Well done Kim ; Keep the Faith !

An Israeli property conference selling off illegally occupied Palestinian lands is set to take place in London this Sunday. I've added my name to this letter, urging the government to uphold its obligations under international law and stop the event from going ahead.

On the twenty-ninth of March, 2020, a ten-year-old boy named Max Woosey set up a tent in the back garden of his family's house in Braunton, North Devon, and climbed inside. The tent had belonged to his next-door neighbour, a seventy-four-year-old man named Rick Abbott who had died of terminal cancer six weeks earlier. Rick had given Max the tent before he died. He had told Max to use it for an adventure. Rick had not asked Max to raise money. The translation of the personal token into a fundraising mechanism for the institution that had cared for Rick in his final months was Max's own institutional invention. By the time he was thirteen years old, he had funded fifteen nurse-years of hospice care. Rick Abbott had been a kayaker, a paddleboarder, and a gym-goer. He was a close neighbour of the Woosey family. When he received his terminal cancer diagnosis at the age of seventy-four, the North Devon Hospice arranged the palliative care that allowed him to die at home rather than in a hospital ward. The Woosey family — Max, his mother Rachael, and his father Mark (a serving Royal Marine) — were close to Rick throughout the final months. They observed the hospice care directly. They saw what the institutional infrastructure of community palliative care could do for a man who wanted to die in his own house surrounded by the things he loved. Rick Abbott died in February of 2020. Before he died, he gave Max his camping tent. He asked Max to use it for an adventure. Six weeks later, on the twenty-third of March, 2020, the United Kingdom entered its first national lockdown under the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. All in-person fundraising activities for UK charities were cancelled overnight. UK hospices — which are not part of the National Health Service and are largely charity-funded, with the average UK hospice receiving only approximately thirty percent of its operating budget from the NHS — were among the worst affected. Their fundraising infrastructure depended on community events, charity shops, and in-person gatherings that were no longer permitted. The North Devon Hospice — the institution that had just cared for Rick Abbott — was, by late March of 2020, looking at the loss of substantially all of its normal fundraising revenue for the foreseeable future. On the twenty-ninth of March, 2020, six days into the national lockdown, Max Woosey set up Rick's tent in his back garden and posted a fundraising page online. The page set a goal of one hundred pounds. The page text explained that his friend Rick had given him a tent before he died and had asked him to have an adventure, and that an adventure was what Max was doing. He did not come back inside that night. Or the next. Or the night after that. He continued sleeping in the tent for the next three years. The fundraising page raised one hundred pounds. Then five hundred. Then five thousand. Then fifty thousand. Then five hundred thousand. By the time Max ended the challenge on the twenty-ninth of March, 2023 — exactly three years after the first night — the page had raised more than seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the North Devon Hospice. Through the three years, he slept outside in storms, in snow, in hail, in torrential rain, in baking summer heat, in freezing winter cold. He slept outside on his birthdays. He slept outside on three consecutive Christmases. He slept outside when he had COVID-19. He went through approximately fifteen separate tents as the weather destroyed them one after another. On one documented night, his tent collapsed in heavy rain and high winds at midnight; he stayed inside the collapsed shelter because he could not find a replacement tent in time. He camped in places other than the back garden when the schedule permitted. He spent a night on a hotel balcony at London Zoo. He pitched the tent in the garden of Number Ten Downing Street and met the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson. He camped at the Sandy Park stadium of the Exeter Chiefs rugby club. On the one-year anniversary of his challenge, he organized a worldwide children's camp-out called Max's Big Camp Out, which inspired approximately two thousand other young people to raise money for their own local charities through their own backyard camp-outs. In the 2022 New Year Honours List, Max was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to fundraising for the North Devon Hospice during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was twelve years old at the time of presentation. The medal was presented to him by the Lord Lieutenant of Devon, David Fursdon, at the Royal Marines base at Lympstone in May of 2022. He was among the youngest BEM recipients in the country. He was also recognized with a Pride of Britain Award, a Spirit of Adventure Award, and the Bear Grylls Chief Scout Unsung Hero Award. On the twenty-ninth of March, 2023, Max ended the challenge. He held a final celebratory festival at the Broomhill Estate in North Devon on the first of April. He then slept in his own bedroom for the first time since the lockdown began. He was thirteen years old. Guinness World Records confirmed Max as the holder of the world record for the most money raised by camping by an individual. The North Devon Hospice translated the seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-pound total into the institutional terms that mattered. The chief executive, Stephen Roberts, said publicly that Max's fundraising had directly funded fifteen nurses for a whole year. The hospice estimated, in its own subsequent statements, that those fifteen nurse-years had supported the at-home palliative care of approximately five hundred patients — patients who, like Rick Abbott, had been able to die at home rather than in hospital wards because the institutional infrastructure was funded to be in their houses. The structural reading of Max Woosey's three years in the back garden is that the promise Rick Abbott extracted from him in February of 2020 was personal. It was a promise from a dying older man to a ten-year-old neighbour to use a tent for an adventure. Max's translation of that personal promise into a three-year institutional fundraising operation for the hospice that had cared for Rick was not in the original promise. The translation was Max's own work. The fifteen nurse-years and the approximately five hundred at-home palliative patients were the institutional yield of a ten-year-old converting a personal token into community infrastructure. Rick had asked for an adventure. Max delivered an institution. If his story moved you, drop one word in the comments — Max, Rick, tent, anything that comes to mind. Tap the like button so more people find this story. The page is small. Every reaction helps us keep telling the stories where a ten-year-old converted a personal promise into community infrastructure.

Fed up. Just spent 14 weeks at @nottsinquiry didn’t miss a minute as this was all I could do in my daughter Grace’s name against all those who failed. Get to my desk and this is what I’m greeted with……

More than 30 UK charities are found to have funnelled millions to illegal Israeli settlements. ‘Labour’s Melanie Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, it would mean taxpayers had subsidised illegal settlements to the tune of £5.6m, a situation she described as deplorable’ - @guardian @melanie_ward

RT @melanie_ward: Funding illegal Israeli settlements is not charitable activity. It is extremist activity. Working with Israeli human res…

For future reference, this is a criminal offence. Don’t do it, regardless of the party. Hopefully this herbert sees this and feels embarrassed!

One terrible, but isolated, incident results in racists saying that we have 2-tier policing, yet these are the facts:

Without even breaking stride, here’s #bbclaurak again platforming Reform’s unelected political omnicrank Zia Yusuf mere days after Sky News’s Cathy Newman was besieged by death threats and widespread misogyny after interviewing the pan faced hate peddling thunderbigot

The Somerset Farmhouse of 1 North Street, Williton were approached by a "food influencer" that wanted to charge them £2,000 for a review. They put out a video of Sally eating a sausage roll instead 😆. Lets make Sally and the Somerset Farmhouse famous for free.

Nothing screams ‘two tier Britain’ more than a multi millionaire, dog whistling, far right, cosplaying politician being interviewed live on Sky from his high end, executive, chauffeur driven €200,000 Mercedes Maybach…

At an aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes

1/4 We had a man like this, a vicious, angry AGP, turn up at our Women's Centre demanding his right as a lesbian to join in lesbian events. When we refused he said he'd destroy us. He applied to be on the committee: women fell out, volunteers left, scared: the Centre closed.

Not sure I could love Germaine Greer any more than I do. Everytime I watch this clip 💜💜 her a little more. For all the sex denialists this is the original critique of “gender”. Take note: Women are a sex class.

Oh here we go again. @YorkshireWater claiming they are "INVESTING" £8.3 billion between 2025 - 2030. That of course turns out to be completely untrue. The only money I can see that shareholders are putting into the business is paying back the "loan" they took, by March 2027 and the £100 million they were supposed to pay to help reduce sewage dumping by the end of March 2025. Every other damned penny of that £8.3 billion, that's £8.2 billion is being funded directly out of bill payers' pockets and not a damned thing to do with shareholders. Why are water companies allowed to tell such utter lies? Ofwat?

The gravy train continues. Failed former CEO of Ofwat, David Black has reappeared at a consultancy company called BRG where he will "Advise firms and investors across regulated industries as they navigate shifting regulatory frameworks". His boss? No less than former head of regulation at Thames Water one Colm Gibson. As @PrivateEyeNews would say "Trebles all round". Well actually that's exactly what they did say. 👇👇👇

Angry doesn’t even begin to cover it.. Today at Snettisham beach protected area for ground nesting birds including Little Ringed Plover, Oystercatcher, Ringed Plover…... Signage EVERYWHERE asking for dogs on leads. 📸 Derek Bromage - Snettisham Village Facebook Page.

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it. Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying. Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence." Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter." Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter. They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created. One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility." Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies. That's the metered intelligence business model. And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

Love the explainer. @darrenpjones is a rock star. He's got it all & he's good at his job, which he clearly loves. He could have challenged Keir Starmer if he wanted. But he didn't want to. Because he's trustworthy & his commitment to the UK & the Labour Party, is real.🌹