Kat the cat sitter (she/her)💜🌈

Laughed so much it triggered an asthma attack 🤣 🤣

@saniyafatma1278 That is an absolutely perfect name for him!

The cat distribution centre has given me a hulk of a boy. I wasn't looking, I've just moved in, I've just separated and I'm busy learning to be single again. Then he appeared, I stroked him, then named him.. I have another heartbeat in my life. Yes hes been to the vets, no chip and not been neutered. Appointments booked for both. Meet Vincent, Vinny for short.

@eldradmvstlive She looks great, but nothing compared to this guy 30 years on

Over three decades apart is crazyyyy

As a GP, I am not allowed to receive a pen or post-it note pad from a pharmaceutical company rep Govt banned them in case I was influenced to prescribe medications This should also be banned Influence is being bought in Govt Patients should influence not the healthy & wealthy

@cam_cannon @Mr_Husky1 My kids also swapped the f for th! I think it may be because I was determined they didn't pronounce th as f, so they just thigured 😉 that rule always applied! Probably the best one was 'thingers'

@Mr_Husky1 Pictured: a KNITHE.

Admit it: Your kid mispronounced a word three years ago and now the whole family says it that way. What's the word in your house? (We still say 'pasketti' and I’m not stopping anytime soon.)

@Mr_Husky1 Not a mispronunciation, just a word he made up, but my brother called a VW Beetle a 'Miegelbing' in 1976 (approx). It is still a Miegelbing (miegel rhymes with eagle, but definitely has to be spelt the German way!)

I can no longer hold my tongue seeing the utter lies being spread about Britain, our history of migration, and how this country was built into what it is today. For those so deeply buried in fake news, manufactured outrage and billionaire‑funded propaganda, I’m going to lay out the truth – and exactly why you’re being fed all this poison. Britain was never a sealed white island. From Roman times there were African soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and living in British towns, people from across the empire walking these roads nearly 2,000 years ago. Through the Middle Ages and Tudor England you still find Black people in the records – sailors, craftsmen, servants, musicians – even Black musicians at the royal court and Africans being baptised, marrying and being buried in English parishes like anyone else. This isn’t some modern experiment; it’s older than half the castles people visit on their bank‑holiday tours. As Britain went out into the world, the world came here. Sailors and traders from India, Yemen and beyond were arriving in British ports from the 1600s. Some of those men were practising a new faith to most Britons at the time, praying quietly in boarding houses near the docks while they worked brutal shifts in the engine rooms of British ships. Over the centuries, more people from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia passed through and settled, bringing their languages, foods and beliefs into port cities that were far more mixed than today’s nostalgia merchants like to admit. After two world wars, the truth is simple: this country asked the Commonwealth to come and rebuild it. People from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia didn’t sneak in; they were recruited. They came to drive buses and trains, staff the NHS, work in mills and foundries, clean offices, run corner shops, open takeaways and small businesses, and yes, build prayer spaces and community centres alongside churches and temples in the neighbourhoods everyone now pretends were always “traditional” and “unchanged”. They did the work that kept Britain going while being told to go home, refused housing, and treated as permanent outsiders. And what have they been paid back with? Scandals where people who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades get told they don’t belong. Policies designed to make life so hostile that some give up and leave. A media that uses their names, accents, clothes or places of worship as props in endless scare stories. The message is always the same: you might toil for this country, but you will never fully be of it. So when you hear that “Britain was white until recently” or that the country has been “overrun”, understand that you don’t arrive at that belief by accident. You get there because your history has been deliberately ripped out and replaced with a comforting myth: that “real” Britain is white, homogenous, and constantly under siege from people who look, speak or pray differently. Now look at when this myth has been turned up to max volume. Wages frozen. Housing a sick joke. Energy and food prices out of control. Public services hacked to pieces. At the same time, the number of people hoarding unimaginable wealth at the top has exploded. Funny, isn’t it, how every front page is about boats and “swarms” and “our culture”, and almost never about the landlords, hedge funds, private equity and offshore trusts quietly buying up your city and your future. That’s because this isn’t just prejudice; it’s a strategy. If you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth, the last thing you want is ordinary people – of every colour and background – realising they have the same problems and the same enemy. Much safer if the factory worker is furious at the new family down the road. Much safer if the person who can’t see a doctor blames the nurse with an accent instead of the minister who cut the funding. Much safer if a man who can’t afford his rent spends his rage on the woman in a headscarf at the bus stop instead of the billionaire who owns half his city. Racist rhetoric, religious dog‑whistling, all of it, exists to break solidarity. It turns neighbours into enemies and stops people seeing that Black, brown and white working‑class communities have far more in common with each other than any of them will ever have with the people flying in on private jets. It keeps you so busy policing skin colour, passports and prayer mats that you never get round to asking why your kids can’t afford a home, why your parents can’t get a hospital bed, why you’re working harder and standing still. The real story of Britain is this: a crossroads, not a fortress. Africans on Hadrian’s Wall. Black people in Tudor courts and city streets. Sailors, traders and workers from South Asia, the Middle East and beyond in the ports. Caribbean, African and Asian workers rebuilding the country after the war, staffing surgeries and hospitals, driving cabs, running shops, cooking food, teaching kids. Today’s multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith working class is not a glitch; it is Britain. It built this place and it keeps it running. If you’re genuinely angry about what’s happening to this country, good. You should be. But aim it where it belongs. Britain was never pure, never untouched, never “theirs” to take back. The people ruining your standard of living are not the ones risking their lives to get here, or the ones whose names you struggle to pronounce. They’re the ones buying politicians, owning media outlets, writing the story of this country so you never learn your own – and never realise who is standing beside you.

@dontforgetchaos He's doing great, nobody has ever won the same war 12 times before! 😂

Wow. 12 times this week. Impressive.

@redheadranting Bopping someone with a wrapping paper tube & clicking tongs

Is there any human equivalent to cats and boxes? Is there something that as humans we simply cannot resist or are programmed to do without thought or consideration? All I can think of is drawing penises on fogged up windows.

@AzPetrich I did wonder of this was what 'the massive gift' from Iran was alluding to! (I know not a gift from them, but Mango's take on his own profiteering from it)

Oh, and another thing - The President of the United States is committing insider trading while manipulating the stock market and should be arrested immediately.

@DocEmUK I found out recently that referrals to specialists are now being basically scrapped! You have to email them- hopefully with everything the pt wants to tell them - then they tell you what to try next! Sounds like a worse deal for patients and GPs!

I’ve been doing this GP malarkey for nearly 20y now. It struck me today that the only way I can carry on practising the way I used to is if I do it at my own personal expense. It never used to be like this - there was enough time in the day for bereavement visits, wellbeing checks, proactive care, time with colleagues to discuss patients & build relationships. General practice today is decision making at the same speed as a shoot-em-up game. Today was just me for 55 same day requests for appointments, clinical supervision of three members of staff, medical student education, paramedic education and all routine needs for a population of 1250 patients. We’re fortunate to have personal lists - though the new contract doesn’t value the continuity at all - and that matters to me deeply. Leaving work at 7, I decided to pop in to a patient of mine that I’ve known for 14y. In their 80s, they’ve just had joint replacement surgery and are having a bit of a wobble. We had a chat, they felt better, we have a plan & I’ll check in next week. This is the kind of GP I want to be. My day would have been less frantic, I’d have eaten/urinated at a sensible time, and I’d would have been less snappy with the children whom I saw briefly before bed if there hadn’t been so much nonsense crowding my day: 25 mins on hold trying to get through to a specialist (and failing), an insurance company slyly demanding a conversation with me about a non-urgent issue because it saves them money, dealing with consequences of private tests not requested by me but with the inevitable ‘see your GP’ as disposition, missing discharge medication, delayed follow-up, inappropriate ‘GP to’ as the heart failure team have a waiting list - and much more. Commissioning gaps, poor clinical pathway planning, govt targets on access over quality, media perpetuation of entitlement over responsibility and disproportionate investment & expansion of specialists over general practice have caused this. This is not ‘part time’ GP working - as a partner that’s never a thing. This is expectations from everywhere without resourcing to match. We want to deliver the things we did 20y ago - that’s why we went into this. If you want your family doctor back then you need to support us - because we want to be that too. I’m a GP, but also a Mum, wife and daughter of aged parents. I can’t do this at my own expense any more, and nor should I have to. Arguments of laziness and greed always abound, but really what we need is a properly resourced service. Please stand with us - a fight is coming.

@MonkEmma Some of the old packaging was gorgeous. Can we at least blame Muslims for that changing? If not, then maybe Kier Starmer's govt? 😉

🧵And we're off, ladies and gentlemen! It's "they're banning the word EASTER" week. Regular as clockwork... So here comes a history lesson and media lesson all rolled into one thread! PS, I can't believe there's no easter egg emoji? This was the best I could do - 🗿🥚 🤣 I digress! 1/19

@MonkEmma This is actually a great idea!

Second aside... No, Cadbury's did not make a Halal Eid Egg and stock it in Asda in Stoke! It was Satire, which worked so well that Full Fact had to do an official fact check! People really will believe any old nonsense! 16/

Here it is, my annual reminder: don't spray spring dandelions with roundup. One flower can be visited by 100+ bees, and your chemical bullshit will kill all of them. If you hate dandelions so much, just pull them. Or leave them alone. It's not like they're going to shank you as you walk by.

@StevenFryerz9 Incredible photo! I've never seen an adder, though I've definitely been in areas they inhabit. Maybe I should start going closer to their bedtime?

"Fangtastic" Every now and then you get an image that just wows yourself, found another adder on my way to photograph Dippers and as it was basking in the sun it yawned 😮 couldn't believe my luck, all day I've being saying to myself "I can't believe I've just got that shot"

@dontforgetchaos My local page, under a comment someone made about the sky looking nice

Oh the Chemtrail nuts are out in force today. Go on, learn a bit of physics, chemistry & a smattering of metrology. I dare you.

@1StevieKilner Funnily enough, I was just thinking about how I need a photo of a cat called Gerald, and that it would be perfect if he was directing wheelbarrow work

If anyone would like to see a photo of a cat called Gerald taking charge of Saturday morning wheelbarrow duties, this is your lucky day. #Caturday

@MadelaineLucyH My daughter's best friends are Muslim. They don't expect her to fast when they are, but she does her best to eat before/after seeing them when poss. She's learnt lots from them & they've learnt from her about Catholic traditions from primary school (confession surprised them!)

My best friend is Muslim, and she has been fasting. I’m not a Muslim, and I don’t. We joke about it. She’s going to a white CoE funeral, and calls me to ask what the norms are and what to wear and say. This summer, I’ll be going to a family wedding with her and asking the same. Because that’s integration. That’s how you build a society that works. We don’t all have to be the same. We just need to have policies that allow for proper mixing and insight.

OK, I am bored with this lie now. Here are the facts. - Abortion remains illegal after 24 weeks gestation except in certain rare and exceptional circumstances - Supplying pills to terminate a pregnancy remains illegal after 10 weeks gestation - Abortion still requires two doctors' signatures to be performed legally - Women seeking terminations must still meet one of the criteria set out in the 1967 Abortion Act - Forced abortion remains a crime - Anyone, including medical professionals, who helps a woman obtain an abortion outside the law is liable for prosecution. In short, "abortion up to birth" HAS NOT been legalised. What the new law does is prevent women from being criminalised for ending their own pregnancies without medical help - a hugely risky practice that women only do if they are desperate. Parliament recognises that these women need care and support, not draconian punishment. Importantly, the new law also protects women who have suffered late miscarriages or stillbirths from being prosecuted for their loss and potentially spending years in jail for what is a tragedy, not a crime. bills.parliament.uk/publications/5…

@Frances_Coppola Thank you. This was something I wanted to look into, to find the truth behind the headline, but just haven't had the chance or mental energy!