In 2008, a group of friends in a small Yorkshire town decided to start planting food in unused public spaces.
The town is Todmorden, population about 15,000, tucked into a valley between Burnley and Halifax. The group is Incredible Edible Todmorden. Their motto is "if you eat, you're in."
Today the railway station beds grow herbs. The fire station is surrounded by fruit trees. The canal towpath is lined with edible plantings. The forecourt of the local police station has been transformed into what's now called "possibly the finest and greenest looking police station in the UK," with a small library of crime novels installed for good measure. Everything is free to harvest.
They have no paid staff, no buildings, and no public funding. They've operated this way for almost two decades. Their guiding principles: "believe in the power of small actions," "kindness underpins everything we do," and "it's sometimes better to ask for forgiveness, not permission."
Over the years they've added a Tool Library, a Makery, and little free libraries scattered around town. They host visitors from around the world (they call it "vegetable tourism"). Their gardening Sundays have grown from four or five people to forty or fifty.
The model has been replicated in over 700 projects worldwide and continued to spread.
Our Centre for Environmental Justice is running monthly free info and advice clinics on how to address environmental harms.
Our 'Health, Home and Your Environment' free info & advice clinic empowers you with the info needed to act for a just solution.
https://t.co/AHtYhA5X0n
Tweet 1/3:🚨 REMINDER: How the State neutralized a historic victory for Irish consumers. In April 2020, lay litigants scored a massive win in the Court of Appeal (Promontoria v Burns). The Court ruled that vulture funds using inherited bank docs without firsthand witnesses was inadmissible hearsay.
‼️Your mortgage “arrears” have clearly been artificially inflated by multi-series double-dipping - into what I would describe as “fire-sale feasts for US funds”.
Pensions and insurers, stuffed with the original “toxic slices” now face the bill as private credit crunches hit, echoing 2008’s AIG crisis, but across the EU.
We are facing systemic rot.
This has been covered up for two decades and concealed by the sham Banking Inquiry. About which I raised significant Protected Disclosures.
There is a daisy-chain of concealed fraud propping up insolvent banks, now handed to vultures while borrowers are fighting hard against repossessions - but based on “debts” as well as “invalid debts” that have been sold numerous times over.
Demand action now from your TD
- force Central Bank to stand over the Central Credit Register and confirm adequacy of supervision;
- force auditing of SPE / SPV chains-of-title;
- void all fraudulent (& unlawfully extended fraudulent swaps);
- launch a pan-EU parliamentary probe completely outside the control of vested interests.
Otherwise, Irish residences and businesses (your assets) will become infinite play-doh for a fraudulent collateral carousel.
‼️
I fear greatly that today’s youth face a “mortgage prisoner” pipeline if taking out mortgages from banks.
Banks will offload performing loans to vulture funds (Cerberus/Lone Star), which hike variable rates post-sale (3.2% → 8%+), exploiting CBI rules that bar switches for anyone with arrears history- even minor restructures.
New mortgages on any phantom-backed properties risk repossession when servicers “discover” hidden charges/redacted deeds, inflating arrears artificially.
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Someone could go to school for 4 years and study aerospace engineering, then get a PhD with a dissertation related to orbital mechanics, and some instagram influencer who watched a youtube video will be like "actually that guy is wrong" on a topic related to space travel and people will believe them.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I hope we go back to a society where credibility is earned with rigorous training in the associated field, not by a popularity contest.
"Residents won't use bikes or scooters."
"Commuters won't use bikes or scooters."
"Tourists won't use bikes or scooters."
And then something magical happens when you create a network of bike lanes.
Let me explain exactly why every new subdivision in America looks like the top photo, because the math is wild.
A mature tree increases a home's value by 7 to 19 percent. On a $400,000 house, that's $28,000 to $76,000. A single shade tree produces the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day. One tree on the west side of a house cuts energy bills by 12 percent within 15 years. The bottom photo is worth more, costs less to live in, and sells faster. This has been documented by the University of Washington, Clemson, Michigan State, and the USDA. The data is not in dispute.
Removing those trees saves the builder roughly $5,000 per lot. Concrete trucks need twice the dripline radius of every standing tree. Utility trenches need flat ground. A bulldozer flattens 200 lots in an afternoon. Preserving trees adds weeks and thousands per home.
So the developer pockets $5,000 in savings and the buyer eats $50,000 in lost value for the next two decades. The person making the decision and the person paying for it have never been in the same room.
The Woodlands, Texas is the proof of what happens when they are. George Mitchell bought 28,000 acres of Houston timberland in 1974 and preserved 28% as permanent green space. He forced McDonald's to build behind the tree canopy. That McDonald's became one of the highest-volume locations in Texas. The first office building, designed to reflect the surrounding forest so you couldn't see it from the street, leased completely.
The Woodlands median home price today: $615,000. Katy, a comparable Houston suburb that clear-cut: $375,000. Named #1 community to live in America two years running.
Fifty years of data. The trees are worth more than removing them saves. Developers clear-cut anyway because they sell the house once and leave. You live in it for 30 years.
🧵 The UK press has given extensive coverage to the recent APPG on Investment Fraud & Fairer Financial Services summit and its powerful report, which demands a Royal Commission to tackle deep-rooted misconduct in financial services. Outlets have highlighted urgent calls for …….
Twenty million barrels of oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday.
Today the number may be zero.
Not because Iran mined the water. Not because a tanker was hit. Because Lloyd’s of London picked up the phone.
War risk underwriters began canceling policies for strait transits hours after Operation Epic Fury launched. The Financial Times confirmed premiums surging 50 percent. Baseline war risk sits at 0.25 percent of hull value. For a hundred million dollar tanker that is 250,000 dollars per voyage. At peak escalation rates, one million per transit. Vessels linked to American or Israeli interests are becoming uninsurable entirely. No price. No policy. No passage.
The KHK Empress was loaded with Omani crude heading for Basra when it executed a U-turn mid-strait and redirected to India. The Eagle Veracruz halted at the western approach carrying two million barrels of Saudi crude bound for China. The Front Shanghai stopped off Sharjah with Iraqi crude destined for Rotterdam. Nippon Yusen ordered its entire fleet to avoid Hormuz. Greece told its merchant armada to reassess passage. Hapag-Lloyd suspended all transits.
None of them were fired upon. Every one of them got the same call.
More than fifty million years ago the Arabian plate collided with the Eurasian plate and compressed the Persian Gulf into a basin that drains through a single geological bottleneck twenty one miles wide. Twenty one percent of global petroleum. Twenty percent of all seaborne LNG. One fifth of industrial civilization’s energy supply forced through a tectonic accident narrower than the English Channel, bordered on one side by the country whose supreme leader was killed yesterday morning.
The USS Abraham Lincoln carries enough Tomahawks to sink every IRGC patrol boat in 48 hours. Operation Praying Mantis crippled Iran’s operational naval forces in eight hours in 1988. The Fifth Fleet has rehearsed this scenario for decades.
None of that matters. Aircraft carriers cannot force an underwriter to rewrite a policy. Tomahawks cannot lower a premium. The most powerful navy in human history cannot make a Lloyd’s syndicate decide that a VLCC transiting Iranian coastal waters represents an acceptable risk on a Saturday afternoon when missiles are landing in Dubai.
Goldman Sachs estimates Brent could peak at 110 dollars per barrel. JP Morgan projects 120 to 130. At those levels every airline bleeds cash. Every central bank watches three years of inflation fighting reignite overnight. Bypass pipelines from Saudi Arabia and the UAE handle roughly three million barrels. Hormuz handles twenty million. The math does not close.
Iran figured out something the Pentagon still has not.
You do not need to close a strait. You just need to make it uninsurable.
https://t.co/BrzGRrU3VW
Person swept away in floods in Arequipa, Arequipa Region, Peru.
Rainfall intensity is increasing across the world.
Lots of people are going to die because of climate change.
1/8 🧵
Overcharging on mortgages, unlawful interest, fees, or penalties, often creates fake “arrears” that banks then use to declare defaults.
This taints the entire enforcement chain, starting with demand/acceleration letters.
Borrowers: this could invalidate aggressive lender actions against you.
From operating this account, many people approach me to simply express concerns about what is happening in our courts across the country.
This morning what has become crystal clear is that certain Circuit Court judges are colluding with certain barristers, with a view to ensuring that repossession orders are granted swiftly with no proper proofs in place.
The specifics of what I am hearing are jaw-dropping. This routine disregard for constitutional safeguards, such as the right to fair procedures under Article 40.3 and effective access to justice, manifests in courts and counsel prioritising “expediency” for powerful institutions, over any due process.
In some courts, rights appear to be illusory for ordinary litigants. All of this information I am receiving erodes public trust in judicial independence.
This alarming disregard for constitutional rights in our courts can only persist when legal professionals - judges, solicitors, and barristers - feel insulated from meaningful recourse or disciplinary oversight.
With this advance tip off, Epstein’s golden circle of business associates could look into - short-selling sovereign bonds or stocks of vulnerable Eurozone countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, anticipating the bailout’s stabilizing effect, but profiting from pre-announcement panic-driven price drops.
They could indeed also buy euros or euro-linked assets at depressed rates, positioning for a sharp rebound as the bailout news calmed markets and stemmed currency depreciation fears.
Epstein’s network, with ties to sophisticated finance (e.g., JPMorgan connections) could trade credit default swaps or options on Eurozone debt, betting on volatility or resolution - to capture massive leveraged returns.
Purchasing distressed sovereign bonds or CDS cheaply beforehand would allow flips for profit post-bailout, as risk premiums collapsed with the EU’s intervention signal.
Funds linked to Epstein could front-run and amplify gains from the information asymmetry in such a high-stakes crisis.
It would be astonishing if this information - when verified - does not lead to multiple criminal charges being levied against Peter Mandelson. Although, perhaps the consequences will be lessened given other information to which PM is privy & which must remain under wraps?
Kudos to the High Court judge who recently demanded unredacted documentation from a credit servicer, before permitting repossession, striking a vital blow against those falsely claiming ownership of borrowers’ loans.
This principled stand for transparency exposes the sham practices of vulture funds and credit servicers nationwide.
Spotlighting such rulings may inspire fellow judges to demand the same rigorous proof, fortifying borrower protections across Irish courts.
#MortgageFraud
Last night in Ireland 3,954,000 KWh zero-carbon energy was dumped
Enough to Heat 1.3 million Hot Water Tanks and an approximate retail value of €1.58 million
Meanwhile over 550,000 families are in energy poverty
@AgeFriendlyIrl@coophousingie@CluidHousing@HouseAllianceIE