Awesome human, multifaceted interests and talents, modest too. Personal interest in skeletal dysplasia and lots of other stuff too
Shrewsbury, England
Joined May 2015
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Steph Birch retweeted
We need your help to sign the "Support the Ceramics Industry" petition created by the #SaveDenby campaign.
- Sign the petition: petition.parliament.uk/petit…
- Share this post
- Tag your friends and spread the word.
Thank you for all of your support.
Steph Birch retweeted
We need your help to #SaveDenby!
We are sad to share that we may be forced to close and a British institution could be lost.
We need your help:
1. Share this post
2. Sign the government petition
3. Buy Denby
4. Visit us at the Pottery Village
Read more: denbypottery.com/pages/save-…
Steph Birch retweeted
"No woman or maiden shall be forced to marry a man whom she dislikes."
That's not a modern law.
That was written in England 🏴 over a thousand years ago.
Anglo-Saxon women had more legal rights than your great-grandmother. On the same island. A thousand years earlier. 🔑
She could own land. In her own name. Buy it. Sell it. Leave it to whoever she chose. No permission needed. Not from her husband. Not from her father. Not from anyone.
She could run a business. She could stand in an open-air court, raise her hand in oath, and the law would hear her the same as any man. ⚖️
On the morning after her wedding, her husband owed her a gift. Land. Money. Property. It was called the Morgengifu, the morning gift. It wasn't symbolic. It was legally binding. And it was hers. Not jointly owned. Not held in trust. Hers. Through everything. 💍
A woman called Wynflaed owned seven estates across four counties, her will still survives.
Cynethryth, wife of King Offa, struck coins bearing her own name and face. The only Anglo-Saxon queen known to have done it. The coins are still in museum collections. 🪙
Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, built ten fortified towns and led armies in battle. In the tenth century. ⚔️
While most of Europe treated women as property, this island wrote their rights into law. 🇬🇧
Then the Normans came. 1066.
And they took all of it away.
Every. Single. Right. 🚫
A married woman's property became her husband's. She couldn't own land. Couldn't sign a contract. Couldn't keep her own wages. Under the doctrine of coverture, her legal
identity was absorbed into his.
Bracton wrote it plainly: "husband and wife are one person, being one flesh and one blood."
In the eyes of the law, she didn't exist.
For over eight hundred years.
Let that satisfy. Eight. Hundred. Years.
In 1882, the Married Women's Property Act gave a married woman the right to own property, keep her earnings, and exist as a separate legal person. 📜
But Britain didn't invent those rights in 1882.
It restored them.
Rights that Anglo-Saxon women had exercised a thousand years before. On the same island, under the same sky, in a language that became the one you're reading now. 🏴
This island forgot once.
We won't let it forget again.
Happy Mother's Day ❤️
Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧
Driving through Oxfordshire, multiple bins in every lay-by and the verges largely free of litter. Good!
Derbyshire has been the worst, Shropshire also looks grim.
More public bins, a deposit scheme to return bottles & number plates printing on drive through orders. Please!
Steph Birch retweeted
'Door handle height at gym means we can't get in' bbc.in/46n8Uja
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yr…
David Lloyd bought a local gym and pool, announced an £11m refurbishment and then made the building inaccessible
All 139 branches will have height restricted access from changing room to pool. This isn’t Equality
“I’m sorry you feel that way” is not an apology. It deflects from accountability and shifts focus from what went wrong to how the complainant feels about it.
It is legitimate, and sometimes necessary, to say: that is not an apology.
Steph Birch retweeted
Please read; the most important piece I've written. Mass poisoning has suddenly killed off most sea life for 30 miles by the Tees. The govt claims it's natural; ind scientists warn it's manmade. The govt is desperate not to inquire too deeply as its freeport policy is at stake.
Steph Birch retweeted
Paralympian @willperryTV looks at the stigma and abuse faced by people with dwarfism.
Stream #TheOneShow on @BBCiPlayer 👉 bbc.in/3oP2gfU
Peter Dinklage’s concerns about the @Disney remake are shared by many others within the dwarfism & skeletal dysplasia community. I’ve got achondroplasia myself, same as Peter - and so do my children. Thread 🧵
We have all heard Hi Ho being whistled, been asked “if you’re not Happy, which one are you” with an accompanying smirk or been asked if we “do” panto. That is all because of a film made in 1937. @Disney needs to move into 2022
@Disney could remake the story as per the original fairy tale - focussing on Snow White and Rose Red. There is no need or excuse to film 7 disabled people - or show it to our communities as “entertainment”.
Before the Snow White film of 1937 - there were no 7 dwarfs, they had no names, there was no Snow White panto (that came after the film). Indeed much of the public awareness of the story of Snow White now is based on a film from 1937 - not the fairytale.
In the U.K., around 30 babies a year are born with skeletal dysplasia - out of 680,000. It’s a really rare disability that is over represented in media. Now if a group of people with achondroplasia are saying this film is a really bad idea & will hurt - please listen @Disney
We have all heard Hi Ho being whistled, been asked “if you’re not Happy, which one are you” with an accompanying smirk or been asked if we “do” panto. That is all because of a film made in 1937. @Disney needs to move into 2022
@Disney could remake the story as per the original fairy tale - focussing on Snow White and Rose Red. There is no need or excuse to film 7 disabled people - or show it to our communities as “entertainment”.