Alison Connorton 🇬🇧🇪🇺 🇺🇦

“Tory-hating Remainer diehard on Twitter” and now apparently “hard woke left winger”, family history researcher, food lover, interfering mother ❤️

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

Yeah, three landslides, clean air and the lowest violent crime rates on record, what a bastard.

Admitting that the criticism is based on him being a Muslim would be more direct.

[Dr Martin @MartinRemains]

There is essentially a coup underway in the Parliamentary Labour Party to appoint with no debate, no competition and without democracy a new PM. I am not a member and am very much a floating voter but why on earth are Labour Party members accepting of this?

[Joni Askola @joni_askola]

If you want to see what true elite hypocrisy looks like, look no further than tech oligarch Peter Thiel.

He is the ultimate example of a man who successfully climbed the ladder of democratic freedom and is now trying to pull it up behind him.

Thiel owes his entire fortune to the liberalism and protections of Western democracy. Moving to the United States as an immigrant and living openly as a member of a sexual minority, he benefited immensely from California's legal and social progressivism. Today, he uses that same fortune to bankroll authoritarian ideologies. His worldview is deeply rooted in a fascist contempt for democratic institutions, and he is obsessed with replacing public governance with corporate, autocratic control.

He feels absolutely no loyalty to the United States or the people living here. Thiel operates as a borderless sovereign who maintains multiple exit strategies. Whether it is his controversial fast-tracked citizenship in New Zealand or his new moves in Argentina, he is always ready to escape the consequences of the political fires he lights, leaving regular people to burn.

He is the hypocritical and dangerous ”global elite” his pawns claim to fight

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Can’t help but feel that this photo would have been more appropriate (and tactful) if and when he becomes prime minister.

[The Last Blairite #TrueLabour @LastBlairite]

This is shameful from every single Labour MP, pissing about like this on the day the first Labour PM in 14 years stands down. Totally lacking class. Could’ve waited a day for such nonsense. I can see my MP on there and I’m embarrassed.

[James S🇬🇧 @jim8oy66]

While Starmer was stood with a face like a smacked arse at Downing Street, ‘loyal’ Labour MPs rushed for a selfie with Andy Burnham ⬇️ 😂

[Ben 🇬🇧 @BenInRushcliffe]

That selfie, on the day of the PMs departure lacks class.

[Alicia Smith @Alicia_Smith19]

Imagine being Keir Starmer: you lead your party to victory, help put nearly everyone in this photo into office, and then, on the day you resign, they pose for a cheerful selfie with your successor.

Parliamentary politics are brutal. Makes Congress look like child’s play

[Adam Wren @aswren]

Not a paticular fan of Starmer but the way the PLP is handling this is so weird. Massive group selfie with big grins after ending his career followed by falling over eachother to offer heartfelt tributes to his legacy

[Sam @SamCKx]

A democratically elected British Prime Minister has been driven from office by a relentless campaign of propaganda and misinformation; funded, amplified and perpetuated by foreign billionaires and elites whose interests bear zero resemblance to those of ordinary working people.

A noble gesture from an emotional Keir Starmer, entirely consistent with his conduct in office.

A truly sad day for British democracy.

His full resignation speech:

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

Apparently, I've been enrolled on a four-week NHS programme for people who have had cancer.

The first appointment, which includes something called a "Holistic Needs Assessment", is in ten days' time.

But instead of feeling supported, this letter has made me feel angry.

Because nobody told me anything about it until the letter arrived.

Nobody asked whether I wanted to attend.
Nobody checked whether I was available.

And in the six months since my treatment ended, not one healthcare professional has been in touch to ask if I was OK.

Apparently, I have to attend the initial assessment before I can discover what weeks two, three and four actually involve - or even what time commitment I am expected to make.

Many cancer patients have already spent months organising their lives around appointments they didn't choose.

So enrolling them on programmes without their consent risks creating exactly the sort of stress the programme is supposed to alleviate.

Which is ironic, given that financial wellbeing is apparently one of the areas covered.

Because many patients have already lost income as a result of treatment. If they're self-employed, like me, every appointment comes with a direct financial cost.

All that aside ...

I am a woman who had breast cancer.
I am not on a 'pathway'.
I am not a box to be ticked.

I am a human being. An individual. Which means my experience of cancer is unique to me - just as every other patient's experience is unique to them.

And I cannot help wondering how much money has been invested in creating programmes like this when some of the basics still seem so hard to get right.

Like making the time to actually speak to cancer patients.

And simply asking:

What support do you already have?
What support might you need?

Then actually listening to what they have to say.

And asking for their consent before enrolling them in 'wellbeing' programmes - rather than assuming.

Because sometimes a simple phone call from someone who sounds as though they genuinely care can be all a patient needs.

And that phone call didn't come when I actually
needed it.

[David Morrissey @davemorrissey64]

We should all be very concerned and worried about what’s happening at the BBC. It’s something to be protected and proud of. Of course it’s made mistakes and they need addressing but hammering it into the ground is not the answer!

[Elizabeth Bangs. No accountability? No democracy. @ElizabethBangs]

So now a party and its leader has to not only win a general election, but all subsequent locals, be popular in opinion polls, loved in dodgy vox pops and on mythical doorsteps and get the approval of focus groups every single day for the whole 5 years or face summary eviction?
OK

[John Ashton ( you, us, I) @Johnrashton47]

Well done Kim ; Keep the Faith !

[Kim Johnson @KimJohnsonMP]

An Israeli property conference selling off illegally occupied Palestinian lands is set to take place in London this Sunday.

I've added my name to this letter, urging the government to uphold its obligations under international law and stop the event from going ahead.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

On the twenty-ninth of March, 2020, a ten-year-old boy named Max Woosey set up a tent in the back garden of his family's house in Braunton, North Devon, and climbed inside.

The tent had belonged to his next-door neighbour, a seventy-four-year-old man named Rick Abbott who had died of terminal cancer six weeks earlier. Rick had given Max the tent before he died. He had told Max to use it for an adventure.

Rick had not asked Max to raise money.

The translation of the personal token into a fundraising mechanism for the institution that had cared for Rick in his final months was Max's own institutional invention.

By the time he was thirteen years old, he had funded fifteen nurse-years of hospice care.

Rick Abbott had been a kayaker, a paddleboarder, and a gym-goer. He was a close neighbour of the Woosey family. When he received his terminal cancer diagnosis at the age of seventy-four, the North Devon Hospice arranged the palliative care that allowed him to die at home rather than in a hospital ward.

The Woosey family — Max, his mother Rachael, and his father Mark (a serving Royal Marine) — were close to Rick throughout the final months. They observed the hospice care directly. They saw what the institutional infrastructure of community palliative care could do for a man who wanted to die in his own house surrounded by the things he loved.

Rick Abbott died in February of 2020.

Before he died, he gave Max his camping tent. He asked Max to use it for an adventure.

Six weeks later, on the twenty-third of March, 2020, the United Kingdom entered its first national lockdown under the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. All in-person fundraising activities for UK charities were cancelled overnight. UK hospices — which are not part of the National Health Service and are largely charity-funded, with the average UK hospice receiving only approximately thirty percent of its operating budget from the NHS — were among the worst affected. Their fundraising infrastructure depended on community events, charity shops, and in-person gatherings that were no longer permitted.

The North Devon Hospice — the institution that had just cared for Rick Abbott — was, by late March of 2020, looking at the loss of substantially all of its normal fundraising revenue for the foreseeable future.

On the twenty-ninth of March, 2020, six days into the national lockdown, Max Woosey set up Rick's tent in his back garden and posted a fundraising page online.

The page set a goal of one hundred pounds.

The page text explained that his friend Rick had given him a tent before he died and had asked him to have an adventure, and that an adventure was what Max was doing.

He did not come back inside that night. Or the next. Or the night after that.

He continued sleeping in the tent for the next three years.

The fundraising page raised one hundred pounds. Then five hundred. Then five thousand. Then fifty thousand. Then five hundred thousand. By the time Max ended the challenge on the twenty-ninth of March, 2023 — exactly three years after the first night — the page had raised more than seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the North Devon Hospice.

Through the three years, he slept outside in storms, in snow, in hail, in torrential rain, in baking summer heat, in freezing winter cold. He slept outside on his birthdays. He slept outside on three consecutive Christmases. He slept outside when he had COVID-19. He went through approximately fifteen separate tents as the weather destroyed them one after another. On one documented night, his tent collapsed in heavy rain and high winds at midnight; he stayed inside the collapsed shelter because he could not find a replacement tent in time.

He camped in places other than the back garden when the schedule permitted. He spent a night on a hotel balcony at London Zoo. He pitched the tent in the garden of Number Ten Downing Street and met the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson. He camped at the Sandy Park stadium of the Exeter Chiefs rugby club. On the one-year anniversary of his challenge, he organized a worldwide children's camp-out called Max's Big Camp Out, which inspired approximately two thousand other young people to raise money for their own local charities through their own backyard camp-outs.

In the 2022 New Year Honours List, Max was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to fundraising for the North Devon Hospice during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was twelve years old at the time of presentation. The medal was presented to him by the Lord Lieutenant of Devon, David Fursdon, at the Royal Marines base at Lympstone in May of 2022. He was among the youngest BEM recipients in the country. He was also recognized with a Pride of Britain Award, a Spirit of Adventure Award, and the Bear Grylls Chief Scout Unsung Hero Award.

On the twenty-ninth of March, 2023, Max ended the challenge. He held a final celebratory festival at the Broomhill Estate in North Devon on the first of April. He then slept in his own bedroom for the first time since the lockdown began. He was thirteen years old.

Guinness World Records confirmed Max as the holder of the world record for the most money raised by camping by an individual.

The North Devon Hospice translated the seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-pound total into the institutional terms that mattered. The chief executive, Stephen Roberts, said publicly that Max's fundraising had directly funded fifteen nurses for a whole year. The hospice estimated, in its own subsequent statements, that those fifteen nurse-years had supported the at-home palliative care of approximately five hundred patients — patients who, like Rick Abbott, had been able to die at home rather than in hospital wards because the institutional infrastructure was funded to be in their houses.

The structural reading of Max Woosey's three years in the back garden is that the promise Rick Abbott extracted from him in February of 2020 was personal. It was a promise from a dying older man to a ten-year-old neighbour to use a tent for an adventure.

Max's translation of that personal promise into a three-year institutional fundraising operation for the hospice that had cared for Rick was not in the original promise.

The translation was Max's own work.

The fifteen nurse-years and the approximately five hundred at-home palliative patients were the institutional yield of a ten-year-old converting a personal token into community infrastructure.

Rick had asked for an adventure.

Max delivered an institution.

If his story moved you, drop one word in the comments — Max, Rick, tent, anything that comes to mind. Tap the like button so more people find this story. The page is small. Every reaction helps us keep telling the stories where a ten-year-old converted a personal promise into community infrastructure.

[Dr Sanjoy Kumar @drsanjoykumar]

Fed up. Just spent 14 weeks at @nottsinquiry didn’t miss a minute as this was all I could do in my daughter Grace’s name against all those who failed.
Get to my desk and this is what I’m greeted with……

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

More than 30 UK charities are found to have funnelled millions to illegal Israeli settlements. ‘Labour’s Melanie Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, it would mean taxpayers had subsidised illegal settlements to the tune of £5.6m, a situation she described as deplorable’ - @guardian @melanie_ward

[Melanie Ward MP @melanie_ward]

Funding illegal Israeli settlements is not charitable activity. It is extremist activity.

Working with Israeli human researchers, I found at least 32 UK charities who have sent £28 million to settlements in recent years.

There’s a likely taxpayer subsidy of at least £5 million