Co Director @labtowin. Labour NEC. Progressive Britian. Anti Brexit. Yorkshire Bylines. Devolutionist. Climate denyers = idiots. Views own - a few borrowed.
Yorkshire
Joined July 2009
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Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
For all the trials and tribulations that come with serving as Members of Parliament: family comes first.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
In September 1994, a 23-year-old teacher named Erin Gruwell walked into Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach. What she found was a classroom of freshmen who had been placed in the lowest-track classes and labeled “at-risk.” Many could barely read at an elementary level. The administration warned her not to waste resources on students who probably would not graduate.
Her first day was a struggle. Some students ignored her, others walked out, and a few threw books. Erin started paying attention to what they were going through. One incident changed her approach. A student passed around a racist drawing. Erin stopped the lesson and asked how many had ever been shot at. Every hand went up. She asked how many had lost friends to violence. Every hand stayed raised.
She abandoned the standard curriculum and brought *The Diary of Anne Frank* into the classroom. She invited Holocaust survivors to speak. Then she gave each student a journal. No grades, no red marks. Just a place to write honestly about their lives. At first many pages stayed blank. Gradually they began to write about violence, loss, and survival. As they shared, the hostility in the room began to weaken.
The school would not fund field trips or better books. Erin took on three jobs and paid for them herself. By senior year all 150 students were on track to graduate. Their journals became a book, *The Freedom Writers Diary*, published in 1999. In 2007 the story became the film *Freedom Writers*.
Many of the students went on to college, some becoming the first in their families to do so. Erin founded the Freedom Writers Foundation to help other teachers use writing and storytelling. When she walked into that classroom she was a first-year teacher facing students the school had largely given up on. She gave them journals and refused to accept that being labeled “at-risk” meant they could not succeed.
Hey @W_H_Smith I think you'll find David Nicholls is a bloke. Its not as if we are short of brilliant women writers.....
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 27% (+3)
CON: 23% (=)
RFM: 22% (+1)
LDM: 11% (-1)
GRN: 10% (-1)
RES: 3% (+1)
SNP: 2% (-1)
Via @YouGov, 18-19 Oct.
Changes w/ 11-12 Oct.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
I've lost count of the number of constituents who have been penalised by private providers for not paying for parking within a few minutes.
New rules today mean you'll get a guaranteed 5 minutes to decide whether to park and 10 minutes to leave without facing a penalty!
buff.ly/I7P3wRs
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
There is no other material on earth that can do what a fleece does, and it grows on an animal that eats grass.
It keeps a sheep alive on a Welsh hill in February, in sleet, with no shelter.
It keeps a Bedouin cool in the Sahara in August.
It keeps a person warm when it is soaked through, which is why mountaineers wore it to the top of Everest.
It will not burn. Put a match to it and it chars and goes out, which is why it lines aircraft seats and theatre curtains.
It absorbs a third of its weight in sweat and gives off heat while it does it.
It blocks the sun. A wool shirt has the ultraviolet rating of a decent sunscreen.
It does not smell. The surface stays too dry for the bacteria that make a shirt stink.
It stretches a third of its length and springs back, so a sock holds its shape for years.
It stops sound. Recording studios and classrooms line the walls with it.
It stops cold in a loft as well as fibreglass does, without the itch.
It soaks up oil, which is why the mats laid on spills are made of it.
It dyes deeper than anything, which is why a Persian rug is still red after 300 years.
It felts into a tent that a Mongolian family lives in through a minus 40 winter.
And when it finally wears out, it rots into fertiliser, and the next sheep eats the grass it grew.
Every one of those jobs now has a synthetic doing it worse.
The sheep had all of them covered before the chemist was born, and it does it again every spring for nothing.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
Great chat with Minister Stephen Timms MP, Steve Darling MP and Chloe Schendel-Wilson (Co-Founder and Director of the Disability Policy Centre) to discuss the Access to Work scheme.
In 2009, I was hit by a sudden onset neurological illness called POEMS Syndrome. That is when I first learned about and subsequently benefitted from the scheme.
Access to Work is a publicly funded employment scheme that helps disabled people start or stay in work by offering workplace equipment, money towards travel if public transport is inaccessible or an interpreter or support worker.
New research shows that without the scheme it is estimated that up to 50,000 disabled people could find themselves out of work.
I am calling on the government to back the scheme with more funding, faster processing and much greater visibility.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
Proud to confirm the national rollout of the Victim Transformation Programme.
Domestic abuse victims will now have a dedicated victim liaison officer supporting them from charge to trial.
When I said I would put victims at the heart of our criminal justice system, I meant it.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
As Attorney General, I want to build a justice system that works for victims.
Today I confirmed the national rollout of the Victim Transformation Programme - giving every domestic abuse victim a dedicated liaison officer, for better support from charge to trial.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
In June 2014 the future King of England dug a hole in a flowerbed at his London home and buried two jumpers. Four months later he dug them up again.
They looked identical. One was pure merino wool. The other was a synthetic copy. Charles had them laid side by side in the soil at Clarence House in front of an audience, marked the spot, and left them there over the summer.
In October the soil was turned back. The synthetic jumper came out whole. It was clean, white and untouched, as if it had gone in that morning. The wool one was a few threads clinging to the wire frame. The rest had rotted away and fed the roses.
He had done another test the day before the burial. A wool jacket and a synthetic one were each set alight. The wool smouldered and went out. The synthetic went up like a torch.
For 40 years this man was laughed at. He talked to his plants. He worried about soil. He wore the same patched tweed coat for decades. In 2004 he launched a campaign to get the British eating mutton again, on the grounds that an older sheep tastes better and gives the hill farmer something to sell. In 2010 he launched another, for wool, from a medieval barn, because the price of a fleece had fallen below the cost of shearing it.
He was treated as an eccentric with too much land.
Go back over that list. Soil, wool, mutton, old cloth that lasts, small farms, raw milk cheese. Every one of the causes he was mocked for has turned out to be right.
He proved the simplest of them with a spade. One jumper went back to the earth, and the other will still be there when he is not.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
FUN FACT: Rep. Ilhan Omar has been a citizen longer than Melania trump AND Elon Musk.
I stand with Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
I have officially been sworn in! Great day meeting all my new colleagues, so excited to represent the people of Holborn and St Pancras!
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
🚨NEW: Labour now has a 9-point lead over the Green party with 18-24 year-olds
[@poll_checker]
Thank you for saying out loud what we all quietly have been thinking....
Andy Burnham becomes first PM to confirm Russian interference in Brexit referendum
@campbellclaret and @RoryStewartUK's exclusive interview with @andyburnham on tomorrow's episode of Leading is out in full at midnight.
Jane Thomas 🌹 retweeted
Thank you to our friends from Easington CLP for coming over to help with byelection campaigning in South Stanley this afternoon! #labourdoorstep
