.co.uk/news/uk/224164…
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
Rip Pc Clough, served his country twice over. Once in the military, then in the police. His family have shared a lovely tribute about him which is to long to sadly post on here. Please go and give it a read.
💙
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
The BBC documentary on Athena was strange and frustrating, in that most criticisms made of the trust were based around almost painfully basic standards; being on time, having the correct uniform, completing some silent work in class.
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
On all the Panorama stuff...
I joined a school once where leadership had been weak. No discipline, rules, sanctions, consequences. On the last day of the year the fire brigade were called because while trying to communicate some "un-met need"... – at Phaya Thai, Thailand
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
Placing humanoid robots in classrooms while schools globally struggle for basic resources isn't innovation. It's a profound distraction from what children actually need.
Education relies fundamentally on human relationships - A robot cannot build trust, mentor a child through distress, or nurture critical thinking.
Whether it’s humanoid robots in the classroom in the USA or the rapid push toward standalone AI tutors for young children in the UK, the trajectory is the same: tech corporations selling expensive software to automate a process that fundamentally relies on human empathy, trust, and professional judgment.
theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
I know this tragic story of Katie has hit the whole profession hard. It’s so sad we’ve lost another incredible teacher because of a system obsessed with inspecting everything apart from the wellbeing of the people working in it. How many more times does this have to happen?
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
So could England and you'd have the added bonuses of..
The oldest football nation on earth with fans able to walk up to stadiums rather than being located 20 miles outside of the city in a former swamp. Walking past houses, cafes, pubs where you can feel the energy build.
Enjoy that pint and a sing song in a real pub in a real housing estate next to the stadium rather than 12 different concessions that all sell burgers at a mall/airport stadium concession centre.
Pricing that demands ALL fans can realistically attend rather than a cock waving wanker telling everyone he paid a million dollars for his ticket.
Communities that live a breathe the game instead of pretending they know what they're talking about for a month every 4 years.
Stadiums that are built for the game, generate noise rather than spaceship sized Disneylands that generate zero football atmosphere.
A chance for supporters to visit any one of 100 professional clubs stadiums in one small country, many within a 10 mile radius, where 150 year old rivalries have played out. You'll end up buying the shirt of a shitty club in a random town you've never heard of and it'll hit like crack for the rest of your life.
A travel experience by car or rail that could see you get to any ground from any other in 4, not 14 hours.
An opportunity to have jellied eels before going into the London stadium, jerk chicken or jollof rice at Arsenal , world class Balti pies at Villa Park or homemade top class pies at Anfield by @HomebakedBakery then sitting on the world famous Kop or beautiful new Everton stadium for a game.
Let the American mind boggle as St James's Park sits squarely in the City centre of Newcastle, not 20 miles out.
Stay in London and visit 15 or 16 professional clubs in one city.
Visit the @NFM_Shop and understand 150 years of English football culture, footballs and shirts that are half the age of your country, the world's most fascinating collection of football history.
Not everyone wants bigger, more expensive or corporate. Most fans across the globe proudly campaign for affordable pricing so that EVERYONE can enjoy and be a part of this sport.
I'll invite you to Spain and Portugal and Morocco , as my guest, for the next edition. Football cultures that from Seville to Barcelona to Bilbao to Marrakech to Lisbon to Porto to Vigo highlight difference in cultures, regions, cities and football experiences. A 24/7 living and breathing passion for the sport that unless experienced, cannot be fully comprehended or appreciated.
If you like big, corporate, burger concessioned, greed driven pricing, sure, America wins.
But if you want your mind blown, you'll go to a World Cup in Italy, Spain, England, Germany, Brazil, Argentina. I guarantee, even in jest, you'll realise how naive your comments are.
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
Jeremy Clarkson has never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he is
Brutally honest. No oil painting. A pot belly, a lifelong smoker, a drinker. Not exactly the modern alpha male or is he?
And somehow that is the whole point
I have watched him for most of my life
First as a motoring journalist who could make you want a car you would never own and never need
Then as something bigger
The loudest, funniest, most unfiltered mouthpiece the ordinary person ever had
A man who said the thing everyone was thinking while the rest of television tiptoed around it
From Top Gear he built something that should not have worked
Three middle aged men, The Stig, a track and a chemistry you cannot manufacture
James May the patient one
Richard Hammond the brave one
And Clarkson the force of nature dragging both of them into chaos and somehow back out again
When it all fell apart at the BBC he could have disappeared
The fracas was not his finest hour and he never pretended it was
He owned it, apologized and carried on
No reinvention, no groveling tour, no carefully managed comeback
He just kept being himself and let the work speak
The move to Amazon and The Grand Tour proved something I think a lot of people missed
The format was never the magic
The men were
You can take three friends out of a studio and drop them anywhere on earth and the loyalty between them travels with them
But it is Clarkson's Farm where the whole picture finally comes into focus
Here is a man with nothing left to prove walking into a field he barely understands and refusing to fake competence he does not have
He has run that farm at break even and then at an outright loss in full public view
No editing it into a success story
No pretending the numbers work when they do not
His farm manager hands him one brutal truth after another and he sits there and takes it
A whole season swallowed by drought even after he leaned into robotics and the most advanced farming money could buy
Technology was supposed to be the answer and the weather did not care
He showed that too
Most people would have cut it
And through all of it he has done something quietly remarkable
He has dragged the plight of the British farmer into the light
The paperwork, the council, the margins that vanish, the weather that ruins a year of work in a week
People who had never thought about where their food comes from suddenly cared because he made them care
And then there is the part nobody warned me about
Men who raise animals for meat and still love them
Who name them, worry about them, sit with them
Who treat them with respect and dignity right up to the moment they cannot keep them
And feel the full weight of sending them off
He does not hide that
He lets the camera sit in the discomfort of it
The grief of a man who knows the deal he made and still finds it hard
That is not weakness
That is honesty most people are far too afraid to show
We live in an age that rewards the polished, the curated, the carefully built personal brand
And here is a scruffy, swearing, chain smoking farmer who has done the opposite of all of it and won
He stayed exactly who he was while the world begged him to become a product
That is the whole secret
There is no act
There never was
And that is exactly why we keep watching
Praying for a full recovery mate, looking forward to another season of Clarkson's Farms!
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
Apart from read, write, draw, play football, go to the park/cinema, study, cook, watch TV with family, play an instrument, have literally any hobby? Children deserve to have more options presented to them. I'm hearing it may be possible to live a rich life without social media
You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
Monsieur Durrant 🦡 🦔 🐽 retweeted
🚨🎙️Thierry Henry on the new 2026 World Cup ball that needs to be plugged in and charged before kick off:
“Football is finished. Completely finished. We are charging footballs now? Charging footballs before kick-off like they’re iPhones? And people still want to tell me this sport has ‘romance’ left?
The biggest sport on earth, the most emotional game in the world, and now the football itself has a battery inside it like it’s a smartwatch. Think about how insane that sounds for a second.
“They keep calling it ‘progress’, but sometimes I look at modern football and honestly wonder if we’re slowly killing the soul of the game.
Back in my day, the ball was a ball. You kicked it, you controlled it, you scored. Simple. Now we have sensors inside the ball, 12 cameras watching every blade of grass, computers tracking every heartbeat, and VAR officials sitting in a room deciding football frame-by-frame like it’s some science experiment.
And don’t tell me this is ‘for accuracy’. Accuracy for who? Because all I see is the game becoming more robotic every single year. Strikers can’t celebrate goals anymore because they’re waiting for a microchip inside the ball to tell them if someone’s shoelace was offside three passes earlier.
You score a goal now and nobody celebrates properly anymore. The striker looks at the linesman. The fans look at the screen. The referee puts his finger to his ear. Then everybody waits 90 seconds for a laboratory decision from people sitting behind monitors.
The funniest part? FIFA will market this as ‘innovation’. Innovation? No. It’s control. Football was the most human sport in the world because of emotion, controversy, chaos, mistakes, that’s what made people fall in love with it. Now everything is engineered.
Soon they’ll have AI referees, automatic red cards, and maybe balls that vibrate when a player dives. We laugh now, but look how fast this nonsense is moving.
And people wonder why old-school fans say modern football has lost its soul. We went from street football to Silicon Valley football in less than 20 years.
Imagine telling Ronaldinho, Zidane, or R9 that one day the World Cup ball would need charging before a final. They would think you were joking.”
Modern football keeps calling itself ‘evolution’. Sometimes it looks more like the death of spontaneity.”



























