Dianella

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[Alicia Kearns MP @aliciakearns]

The UK *nominated* Iran to join this committee.

Why @Ed_Miliband? Is this what you shook hands over?

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

What a sordid world.

[Jennifer Kimmel 💚🤍💜 @eyre_ann]

@robjessel16 Between the pro rapist Brand crowd, the women really want to be beaten and strangled crowd and the so what if Gisèle Pelicot's horrific ordeal being used for Eddie Izzard's sexual gratification crowd, it has been a particularly disturbing week for rape survivors.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

On Remembrance Day, a day when we honour the fallen who gave their lives for our freedom, the Woman of the Day can only be “The Poppy Lady from France”, teacher and humanitarian Anna Guérin (1878-1961) from Ardeche.

She campaigned for all WW1 Allied Countries to use poppies made by French widows and orphans as a symbol of remembrance and to raise money for the families of the fallen and those who had survived.

In 1911, Anna was living with her family in England and delivering lectures on behalf of the Alliance Française, an international organisation that promotes French culture and language. Soon after Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, she left Liverpool on the Lusitania bound for New York. While delivering lectures to American audiences on behalf of the Alliance Française, she quietly raised funds at the end of each lecture for those made destitute by war, sending all donations directly to the American Red Cross.

Once the USA entered the war, Anna was free to raise funds openly. She returned to France each summer throughout the war and was halfway across the Atlantic at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918: Armistice Day.

In 1915, Canadian surgeon Lt Colonel John McCrae had famously written “We shall not sleep, though poppies grow, in Flanders fields”, which inspired Moina Michael of Georgia to persuade the American Legion Auxiliary to adopt the poppy as their symbol in 1921 but Anna had already started promoting the poppy as the symbol of Remembrance two years before after the French government formed "La Ligule des enfants de France et d'Amerique" with the poppy as its emblem and asked her to travel to the USA to form the American branch.

From 1919, Anna raised funds for the war orphans of France by holding Poppy Days in every American state she visited, distributing paper poppies in exchange for donations. Women and girls wearing sashes bearing the words "In Flanders Fields the poppies grow” sold them. It was then that Anna devised a plan for holding an Inter-Allied Poppy Day, a day when all WW1 Allied countries could use poppies as a symbol of remembrance and to raise humanitarian funds.

The USA decided to go its own way and follow the American model so Anna turned her attention to the Commonwealth, starting with Canada and Newfoundland (not part of Canada then). Both signed up to her idea so she travelled to the UK, arriving in Liverpool in August 1921.

Anna brought samples of her French-made poppies to the British Legion and offered to fund the manufacture of a million poppies in France, an offer the British Legion accepted. She also persuaded the Legion of the value of recruiting women as volunteers to form a distribution and collection network.

Australia and New Zealand followed suit and the Inter-Allied Poppy Day became established.

When Earl Haig announced in October 1921 that 11 November would be known as Remembrance Day or Poppy Day, the British Legion contributed a further eight million poppies made in Britain to Anna’s one million French poppies.

All nine million poppies sold.

Today, over 45 million poppies are distributed by the British Legion in the UK and many more are created at home by volunteers for civic remembrance displays. #LestWeForget

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

We're all waiting 🙁

[Paula @paulabearthe2nd]

David Walliams allegedly sucked someone’s boobs and the media are livid.

Wait till they hear about the Pakistani rape gangs who put glass bottles up young girls and drugged, Tortured and raped them.

They’ll hit the roof.

[Christopher Talbot @Lord_Talbot64]

England has existed for 1,099 years, but our leaders claim it is not an ethnicity. Pakistan has only existed for 79 years, yet it is an ethnicity.
England is conventionally dated as a unified kingdom from 927 AD under Æthelstan, the first king of all the English. Pakistan gained independence on 14 August 1947. In the UK census and official usage, “Pakistani” is routinely listed as an ethnic category, while Englishness is frequently treated as a civic or cultural identity open to anyone rather than a historic ethnicity tied to the long-settled people of England.

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

🎯

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Russel Brand has been sentenced to 10 years, six months in prison for rape and sexual assault, with the judge praising the victims for their courage in coming forward and also paying tribute to the Met Police for supporting them.

This begs the question of why three members of a West Yorkshire grooming gang who raped two girls aged 13-14 and passed them around for other men to abuse received substantially shorter sentences when they were jailed for between 6-9 years in 2025.

Judge Nadim said: "To differing degrees, the social services and police response to the situation the girls found themselves in was that they were the authoresses of their own misfortune".

Victims of grooming gangs also deserve to see justice and to be treated with respect and dignity by police after years of being ignored.

https://t.co/yHMbgODIFB

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

@ThePosieParker Beautifully expresses my experience too of our local remembrance parade and service. And my lovely grandad. ❤️

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day Alice Coachman, born OTD in 1923 in Georgia, the first black woman from any country ever to win a gold medal at the Olympics. She jumped 5ft 6 and 1/8 inches at the 1948 London Olympics, setting a new Olympic record, and King George VI placed the medal around her neck.

There were no training facilities for Alice when she was a girl, no organised sports open to her. She faced the twin barriers of exclusion of the basis of her sex and ethnicity. If girls then were really intent on taking part in sports, they were only meant to take part in “ladylike” activities like swimming and tennis, not athletics. Her own father whipped her for jumping and running. She was supposed to sit on the front porch and look “dainty.”

Natural talent cannot be denied though. Alice enjoyed playing baseball and softball with the boys and she could run and jump better than anyone else. It was her aunt Carrie and her fifth-grade teacher who encouraged her to carry on running and she resorted to running barefoot on dusty roads near her home to build up her stamina. She used sticks and rope to practice the high jump.

“To be a champion, you got to have determination, you've got to have guts; you have to train and let nothing come between you and what you want, that goal you want to reach.”

By the time that Alice was competing for her high school track team in Albany, she was already attracting attention with the result that a coach at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama was able to persuade her parents to let her transfer there to complete high school.

“Track and field was my key to getting a degree and meeting great people and opening a lot of doors in high school and college.”

She won four national championships for sprinting and high jumping at college level and was one of the best in the country, winning titles in relay and high jump. Trying out for the 1948 Olympics was a gamble — Alice had a back injury — but she still managed to demolish the existing US high jump record.

In August 1948, Alice cleared the 5 feet 6 1/8-inch bar first time at Wembley Stadium and took her place in history as the first black woman to win gold AND the only American woman to take gold at the 1948 Olympics. The crowd cheered when she stood on the podium and King George VI awarded that medal.

When she returned to the US after the Games, Alice was met by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and President Harry Truman and she was honoured with a 175-mile motorcade and parade from Atlanta to Albany…where she was promptly brought down to earth with a bump.

Georgia was segregated. Atlanta held civic ceremony in her honour but it was segregated. The white mayor of Albany sat on the stage with Alice but refused to shake her hand and she was made to leave by a side door.

It beggars belief that people were ever treated in this way but it is a matter of record. It beggars belief that women like Alice ever had to face twin barriers just to be accorded the same human rights as others but it is a matter of record. This is why Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989; for women like Alice. She did NOT mean blokes in dresses.

Alice died in 2014 aged 90 but in the years since her historic win, American African women have made up a majority of the US women's Olympic track and field team and brought honour and glory to their country.

“I think I opened the gate for all of them.”

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

What a woman 💜

[Claire Adams 🇬🇧 @claire_adams694]

Tomorrow, Maggie Oliver and her team take the Government to the High Court over its failure to implement key IICSA recommendations.

Labour has shelved the national compensation scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse, while victims continue to fight for justice and children remain at risk. Successive governments have failed these victims. I cannot attend due to work commitments, but I’ll be watching closely. Please show Maggie and her team your support. She’s someone who turns words into action.

@MaggieOliverUK

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

I have no words 🤯

[WRN Derbyshire & Staffordshire @WRNDerbyshire]

Last night, our members made history. We stood together in #Nottingham for the first female-only #ReclaimTheNight march the city has seen in well over a decade. In fact, this was likely the only explicitly female-only #ReclaimTheNight march in the entire country this year. 1/11

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

Every day now is filled with phone calls from finders of out-in-the-day hedgehogs. And they are all saying the same thing: "We brought him in, put him in a box and gave him food, he was starving."
They don't realise, but these sweet kind people have just sealed this hedgehog's fate.
Please NEVER feed a daytime wildlife casualty.
I know, it's so hard not to.
When we see a suffering animal we feel a strong, innate impulse to help, and a desire to provide immediate tangible comfort; equating food with survival and care.
Feeding feels like a direct, immediate and nurturing action to alleviate suffering.
Yet it is the most catastrophically harmful thing you could ever do.
Especially hedgehogs out in the day, who will be hypothermic.
It takes a lot of energy to digest food, energy these compromised animals just don't have spare.
Every last bit of their energy is being used to maintain vital bodily functions - to keep the heart beating, to oxygenate the organs.
Forcing energy away from these critical functions for something as non-critical as digesting food will be a death sentence.
It won't be immediate, it may take hours, or a couple of days, but eventually, no matter what the experienced rescue you later take them to tries, the animal is already on the unstoppable journey into shock, organ failure and death.
It's tragic for the casualty and heartbreaking for the rescues.
So please help in the right way.
An out-in-the-day hedgehog needs *contact* warmth, a safe indoor space away from flies, and cover to reduce their stress (please see advice below).
They are not going to die of starvation in the couple of hours between you finding them, and getting them to a rescue.😊
And please remember - any website that gives you DIY information on caring for or feeding injured or orphaned wildlife is, by default, wrong.
The ONLY right action is to get them to a good rescue (never a vet) where their complex needs can be met.
Even if you have seen this vital information before and understand it, feeding wildlife casualties is a powerful compulsion because it directly activates human instincts of empathy and compassion, often overriding the scientific advice against it.
So please remember this warning and spread it as far as you can.
Helping a wildlife casualty get to the expert treatment they need is an incredibly kind, altruistic act of great humanity.
Just remember to provide them with what they need, not what you need.🥰

[Nick Buckley MBE @NickBuckleyMBE]

If only we had a government that put the British people first and not foreigners. We haven’t had one of them for decades.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

In 13 Olympic games & fifty years covering international sport… I have never seen a Muslim women hoisted onto the shoulders of a man in celebration

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

Outrageous!

[Denise Ward @DeniseEllen7]

Mr Imane Khelif will once again be punching a woman in the head in a boxing ring on December 15. He gets to do this because as a professional boxer he is eligible to compete against women in many countries. He was never accused of being transgender, he's a man, that's it.

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

Shame on the cowards that are facilitating this abuse of women ##SaveWomensSports

[Women's Rights Network - WRN @WomensRightsNet]

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the male who punched women to victory at the Paris Olympics, returns to the French capital on 15th December to box against another woman, 21-year-old Clarida Sarabia.

Competing in a professional tournament means Khelif is exempt from the need to fight other men and may compete in women’s boxing.

This week a Conservative amendment to the Sporting Events Bill to ensure sportswomen’s rights to single-sex sport (changing rooms and toilets) at ALL international events held in this country was voted down by Labour MPs.

This time the boxer is fighting in Paris. Next time, it could be London because our lawmakers won’t protect the woman taking her life in her hands to fight against a man.

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

The Young Vic casts ‘Suzy’ Izzard, a man who regularly enters female-only spaces, in a play about Gisèle Pelicot. A story about the most appalling violations of a woman’s consent, featuring a man who treats women's boundaries as negotiable. Do they see the irony, or is this just trolling by their woke staff?

[🎩 Russ Smith 🎩🇬🇧 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇱🇺🇸🚜🩵 @Chiefyruss]

No idea why certain politicians want to keep us in the EU have you?

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

@lennysperson It's always the tax payer that pays for ideological stupidity and cowardice.

[Dianella @DianeDear1]

@lennysperson I think that it's more than just votes. Its about destroying all sense of our community. Controlling the masses by instilling fear and hopelessness.

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

Happy days at Guardian Towers. Remind me, which columnists did Kath Viner drive out of the paper? Talcum X? Russell the Rapist? Oh, I remember now. It was the feminists. All three of us: