Mark Thurstain

An experienced commercial data scientist & strategist. Founder of Geofutures, mapping geek and sustainability expert. Likes his garden. And cricket.

[THE THE @thethe]

Video directed by @timpopedirector with editing, VFX and projections by @do_or_diy and @Peter_W_Knight . ‘Cognitive Dissident’ (written by Matt Johnson and @LittleBarrie ) is the first single from Ensoulment. the first studio album from THE THE in a quarter century.

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

Absolutely love this ….. and I keep watching it.

[England's Barmy Army 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🎺 @TheBarmyArmy]

Elite content.

Well played, @DaleSteyn62 😂

[MarshFamilySongs @MarshSongs]

Some musical notes about National Service, by kids aged 12, 14, 16, 17 🎶

Dedicated to @brianmoore666's daughter & all teenagers who volunteer/work/serve. Not dedicated to Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

If you like our stuff, there's 3 Kickstarter days left
👉https://t.co/gVpw35K92J

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@SimonMAtkinson Come on you robins!

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@verygoodmaps Nicely done.

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@CountyChamp Viv Richards

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@profrichharris Selfie needed!

[Gaynor Astbury @gaynor_astbury]

#intergenerationalfairnessday

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@profrichharris Happy belated birthday Rich

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@TheBathLandlady How does the great blue yonder compare?

[7Cricket @7Cricket]

EXTRAORDINARY!

Grace Harris had a broken bat, and this is how it played out:

"Hey guys, I need a new bat!"
"Stuff it, I'll still hit it!"

And then Harris hits it for SIX! #WBBL09

@SportsCenter #SCTop10

[George Takei @GeorgeTakei]

When I was a little boy, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise attack, and thousands of U.S. servicemembers perished. As a nation, we were stunned. And we vowed to strike back. Revenge was understandably on everyone’s mind, including many Americans of Japanese descent who opposed the emperor and were peaceful and law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents.

In its zeal to exact that revenge, however, the U.S. government overreacted, out of fear and bigotry. They targeted everyone who happened to look like the people who had carried out the attack. Those of us who had done nothing wrong were forced to pay the consequences for the decisions of others far away and disconnected from us. We were interned for years, in open-air prisons, while America went off to fight Japan, Germany and Italy.

It’s so important that we carry the lessons of the past through to today. Merely because one group commits atrocities and acts with depravity does not mean vast hundreds of thousands or even millions of others should be lumped together with them and made to suffer. We must never paint with the brush of justice and retaliation too broadly, or the toll of human suffering will rise immeasurably.

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

@charlesdowding You’re a real inspiration Charles. If you’re off, then we are on the downward slope. Does this mean I need to get an Insta account?

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

Ella Baron on the UK’s decision to go ahead with the Rosebank oil field – cartoon https://t.co/Eo28EjODcD

[Mark Kieran - Democracy Activist @MarkKieranUK]

WARNING: THREAD CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

🧵 What a morally vacuous, embarrassingly incompetent monster Suella Braverman is.

Having worked at the Home Office deciding asylum applications, I know the 1951 Refugee Convention's terms are far clearer than her pernicious propaganda would suggest.

She says many asylum seekers base their claims on “feeling” discriminated against in their home countries. But the scope of the Convention is limited to people who believe they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” for some specific reasons. Those reasons are race, nationality, religion, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Mere feelings of discrimination would not meet that rigorous test, and any application made on those grounds would (rightly) be fast-tracked for refusal.

She suggests that persecution, by definition, must involve a threat to life. Not true. Persecution often DOES involve a threat to life, but other things can qualify as persecution (arbitrary detention, unjustified confiscation of assets, withdrawal of state protection from crime). Braverman knows this, but the boneheads whose votes she is soliciting do not, so hey, why not spin the line?

In my time at the Home Office, I refused many asylum applications which, on the evidence presented, clearly did not meet the test of a well-founded fear of persecution on Convention grounds. The majority of those applications were made by people (mostly young men) who appeared to be seeking better economic futures for themselves and their families. That's completely understandable, and I never blamed them for trying, but it's not grounds for asylum, so neither did I feel any guilt in refusing them…that's not the purpose of the asylum system.

But I did grant asylum to a number of people who had clearly faced unimaginable horror in their own countries before escaping to the UK, where they felt safe and where they believed they would be able to live the rest of their lives in peace.

There was the Sikh activist who had a kettle of boiling water poured over him during a police interrogation. There was the woman from a minority Muslim sect who, when her husband died, and her neighbours started throwing stones through her windows at night, sought the protection of the local police only to be publicly ridiculed and then gang-raped by six officers in front of her three young children. There were the young Tamil men forced to inhale the fumes of burnt chilli powder by Sri Lankan police. Others hung upside-down and beaten for days until they confessed to crimes they played no part in. And many, many more with genuine, provable experiences just as gruesome.

Nearly thirty years on, I can still recall the faces of those people as they recounted their experiences to me during interviews and the tears in the eyes of the interpreters as they translated words no one should ever have to hear.

Since my days in the Home Office, I can’t recall a single Home Secretary who hasn’t had to wrestle one way or another with the asylum system. But neither can I recall one who has approached the task with as little humanity in their heart as Braverman. Truly, she is in a league of her own.

I simply don’t believe the majority of people in this country support the cruel policies that Braverman embraces so enthusiastically. As I listen to her today, my sincerest hope is that when Open Britain and our partners finally deliver a functional democracy in this country, monsters like her will never again be able to game their way into high office and abuse the power they find there.

This is our fight.

If you've read this far, please consider giving this a retweet and following me, @OpenBritainHQ and @StopTheRot_UK so you can be part of this positive change. Thank you.

[Mark Thurstain @thurstain]

🚨 The Prime Minister wants to weaken already inadequate UK climate plans as the world faces extreme flooding and wildfires.

We need to take action now.

Join me and demand practical action to protect our planet before it’s too late⏰👇 https://t.co/zGjA5yRHzU

[Farmer Tom 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 @Farmer_Tom_UK]

This has *really* would me up, and it’s only Monday.

@MaschioUk @OPICOag @chandlersfe

#FarmSafety @nfu_farmsafety @FarmSafetyHour @yellowwelliesuk

[Mirah Jing Zhang @MirahJZ]

Presenting a bit of spatial causal modeling work at the GIScience Conf 🤗 @GIScience_conf

[IncrEdibleBristol @EdibleBristol]

It seems to us that @BristolTreeFora are correct. Causing harm and then mitigating for that harm is still causing harm. @Catherinewith11 farming skills have created a place rich in biodiversity and that needs to remain, as per our declaration of a biodiversity crisis

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

US Senator and war hero John McCain passed away five years ago on this day. He was one of the few who predicted exactly how Putin was planning to "rebuild the Soviet empire".

The video below is from an 2014 interview: