Bardmaiden

She/her Cis-woman - I crochet, knit, cross stitch, read and am a general sci fi geek. Also a black hole of warmth and snuggles. @bardmaiden.bsky.social

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

Nineteen years in the making! My cross stitch dragon is finally finished!

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@OsakaJack I’m glad you were there for her through her life. Many hugs for your loss

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@OsakaJack Today was my 23rd anniversary of meeting my partner, we very happily snuggled for most of the day ❤️

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

And he didn’t let me tap off and on again just charged me the full fare without asking where I was going!

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@FirstYork I’ve been getting the 4 regularly for years (over 5 years at this point) occasionally if I’ve just missed the one to town I ride around through Acomb, most drivers if see me waiting ask if I want to jump on and do that. 1/2

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

So as I had just missed the town bus I jumped on tapped on as usual. But the driver insisted I payed at Clockhouse stop instead of the thing I’ve done for years. It’s bloody cold I have a nerve condition that means I can be put in extreme pain if I am out for a long time.

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@GuyCaveOfficial I’m the tallest between me, my sister and mum. (5’, 4’11 and a bit and 4’10”) my dad is 5’7”. My partner has 7 siblings who are all 6’+ I feel tiny when we visit his hometown

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Home Secretary Suella Braverman dosn't speak for me and she has to GO.

Like If she doesn't speak for you
RT If its time she got fired

#BravermanOUT

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@PortalBookshop

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@MartinSLewis Most of my household is disabled, online shopping is a godsend for us

[Janey Godley @JaneyGodley]

For sure

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@seananmcguire The NHS is wonderful but needs some serious investment and the Tory’s to be removed.

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@seananmcguire Got an ear infection, contacted my doctor had an appointment within 24 hours face to face. When I had a breast lump (was a boob infection thankfully) got scanned within a week. It has it faults *mutters rude stuff about BMI requirements for needed surgery* but I’m glad it’s there

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@brickie78 @SignalstoDanger is very good

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@brickie78 Very interesting podcast on the disaster and how it changed the railway

https://t.co/jke43lXAnd

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

. @RishiSunak claims a #GeneralElectionNow “is not what the country wants”

Over 172,000 have now signed the petition telling him he’s wrong! Let’s make it 200,000

https://t.co/FK9iRBcaEH

[Louise 🍉 @Blondie_LC89]

Rishi Sunak doesn't think the UK public wants a general election. Let's find out: Do you want an election? Please RT to increase reach:
#PoliticsLive #GeneralElectionN0W #ToryPartyConference

[Mark Kieran - Democracy Activist @MarkKieranUK]

WARNING: THREAD CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

🧵 What a morally vacuous, embarrassingly incompetent monster Suella Braverman is.

Having worked at the Home Office deciding asylum applications, I know the 1951 Refugee Convention's terms are far clearer than her pernicious propaganda would suggest.

She says many asylum seekers base their claims on “feeling” discriminated against in their home countries. But the scope of the Convention is limited to people who believe they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” for some specific reasons. Those reasons are race, nationality, religion, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Mere feelings of discrimination would not meet that rigorous test, and any application made on those grounds would (rightly) be fast-tracked for refusal.

She suggests that persecution, by definition, must involve a threat to life. Not true. Persecution often DOES involve a threat to life, but other things can qualify as persecution (arbitrary detention, unjustified confiscation of assets, withdrawal of state protection from crime). Braverman knows this, but the boneheads whose votes she is soliciting do not, so hey, why not spin the line?

In my time at the Home Office, I refused many asylum applications which, on the evidence presented, clearly did not meet the test of a well-founded fear of persecution on Convention grounds. The majority of those applications were made by people (mostly young men) who appeared to be seeking better economic futures for themselves and their families. That's completely understandable, and I never blamed them for trying, but it's not grounds for asylum, so neither did I feel any guilt in refusing them…that's not the purpose of the asylum system.

But I did grant asylum to a number of people who had clearly faced unimaginable horror in their own countries before escaping to the UK, where they felt safe and where they believed they would be able to live the rest of their lives in peace.

There was the Sikh activist who had a kettle of boiling water poured over him during a police interrogation. There was the woman from a minority Muslim sect who, when her husband died, and her neighbours started throwing stones through her windows at night, sought the protection of the local police only to be publicly ridiculed and then gang-raped by six officers in front of her three young children. There were the young Tamil men forced to inhale the fumes of burnt chilli powder by Sri Lankan police. Others hung upside-down and beaten for days until they confessed to crimes they played no part in. And many, many more with genuine, provable experiences just as gruesome.

Nearly thirty years on, I can still recall the faces of those people as they recounted their experiences to me during interviews and the tears in the eyes of the interpreters as they translated words no one should ever have to hear.

Since my days in the Home Office, I can’t recall a single Home Secretary who hasn’t had to wrestle one way or another with the asylum system. But neither can I recall one who has approached the task with as little humanity in their heart as Braverman. Truly, she is in a league of her own.

I simply don’t believe the majority of people in this country support the cruel policies that Braverman embraces so enthusiastically. As I listen to her today, my sincerest hope is that when Open Britain and our partners finally deliver a functional democracy in this country, monsters like her will never again be able to game their way into high office and abuse the power they find there.

This is our fight.

If you've read this far, please consider giving this a retweet and following me, @OpenBritainHQ and @StopTheRot_UK so you can be part of this positive change. Thank you.

[Bardmaiden @Bardmaiden]

@chronicleflask “In the prison under the castle Allaze, in the dark, moldy cells, where the greatest criminals in Mellinor spent the remainder of the lives counting rocks to stave off madness, Eli Monpress was trying to wake up a door.” One of my favourite first lines

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

NHS privatisation takes place in many different ways.

Dr Anna Warrington explains how successive governments understaffing the NHS, forces the NHS to pay for private contractors who charge more than NHS staff charge.

This is a must watch to better understand NHS privatisation.