Dr Alison Booth

Student of Pirandello & Ionesco. Fairy manquée. Dance, karate, opera, rabbit & cheese lover. Linguist. Gardener. Book hoarder. Volunteer Clonter Opera. European

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

I'm not a medical doctor but this call to use our freedom to take responsibility in this pandemic, is well put.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@helen_warlow Now I want to do this with all my favourite authors....🤪

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

It was profoundly depressing when the movie was first announced and a professional media critic admitted he had never heard of the Odyssey, but what I found even more upsetting was how a bunch of his followers posted, “How did Nolan even learn about this obscure text?”

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@xxyllinn It feels like everything is overthought and needs "managing". Just because they can embed this tech everywhere doesn't mean that they should.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@Nick_Holland_ Once you know this & how he behaved within the family & what the sisters were dealing with, it really colours how you see parts of their novels. It also makes them so relatable to modern readers who may be dealing with relatives stuck in self-destructive behaviour via drugs.

[SarcoidosisUK @SarcoidosisUK]

Join us for the next Bristol Support Group meeting taking place on Tuesday 21st July at 7:30pm!

This is a virtual event, taking place on Zoom, and is open to anyone in Bristol or the surrounding areas.

Please contact [email protected] for more details!

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 It’s remarkable that Britain now recognises steel as a strategic national asset but still treats food as though the global market will always provide.

This is becoming a consistent theme across government:

Steel is strategic.
Energy is strategic.
Defence is strategic.
Semiconductors are strategic.

The missing piece is food.

Food security is national security.

If govt intervenes to protect steel production, why not the industry that feeds 70 million people?

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@LBC £10bn. More than the net annual cost of being in the EU, just for scale.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

Seen in Walton-on-the-Naze near Clacton.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

I still don’t think many people have clocked how massive this story actually is.

Thames Water is carrying £19.8bn of debt, up 2 billion in a single year, and it will run out of money before Christmas.

£19.8bn against 16 million people who cannot switch, can’t leave, and cannot stop drinking water.

That’s about £1,240 per head. 5 grand for a family of four. In some way, shape, or form, they’re on the hook for it.

That’s the part that I don’t think has landed yet. This isn’t a story about sewage in the Thames, or bonuses, or another regulator caught asleep. The actual event is 30 years of a monopoly being used as collateral by people who knew its customers could never walk away. The bill has now come due… and it’s a big one.

The pipes and the infrastructure were never the real asset. The 16 million captive water drinkers were.

What’s going to really sting is the fact there’s only two ways this gets settled. Your bill goes up, substantially, or your taxes do. Most likely both, and it’ll be on a schedule designed in a way so you don’t notice the hit, in an attempt to suppress the rage you should rightly be feeling.

And before anyone tells me the creditors are taking a 30% haircut, look at what they’ve asked for in return. Fines waived until 2030. Pollution targets “significantly modified.” Bills raised above what the regulator allows. That isn’t exactly them eating the loss now, is it. That’s them buying a regulatory holiday, on debt most of them bought at distressed prices.

Nobody voted for this, nobody borrowed it, and nobody saw the benefit of it. The debt was loaded onto a captive customer base over 30 years and paid out to shareholders who have long since gone.

16 million people are about to find out that they co-signed something they were completely unaware of.

Now, this is what should worry us all. Thames isn’t a rogue outlier, it’s just the first one to fully hit the wall. English water carries north of £60bn of debt. Southern is already junk rated, needed a £1.2bn rescue from its shareholders, and its customers are looking at a 48% bill rise this decade before you count what the CMA added on top. Every one of these companies borrowed heavily when money was free and now have to refinance it all in a world where it isn’t, while being told to spend billions on infrastructure they left rotting for 30 years. Thames is just the first and most visible of what will likely end up being a line of dominoes.

Maybe Burnham nationalises Thames Water. But ask yourself… how many more will need to be nationalised? And who do you think pays for that?

[Pete 💙NHS💙 #FBPE @QuakerPete]

It's the old story - privatisation wants all of the benefits but none of the risk. We've been screwed over with an essential resource.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

Politics often looks like a spell.

For years Boris Johnson seemed untouchable. Then, almost overnight, the illusion vanished.

Nigel Farage has enjoyed a similar aura of inevitability. But once voters start seeing politicians as ordinary, flawed and accountable, it’s remarkably difficult to recreate the magic.

Politics can change much faster than people expect.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@LizWebsterSBF His exceptionalism will bring him down. People really don't like that kind of fake superiority in this country.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@TheRealJamieKay Pork pie.

[Jamie Kay @TheRealJamieKay]

WTF???

😂😂😂😂

[The Book Club @bookclubpodhq]

📣NEW EPISODE

🐆THE LEOPARD🐆

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change"

Tabby and Dominic discuss:

🤔The twilight of old Europe
🇮🇹How one dying prince wrote the greatest novel about a world that refused to die
🏴‍☠️The world's most exciting eye patch

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@bookclubpodhq Please do an episode on the novel The Garden of the Finzi-Contini" (Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini) by "this bloke, Bassani". (🤣) Similar to The Leopard, there's a beautiful & very moving De Sica film of it, and it's also multi-themed. PS really enjoyed The Leopard episode!

[Miss Ally @MissAlly_01]

So if Farage wins, he won against a bin, & if he loses, he lost against a bin.

It’s a bin bin situation.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@ZiaYusufUK You're all protesting far too much and, as usual playing the victim card. It's all starting to look very shady indeed.

[Dr Alison Booth @boothac59]

@whynothomer The Matt Hancock local pub landlord contract was the one that really took the biscuit! 🤬

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Utterly shocking but not a surprise. Impunity breeds hubris.

All states and people who care for Freedom must rise up in defense of the ICC and int'l justice now, before it's too late.

It's rule of law or barbarism.