Sophie Joanna

Comms and creative writing. Former civil servant. Massively pro-animal. Grammar pedant. #NeverLabour

[Sophie Joanna @BeesWingedEyes]

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much - Oscar Wilde

[Fox Guardians @foxguardiansuk]

What a wonderful fox dad Elf is! This was him last summer playing patiently with his daughters. He taught them well to be confident and street- smart young vixens. All of his daughters are now fox mums themselves and “responsible adults”. However, every time they bump into them when he is inspecting his large territory surrounding the cemetery, they still wiggle their brushes excitedly and squeal with joy just like they did when they were tiny cubs. I hope you will enjoy this #FlashbackFriday clip. I will continue to share more precious memories of the wonderful foxes under my care.

[Sophie Joanna @BeesWingedEyes]

@SafferTheGaffer We have a pigeon nesting in my local gym unit. I nearly cried when people gave the mother bird food and water to keep her going in the hot spell. Misunderstood beauties.

[Pippa B 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🚜 ❤️ 🇺🇸 @pippaisright]

Remember, @Keir_Starmer who wants to ban X for spreading misinformation has been community noted 27 times for lying.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

If you are old enough to have driven in Britain in the 1980s, you remember the windscreen.

By July you could barely see through it. A run from Leeds to London in August finished with a bumper that looked like it had been to war and a sheet of glass you scrubbed with a sponge at the services while the engine ticked as it cooled. Moths in the headlights. Flies in the wing mirrors. The grille packed solid. Nobody thought it remarkable. It was simply the price of moving through a country that was still, in living memory, heaving with flying things.

Drive that same road today. Stop at the same services. The windscreen is clean. Spotless. You could very nearly eat off it.

We have the numbers, for those who want them. The Bugs Matter survey, run by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, has had volunteers counting the splats on their number plates since 2004. Britain's flying insects are down by roughly four fifths in twenty years. Gone in a single human lifetime, while the rest of us noticed nothing at all.

The birds went down with them, because the birds lived on them. A child born this year can grow up in the English countryside and never once hear a turtle dove, for the simple reason that there is almost nothing left to do the calling.

And none of it, not one acre of it, happened on the grass.

It happened in the arable fields, where the hedges were torn out for bigger machines and a single crop was sprayed over and over to keep it upright. The herb-rich meadow grazed by cattle still hums. The beetles, the pollinators, the ground-nesting birds, all still there, just about, on the pasture our ancestors never stopped grazing.

So when someone tells you your steak is emptying the British countryside, ask them what grew on that field before it was drained and ploughed and sprayed to raise the oats for the carton in their fridge.

It was grass, and there were cattle on it, and back then the windscreen needed cleaning.

[CommunityPlanningAlliance 🦇🦎 @CommunityPlann1]

So much for local decision making 🤷‍♀️

[Queen Bee @KingBobIIV]

Your steam engine is British.
Your Industrial Revolution is British.
Your railway is British.
Your underground railway is British.
Your modern railway timetable is British.
Your suspension bridge is British.
Your iron bridge is British.
Your modern lighthouse is British.
Your marine chronometer is British.
Your global time standard is British.
Your time zone starts at Greenwich.
Your telephone is Scottish.
Your television is Scottish.
Your radar is British.
Your jet engine is British.
Your tank is British.
Your programmable computer is British.
Your World Wide Web is British.
Your fibre-optic communications were pioneered by a Briton.
Your modern telecommunications network was transformed by British inventors.
Your antibiotics are Scottish.
Your vaccination programme was pioneered by an Englishman.
Your modern nursing profession is British.
Your public sanitation system is British.
Your modern sewerage system is British.
Your clean drinking water infrastructure was pioneered by Victorian Britain.
Your weather forecast is British.
Your life boat service is British.
Your modern fire service was pioneered in Britain.
Your parliamentary democracy is British.
Your constitutional monarchy is British.
Your common law is British.
Your independent judiciary is British.
Your trial by jury is British.
Your presumption of innocence is British.
Your habeas corpus is British.
Your rule of law is British.
Your modern police force is British.
Your modern civil service is British.
Your modern banking system was shaped in Britain.
Your central banking model was shaped by the Bank of England.
Your stock exchange model was pioneered in London.
Your global insurance market was built at Lloyd's of London.
Your international maritime law was shaped by Britain.
Your global trade routes were mapped by Britain.
Your anti-slavery patrols were British.
Your modern university model was influenced by Oxford and Cambridge.
Your scientific societies were pioneered by Britain.
Your peer-reviewed science was advanced by British institutions.
Your laws of motion are English.
Your theory of evolution is English.
Your economics is Scottish.
Your electromagnetism was transformed by a Scot.
Your geology was pioneered by Scots.
Your thermodynamics was advanced by Britons.
Your stainless steel is British.
Your carbon fibre is British.
Your steam turbine is British.
Your hovercraft is British.
Your ATM is British.
Your cash machine is Scottish.
Your postage stamp is British.
Your modern postal system is British.
Your football is English.
Your rugby is British.
Your golf is Scottish.
Your tennis was codified in Britain.
Your badminton was codified in Britain.
Your cricket is English.
Your worldwide language is English.
Your newspapers were shaped by Britain.
Your global news agencies were pioneered by Britain.
Your public broadcasting model is British.
Your music charts are British.
Your modern popular music owes a great deal to Britain.
Your neighbour may be an immigrant.
But a fair chunk of the modern world is British.
Pull yourself together.

[Sophie Joanna @BeesWingedEyes]

@YvetteCooperMP @FCDOGovUK @jnbarrot @AnitaAnandMP Any chance you might invest in our defence to ensure we, the British, can live in peace? I’m guessing not?

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Every single person who still cringes at the memory of trying to bullshit their way through an interview or exam question: today, the slate is wiped clean. Set down your burden of shame. Nothing - nothing, I say - could touch this.

[Ant Middleton @antmiddleton]

.@UKLabour I would STRONGLY suggest that you remove this post immediately as your statement of myself ‘assaulting’ a female officer is highly misleading and completely false as I’ve never laid a finger on a woman let alone a female Police officer! However doesn’t Labour allow for female police officers to have their noses broken nowadays??? #Manchester #Labourout

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Sometimes you can only shake your head in disbelief at how unserious this government is.

[Benedict Spence @BenedictSpence]

Oh wonderful, internet restrictions for the public during unrest.

Like Iran.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

In regards to the girls in Dundee, Police Scotland released a statement implying that these girls were lying. Politicians, journalists and even feminists dismissed the allegations of assaulting as “far-right, racist” nonsense.

This is how the Pakistani rape gangs flourished.

[Bev Turner @beverleyturner]

It pains me to respond to the attention seeking @MatthewStadlen ....
But he's tried to orchestrate yet another pile-on and truth matters.

The exchange with him was at 1am on Monday night. At that time we were relying on sparse footage and interpreting media descriptions.

The official figures were eventually released, based on accurate assessments, after dawn the next day.

I was ACUTELY aware that this disorder would be used (just as Southport was) by the government to introduce more powers of control.

I could see Stadlen priming viewers at home to accept incoming restrictions.

Language matters. Too many people in news media reach for hyperbole to manipulate you - never more so than when an authoritarian government is waiting to pounce.

Facts that emerged the next day:
15 police officers injured.
4 residential properties damaged by fire.
3 residents evacuated from burning homes.
Several vehicles burned.

All unacceptable hooliganism, stupidity and chaos. Life-changing for some involved.

But when I think of 'riots' I call to mind Brixton in 1981 in which 100s of police and civilians were hospitalised.
Toxteth, 1981, in which one person died, more than £10million of property was damaged and 100s were injured.
The Poll Tax riots in 1990 saw 200,000 people in Trafalgar square; 100s of people injured and arrested.
Tottenham, 2011, The 'Mark Duggan' riots - FIVE people died, 1000s were arrested and damage reached roughly £200 million.
2024: Southport, 1000s of arrests and some high-profile jail-sentences including Lucy Connolly for commenting online.
Those are riots.

In 2026, a hot day is an "emergency," feeling a bit down is "depression;" rain is a "flood risk" and being tired is "burnt out."

In my view, the British people should be calmly withdrawing their labour and taking to the streets in their millions right now to force political change, but too many are unwilling to get off the sofa.

It was obvious that this disorder would be used by the government to introduce more powers of control over free speech so on Monday,'s show, I was torn between relaying the unrest and attempting to moderate the hysteria. But I did let Stadlen wind me up and that was unusual on my part.

On the issue of greater social media restrictions I was proven right within 24 hours.

Now let's look at who Matthew Stadlen really is....

Have you ever wondered why a grown man would spend so much time doing unpaid media work, even going to the time and effort of clipping and promoting my counter-narrative views on social media at every opportunity?

I have zero evidence that he is anything other than a trust-fund boy who lives in a big London house and likes being on TV.

He may just be the product of his rarified upbringing.
But if you were to require a malleable asset to nudge the Establishment dial, his type would certainly fit the bill:
St Paul's and Trinity College educated with a father, Sir Nicholas Stadlen who was a High Court Judge. His uncle Godfrey Stadlen was a very senior Home Office civil servant involved in the administrative machinery of UK immigration policy.

His paternal Grandparents were Central European émigré intellectuals who brought Marxist, anti-fascist and Continental philosophical traditions to Britain. His grandmother's work and participation in intellectual circles, especially contributed to debates on Marxism and political theory.

Frankly, The Stadlen family sits in the upper institutional ecosystem of Britain through law and elite education, not to mention Matthew's hard-to-define media career...

So when he is dead-set on making you think a certain way, take a breath, think harder and be extremely wary.

[CPRE London @CPRELondon]

We strongly object to development on #Havering’s #GreenBelt behind Wingletye Lane and Benets Road. The fields are rich in #Wildlife and play a vital role in separating Hornchurch from Upminster and preventing #UrbanSprawl. Plenty of #Brownfield land that could be used instead!

[James Wright @JPBWFarm]

Thank you. Since last week, over 7,500 of you have signed my letter to protect Exmoor ponies. Because of that pressure, I have good news.

I wrote to Natural England and asked them straight. They have now confirmed, in writing, that there are no current plans to change grazing on Exmoor, and they recognise the Exmoor pony as a rare breed and a vital conservation grazer. Exmoor National Park has said the same.

This isn't the end. I have outstanding freedom of information requests from Defra and the Rural Payments Agency, who run the funding schemes, to make sure those reassurances hold for the long term.

There is something lasting you can do TODAY! Exmoor Ponies came back from just 50 animals after the Second World War, and the breed's gene pool is still fragile. The Exmoor Pony Society is building a gene bank so we never come that close to losing them again.

Donate and help secure the future of the breed.

[EmFord @EmFord2015]

300 trees in ancient woodland felled before planning permission was granted, the only word for it is crime. But the developers will apologise, pay a meagre fine and continue on their way.
https://t.co/QiO7iOiFmT

[James Glancy @jaglancy]

The uncomfortable truth is this. If, at election after election, for decade after decade, people keep voting for proper control of their country’s borders, and politicians keep ignoring or belittling them, it’s inevitable that some of those people will think: “Voting doesn’t work. And peaceful protest doesn’t seem to have much effect, either. So we need to find an alternative way to make politicians listen to us.” And that alternative, I’m afraid, is what we’ve seen in Belfast.

https://t.co/E1L4q8Oywp

[Danica Priest🦇🦎🦇🦎🍃💚🍃 @DanicaPriest]

Steve Reed just overruled Slough council and approved a massive data centre. So much for ‘local people know best what their area needs’ 😡

[Sophie Joanna @BeesWingedEyes]

@Channel4News What job was the hard-working would-be-beheader doing then?

[MIP34 Ⓥ💚🦉🦔🦊🦝🦌🕊🌈🇪🇺💙 @MaggieP31069]

Here we go again. More green land, wildlife and environmental damage courtesy of Starmer's hideous build, build, build programme of destruction.

115 homes planned for greenfield site between Surrey villages

https://t.co/f9SWXZQiZh