Ann Stuart-Heath
10.9K posts

Ann Stuart-Heath
@Jasbeh
Retired but still rescuing dogs. š„° Love my country. ā„ļø Never be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone. š¬š§
North East Coast, England Se unió Ocak 2011
1.7K Siguiendo1.5K Seguidores

@NimraShahzadin Nothing she could buy from a shop or a designer could ever hold and speak love like this dress does. Every careful stitch came direct from the heart. It's a shame the mother in law is so blind.
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My daughter's getting married in three months and her future mother-in-law keeps making comments about my "homemade" dress. When my daughter asked me to crochet her wedding dress, I was terrified but honored. Her fiance's mother has been dropping hints about "real" wedding dresses from "actual" bridal shops, like what I'm making isn't legitimate somehow. She keeps asking if we have a "backup plan" in case my dress doesn't work out. I've been working on this for eight months. The pattern came from a master crocheter on the Tedooo app who's made dozens of bridal gowns. Every thread was chosen carefully, every stitch counted twice, every measurement checked and rechecked. This isn't some craft project - it's a work of art. The train alone took six weeks to complete. Those pineapple motifs at the bottom? Each one represents hours of concentration and love. The fitted bodice required me to learn techniques I'd never attempted before, but I was determined to make something worthy of her special day. Yesterday my daughter had her final fitting and started crying when she saw herself in the mirror. "Mom, it's the most beautiful dress I've ever seen." She's going to surprise everyone at that church, especially her future mother-in-law. I can't wait to see the look on everyone's faces when she walks down that aisle.

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@Amelia558rs Ahh, I remember when I had a bag full of them. I used to hang it on the washing line and pull it along while I hung the clothes out.
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@WorkElizab I dont believe you're even serious. This is a prank post.
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@james_xond You mean as a paid employee? Absolutely. As admin staff for 30yrs in the NHS. 55+hr a week happen every week, 52 unpaid weeks a week per year if you're a mam, a carer etc.
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Ann Stuart-Heath retuiteado

Dear @BBCNews,
You are the BRITISH national broadcaster. We fund your existence, and we expect you to speak for the BRITISH people.
Britain is not a Sharia state.
Britain is not ātoo dog friendly.ā
Britain is a nation of dog-lovers.
Remember who you represent.
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@gofishh77 Get your fecking dog off that chain, you cruel barsteward 𤬠The wrong one's chained up!
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@davestokes66 @JamieSAFC_ You don't know what a paedophile is if you think Johnson is one. Look it up, and then look up the age of the young lass he met. He's a scumbag and didn't get long enough in prison for my liking, but he's not a paedophile.
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@JamieSAFC_ Didn't Sunderland once employ paedophile football Adam Johnson?
Now they're attacking someone who objects to child rapists being allowed into Britain.
What kind of people are these Sunderland fans exactly? Mistakenly think they're morally better than everyone else
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@AdamFulwell_ @JuanSartoriUY "A socialist & trade union football club"
What? It's a FOOTBALL CLUB, there's nothing socialist or trade union about it. Is this because there's a miners banner displayed on one of the staircases? I've never heard anything more bizzare in my 61yrs of support.
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Disgraceful and distasteful from a director (@JuanSartoriUY) whoās clearly barely spent any actual time in the region to know this is a massive slap in the face.
A socialist and trade union football club being used to peddle some political bullshit is shameful. Reconsider.
ITVPolitics@ITVNewsPolitics
Nigel Farage offered Sunderland Stadium of Light visit by club director ITV News Political Correspondent @harry_horton reports: itv.com/news/2026-03-2ā¦
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@SummersidePaul @Philip_RJ89 Whats happened is the worm trying to use the club for his platform ? Hopefully they will see sense and dont entertain his advances.
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No to Nigel Farage. No to intolerance, bigotry and hatred ā and no to Reformās Trumpian poison.
All in Sunderlandās hands. Letās hope they see sense and do the right thing. There should be ZERO association with that man at our club.
#SAFC
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Ann Stuart-Heath retuiteado

@ALS_Fanzine That's so true. One thing I don't believe has been mentioned tho, for some obscure reason some of us had our BCP's emptied from our accounts. The club had no idea why this happened and made no attempt to rectify the problem. That's us unable to go to an away game again.
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WHAT PRICE LOYALTY?
BY SLEEPY_G
That derby win on Sunday was mental, wasnāt it? ⦠celebrating that Brobbey winner with your mates, going nuts at full-time, and watching the crazy scenes in the away end on TV. But for around 60 of our fans that joy was tempered with the feeling of, āhang on, I should be in there, right amongst that lotā. And they should ā they had the points and theyād done the miles.
These people had qualified for tickets, many in phase one (70+ points). Those tickets were purchased and assigned to their SAFC ticket account within 24 hours of going on sale... right until the club then unceremoniously removed them without notice or reasoning given.
Itās worth revisiting that again. Some of our most hardcore fans, whoāve acquired points by attending a high number of aways (in some case every away match) across the preceding three seasons and likely before, had their tickets, for our first visit to the landfill in ten years, removed from their accounts without explanation. The club responded to the understandable complaints by saying they were āinvestigating widespread misuseā of the away ticketing system. No timescale or further explanation was offered, they werenāt told if they themselves were being accused of āmisuseā, or why the club felt it appropriate to give out such a draconian punishment.
They were told (perversely) that they could apply again for the same tickets when they went back on sale! Unsurprisingly, only two fans were able to achieve that. The club could have undertaken this investigation after the Mags game with four weeks till the next away game. Doing it just seven days before the derby smacks of proving a point at the expense of these fans.
Some will read this and the mention of away tickets will already have them on their haunches, ready to pile in. Away tickets in the PL have been like rocking horse shit for almost every match. General sale never happens and those with a relatively small no of BCPās are not even getting close.
If youāre well down the loyalty list, with little chance of stepping up it, youāll feel itās an unfair system, and itās not difficult to see why. If you then find out people have passed tickets to their mates, whilst also retaining their own loyalty point, itās not going to make you feel any better about it.
No system is ever perfect and itās entirely reasonable that the club should try and make it fair and equitable for all. However, itās likely that whatever approach the club takes when it comes their away ticketing process, they will get derision by those on the wrong side of it. And hereās the other unfortunate truth, fans will always pass tickets onto fellow fans. It might be their mates or family, but sometimes, if circumstances demand, theyāll sell on at face value to a fan theyāve never met before. Iāve benefited from it myself, and so have many thousands more⦠standing outside away ends on a wing and a prayer, hoping to catch lucky from someone who made a promise that you hope theyāll come good on.
I hadnāt qualified for tickets for those games because I wasnāt a season ticket holder at the time. It didnāt matter that I had been one, at both Roker Park and the SoL, or that Iād been to a substantial number of homes and away games since 1975. I knew the rules, understood them, resented them⦠but struggled to see a better approach. I had to look towards fellow fans, and keep my fingers crossed. That optimism has sometimes paid me back, and Iāve always ensured Iāve made the same gesture back when circumstances dictated.
This season the club had warned fans against passing tickets onto others and checks had been put in place, which was fair warning. If Iāve been informed correctly, three of such transgressions were discovered at Leeds and they all came from the same supportersā branch, so the branch secretary was asked to explain. The response from the club to his honest response was him being given a ban from away matches across three seasons and home matches for the rest of this season; whilst the 60+ others were then (presumably) considered guilty by association.
However, this hardline, some would say brutal, position the club has taken actually creates more questions than it answers, and I canāt imagine thereās a single supporter who wonāt be questioning what it now means to them, for both away and home fixtures. Under what circumstances can you pass a ticket on? What happens if, at last minute (as happened to me last season), you have a family crisis and you canāt make the game. Youāre likely gutted, out of pocket because of travel, etc. and the real kick in the balls is if you canāt get a penny back on the ticket, even if thereās a long queue of potential purchasers desperate to see the club they love and snap your hand off.
Will similar sanctions be taken in every instance? If you do cross that line, whatever your logic and reasoning, will you suddenly find out that a ticket purchased legitimately has been removed without notice? Or will you face a much-longer ban? Whatās more, if the current system is deemed to be unfair to those wanting to do more aways in future, but who do not have the necessary points, what are club doing about it? Will they run a ballot for those with not enough points in phase1 and if they do, which segment of fans are most likely to miss out?
Perhaps even more importantly is why now, and how does it affect fans relationship with the club going forward, particularly in relation to our Supporters Branches? Is this the clubās doing entirely, or are the PL standing over us? Letās remember, digital tickets and tightening up on who is attending, and on what basis, is now becoming the norm in the PL. Man City are installing cameras at all turnstiles with a view to introducing a facial recognition system as you see at airports.
Another thing seen at other PL clubs is the disregard for Supporters Branches. They are seen by some as archaic and full of fans whoāve done the away trips by coach with their mates for many years, but ask awkward questions at liaison meetings, and spend more money on pints than merchandising. The Glazers were quick to target even long-standing supporterās clubs as an unnecessary irritant when they purchased Man United and itās taken a long battle to establish a Supporters Trust with over 200k members.
In the case of this particular supporterās branch, they donāt run coaches. They organise train travel, to the point where they are (well, were) LNERās biggest non-business customer and as such were able to negotiate discounted tickets, significantly lowering the cost for those making long trips across the country. Whatās in it for LNER? Well, theyāve got one block booking, all in 1 or 2 carriages. No worries about railcards or the general public complaining about the lads with the cans arguing over the merits of 4-3-3.
British Transport Police also like this arrangement as this large group of fans are entering and existing stations en-masse, at the same time. Speaking of the police, isnāt our fans base one of the best behaved in the country? You rarely see bother, no matter how many aways fans we meet on our journeys... so we must be doing something right.
Itās very easy for a business the size of SAFC to take the corporate approach, point at the T&Cs and decide itās necessary to take a hammer to crack a nut when those pesky fans havenāt followed the rules.
But our ticket office havenāt exactly covered themselves in glory in the past, and Iād argue that sometimes the DIY approach of our fans in moving tickets on is done by necessity as much as anything else. It is ridiculously difficult to get a call answered, whilst emails (or the frequent waste of time that is the āask.SAFCā function) are often ignored. Getting the paying punter in through the door should the priority task for any business but they make it unnecessarily difficult for people simply wanting to come and watch the team.
The whole saga described above must have been damaging to the club. Many fans, even if not affected directly, cannot believe how they have removed such sought-after tickets, from clearly the loyalist fand on a whim and without any meaningful rationale offered. Theyāre even more appalled when they realise the sanction taken against that one particular supporter - who is not only one of the nicest, easy-going men youāll ever meet - but who has single-handedly ensured hundreds of our fans have been able to get to games over many years, as well as supporting them in numerous other ways.
And never for personal gain (worth highlighting here that is absolutely zero suggestion anywhere of anyone profiting from other fans, cos it doesnāt happen) - but always because itās what heās done for such a long time (heās also, absurdly, assisted the club often in getting tickets sold at short notice when theyāve cocked up, or finding a spare for them when a photo opportunity cropped up with an overseas supporter).
Weāve all been enthused by marketing teams work in the last few years⦠ācommunityā⦠āconnectionā⦠āweāre nothing without our fansā⦠āfans are the lifeblood of the clubā⦠our players praising the vocal away support, etc. But the marketing-speak means nothing unless itās backed-up day-to-day interactions with match-going fans. Showing distain and disregard for fans at any point is never a good look, whatever league youāre in.
The issue of fairness when demand far outstrips supply isnāt unique to SAFC. Thereās no magic fix and there will always be winners and losers. The club are 100% right in closely monitoring where and how away tickets are used, but they also need to be pragmatic, have processes that are fair, understandable and consistent - and if sanctions are taken, to ensure they are appropriate and proportionate.
Those 60 fans will never get the moments they missed on Sunday back. The day has been and gone and future memories of will also have the postscript of āoh yeah, I wasnāt there because the club took an unreasonable, over-zealous action to unfairly ban meā
If the powers that be at SAFC are serious about fairness and connection, they need to get hold of this quickly. The dismay of many will have been tempered by the result but the bigger picture canāt be ignored. They need to ensure the fine words in the words from on-high, match the actions taken in the day-to-day fundamentals. The fan who has been banned needs bringing back into the fold and the club need to ensure the ridiculous action taken against the others is never repeated.
And most importantly they need a proper review of the away tickets process, where supportersā branches fit into that equation, and to sort their own internal processes out into the bargain. Contact with the club needs to be much easier and supporters queries should be responded to much quicker. They need to consider how to move the bottlenecks and obstacles for all fans in obtaining tickets, home and away, not as a nice-to-have but because itās good business sense.
Perhaps they need to think of a better āmembershipā scheme than we currently have, goodness knows how many unused membership numbers there are out there. The only way this debacle can be a good thing is if the club works with fans to ensure such nonsense never happens again, and that future actions are consistent with the values and culture it wishes to engender.
Over to you, KLD and all before more of our most loyal fans are ostracised.

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Ann Stuart-Heath retuiteado

Journalist Yasmin @y_alibhai Brown has penned an article & comments "This column will be pounced on by racists, but I have to write it," & adds "Racism is flooding the lives of Muslims like me."
She's is most critical of Nick @NJ_Timothy's criticism of the Trafalgar Square open praying. Many see it as an arrogant sign of dominance.
Well Yasmin did you not say in 2006 on BBC Worldās Dateline of white men: āI donāt like them. I want them to be a lost species in a hundred years."
Your racism aside, 500,000 white, working-class British girls were groomed by mainly Muslim men, while 98% of all terrorist deaths of Britons from 2000 have been perpetrated by Islamists.
Much of the problem is the whining cry-bully mentality, & you are always play the victim.
British people are not racist by instinct, it is learnt from reading the news.

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