Ruth Gilbert

Insurance designer at Insuring Change.
Bereavement, financial, social & health safety nets. Tackling trust(s) in life insurance.
@catalystscot.bsky.social

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@burpsick @_6signxxx Good one
Except renewable electricity is said in last column to be 2 x higher, whereas numbers in other columns indicate half in US

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@nw_nicholas 🤣

[Cat in the Hat 🐈‍⬛ 🎩 🇬🇧 @_CatintheHat]

@LucyGoBag “One of the most influential men in govt policies, in so many areas, for the last 30 years”…

…and that’s one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in.

His hands are all over so many disastrous & dangerous policies in Public Health.

https://t.co/3YYTfk5Uig

@GeorgeMonbiot

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@Rachel_ERFF @lowcarbGP @drjenunwin Me too 😊

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇨🇳 China just switched on the world's largest offshore solar farm

2.3 million solar panels. 2,934 steel platforms. 11,736 piles driven into the ocean floor. Built to survive force-11 gales and sea ice.

It sits 5 miles off the coast and powers 2.67 million people.

Oh, and they're also farming fish underneath it 😳

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@banthebbc @DanNeidle We don't know for sure that she has received special treatment, as it all turns on the nature of the caveats given determining "carelessness".
On the other hand, (separate from HMRC decision), she has also borne what ordinary tax payers don't - having to resign.

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@DanNeidle If we agree "boilerplate" is not explicit (but just a generality to limit the opinion-giver's liability in all cases), I note you have said you don't know whether it was boilerplate. The prevalence of that approach leads me to assume it most likely was.

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@DanNeidle I've read his summary. It doesn't convey to me that the caveats were as blunt as they seem to you. I come across such boilerplate "don't sue us if anything goes wrong" generalities from those in a position of better knowledge than the customer every day - always ignored.

[No Chance @MrNChance]

Ben Habib alleges that Nigel Farage & Boris Johnson were paid £1m each by Christopher Harborne to essentially rig the election in favour of Johnson. He also claims the undeclared £5m "gift" Farage received in 2024 from Harborne was payment for Farage to take over as party leader of Reform UK and stand in Clacton.

- Harborne has paid Farage at least £6m personally.

- Habib claims Harborne gave the Brexit Party £14m in total and attempted to break electoral law by hiding his identity so he could give more.

- Reform UK have received over £22m from Harborne to date.

Full clip here:

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@david_hollas @narindertweets Good grief! “A company can be technically insolvent, with creditors owed money it cannot repay, and still make a legal political donation. The regulator has no power to act.”
At least the law on this is being reviewed …

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

HALF A MILLION PEOPLE WERE DEFRAUDED

Imagine you are behind on your store card payments. You are already struggling. Then the bank quietly adds an extra charge on top of what you owe. Not because it costs them that much. Just because .. they can. And because they think nobody is watching.

Someone was watching.

Nicholas Wilson was a debt recovery lawyer. He goes by Mr Ethical @nw_nicholas on X. His old boss meant it as an insult. In 2003 he noticed that @HSBC subsidiary HFC Bank was adding an illegal 16.4% charge onto the debts of people who were already in financial trouble.

Store cards from John Lewis, Currys, B&Q, Dixons, PC World. Ordinary people. Struggling people. Being quietly robbed.

He told his boss it was illegal. His boss started calling him "Mr Ethical" as a joke. Then they sacked him.

He reported it to the regulators. @TheFCA ignored him for years.

When a researcher separately wrote to both HSBC and the FCA asking about the fraud...

... both wrote back with responses in the exact same wording, same punctuation, same paragraphs. The bank and the regulator were sharing the same script.

FCA's own independent Complaints Commissioner eventually investigated. He called it the worst case of regulatory failure he had ever dealt with.

FCA's response was to appoint Ruth Kelly, an HSBC director, and Baroness Hogg from John Lewis, onto its own board. The two people they were supposed to be investigating were now sitting inside the regulator.

You actually cannot make this up.

After 13 years of Wilson refusing to go away, HSBC quietly agreed to pay some money back. FCA announced 6,700 victims.

Wilson says the real number is closer to 500,000. HSBC has now set aside £223 million for repayments. No fine. No criminal charges. No one went to prison. No one was even publicly named.

Wilson has spent the last 20 years unemployable. Blacklisted. Living on state benefits. Fighting to keep his home. Someone even anonymously reported him to the DWP for benefit fraud while the actual billion pound fraud went unpunished.

The bank that robbed half a million people kept its licence.

The man who caught them lost everything.

Source: @guardian | @BBC | @PrivateEyeNews | @SundayMirror | @realmediauk | nicholaswilson com | @nw_nicholas and others.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

🇺🇸BREAKING: Someone placed a $920 million crude oil short at 3:40 AM.

70 minutes later Axios reported the US and Iran were close to a deal.

Oil dropped 12%.

The trade made $125 million in profit.

Minutes after that Iran launched the “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” and oil surged 8%.

$760 million placed before Trump’s last announcement.

$920 million placed before this one.

Every major announcement in this war has been front-run by someone who knew it was coming.

What kind of war is this?

This is more like a trading desk with an army.

Never stop connecting the dots.

[Matthew Baszucki @matthewbaszucki]

Here is a crazy stat form a study on children, metabolism, & mental illness:

Children with the highest insulin resistance at age 9 were 500% more likely to have a psychosis-at-risk mental state at age 24.

And 300% more likely to already be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

Think about that. The metabolic dysfunction came first. Before the psychiatric symptoms. Before any medication.

This is not the pills. This is the metabolic disease itself affecting the developing brain.

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@Unionbuster @paullewismoney How did Reeves cause this 2024 wreckage?

[New Scientist @newscientist]

You may think of the high-fat, low-carb eating plan as a faddish way to lose weight. But the keto diet is now being used to tackle conditions from severe depression to bipolar disorder and anorexia, with transformative results https://t.co/0dva7j2ggY

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@lowcarbGP @bschermd @janellison Two of my favourite inspirational people putting justified “hope on the menu” for so many whose other options have led up a blind alley 🙌

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@BoitierRouge @ArmandRueff @DickinsEmily He seems like a very interesting and accomplished man from this article:
https://t.co/hEXMst8lDM

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@lowcarbGP I wonder if @MantaraHealth has any indications that pharmacogenomic testing can help identify those who will metabolise Semaglutide well without side effects?

[Ruth Gilbert @catalystscot]

@ErrorFeedback @grok @cb_doge Yes, that’s how we were able to (had to) take our cat off insulin a week or two after coming out of cat hospital where she had been for pancreatits and was discharged with a diagnosis of diabetes.