Executive & leadership coach with previous leadership experience in social care. Keen to raise the profile of coaching & how it can impact & benefit the sector
Stop the ‘Great Israeli Real Estate Event’ taking place in London on 14 June. Palestinian land is not for sale. Such sales are illegal & unethical. This event should not be allowed to go ahead
🚨 BREAKING: New data has revealed that Barclays has backed away from underwriting Israeli government bonds, under pressure from our campaign.
This is a big step forward, but it’s not enough to end our boycott. (1/7)
https://t.co/hzw0lRKp10
November 1971. Chiswick, West London.
Erin Pizzey is 32 years old. She is not a lawyer. Not a politician. Not a doctor.
She is a woman who talked Hounslow Council into lending her a cold, rundown building on Belmont Road — a former community hall — for almost nothing. Her original plan was modest. A warm room. A cup of tea. Somewhere for mothers with young children to simply get out of the house.
Then the door opened.
A woman stood in the entrance. She was covered, head to foot, in bruises. She was holding two small children. She was shaking.
She didn't want tea.
She needed somewhere to hide.
Erin let her in. She didn't turn her away. She didn't tell her to call the police.
Because Erin had already called the police. They told her the same thing they told every woman in Britain at the time: they could not enter a private home over a "domestic dispute." That was the law. The home was private. What happened inside it was a family matter.
When Erin contacted a female civil servant to report what she was seeing, the response was astonishing. The woman told her flatly: "There wasn't a problem of battered wives until you made one."
Erin put down the phone. Then she went back to her residents and made sure they were fed.
Within weeks, 40 mothers and children were sleeping in four tiny rooms. No funding. No staff. No legal authority.
She didn't stop.
By 1973, word had spread through quiet whisper networks — one woman telling another, "There is a place. Go to Chiswick. She won't turn you away." That same year, Erin hosted the first National Women's Aid Conference in the UK. Women from across Britain arrived, and they all recognized the same thing at once: what she had built needed to exist everywhere.
In 1974, the council set a maximum of 36 residents. At peak times, 150 women and children were living inside those walls — sleeping on floors, on chairs, in hallways. The building smelled of cooking, fear, and something else entirely: relief.
Erin was taken to court for overcrowding. She appealed all the way to the House of Lords.
She kept the doors open the entire time.
That same year, she wrote a book. Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. It was the first published account of domestic violence in British history. It used real stories from real women inside the shelter. Overnight, a problem that had no official name was on front pages from London to New York.
The movement spread. Refuges opened across the UK. Then Australia. Then Canada. Then the United States. The pattern she created in four small rooms in West London — no blueprint, no permission, no funding — had been replicated in hundreds of shelters across the Western world.
MP Jack Ashley stood up in Parliament and said: "It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical."
She was ranked 14th in a poll of the 100 women who shook the world. She was awarded the Italian Peace Prize. She received a CBE. The charity she founded — Chiswick Women's Aid, which became Refuge — grew into the largest domestic violence charity in the United Kingdom, with over 460 employees and an annual income of more than £33 million.
Erin Pizzey passed away on October 4, 2025, aged 86.
She never stopped.
It all began with one woman, one borrowed building, and an absolute refusal to say no.
Forty women and children showed up with nowhere to go.
She made room.
Share this if you believe one ordinary person, refusing to look away, can build a shelter that holds the whole world.
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لماذا هذا ليس على الصفحة الأولى في كل صحيفة عربية وعالمية؟
شاب من غزة.. دفنته إسرائيل تحت أطنان الخرسانة، وحاولوا محو وجوده تمامًا.
لأن الخبر ما يناسب "السرد"، ولا يخدم "التوازن"، ولا يجيب على "حق الدفاع عن النفس".
دماء غزة تُدفن مرتين:
مرة تحت الركام..
ومرة تحت الصمت الإعلامي المشبوه.
On this day, four humanitarian workers were killed while carrying out their duty of recovering the martyrs and providing aid to the wounded in eastern Gaza.
They carried no weapons—only a mission to save lives. Yet they were targeted by the occupation while performing their humanitarian work.
In memory of:
• Paramedic Hussein Muheisen
• Paramedic Wael Al-Attar
• Paramedic Baraa Affaneh
• Journalist Moamen Abu Al-Ouf
May they rest in peace. Their sacrifice remains a testament to their courage and humanity.
"A Swiss court has acquitted five Palestine solidarity activists, annulled their fines, recognised the reality of genocide in Palestine, and affirmed that peaceful civil disobedience is protected by freedom of expression."
Please RT this until the UK courts do the same.
Thanks.
🇵🇸: 20-year-old Malak Maher Naeem died after waiting for months for Israel to approve her medical evacuation from Gaza for cancer treatment.
By the time she was allowed to travel, it was too late. Her lymphoma had become critical and she died shortly after arriving in Egypt.
I've been in hospital with my 4yo son all day, as he's getting chemo for his leukaemia, and as ever, I can't stop thinking about the fact that churches in Jerusalem begged the Israeli govt to let them treat kids with cancer in Gaza, and Israel said no. A mass death sentence.
When I was able to return to my city, Beit Hanoun, for the first time after we were displaced at the beginning of the genocide, I saw nothing but the decomposed bodies of children, with nothing left of them except their clothes and shoes.
This happened nearly two years ago, but those scenes have never left me. They remain stuck in my mind, haunting me without mercy.
There are images that time cannot erase, and absence cannot soften. They remain living inside a person no matter how hard they try to continue their life.💔😭
🔴 The son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza held in Israeli detention since December 2024, warned Monday that his father’s life is in danger after being transferred to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison — a move the family says came in direct retaliation for filing a legal appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court.
The family says Abu Safiya is being held in a two-meter cell with no food, water, medicine, or access to his lawyer.
“How can a person be punished for asking why he is being detained?” his son asked in an urgent public appeal. “Every hour that passes without action may bring more suffering and pain.”
Protesters in Iran continue to be executed by the regime. But not always by public hanging. Take Amir Davoodabadi who was injected with a poisonous substance into his testicles when held in prison which led to his death soon after release.
#امیر_داوودآبادی was born 1980 in Arak and one of tens of thousands who took to the streets January 8th and 9th to protest.
Days after the protests Amir was identified and arrested. After a month of interrogation and torture, he was released from prison in early March. Just before release he was injected with unknown chemicals into his testicles.
A few days later Amir's body began to react. His entire body swelled up and his kidneys and liver failed. His family were forced to transfer him from a hospital in Arak to Tehran where doctors where were unable to help him.
The family was then informed that toxic substances had entered his body. Amir lost his life 25 days later. He played the violin and was full of life. Like so many others with so much to give, murdered by the Islamic Republic.
Amir Davoodabadi is buried in the village of Gavkhaneh, next to another murdered protestor of Arak, Amir Mehdi Nemati Nejad.
The ‘Great Israeli Real Estate Event’ is to be held in London this Sunday.
This disgraceful event will involve the sale of land stolen from Palestinians in illegal Israeli settlements.
Today, I called for the Government to ban this event.
New footage obtained by B’Tselem uncovers the moments when the Abu Haikal family was shot. Seven-month-old Sam Abu Haikal was killed in the shooting, and both his parents were injured. The footage clearly shows that the Israeli soldier fired at the car as it was slowing to a stop. The car was far from the soldiers and posed no danger to them whatsoever.
Moments later, in another video obtained by B’Tselem, seven-month-old Sam’s father, Fahed, is seen just after his son was shot. Fahed is holding baby Sam in his arms, trying to stop the bleeding from his head with his hands, while Sam’s mother, Daniyah, who was also injured by the gunfire while holding her son, is seen sitting on the ground, next to the car.
Last Friday, 5 June, an Israeli soldier fired at a Palestinian family driving home from a family visit, as they sat in their car in the Tel Rumeidah neighborhood in Hebron. The family was shot as the car was slowing to a stop at the soldier’s command. Sam, a seven‑month‑old baby who was in his mother’s arms in the back seat, was struck in the head and pronounced dead shortly afterward. Sam’s parents were also injured by the gunfire; his mother is still in the hospital. After the shooting, the soldier who fired and another soldier who was with him left the scene without checking the car or offering any assistance to the critically wounded baby or to his mother.
In the past two and a half years, Israel has killed tens of thousands of children in Gaza and the West Bank. The immunity it gets from the international community has led to a reality where, under Israeli rule, Palestinian lives are entirely disposable – even a seven‑month‑old baby.
For those who are unaware, this is the size of the bullets that Israeli soldiers fire at defenseless civilians in Gaza living in tents.
Families who have already lost their homes are forced to live under constant fear, with danger surrounding them every day.
The world's silence is costing innocent people their lives.
Silence is killing Gaza.
Israel responds to Iran's retaliatory strikes by cutting off all aid to Gaza.
This is a state which routinely collectively punishes civilians as a tactic of war.
This is monstrous, and it is also a grave war crime.
𝐆𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐨 𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟕 𝐯𝐢𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐔𝐊:
“We are now in the process of defining the bid requirements,” Infantino said in 2017.
“In the world, there are many countries that have bans, travel bans, visa requirements and so on and so forth.”
“It’s obvious when it comes to FIFA competitions, that any team including the supporters and officials of that team who qualify for a World Cup, need to have access to the country, 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐩.”
“The requirements will be clear. And then each country can make up their decision, whether they want to bid or not, based on the requirements.”
Now they have DENIED PERMANENTLY the entry of the BEST referee in Africa.
The reality doesn't match the political rhetoric. Nearly 2/3 of NHS leaders are warning of cuts to balance books, while the government insists the NHS is properly funded.
Staff & patients shouldn't pay the price.
Support our crowdfunder to hold them to account: link in bio.
Four-and-a-half-year-old Mu’in al-Ghalayini suffers from severe burns covering 80% of his body, which he sustained when he was nine months old. He has undergone numerous surgeries and skin grafts, but his condition is deteriorating.