sweet sweet Lo

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

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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[sweet sweet Lo @no1lolo]

Looking absolutely stunning tonight #AndiOliver #GBM #GreatBritishMenu 💯🎊🎉💫💚

[sweet sweet Lo @no1lolo]

Says the #DraftDodgerInChief @realDonaldTrump

[sweet sweet Lo @no1lolo]

Former defence secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind told The Independent: “President Trump is either willing to make accusations without bothering to check the facts. Or he is just lying and knows he is lying. Either way he is destroying his reputation and that of the United States”.

[sweet sweet Lo @no1lolo]

@SHEIN_Official despite me spending £240 @SHEIN_Official can't help when the parcel goes missing? #missingparcels #Shein #WheresMyParcel #Refund

[Thomas Standfield @TStandfield1789]

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Seven years,
Over £186million spent,
Final report published 20 October 2022.
Recommendations implemented by the Tory government?
None.
When is Kemi Bay-denoch going to apologise?
@KemiBadenoch @Conservatives @CPhilpOfficial

[Canada Hates Trump @AntiTrumpCanada]

Dear America,

With all due respect, we’ll pass on becoming your 51st state.

Sincerely,
Canada 🇨🇦

[Nick Taylor @NickTayNorfolk]

If Tice is on Kuenssberg tomorrow, how do the BBC justify that?
Reform are on the BBC so regularly with only 5 MPs.
The BBC are helping build Reform with this exposure.
It's not balanced, so why are they doing it?
They seem to use their own cover as reason for more.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"Bidders demand Thames Water granted immunity over environmental crimes."

So these are the kind of people we are dealing with. If you don't grant us immunity from prosecution we won't buy the company.

Govt has but one response to this. Nationalise Thames Water and do it today but do they have the political courage?

https://t.co/8lGuX7AvfL

[4th July - Tory wipe Out @snb19692]

Congratulations to 'The man of the People 'Nigel Farage" MP Reform Party Limited. Top earning MP, on course for over £1 million with his 10 jobs plus MP salary! Top earner MP. Not been to Clacton his constituency yet though! 😉

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

Weird how he didn’t call up the National Guard on January 6th.

[John O'Connell @jdpoc]

Fact Check: False.

Three days ago, I had to take two Central trains. Yesterday, 1. Last week, I think five.

All of them perfectly clean.

This guy represents Reform, so we already know he’s a fucking liar.

[Andrew Parnall @dontbrexitfixit]

It seems you have forgotten that those brave young @SarahForRuncorn fought, and died, to defeat fascism Ms Pochin. And before you condemn me as a lefty, I served 22 years in the British army to protect our freedoms from the likes of you and your hate filled party. You disgust me

[The Purple Pimpernel @Eyeswideopen69]

Little wonder they’re cancelling all their council meetings — this is not a good look for the self-appointed champions of working Brits.

Reality is gonna crucify these petty, racist, vindictive arseholes.

[Thomas Standfield @TStandfield1789]

Well, well, well.
Reform are to try to stop councils they control from contributing to the pensions of council workers.
Needless to say, stopping pension contributions is entirely illegal.
Not that the law matters anymore.
@Nigel_Farage @reformparty_uk @TiceRichard

[Brendan May @bmay]

The public certainly saw through you. They never chose you to be their Prime Minister, and at the first opportunity to vote on your catastrophic bin fire of a premiership they kicked you out of one of the safest Tory seats in Britain. Do stop continually embarrassing yourself. 🥬

[Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 @reformexposed]

Arron Banks will continue as head of Reform UK DOGE.

Remember when he and @Nigel_Farage railed against ‘unelected faceless bureaucrats’ wielding power over UK citizens?

Got a mirror here for you @Arron_banks.

https://t.co/niHEG7MQvp

[Josh MacAlister MP @JoshMacAlister]

Looks like @reformparty_uk need to educate themselves. This is a Reform cllr calling children in care “evil”.

Children in care face the greatest disadvantage of any group in society. This kind of stigma on top only makes things worse.

I won’t hold my breath for an apology…