Paul Simister 💙

Retired. Loves music, animals, Manchester United. For peace, love, understanding, dignity and respect.

[(Re)Search & Destroy @TruthAsylum121]

For many people, Parents Against Grooming UK is recognised for its campaigning, public advocacy, and standing up for survivors when others would not listen.

But PAGUK is far more than demonstrations and public awareness.

For over 20 years, Billy Howarth and the PAGUK team have provided frontline support to survivors of child abuse and exploitation, often helping people during the darkest periods of their lives.

Behind the scenes, the work never stops.

PAGUK supports survivors through:

* Trauma-informed counselling
* Emotional support and aftercare
* Court attendance and advocacy
* Guidance through criminal justice processes
* Support for families
* Crisis support during investigations and disclosures
* Long-term survivor care and wellbeing

For many survivors, the support hub has become a place of safety, trust, and understanding. It is a place where people can speak openly without fear of judgment, often for the very first time.

But after years of continuous use supporting vulnerable survivors, the hub is now in desperate need of renovation and improvement.

We want to create an environment that reflects the importance of the work taking place inside it — a calm, welcoming, trauma-informed space where survivors can continue accessing counselling, advocacy, and ongoing support in safety and dignity.

Trauma recovery is not just about words. Environment matters.

A safe and peaceful space can help reduce anxiety, build trust, and support survivors as they navigate the lifelong effects of abuse and exploitation.

This fundraiser is about protecting and strengthening a service that has spent two decades standing beside survivors when they needed support most.

Every donation will help restore a space dedicated to healing, hope, recovery, and long-term survivor support.

🟣Coming soon
@BillyPag2023 @HoodedClaw1974

[Paul Simister 💙 @PaulSimister]

This research on the benefits of writing rather than typing needs to be much better known, especially for anyone with kids.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.

Her name is Audrey van der Meer.

She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.

The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.

Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.

Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.

When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.

The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.

When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.

Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.

Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.

The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.

Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.

Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.

Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.

Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.

Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.

A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.

The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.

The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.

The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.

That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.

Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.

Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.

Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.

You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.

The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.

Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

An abandoned cat was adopted by lions. Safari park rangers heard commotion near the reserve in the middle of the night and checked the CCTV. A car had pulled up, someone threw out a pile of trash, then sped away. But in the garbage was an orange cat. Rangers searched for him for hours, but he vanished. Sadly, they said animals being dumped near the outskirts was not unheard of. But this cat did something no piece of trash ever had.

Days later, trail cameras caught him walking beside a local lion pride. Then they saw him lying in the sun with them, grooming himself like he belonged there. He does not hunt with them. He does not fight with them. He just follows, rests, and somehow became part of the pride. Scientists say it is strange, but not impossible. Because lions are cats. And apparently, cats know when another cat needs a family.

[Æthelstan @TheHauskarl]

Larry the Cat will have outlasted 5 British PMs. It's time to start asking if the strength and stability we needed has been right in front of us all along.

[Paul Simister 💙 @PaulSimister]

Now why was it Labour tried to cancel many of the local elections? A clear sign of trying to deny democracy.

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

🗳️ The change in seats as of 9am in the #LocalElections

🔹REFORM +1,276
🟡LIB DEM +142
🔵CON -427
🔴LAB -1,051
🟢GREEN +306

129/136 English councils have declared

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

When are Labour Ministers finally going to realise it's not their job to tell the country what it wants. It's to listen to what the country wants. And what the country currently wants is to be shot of Keir Starmer.

[NaomiFromKent @NaomiFromKent]

@BBCPanorama has failed to reply to my letter pointing out factual errors and bias vs @PSCupdates solidarity movement in its April 20 broadcast Antisemitism: Why British Jews are Afraid. I will be submitting formal complaints. Read the letter here.
https://t.co/IIKGcaHPF8

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Free speech and open debate is the antidote to violence and conflict.

We should always encourage debate - no matter how much we disagree with the opposition https://t.co/2dn0dzRPY7

[Paul Simister 💙 @PaulSimister]

A very impressive MP. If only there were many more like her, prepared to uphold standards of behaviour.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

NI Sorcha Eastwood has tore into Starmer’s double standards once again:

“Peter Mandelson wouldn't have survived the vetting for a kids football club and rightly so. And yet we are expected to believe from those benches that it's nothing to see here.”

She didn’t hold back! 🔥

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Mother dog “when will these useless humans get my daughter a decent haircut? She looks like one of those scruffy teenage boys who think it’s rebellious to have terrible hair”

10 month old puppy “yeah but I look cool, ‘cause I am cool”

(Dog groomer booked, assiduous grooming daily, not matted, just wild and much loved)

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

In a small neighborhood park, there’s a massive Maine Coon everyone calls Capitán.

For five years, he’s ruled that little patch of green like a quiet king. Not aggressive. Not loud. Just steady. Watching from his favorite bench like a gentle guardian of the block.

Then one day, a tiny white kitten appeared.

He was beautiful. Fragile. And something wasn’t right.

He kept bumping into benches. Planters. Curbs.

He didn’t flinch at sudden movements. He didn’t track sound the way kittens do.

It didn’t take long for the neighbors to realize the truth.

The kitten was blind.

Out there alone, he wouldn’t have lasted long.

But he wasn’t alone for long.

Because Capitán noticed.

From that day on, the big Maine Coon never left his side. He started walking slightly ahead, slowing his long, powerful strides so the kitten could brush against his thick fur and follow. Like a living guide rope.

When neighbors set out food, Capitán gently nudged him toward the bowls. When they crossed the sidewalk, he adjusted his pace. When they rested on their favorite bench, Capitán curled his massive body around the kitten like a shield.

And when it rained?

He made sure the kitten was safely tucked under the planter first.

Only then would he settle in beside him.

A local veterinarian later confirmed it. The little one was born blind. She said without Capitán, he wouldn’t have survived even a week outdoors. He wouldn’t have found food. He wouldn’t have avoided danger.

Some neighbors offered to adopt the kitten.

But every time they tried separating them, both cats cried endlessly.

So the community made a decision.

They kept them together.

Now their bowls sit side by side. The neighborhood looks out for them daily. And Capitán still walks just ahead, with a tiny white shadow brushing against his fur.

Because sometimes family isn’t about where you come from.

Sometimes it’s about who slows down for you.

Who shields you.

Who chooses to guide you when you cannot see the way.

And sometimes…

the strongest hearts wear fur. 🐾

[PJ Yukon Poet 🍁 @PJ_Yukon]

THIS is the only statue of our beloved late Queen Elizabeth II that truly does her justice. I've seen it up close in Ottawa. Just seeing it heartens my soul. She was so wonderful. She made us proud. May her memory live on forever. Thank you Ma'am. 🫡 ~ PJ Yukon Canadian Poet🍁 @KensingtonRoyal #queenelizabethII #QEII

[Freyja1 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇸🇯🇩🇪 @FreyjaBakke]

Let's find her . Please repost

[Paul Simister 💙 @PaulSimister]

50 years ago... This makes me feel old because I remember it coming out, but then I do become an OAP in a couple of days time.

[Punkrock History @PunkRockStory]

⚡ 50th Anniversary of a Legendary Album 🔥

"Ramones," the self-titled debut album by the American punk rock band Ramones, released on this day in 1976, and features the singles "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."

#punk #punks #punklegends #punkrock #ramones #history #punkrockhistory #otd

[Sherri Unfiltered™ @FFT1776]

Animal shelter security footage captured a scared dog with a large St Bernard.

I had a St Bernard and this is exactly how loving they are❣️

I’d adopt them both!

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

There is a simple truth here.

If your motivation behind your decisions on the use of fossil fuels, was predicated on:

- a long term target to remove their use
- a short term intent to reduce emissions
- a wish to spend money efficiently

Then we would be using our own gas.

[The Prince and Princess of Wales @KensingtonRoyal]

Remembering Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the 100th anniversary of her birth. Inspiring generations through a lifetime of duty.

[🇨🇭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿InLucysHead🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇨🇭© @InsideLucysHead]

Keir Starmer walked into a bank to cash a cheque...

When he’s called over to the teller, he says, "Good morning, could you please cash this cheque for me?"

The teller replied, "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?"

Keir said, "Truthfully (yea right 🙄), I didn’t bring my ID with me as I didn't think there was any need to. I’m the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom."

The teller said, "Yes yer tool, I know who you are, but with all the regulations and monitoring of the banks because of impostors, forgers, and requirements of the legislation etc, I must insist on seeing ID."

Keir said, “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they’ll tell you. Everybody knows who I am."

The teller said, "I’m sorry, yer W⚓️, but these are the bank rules and I must follow them".

Getting a bit agitated, Keir snapped, “C'mon woman, I’m urging you, please, to cash this cheque.."

The teller said, "Look here yer bare faced liar, here is an example of what we can do. One day, Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods, he pulled out his putter and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his cheque. Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racket and made a fabulous shot where the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that shot we cashed his cheque. So, Keir, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you?

Keir Starmer stands there thinking, and thinking, and finally says, "Honestly, my mind is a total blank, there’s nothing that comes to my mind. I can't think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do, and I don't have a clue."

With a big smile, the teller said, "Will that be large or small notes, Mr Starmer?

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

“The mistake was yours, Prime Minister. You should not have denied something about which you did not know”

Whether Starmer knew or did not know, there in lies the rub.

A liar or a fool.

[Paul Simister 💙 @PaulSimister]

A crazy tax and benefits system. How can anyone be worse off earning more than £100k than less.
https://t.co/Ga2fOClS7R