Woman, 65, in SW England. Absolutely anti-disinformation! Loves loads of music, ptcly classical - ptcly Rossini - husband, films, cat(s) and trees. Hates right-wing politics and horrors of global warming. NO DMs.
1,951 followers 2,356 following 545 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
Today Nick Ferrari asked if treaties like the ECHR & the Refugee Convention that were drawn up in the wake of WWII are still relevant to modern Britain. I said the context of racial hatred towards Muslim immigrants now echoes the hatred of Jewish immigrants in the 20th century. We need these laws.
1970: Bertrand Russell on Palestine
The HMT takeover by the Resolution Foundation is notable. Both Torsten Bell, who's leading on the budget, and Dan Tomlinson who'll now be doing tax, were there.
I like the rebrand.
I hope he remains so.
I’m daring to invest in the hope that the appointment of Darren Jones, and a few more in No.10 reshuffle, brings some improvement.
Another day, another utterly shameful cruelty against refugees announced. Recognised refugees - so people granted the long term right to stay in the UK because they have escaped real danger - will face new barriers to reuniting with spouses & children safely in the UK #r4todat
Where has this ludicrous ECHR "debate" even come from. I've never once met an ordinary member of the public who's said to me, "Do you know what? We REALLY need to leave the ECHR." It's just a new right wing talking point because every other shit idea they've foisted on us has run out of steam.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
What a traitorous piece of shit Farage is… (Sunday Times)
Douglas Carswell has skirted the line and now he's crossed it. This is disgusting racism from a former MP who now demonstrates who and what he is.
For anyone finding the need to explain the British tabloid print media of the 1990s to a bemused teen, this is the transition from part 2 to part 3 of the Princess Diana story distilled and bottled. Serve in your 1981 wedding commemorative mug.
Jail?
🚨 Over 18,000 people have already emailed the Home Office demanding they shut down this Nazi gig. Let’s turn up the pressure. If you haven’t added your name yet, now’s the time – and don’t forget to share the link with friends and family. secure.hopenothate.org.uk/page/176528/...
🌳 Deforestation and deadly heat A new study links tropical deforestation to ~28,000 heat-related deaths each year. Local warming from forest loss now accounts for over a third of climate heat mortality in affected regions. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #SciComm #ClimateCrisis 🧪
If Angela Rayner lived in a cardboard box, the Telegraph would claim she nicked it.
This whole summer only one story has dominated our entire politics & it comes down to literally 30,000 people in hotels. Ridiculous. The government needs to get a GRIP it’s pathetic.
👏😊
Bears repeating that Lowe's position on remigration is to the right of the BNP in the 2000s. And the Telegraph is giving him softball interviews.
www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
My reporting of Zou's case, where police were also appealing for help identifying dozens of victims seen in the footage he took of his abuse, is here www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/w...
Xu is from China and was previously a student in London His methods are strikingly similar to Chinese student Zou Zhenhao, who was jailed in June for drugging and raping women, and filming the abuse, in London Police say there are no known links between the men but they are keeping an "open mind"
Police are appealing for more potential victims to come forward after a London business owner admitted 24 offences over three years, including drugging, raping and covertly filming women Only 3 of the victims visible in Chao Xu's videos have been identified www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/w...
More and more Russian drones fly towards Kharkiv. I can hear them buzzing outside and the sounds of air defense.
Full-on adult human is Zoe.
Did Brexit cause the small boats? Are any countries managing immigration well? How do I stay calm when arguing with dickheads? What can we all do to fight back against the hate? Wonderful questions from the @bremaininspain.com community :) - my answers here www.bremaininspain.com/bremainers-a...
Pigeons need more kindness. 🥺
The key summary paragraph In essence: protests will make such injunctions *less* likely on the balancing exercise of the court. Thereby: the bigger the protest the less likely an injunction removing asylum seekers will be granted. Bold and refreshing decision.
BBC guest mentions CTM. No reaction.
Let’s get #PFAS out of our food @rachaelray. Let’s work together to protect our families.
#ProudBlue Vindictive motherfucker 😡😡😡 apple.news/AaU61PsTFTSi...
Good piece by @rafaelbehr.bsky.social -- someone needs to keep saying it. I've grown tired, moved on to Trumpworld, but good if the debate is coming back.
Very succinct WSJ summary of the staggering migration shock that successive Tory governments inflicted on Britain as they tried to mitigate and hide the economic consequences of the Brexit disaster
Selecting someone who isn't alive is one way to lower the chance of a scandal I suppose
'I met a man recently', prophetic given the upsurge in racism and cruelty we are witnessing at present.
Britain's newspapers campaign day and night against solar. They all sing a song of oil, coal and natural gas. Refute their lies and challenge their misleading claims with this handy guide interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/so... #NetZero #LoveNetZero #BoycottTrump
I was shocked when I first saw these results from standard climate models used in IPCC reports: for high emissions, the Atlantic overturning circulation #AMOC shuts down in all 9 models that ran past 2100, and is well on the way to shutdown by 2100. Our paper on that is out today.🧵
"Climate models show the tipping point that makes an Amoc shutdown inevitable is likely to be passed within a few decades, but that the collapse itself may not happen until 50 to 100 years later." What we do now will affect this planet beyond our lifetimes.
The Home Office has the power to block the overseas bands from entering the UK, which will scupper the promoters plans. But they won’t act unless we demand it. Join us and email the Home Office now: secure.hopenothate.org.uk/page/176528/...
The drummer of Crucified is Gary Smith, a veteran nazi and former Combat 18 activist. He played in No Remorse when they released Barbecue in Rostock, described by German authorities as the most extreme nazi record ever made, glorifying racist violence and arson attacks on asylum centres.
❗The biggest neo-nazi music festival in over a decade is coming to Great Yarmouth and we need your help to stop it. hopenothate.org.uk/2025/08/28/g...
Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures - The New York Times share.google/87MGlTtozqU0... Shout out ARIZONA we are one of these 6 states New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio, Washington state WASTEFUL & INAPPROPRIATE SERVICES REDUCTION And tRump said he won't cut MEDICARE
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
Let's all do this before he kills us
What could be done in practice with a Reform majority in the House of Commons would have no constitutional limits, short of either refusal of Royal Assent to a Bill or the courts impugning the sovereignty of parliament.
It's not just asylum seekers, @theguardian.com - it's anyone without paperwork www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Constituent: I've heard President Trump say more than once that he's lowered drug prices by 1500%. I'm not sure how that works
Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?
Just complete inability to understand that there are any low-income people that don't fit their stereotype. Wildly wildly patronising as well as analyticially ridiculous.
Matthew Syed's latest drivel is an absolute masterclass in conflating a particular group of older, white, relatively financial secure, working class voters with the entirity of the low income population. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Making rich people richer does not help make poor people less poor. Making rich people richer does not help make poor people less poor. Making rich people richer does not help make poor people less poor.
Kamala Harris nailed it. We warned everyone the stakes were too high to hand the guy built for Project 2025 another shot — but noooo. Ever have one of those mornings you just want to throw the window open and yell, FUCK YOU ALL? Yeah, that.
*Meant red-CROSS-on white
If you’re doing a ‘double tap’ strike on a hospital, you’re a war criminal and a terrorist.
Is the UK media highly incompetent, grossly biased, or both?
I remember being in a focus group some years ago and a participant saying "just give us the facts and figures about Brexit and we'll decide!" and an observer commenting, "all we do is give them facts and figures and it doesn't work!" What voters say they want and what works are two different things.
Can Georgia do a cabinet reshuffle?
I think Salvini is flailing and in a panic. His party is not doing well, stagnant at 8% in Italian polls and increasingly unpopular. Meloni has successfully taken the steam out of the Italian far-right. She may in fact be a model for other European conservatives on how to undermine the far-right.
Just shrieks a show.
CDU & SPD streichen in Berlin den Baumschutz und Pflege der Grünanalgen. Das tun sie nach 7 Jahren Dürre & Extremwetter-Ereignissen. Die Kürzungen werden den Bestand weiter dezimieren. Anders gesagt: Die Kürzungen von heute sind die Schulden von morgen. Der notwendige Stadtumbau wird vertagt.
🌳 Berliner Bezirksstadträt:innen schlagen Alarm: Unser Stadtgrün steht vor dem Kollaps. Wir haben uns mit einem Brandbrief an den Regierenden Bürgermeister gewandt – die Berliner Morgenpost berichtet darüber. 👉 Artikel lesen: www.morgenpost.de/berlin/artic... #Stadtgrün #Berlin
ONE red-flag-on-white worth supporting, and it’s British -
I had this in mind when I replied to Otto English last night, that I liked the idea of a world flag with every country’s one on it, complex and multicoloured.
Over a quarter of all homes sold in the first three months of 2025 were bought by real estate investors. If we want to make housing affordable again, we must get Wall Street out of our homes. https://youtu.be/q9TOGxDJ0TE?feature=shared
I want a flag I can happily wave (yes and in their faces) - maybe a world flag, showing every country’s one.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
@jeansibelius.bsky.social Good morning! Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 – First movement: Allegro moderato www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtG3...
24 August 1908 | A Polish Jew, Chaim Cygler, was born in Miechów. A worker. In #Auschwitz from 22 January 1942. No. 25916 He perished in the camp on 12 March 1942.
Millions of people threatened by wildfires near their homes, research finds Analysis by an international team of scientists showed 440 million people were threatened by fire encroaching on their homes between 2002 and 2021.
Footnote to this, which describes Russia's recent past, but also America's present and UK future if Farage becomes PM. Constitutiona and cultures are different, intensities may vary, but the ethno-nationalist trajectory is a template that repeats and repeats.
The plot has left the building and it’ll take more than a map, bag of moral compasses and a chronic dose of self-awareness for our media to find it again.
The laziness and implied bias of the BBC here is extreme - "No 10 did not comment" presumably because the CPS and courts are independent, but there's no attempt to find anyone who would argue the opposite view, just the unchallenged whine of someone who called for asylum seekers to be burnt to death
I think we can accept Judge Inman has been proven entirely correct on the lack of insight. www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/u...
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
"Within nine months, 2,500 new decision makers were installed — many of them inexperienced and hired through high-street recruitment agencies. The monumental task of cutting the backlog was visualised like a board game and dubbed “39 steps. As one put it, "we drowned before we learned to swim”."
"As the political rhetoric has become more toxic... the real-world consequences for those inside the hotels and for organisations like my own and many others... become more dire." @enversol.bsky.social writing in today's @theguardian.com. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
1/3 A plea to Labour and Keir Starmer: Practical fixes to the economic mess you inherited from the last government will not be enough. You need to fill the moral vacuum that they created too. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Buckfastleigh 80 minutes.
Anyway we've seen how dictatorships rise. And now we get to see how witch hunts happen. Would probably have been much easier to teach it all in schools... oh we do
Again, this -
Migrants can't answer back. They have no voice. So they make the perfect scapegoat for the pent-up rage of the angry, self-loathing far right who can unite around this issue. In addition it gives the media something to write about in the long summer recess. That is what is really going on here.
Home office statistics for year to June 2025 Visas are 852k in 2024-25 (Peaked 1.4 million in 2023) Year in year Work visas down 36% [21k health/care visas; peaked 200k] Study visas down 4% Study dependent visas down 81% Family visas down 23% Asylum claims up 14% www.gov.uk/government/s...
Refugee charities install safe rooms and relocate amid rise in far-right threats
It's just ridiculous: like something out of Brass Eye or Black Mirror.
Well if it isn't climate-denying, Brexit-supporting, migrant-bashing, transphobic "maverick" Graham Stringer
It is very nearly the tenth anniversary of that brief moment when, for 2 or 3 days, British newspapers remembered refugees are desperate human beings who need our help, rather than scum that it's okay to threaten with violence.
I don't know about you but I've had about enough of mainstream media & politicians legitimising racist anti-asylum protests that terrorise refugees & communities. I had to push back hard, TWICE on BBC yesterday about supposed "legitimate concerns" www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtkA...
100 Women's Rights Organisations, including @rapecrisis.bsky.social, @refugecharity.bsky.social, & @evawuk.bsky.social have signed a letter warning that attempts to link rape & violence against women & girls to immigration is a racist distraction. They urge the govt to address dangerous narrative
After seeing this excellent chart from the folks at @data.ft.com, we had to see how things look across the water. Irish solar in 2025 has already overtaken 2024 as of the second half of July, and it looks likely to exceed 1TWh later this year for the first time ☀️
So that 3 fingered salute appears to be a fascist thing linked to Serbian neo-nazis. Clearly they think it's a brilliant subtle gesture which nobody is going to bother fact checking
20th August 2011, Maria Concetta (Cetta) Cacciola (31) dies after drinking hydrochloric acid. She tries to escape from a life of oppression in her 'ndrangheta family but returns out of love for her three children [Thread] >> 1
Infuriating.