Cheryl Barrott

When patients consistently feel the need to self-diagnose, it’s a signal that the system isn’t adequately recognizing or organizing their illness. We shouldn’t force a behavior due to an unmet need, then focus on the behavior without addressing the trigger. That’s old hat.

Dr William Weir on how the influence of Simon Wessely and his colleagues created an overriding tendency among doctors to insist that #MECFS is a psychological disorder. Clip from @hope4mefibroni Collaboration for Change 2026

#MECFS patients and advocates not only had to fight flawed research and harmful treatments, they also had to deal with attempts to discredit them, like a PACE author calling an MP “unbecoming” and accusing MPs of defamation and libellous comments for scrutinising his work.

They are all talking about the middle class because none of them know how the working class live. Working class boomers didnt go to University. This is a generation war amongst the middle class who all feel entitled to granny's bank account.

1,600 years of Worship in one spot! Happy St Patricks day from the Templar Magdalene Chapel, Ireland. Built from the very stones laid down by St Patrick HIMSELF in AD 430! Erin go Bragh

🇯🇵 Many St. Patrick's Day festivals in Tokyo over the weekend. Any Irish followers? These guys doing these tunes justice?

Two British men built the machine that changed the world. 🇬🇧⚙️ An ironmonger. And a plumber. You've never heard of either of them. 1690s. Britain's mines were drowning. The deeper they went, the more they flooded. Men drowned in those tunnels. Children hauled water out by hand. Bucket by bucket. When the water won, the mine closed. And the village starved. Thomas Newcomen. Ironmonger. Dartmouth, Devon. John Calley. Plumber and glazier. Both Baptists. Both barred from the universities. Both outsiders. One knew metal. The other knew water. They worked for a decade. With their own money. No patron. No institution. Just a forge, a bench, and an idea. For years, it wouldn't work. Then cold water leaked through a crack. The steam condensed instantly. The engine fired. The flaw was the answer. 1712. A coal mine near Dudley Castle. They built their engine at the pit head. Twelve strokes a minute. Ten gallons a stroke. Not horses. Not children. A machine. But they couldn't patent it. Thomas Savery already held the rights — to every engine that raised water by fire. Even machines he never built. Calley died in Holland. 1725. Far from home. Still working on their engine. Newcomen died in London. 1729. His grave is lost. Decades later, a young man was asked to fix a model of their engine. While fixing it, he saw how to improve it. His name was James Watt. You've heard of him. But without them, there is no engine for Watt to fix. No Industrial Revolution. No modern world. Every factory. Every railway. Every power station. British men. An ironmonger. And a plumber. And that's only a fraction of what we have done for the world. 🇬🇧 Names like theirs are buried everywhere. We dig them out. No sponsors. No algorithms. Just a community that believes its true history matters. Our community makes that happen 👉 proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us.🙏 Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Britain called her a housewife. 📰   She’d mapped the molecule that saved the war.   Dorothy Hodgkin’s hands were destroying themselves. Rheumatoid arthritis twisting every joint, locking every finger. The instruments she needed were the size of pins.   She kept working. 🔬   1945. Soldiers dying of infected wounds. Penicillin could save them — but no one knew its molecular shape. Without that, you can’t mass-produce the drug.   Hodgkin mapped it. Seventeen atoms. Four years. With hands that could barely hold the equipment.   Penicillin went into mass production. Millions survived. 🌍   Then she went bigger. Vitamin B12. A hundred and eighty-one atoms. The most complex molecule ever mapped at the time. Eight years. They said it couldn’t be done.   She did it anyway.   1964. Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 🏆 The only British woman ever to win a science Nobel.   The Daily Mail headline? “Oxford housewife wins Nobel.”   She’d solved the molecule that saved the war. Cracked the one they said was impossible. And they called her a housewife.   But she wasn’t finished. Insulin. Seven hundred and eighty-eight atoms. She started in 1935. Finished in 1969. Thirty-four years. By the end, her hands were almost useless. ❤️   She taught at Oxford for half a century. One of her students was a young chemist named Margaret Roberts. Who became Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher hung Dorothy’s portrait in Downing Street.   Every antibiotic you’ve ever taken. Every insulin injection. Every life saved by understanding the shape of a molecule. That traces back to a woman whose hands were failing her, and who never stopped.   Stories like hers get buried. We put them in front of millions.   Help us keep these stories alive → proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us.   Be proud of us. 🙏🇬🇧

New official figures disprove claims that social security spending is ‘spiralling out of control’ #SpringStatement @MelJStride @RachelReevesMP @SpinDecoder @RITB_ disabilitynewsservice.com/new-official-f…

🇬🇧 Magna Carta had a twin. It was law for 754 years. You've never heard of it. After 1066, the Normans claimed the forests of England. Not just the trees... Villages, farmland, rivers. One third of the country. Land ordinary people had farmed for centuries. Taken. Hunt a deer to feed your family? They blinded you. Cut down a tree to heat your home? They took your hands. 1215. The barons forced King John to sign Magna Carta. The most famous document in English history. But Magna Carta was for the barons. Not for the people in the forests. Two years later. 1217. A second charter was sealed. The Charter of the Forest. This one was for everyone. The right to gather firewood. The right to graze your animals. The right to fish the streams. No more blinding. No more mutilation. For gathering wood. For the first time in English law, ordinary people had rights to the land. Not given by the king. Taken from him. 754 years. It was law until 1971. Every common in England. Every village green. Every right of way. The idea that land belongs to everyone... It started here. 🇬🇧 They taught you Magna Carta. They never taught you this. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Dirty Business has made it crystal clear - it's just UNACCEPTABLE for our water to be run for profit for shareholders and creditors In public ownership, Thames Water could be accountable to households, workers, anti sewage groups, local councillors 👇 weownit.org.uk/blog/what-coul…

“At 4 years old, children do not control their attendance. Illness, medical appointments, disabilities, special educational needs, and family circumstances are outside their control. Yet they are being made to feel punished for it.” birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/…

👁️Home Secretary: "My ultimate vision was to achieve...a panopticon" where “the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.” George Orwell: 1984 was a warning, not a manual Here's why you should worry about the Government's plans for mass facial recognition expansion ⤵️

But the LCP hasn’t stopped has it! @Keir_Starmer @BrexitStewart @UKHouseofLords @HouseofCommons @UKParliament @10DowningStreet @WAlladin1 @ukmfa1 @EthicalApproach @TheGreenParty @keepnhshonest @DearCoroner @CareWatchdog c.org/WGffbP95Br

The government’s own social security advisers have warned a minister he may need to do more to “shift entrenched concerns” among disabled claimants that they could lose their disability benefits if they take steps towards paid work. #DWP disabilitynewsservice.com/governments-ad…

Patients need more GPs, not slogans about “front doors”. Once inflation and rising staff costs are stripped out, £485m shrinks fast barely meaningful per patient. Meanwhile workloads rise under a top-down contract. The NHS needs real capacity, not spin.

"Half the welfare budget is spent on in-work benefits. That is a direct subsidy for low wages, so the corporations can get higher profits” – Eddie Dempsey at the @DurhamGala. Hear more from Eddie @RedhillsDurham tonight. Doors open 6.30pm. Tickets: buytickets.at/marras/2064884

Let’s swap the jargon for the truth. When "safe staffing" is really one nurse covering a whole corridor, the language stops reflecting the reality of care. What’s happening in your Trust right now? Share your testimony securely and anonymously: whistleblowersoftware.com/secure/everydo…

NHS JOBS HAVE RELEASED AN ADVERT FOR PHYSICIAN ASSISTANTS TO WORK ON REGISTRAR DR ROTAS AT THE ROYAL MARSDEN HOSPITAL . EXPERIENCE WORKING IN ONCOLOGY-DESIRABLE PAS HAVE NO MEDICAL QUALIFICATIONS IS THIS WHAT #CANCER PTS DESERVE @wesstreeting @Keir_Starmer ?

Judging by the 12 members they've chosen it does not look promising... Charities warn Labour’s PIP review must ‘earn the trust’ of disabled people #TimmsReview aol.co.uk/articles/chari…