I try to follow people I don't agree with as well as those I do, and those who make me laugh. Not here to judge, but to share info and lovely things.
South London.
Joined June 2016
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Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
In 1952, an English teacher named Cecil Dormand secretly paid for a dirt-poor 11-year-old to take a drama course.
He never told him and the boy didn’t find out until decades later.
By then, he was a knight, that little boy’s name was Patrick Stewart.
He was born into a poor family in Mirfield, a small mill town in Yorkshire and his father came home from World War II a violent man, and he was violent toward Patrick’s mother.
Young Patrick learned exactly when to step between his father’s fist and his mother.
An English teacher put a copy of Shakespeare in his hand and told him to get up and perform.
He never stopped and left school at 15.
By 19 he was completely bald... most agencies told him he'd never make it because of that.
In 1987, the LA Times called him an “unknown British Shakespearean actor” when he was cast as Captain Picard.
Then he became one of the most famous faces on Earth.
You’ve probably heard that part.
Here’s the part you haven’t:
He spent decades as a patron of Refuge, sheltering women and children from domestic violence.
But he never stopped trying to understand his father.
He dug up a 1940 newspaper clipping that said his dad had come home with severe shell shock.
He went to France and walked the ground where his father’s unit was pinned down under bombing for hours.
He learned his father had PTSD, and nobody ever helped him.
So Patrick became an ambassador for Combat Stress, a charity that helps veterans.
In 2013, a young woman at a Texas convention told him she was a survivor of domestic violence.
He asked, “My dear, are you okay?”
Then he hopped off the stage, held her, and told her: “You never have to go through that again, you’re safe now.”
At Dragon Con, a Make-A-Wish girl dressed as Spock came to meet him.
2,000 people were waiting for him to speak... he sat down and talked with her for 15 minutes, making all of them wait.
He told her that since they were friends now, whenever she saw him on screen she could wave and say, “Hello Patrick.”
After 9/11, he felt helpless, so he brought his one-man A Christmas Carol back to Broadway for a full week of charity shows.
He played every character himself and donated every cent.
In 2019 he did it again, and every dollar went to feeding hungry New Yorkers.
In 2017, he fostered a pit bull named Ginger, who had been rescued from a dogfighting ring.
She was his first dog in more than 50 years.
He couldn’t bring her home to England, so he found her a family.
Then he kept fostering more.
When he said he was done with Star Trek so many people told him the show had gotten them through the hardest times of their lives.
So he wanted to see if Picard could do it one more time.
Rest in Peace, Sir Patrick 🖖
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
They've given it a content warning!
'This evidence session may include content that some viewers may find distressing.'
Parliamentlive.tv - Draft Conversion Practices Bill (Joint Committee)
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
NHS Wales papers say “many of the safeguards within the assessment process are not being followed in practice” at the Welsh Gender Service.
NHS Wales is meeting on Friday to discuss the concerns. We will be watching. Kudos to @nickwallis who's been on this since the go.
What has been going on at the Welsh Gender Service is a big story. Thanks to NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee's commitment to relative transparency*, we can see it unfold.
genderblog.net/welsh-gender-…
* it took them at least two years to pull their finger out, mind you
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
When I think of Patrick Stewart, it's not Captain Picard or Professor X that springs to mind. It's this quote.
May he rest in peace.
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
This is not gay marriage 2.0
This is an chilling effect of Arctic proportions
Threats of prosecution have real world effects and ignoring that is to ignore reality
“We could amend this Bill here, there and everywhere, carve out this, tweak that, but at the end of the day the government would still be passing a Bill that says there’s one area, and one area only, of medical practice where you could get prosecuted if you put a foot wrong. That won’t be a chilling effect, that’ll be a deep freeze”
Magnificent from @Jebadoo2 #BinTheBill
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
2/interestingly, the reactions reveal an important aspect of transactivism: its insistence that kids should have adult autonomy. It used to be the absurd notion that "kids know who they are". Now it's a #ConversionBill that ignores parents' duties to guide & protect their kids>
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Taliban prevents women from working =UN silence!
Taliban prevents women from schools=UN silence!
Taliban prevents women from showing their faces =UN silence!
Taliban prevents women from leaving their homes alone=UN silence!
Taliban prevents women from speaking =UN silence!
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Paraded through busy traffic, with hard concrete beneath his feet, was how Manu spent his days as a ‘begging’ elephant. Surrounded by the constant sounds of honking vehicles, the noise and the chaos of busy streets, one can only imagine what life must have been like for a blind elephant so far from the natural world he was born into.
Today, when Manu steps out for his walks, the sounds around him are different. He can hear the birds calling, the leaves rustling in the breeze, and all the little sounds that make up nature’s very own orchestra.
He can take his time, explore at his own pace, reach out to pluck leaves from trees, follow unfamiliar scents with his trunk, and feel the softness of grass beneath his feet. And after everything Manu has been through, seeing him walk so freely, and find comfort in the natural world around him fills our hearts with a happiness that words can hardly describe.
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
So cool to find a herd of wild Red Deer on moors 10 minutes outside #Sheffield in fading light. Its incredible to have these wild places so close to one of UKs major cities. We need these places for wildlife and people. We need cities themselves to become wilder #wildSheffield
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
RIP Patrick Stewart. What an actor. I still can’t believe he agreed to do this scene. And he didn’t even mind when I ruined every take. Legend.
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
.@Jebadoo2 was on fire today. Patiently explaining criminal law after a panel of activists with a distressingly low comprehension of what they were asking for.
Barrister @Jebadoo2 explains how a parent saying to their child they should love their body could meet every element of the Government’s proposed ‘conversion practices’ offence.
As Dennis says, all it takes is one difficult, distressing argument for a parent to be wide open to the risk of prosecution.
How can Women and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson claim the Bill “will not impinge on” parents’ ability to have difficult conversations with their children?
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Been quite the day. Grateful to Parliament for letting us speak and to Helen and Dermot for being such effective advocates.
This bill is dangerous and it will criminalise innocent parents. It cannot be amended into civility. It must be defeated.
🧵 Second panel at the Joint Committee on the draft Conversion Practices Bill:
Dennis Kavanagh, Gay Men’s Network
Helen Joyce, Sex Matters
Dermot Kehoe, LGB Alliance
Watch live: parliamentlive.tv/Event/Inde…
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
A few of our recent carbon busting, penguin saving, oil war reducing, solar loving, home energy systems....
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
I want you all to know this.
There are 650 MPs in Parliament. Yet the one MP chosen by @UKLabour to Chair the Bill Committee for the controversial, dangerous and dismally bad draft legislation, the Conversion Practices Bill, is Alex Barros-Curtis. Until July 2024, when Alex was given a very safe Labour seat in Cardiff, he was the Head of the Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in London. This was a department set up to investigate complaints against members of the Labour Party. Complaints of antisemitism, Islamophobia, abuse, and of course latterly, mostly women holding legally-protected 'Gender Critical' (sex realist) beliefs. Alex oversaw the investigation of hundreds of members who liked or tweeted gender critical or feminist views. I was one of them. He investigated me, as a sitting Labour MP, for 13 months.
13 months to 'investigate' one like of one tweet. I had a great lawyer, one of the names we're all now familiar with, and I had to crowdfund to pay for his (excellent) work.
They first tried in 2020. But the screenshots crudely attached to that passive aggressive, threatening-sounding email from LP admin staff were so risible that I replied that it was too ridiculous for me to waste my precious time on. They left it. Years of Starmer bumbling and stuttering through interviews about whether he had spoken to me, whether he supported me, etc followed. My feminist sins continued apace.
And then I 'liked' a tweet by my GC comedian friend @Glinner. He had mocked Eddie'Suzy' for comparing his choice to wear traditional women's clothing, fake plastic breasts and nails, to those being persecuted by the Nazis during WWII. I found his sarcasm, as a award-winning comedy writer in the face of such offensive narcissism amusing and so 'liked' it. I found it absurd and obscene that Izzard, an extremely privileged and wealthy man, who openly changed his 'gender' at will, should write himself into history falseley as someone who would have been oppressed due to a circumstance beyond his control. We all know the groups who were tortured, starved and killed...
There is obviously more to my story, I will tell it all, it's just one chapter of the years of spiteful abusive and bullying practices meted out to me by the Labour Party managers. Not those who'd achieved office on merit, or even unexpectedly, but those in the club, often having failed to be elected themselves.
So Barros-Curtis who we were repeatedly told led 'the many *independent* inquiries into women members and MPs like me, now often stands as a trans-rights activist on the Labour backbenches. He has also been gifted the role of Chair of this Committee and is a huge supporter of this Bill. And I am not a part of the Bill Committee, although plenty of TRA MPs are. Does that sound like the democratic scrutiny of legislation to you?
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Bloody well said Dermot
This afternoon our Vice Chair, Dermot Kehoe, gave evidence at the Joint Committee on the draft Conversion Practices bill.
Parents should never feel afraid to tell their child “I don’t believe you’re born in the wrong body… but I do believe you’re my gay son and I support you in that”.
You can watch the whole meeting here:
parliamentlive.tv/Event/Inde…
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Today I began the digging out a few local drains. This one is on a hill it is set back off the road in this cut in. But its never cleaned out. I do this each year digging out weeds and turf. Look closer there is a broken broom in there!!
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
This is grim. But representative of what is happening throughout the Country- we have a severe housing crisis & the consequence is ugly behaviour from profiteering. We can all wish it wasnt so but it is. I hope you are watching Mr Burnham. Life is grim at the bottom
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Thank god the adults entered the room…
Well done @Jebadoo2 @HJoyceGender @AllianceLGB in articulating how the conversion practices bill is a dangerous piece of legislation.
No parent should be locked up for not wanting trans ideology to harm their child!
Axe the bill!
Jill Collier 🟥 retweeted
Monkeys from #mauritius have endured a transport ordeal lasting 31 hours. The long-tailed macaques were transported by Awesome cargo to Miami @iflymia. This is a relentless & inhumane trade in sentient beings by the research & toxicity testing industry. tinyurl.com/ytbuzrh8
ALT Images taken from an earlier transport - and provided to Action for Primates - show the heartbreaking plight of monkeys imprisoned inside wooden crates being loaded onto trucks at Miami International Airport.
ALT Long-tailed macaque in transit crate, Brussels Airport 2024; Animal Rights