I spent a short time temping at HMP Styal when I left university. In hindsight it was an incredibly valuable experience for me (especially in politics) since the majority of people will never experience the inside of a prison. What I learned was that there are a huge number of
'It's not a funny issue!'
'No, I'm finding your answer funny!'
Liberal Democrat for Edinburgh West, Christine Jardine MP, clashes with the Breakfast panel over whether trans-women should be in female prisons or sports.
@EmmaSzewczak
During lockdown I was a welfare manager for asylum seeker families and the amount of calls I got from angry neighbours about children playing in their own gardens was insane. One man was incensed that some small children had drawn on their own wall with chalk. Another couple put
It doesn’t actually *matter* if a male in a women’s prison is a violent offender or not - you put him in there and it ceases to be a women’s prison. Society has in large part failed these women. Deprioritising their needs to keep a man safe from other men fails them again.
@crit_gen
@Susanshox
I don't care if they've been convicted of shoplifting a twix, frankly. A lot of these women have been socially conditioned through their entire lives to put men's needs first before their own. Any male presence would jeopardise their rehabilitation.
Pretty sure the likes of
@bindelj
have stats out the wazoo about how many female prisoners are victims of DV, CSA, exploitation, ex-care system etc. And how much more receptive they are to rehabilitation programmes.
Every intake form had a body map to record injuries. Lots and lots and lots of self harm. The nurses would tell me about the things people would use - were it not so horrifying you would almost admire the creativity. (I won’t describe for reasons of not giving anyone ideas)
The health unit also had an area where they did group therapy. Lots of paintings on the wall of positive some for the future. Tragically normal goals like “be a mum to my kids” and “never go back on the streets”.
An example of the vulnerability aspect: my job was in the health unit. One of my tasks was sorting health records. A tiny minority visited the health unit for minor issues, like painkillers for a headache or treating an accidental injury.
There were obviously some very evil women inside as well - one lifer was in for a murder that would have been front page news if it hadn’t been at the same time as James Bulger was killed. But they were in the minority.
@Miss_Snuffy
I mean, mine dropped dead when I was five, some people just don't have one and it's nobody's fault, and actually it's quite nice to not have EVERYONE'S GOT A DAD EXCEPT YOU shoved in your face as a kid at Christmas.
@woofknight
In the film “Evan Almighty”, where Steve Carrell starts turning into Noah, it goes entirely unremarked upon that his wife is called Joan.
JOAN 👏 OF 👏ARK [sic]👏
@annahrichards
@BBCNews
I did a quiz once on the BBC where I won about £1300. Not a massive sum but I did it because I was broke and needed the cash. Ended up getting a newspaper consumer column involved because it took them months to send me the money.
Actually, yes. 14 years ago as a newly married 25 year old I kept a highlighted PDF of the death in service JSP on my desktop, because my husband was being sent to a war zone that people were regularly coming back from in boxes.
And while he was there my poorly maintained
@lukerobertblack
Went for a weekend trip to Krakow in January - had a nice cocktail after dinner in a bar on our last night at about 11pm. As we were leaving for the airport at about 5am we passed the bar - still open, with customers and music playing. No trouble or loud noise really.
@WriterMike85
Wherever I see a bread crate I like to remind people that delivering bread is the third most stressful thing you can do after moving house and suffering false arrest…
@ClaireD143
Follow on milk is not necessary. They can drink cow’s milk or other milks as part of a varied diet once weaned. They shouldn’t need a specialist baby milk unless specific medical issues. The companies are just trying to get round advertising rules by making this stuff.
@bphillipsonMP
Well there’s inclusion and inclusion, isn’t there? For SEND children, sometimes they need a slightly different environment, but anything different gets shouted down as parents looking for an advantage, rather than parents just wanting their kids to be happy and able to function.
@hellinhandcarts
Very sweet of you to say so. Hopefully able to make this point to the people who would blindly vote for Yvette Cooper instead, who has been woefully quiet on this issue and whose idea of women's rights is a pink minibus.
Reform claiming this is a breach of his privacy is a nonsense. This is smack bang bullseye in the public interest. If you were a female constituent who needed help as a victim of domestic abuse would you feel confident going to him as your MP? I bloody wouldn’t.
Revealed: Newly elected Reform MP James McMurdock was once jailed for attacking an ex-girlfriend outside a nightclub - as victim's mother slams 'monster' who 'should not be representing people'
@MartinSLewis
Just because your partner is a high earner that doesn’t mean they’ll give you any of it. CB was originally targeted at mums who stayed at home and had no other form of income. High income benefit charge can massively amplify financial abuse by high earning partner.
@MegaSausageHead
I’ve asked to be taken off the list. It’s horrible and I faint or throw up every time. The last time I had an appointment it was at our local hospital and the clinic I was booked in for apparently didn’t actually exist so I was left wandering round pontefract hospital. When they
@thomasforth
The decline in both quality and quantity of pun-based shop names is a blight on our national culture and frankly if there’s not a tax break for them in the budget I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter.
@JacobB12277686
@EmmaSzewczak
They were two 6 year olds playing on a swing in their own garden whilst under house arrest, they weren't exactly having a drum n bass rave. Also I think playing outside at 8.30am during summer when it's been light out for several hours is perfectly reasonable.
@HazelAppleyard_
@northumbriapol
I deal with this via a strategy called “Do you like horses?”. Basically pick a subject they are likely to find annoying/dull and just start talking at them about it. Quite quickly they will go away.
@JonAshworth
How can you ask people to join you when your colleagues have called them scum? Are they not scum any more? Are their transgressions forgiven by paying £5.25 per month? That’s a lot more than Conservative Party membership - is the plenary indulgence included with the price?🤔
Here’s the qualities I’m looking for in a leadership candidate:
🔵Robust at the despatch box
🔵Able to come across as a human being in media interviews
🔵Real life/work experience outside of politics
🔵Cares about ordinary members, even in unfashionable seats
🔵Wants to speak to
@sammywoodhouse1
Police, social services and criminal justice system needs to remember there’s an age of consent for a reason. If you were below that age, you couldn’t consent-end of. I’m so sick of arguments about girls being mature or looking older or whatever. It’s allowing men to get away
@jamesjhistory
I was quite impressed with the Guy Ritchie Netflix series- a junior officer that’s actually more or less the right age for his rank, people calling each other the right things, salutes only given to people they should be, berets actually shaped, uniforms pretty much bang on. I
@DanielPriestley
I invested some of the cash that I got in a divorce settlement on an industry course, for which I was taxed with a 20% VAT charge. The course helped me get a much higher paying job, where I contribute much more in tax every month. The tax I pay now has already covered that 20%
@peterwalker99
York is a city that was built to be navigated by peasants with carts. Imagine my shock at discovering that getting round it in a Chelsea tractor is difficult.
@backpainandwine
On a cycling holiday with some uni friends in Northern France we got lost. My friend Pedro was in charge of the map and said he couldn’t find the village we were in. Reader, he thought we had been going round in circles entering and exiting a village called “Rappel” (which are
@imagegardentrax
It’s as important for bright kids to learn social skills and take up enjoyable hobbies as it is for them to do umpteen A levels. Her parents are failing her by not encouraging a sport, a skill, an instrument, a club… SOMETHING. It can still be intellectually stimulating but it
@simonjedge
@politico
@jk_rowling
Calling yourself Robert so you can write detective stories without everyone (initially) knowing you’re the world’s most famous author and calling yourself Susan so you can get your meat and veg out in a changing room full of non-consenting women are equivalent activities, surely
@MegaSausageHead
Every woman deserves better. Don’t tell me if men needed to get a plastic brush shoved up their willy every few years where a significant number experienced quite severe pain they wouldn’t have thought of a better way of doing it by now.
@TheAttagirls
The amount of women who get released on a friday and say "OK Miss, see you monday!" is shocking. For so many extremely vulnerable women prison is a place of safety away from violent partners, dealers, pimps etc. But the research is so clear that with the right help a huge
@ripx4nutmeg
When I worked in the reusable nappy industry virtually every business had stories about men with sexual fetishes calling them and treating their staff like some sort of chat line. Totally unacceptable.
@AlistairCarns
@Keir_Starmer
@JohnHealey_MP
Can we have free mental health first aid training for forces families? Would be nice if a Labour govt cleaned up their own mess on this one. Families of Iraq & Afghan vets having to deal with seriously traumatised people with no training or support. How long is the course for a
@ripx4nutmeg
I thought the whole point of her court case with the tax man is that the actress Lorraine Kelly is not at all like the fictional TV character Lorraine Kelly? Has she perjured herself?! 🤔
@MayorOfWY
A lot of the sexual harassment that women in Holbeck and Beeston have to put up with is due to the fact that a Labour council and Labour-led police force decided to announce to the men of the UK that women were for sale on the streets of Leeds with zero consequences. Even though
🔵Willing to reform CCHQ
🔵Has a decent pitch to people under 45
🔵Will defend freedom and choice over authoritarian “ban it harder”-ism
🔵Has strong commitment to integrity
Nigel Farage should be ashamed of his comments. Ukraine was illegally invaded by a tyrannical leader and I am proud that we have supported them all the way through.
@Mr_John_Oxley
The Harry Potter stars all paid tax before they were in high school and you can’t serve in the armed forces if you’ve got asthma. Votes for children, except the ones with inhalers!
@gsoh31
As a historian, do you not accept that many professions shrink over time? Not many furriers or tobacconists these days. Should academia be shielded from a need to demonstrate its usefulness to society? If so, why?
@DanJTPitt
@sheffielduni
We had some… *interesting moments* when I was at Sheffield in the mid-2000s at the height of the Iraq war, but nothing like this. Scary.
@Aja02537920
For myself! Yvette Cooper doesn’t want to “get into rabbit holes” about what a woman is, and was very quiet about women being for sale on her doorstep in the managed zone. I’m the only other woman on the ballot paper.
@somersetlevel
She might have only been Home Secretary for a fortnight but labour have had direct responsibility for West Yorkshire police since 2012. Mark Burns-Williamson was literally a Castleford councillor.
A dismal side effect of the GE campaign: on Monday I’m making an adult safeguarding referral for an older lady who has sent me FORTY FOUR “contact your candidates” emails from so many different charities that I am very concerned that she’s being financially exploited.
@KemiBadenoch
Yvette Cooper posed with signs saying “refugees welcome” but when it was my job to keep tabs on them in her constituency for the home office in 2020 there was a sum total of… one. She’s happy to welcome people with complex needs as she doesn’t have to deal with the fallout &
@Sian_L_S
I think the first thing we need to fund properly is drug rehab in prisons. The only guaranteed rehab programmes are for alcohol - if you're on illicit benzos you'll get put on a prescribed dose, if you're on heroin you'll go on methadone. The queue for the methadone in the
You might notice there's a distinct lack of Northerners in the mix here.
We can't slip back to being a party of the South, and on that basis Five Towns and Hemsworth Conservatives have written to every candidate and invited them to come and make their pitch in Pontefract.
@AusSkeptic
@Ilikeottersbest
@JournalistJill
I know someone who had gynaecomastia surgery. He grew one boob at the age of 15. It did not go away. It’s not normal for males to grow one breast. There was no “feeling” or “identity” about it- it was simply an abnormal growth of tissue that was surgically removed.
@HerreMorker
@ClaireD143
It kind of is the point. It’s mega expensive but you don’t actually need it. They shouldn’t be able to advertise this stuff at all imo. Should be in plain packaging like cigarettes.
@GSpellchecker
@janeclarejones
Gender is a linguistic concept that’s similar to sex but used as a synonym because lots of squeamish people think sex is a naughty word.
@montie
It’s what you’d get on the home office voluntary returns scheme that’s been in place for at least 5 yrs. But Rwanda means we have a solution for the people for whom we have no way of returning them to their home country. £3k is pretty cheap compared to keeping people in the
@SurrogConcern
What happened to the “oh most of these women are already mothers 🥰🥰🥰” argument? Shouldn’t their children be taken care of by a life insurance policy rather than people already wealthy enough to be pursuing surrogacy?
@lisareality1
Genuine answer? Because a huge number of people on both sides of this debate have a blind spot where they believe “different = better”. Bookish children are more likely to end up in professions than ones who are more practical, even if you can make more money as a plumber than a
@markbishopuk
@AyoCaesar
The problem with the C of E is that they suffer from the same malaise as the rest of the British establishment and are sort of a bit embarrassed about what they’re actually for and end up using awe-inspiring cathedrals for vintage kilo sales and secular art installations.
If you live in Ponte, Cas, Knottingley, Altofts, Darrington, Carleton, Ferrybridge, Airedale… frankly anywhere in PCK you already know what it will be like if you return the same MP tomorrow: exactly the same as it’s been for the last 3 decades.
I’m offering a real local choice
This has been a disappointing night, but I am so thankful for my wonderful association members who have done nothing but support and encourage me, and absolutely slog their guts out to give people in our area the credible, local campaign they deserved.
Our party will have some
@Samfr
Get the calpol in sachets so when you’re on the go you can just tear the corner off & give them the packet to suck. No spoon needed and perfect dose.
@Gellyfsh
I tried to cancel my ex husband’s internet for his army accommodation because he was going to Afghanistan for 8 months and while he was away the base was closing. They wanted him to transfer it to “his new address” and the chap on the phone was very confused that he couldn’t find
@thomasforth
For the record, the best shop name pun of all time is a Stockport sandwich shop called “Bapman” with the tag line “for your dinner dinner dinner dinner”, closely followed by Harrogate bra shop “Fit to Bust”. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
@HJoyceGender
@NickFerrariLBC
Why can’t he just be kind and make the gents toilets into a gender neutral space where all kinds of penis-havers are safe and welcome, regardless of how they identify?
@Ron__Jon8s
@jamesjhistory
If you want real rage porn watch the Sherlock episode The Sign Of Three. They investigate a Guards regiment where nobody has ever seen the hot side of an iron or the inside of a tin of Kiwi. That would be the mystery for me, right there.