Loraine 💙💛😷

Designer, retired educator, enthusiastic collector of inspiration. Late diagnosed Dyspraxic

[The Herald @heraldscotland]

Val McDermid turns 71 today.

In February, the Scottish crime writer warned that writers are facing a 'massive threat' from artificial intelligence.

She said: "AI can produce a certain kind of book and it is learning all the time. The only reason it can produce any books at all is because it's stolen out of all of our texts. All of our texts have been scraped.

“They have taken 150 pieces of my work, for which I've had no recompense, they’ve not asked my permission and I have no say in what they do.

“There are court cases on the way now, but it's tip of the iceberg stuff.

“There was never any point when they sought a partnership with creatives. They just stole our work and ripped us off."

The author said she was confident that writers would always have a way of writing in a way “that cannot be replicated by a machine.”

She added: “A machine can pretend to have feelings, but it doesn't have feelings and it doesn’t understand emotions at the deep level that we do that.

“Sometimes when you are reading a book and an event happens you expect the characters to behave in a particular way, but they don't.

“They respond in a different way because they are human because they have a range of possibilities.

“I think the human writer will always have a head-start on the machines for that.” 👇

[Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian @DrHelenFry]

Every veteran carries a story that deserves to be recorded and told for future generations.

This is Ken Mills, who flew a Spitfire in the Second World War.

Here he is, holding a photograph of himself from his heroic wartime years:

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"Swimmers warned to avoid sewage release area."

Southern Water up to their old tricks again I see. Sewage illegally dumped into the sea and people told to say out of the water.

When are govt going to get a grip?

https://t.co/3jNNjEmDwF

[Nicky Clark @MrsNickyClark]

Physicians associates -who should be called assistants in my view - are a useful auxiliary service as long as they stay in their realm of knowledge and experience only.
This wasn’t that and is horrific. The poor little girl.

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

The UK is starting to reject Palantir.
Be part of the movement and email your local NHS Trust

https://t.co/PsCDnjsTBl

[Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis]

THEY ARE BASTARDS!

We just got an email sent to MSE. The spelling was awful, and it was quite tough to understand. Lower down, the writer later explained she was 78 and her disability had stopped her being able to spell. So perhaps it is a stroke, or something similar.

I've tidied it and summarised below, changing some identifying details. In a nutshell, it was this...

"I invested, Martin, with Quotum when you first announced it on TV. What an opportunity for me to buy my own flat. My manager there passed me through to a nice man who asked me for £350 more. He showed me it was growing. I did what he told me to do."

She then goes on to explain how she really wanted her flat and she gave more and more money. And she has nothing left to help with her disability.

I'm honestly in tears typing this. These types of scam ads have now been going on for a decade. I have spent my career trying to help people with their finances. It feels visceral to get this, and to feel that this reputation has been perverted by criminals to steal from someone who is clearly so vulnerable leaves me feeling nauseous.

So many people, both vulnerable and not, lose money and see their lives and wellbeing destroyed. It's now seven years since I sued Facebook. And yet still nothing is being done.

Big tech makes £3bn a year from these scammers. We have a law in place to make them responsible for these ads they're paid to publish, yet it isn't implemented. How many more of these do I have to receive - and far worse, how many more people have to go through this?

This is relentless. It is wrong. Government has to take action! I wrote to the PM just two weeks ago on this very issue. I've not heard back yet.

(We are, of course, going to try and point her in the right direction to get help, but that will be stressful for her too)

[Millymolly @lorrainesplace]

Another grift by Luxon. Rent for his freehold house that is supposedly his office. I doubt if he's ever in his office though.

[Waterstones Liverpool @WaterstonesLPL]

We are honoured to welcome @frankcottrell_b at 1pm on Thurs June 18th for a publication day celebration - Frank will be joining us to sign copies of his new book A British Childhood. No ticket required - just come along, buy your copy & get it signed by Frank & have a chat!

[InfoGram @_InfoGram_]

🇺🇸Trump: I am "one of the finest intellects in the history of our country"

🇫🇷Macron: "When Intellects are serious, they do not say the opposite of what they said the day before. Perhaps they should not speak every day."

Macron exposed Trump’s intellect badly and indirectly called him the biggest clown 😂

[Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian @DrHelenFry]

Please do keep an eye on my X page over the weekend.

I have some incredible threads on the way, including first-hand accounts of parachute jumps into Normandy.

You won't read about them anywhere else!

Do 'Follow' along: @DrHelenFry

[The Palestinian @InsiderWorld_1]

“Netanyahu is the Hitler of the 21st century, and failing to stop him condemns us all.”

Spain’s Ione Belarra

[James 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇺🇦 @EasyPeasy_3]

His date of birth is 17 Dec 2005. Please retweet this. If you know him, please tell him to remain anonymous. He just needs to contact DKMS, even if it’s to say ‘no’. That would give us closure.

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

SEVEN WHISTLEBLOWERS. ONE DEAD WOMAN. ONE KNIGHTHOOD FOR THE MAN WHO IGNORED THEM

In 1999, seven care workers at a BUPA care home in Bromley reported abuse of vulnerable elderly residents.

They followed every rule. They submitted formal evidence. They did everything the law required.

Edna had no family. She was entirely defenceless. Seven people risked everything to speak up for her.

Every one of them lost their job.

Edna died.

The man who received the evidence and chose to act on none of it became Sir Des Kelly OBE, a government advisor on elderly care, head of the National Care Forum, and a welcome contributor to CQC @CareQualityComm policy on the very sector where his inaction let an abuser harm more people.

You genuinely cannot make this up.

These seven became known as the BUPA7. They were the first people in UK history to use the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA), the law that was supposed to protect whistleblowers. The law that failed them so badly that other workers across the country saw what happened and quietly decided it was safer to say nothing.

That silence has cost lives. It still does.

Eileen Chubb @CompassnInCare, one of the BUPA7, has spent every year since building Compassion in Care and supporting over 13,000 whistleblowers. She has seen the exact same pattern repeat itself across the NHS, social care, finance, construction, and local government.

Report wrongdoing. Lose your job. Watch the wrongdoing continue untouched.

Even if a whistleblower wins at an employment tribunal under PIDA, nobody is legally required to fix the problem they reported. The abuse can just carry on. The risks remain. The tribunal hands out a payout and everyone goes home.

Mid Staffs. Gosport. Rotherham. Bristol Babies. Winterbourne View. In every single one of these cases, someone knew. Someone spoke up. And the system destroyed them for it while the wrongdoing continued.

Robert Francis produced his Freedom to Speak Up review in 2015. Joint investigations by Compassion in Care and @PrivateEyeNews later revealed that the CQC @CareQualityComm lied to the public for years, falsely claiming it had closed 100 care homes when the real number was two.

The same CQC had invited Des Kelly's input into its policy on the sector he had already failed so catastrophically.

Nothing meaningfully changed.

Eileen Chubb is calling for Edna's Law. A law that would make it a criminal offence to ignore a genuine whistleblower, put wrongdoers in front of a criminal court instead of an employment tribunal, protect whistleblowers as protected witnesses, and force corrective action on the actual wrongdoing.

The State would prosecute. Not the whistleblower, who is currently expected to become a legal expert and fight experienced barristers alone.

The petition has 7,417 signatures. It has been running for a while.

It is addressed to Sir Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer.

If you want to protect the public, you protect the people willing to protect the public.

Sign the petition. Share it. Write to your MP.

Because the alternative is just waiting for the next inquiry. The next preventable scandal. The next name we will all say we should have done something about.

Sign the petition

https://t.co/bmEI8vHq7w

[Middle Eastern Affairs @OpsHQs]

🚨 The situation is completely getting out of control.

Albania is erupting for the second consecutive day in angry mass protests against the Kushner land seizure deal worth $4 billion. 🇦🇱

The Albanian people refuse to become a new Palestine. 💥"

[Richard Burgon MP @RichardBurgon]

There is a growing push inside Parliament for widespread sanctions on Israel.

It's what the public wants. And a new poll shows more than two-thirds of Labour members want tough sanctions too.

This is a fight we are going to win!

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"'No signs of life' in stream after sewage spill."

And the @EnvAgency does what exactly?

https://t.co/4ZyaFy96BX

[Middle Eastern Affairs @OpsHQs]

The Israeli ambassador to Europe is protesting the spread of this image. Let it spread all over the world. 🌍🔥"

[Neil Duncan-Jordan MP @NeilForPoole]

Giver and taker firms have donated £47m to political parties over 25 years.

💰 These same companies went on to score £60 BILLION in public contracts since 2015.

This is everything people hate about politics.

Ban firms from getting contracts with Governments they pay to elect.

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed