Bits & pieces about my day & a lot about Matt Baker!
Scotland
Joined November 2010
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Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
This below was my intuition. Now we are learning that Tusk is German-aligned, that Germany needs control of gas pipeline running through Poland, that Poland has the biggest gold reserve in EU, and that possibly the police aiding coup d'etat were sent from Germany.
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
This is where all the “male feminists” end up.
“I’ll support your right to things that improve my sexual access to women - like abortion, sexual liberation - but will viciously attack you if you attempt to limit that access by denying me porn or prostitutes.”
Dworkin called it
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
🚨NEW: 51% of all visas granted to care workers in 2023 were sponsored by employers who have since lost their licences, predominantly due to fraud or abuse
[@maxtempers]
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
I entered the workforce in 2008 and within five months, at the age of 21, was made redundant as a result of the financial crash. It's basically been an escalating tsunami of shit ever since. Sad to be leaving those halcyon days behind.
"Painful" years ahead, think tanks warn, as living standards set to fall
bbc.in/4k5Vgsz
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
An interesting story in the Times which highlights the foolishness of giving HMRC the power to take money straight out of people's bank accounts.
Tax lawyer Simon Evans only found out that he apparently owed HM Revenue & Customs money when it was extracted from his bank account.
Last month he got a letter from HMRC to say it had taken £2,300 out of his account because it claimed he had unpaid tax. “There wasn’t a dispute, we’d never heard from HMRC nor had our accountant who has handled our taxes for many years,” Evans said.
“It turns out that HMRC had sent letters to an old address in London that we haven’t lived at in years,” he said. “This is despite the fact that all of our Companies House and tax returns are up to date with our correct address and our accountant’s address."
“If we owed this money we would of course have paid it. We wanted to know if there had been an administrative oversight, but over several calls no one at HMRC could tell us what we owed, or from what period it was owed. Our accountant is still trying to get to the bottom of it."
This is what happens when you give an incompetent public sector bureaucracy the power to take money out of people's bank accounts.
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Know any women with those awful, painful recurrent UTI’s?
Pass this article on- it’s about a study that may help a lot of women avoid a lot of needless suffering
ctvnews.ca/health/article/a-… @CTVNews @SepsisCanada @kidneycanada #WomensHealth
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
🚨A known rapist or abuser could be coaching your kids sports team, or working with vulnerable people, or sitting next to you at work - thanks to a family court loophole.
🚩Family court findings of rape, coercive control or harassment don’t reach the police so they don’t show up on DBS checks.
It’s not a glitch. It’s the system. I've raised the alarm about this exact loophole for years, and in my book released earlier this year.
BBC on the ‘Change the Check’ campaign:
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckzd…
📕 The System Is The Weapon
amzn.eu/d/07VygeC4
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Does everybody remember the Bradford grooming gang case involving a 15-year-old girl who was subjected to an Islamic marriage ceremony with her abuser, while her own social worker attended?
Well, her abuser, Raja Zulqurnean, originally sentenced to 18 years on 14 May 2025, had his sentence increased to 23 years by the Court of Appeal on 5 September 2025, after it was deemed unduly lenient.
My question remains: Why was the social worker who attended this so-called marriage ceremony not in the dock as well? A vulnerable child in state care, being exploited in plain sight. Where was the safeguarding? Where was the accountability?
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to:
Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund
alzresearch.org/giving/
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources
alzfdn.org/donate/
Photo Credit: Tommy Garcia
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
If you’re a parent do pay attention to this terrible bill. The law already protects young people from coercion & harm, this bill will just criminalise loving parents worried for their, very often gay or autistic children. They plan to take away your parental rights to parent
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Seeing as many people still don't grasp this concept that moving standing charge into unit rates is NOT "paying for what you use", then I've made this.
If you are in the red triangle you are going to be paying more than you would have, and subsidising those in the green triangle.
If you are in the green triangle you are not paying for what you use, those in the red triangle are paying for a portion of your network and meter costs.
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
A doctor rapes a patient.
The victim reports it.
THE DOCTOR ADMITS IT.
He tells a hospital committee that it was a "one off" and he will not do it again.
THE MANAGEMENT SAYS THAT IS OK.
And allow him to carry on working.
THE POLICE TAKE NO ACTION.
The hospital concerned is the BLACKPOOL VICTORIA HOSPITAL.
The same hospital where a 75 year old patient was raped to death and no one was ever convicted for it.
Are women worth nothing to the NHS?
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c172…
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Clarissa Street, a 24-year-old University of Manchester sociology graduate, died in August 2024 after arriving at Royal Oldham Hospital with dizziness, breathing difficulties, and a history of blood clots.
Paramedics suggested she was overreacting and having a panic attack. A triage nurse placed an oxygen mask on her that was never connected to an oxygen supply, and she waited in a corridor for more than an hour despite low oxygen levels and a rapid heart rate.
Her condition worsened, and she died the next morning from a pulmonary embolism.
At the inquest at Rochdale Coroner’s Court, the nurse admitted the disconnected mask was a mistake and that she was unsure why she had used it.
The coroner found significant failings in the triage and initial management of her care, and expert evidence indicated she more than likely would have survived with earlier diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
The case has drawn attention to the risks of dismissing physical symptoms as anxiety, especially in younger patients. 🙏
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Er … hidden away in today’s Budget is a new Data Centre Covenant.
taxpayers will fund over £700 MILLION in AI initiatives and the government is introducing special treatment for strategically important AI data centres.
They will receive PRIORITY access to electricity capacity, faster connections and faster planning decisions.
A new Quango … the Ministerial Control Centre will push these projects through.
So with energy in short supply and prices linked to supply … ordinary citizens er … are not priority!
Better stock up on brand and loo roll. Just like they told you.
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
A 20-year study of a million children found that kids conceived by IVF frozen embryo transfer had double the cancer rate.
84% of US IVF transfers now use frozen embryos.
Danish researchers followed every child born in Denmark from 1996 to 2012 for up to 20 years. The study was published in JAMA last week.
Children conceived without assisted reproduction developed cancer at 18.3 per 100,000 per year.
After frozen embryo transfer, the rate was 41.1.
After ICSI, where a single sperm is injected directly into the egg, it was 27.9.
After frozen transfer, leukemia ran more than twice as high.
The only method that showed no increase was a fresh embryo, never frozen, created by placing eggs and sperm together in a dish.
That version is now the exception. In 2021, 84% of US IVF transfers used frozen embryos and 78% used ICSI, according to the CDC.
Compared with children of women with a history of infertility who conceived without treatment, the frozen embryo risk stayed at more than double.
In the authors' words, the results suggest "procedure-related, rather than infertility-related, factors." This is not the first time the pattern has shown up.
A 2019 JAMA study of the same Danish children at 11 years found it too. A 2022 study of 2.3 million children in Taiwan found those conceived through assisted reproduction had 58% higher cancer risk, "mainly owing to leukemia and hepatic tumor."
The absolute risk is small, and most of these children will never get cancer. The Danish children were conceived with older freezing methods, and the authors warn the results "may differ for contemporary protocols."
Nobody yet has long-term data on IVF as it is done today. Children conceived with today's methods won't have 20 years of data until the 2040s, so today's IVF children are, in effect, the trial.
Parents deserve to hear these numbers before they sign the consent form, because their child is the one who will carry the risk.
doi.org/10.1001/jama.2026.18…
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Hi again Charlotte,
Quoting you:
"MPs are NOT excluded from the duty of candour." "MPs are NOT exempt".
I'm so sorry and I know this must be painful because it is a betrayal of sorts...but yes they are completely exempt.
MPs (and peers, ALL LEGISLATORS) are trying to give themselves a cut out from the Hillsborough Law.
You mention chatpt so I would ask you to copy and past THIS PROMPT INTO YOUR AI so you can see for yourself (I ask @grok to give us its own response to the below prompt as well):
Read the official Public Office (Accountability) Bill PDF: bills.parliament.uk/publicat… and ExecProsec’s amendments and briefing: execprosec.org/amendments-br…. Establish whether MPs, peers, MSPs, Members of Senedd Cymru and Northern Ireland Assembly members, acting as legislators, fall within the duty of candour and assistance, its criminal enforcement, and the misleading the public offence. Trace clauses 2, 5 and 12 through Schedule 2, paragraphs 2(4) and 3; distinguish ministerial roles and Schedule 4’s separate misconduct offences, and address the briefing’s possible drafting ambiguity concerning peers. Then critically assess whether the Government’s reasons for excluding legislators withstand the proposed amendments. Test each objection against the actual wording: protection for proceedings in every UK legislature; safeguards for opinions, mistakes and ordinary debate; restriction of the new misleading offence liability to five specified purposes; prosecution controls; and fines without imprisonment for serving legislators convicted solely through their legislative status. Explain why protecting parliamentary proceedings would require excluding serious public dishonesty outside them, if it would. Test whether lacking executive powers or ministerial information prevents legislators from causing harm through deliberate fabrication, and whether elections or internal discipline provide equivalent accountability, particularly for unelected peers. Distinguish safeguards already in the Bill from proposed changes. Verify the briefing’s legal claims rather than accepting either side’s assertions. Conclude whether the exclusion remains credibly justified, and whether lawmakers imposing these standards on others while excluding their own legislative roles constitutes a defensible distinction or a hypocritical double standard. If an objection is answered by the safeguards, say so explicitly.
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
So in short, some idiot in the government sent an email to the wrong people and as a result of this screw up, the government engaged in a secret operation to relocate 18500 people plus their families to the UK and hid it from the public.
The MoD are claiming the cost of this was around £800m to date, however subsequent investigations has calculated a lifetime cost of this at around £6b (YES BILLION)
We don’t get to know who signed this agreement or pushed it through and we are just supposed to say, oh well mistakes happen??
Not being funny but I’m guessing this has to be the most expensive email ever sent.
ABSOLUTE CLOWN SHOW.
These people are in charge of our money.
Frightening!!!
🚨🇬🇧 WESTMINSTER CLUEDO: WHO SIGNED THE AFGHAN DEAL? 🔎
🎭 Jenrick. Sunak. Shapps. Braverman. Heappey.
Five familiar faces. A secret government scheme. And some very serious questions.
📂 18,500+ Afghan applications affected by a MOD data breach.
🔒 A superinjunction kept the scandal secret.
🏛️ Cabinet approved a secret relocation scheme in December 2023.
✈️ The scheme was expanded in March 2024.
⚠️ Earlier changes to routine specialist Afghan resettlement security checks were authorised at ministerial level.
BUT WHO ACTUALLY SIGNED OFF WHAT?
Who approved the screening changes? Who knew about the secret scheme? Who authorised its expansion?
The government insists security checks remained in place. Then publish the approval trail and demonstrate that the required checks were completed.
🕵️♂️ We're playing Westminster Cluedo — except this isn't a board game. It's taxpayers' money, national security and government accountability.
WE KNOW THE DECISIONS. NOW SHOW US THE SIGNATURES.
📸 The evidence board is below.
🔎 @PublicAuditUK
#PublicAudit #Westminster #Afghanistan #UKPolitics
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Andy Burnham is facing a backlash from Labour MPs over party’s proposed ban on conversion therapy. A former Labour health minister has raised “serious concerns” about the draft Conversion Practices Bill, claiming it places parents at risk of prosecution.
telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
Wait. So a woman in the military was raped by her commanding officer, because he used his key to sneak into her quarters, and a judge just decided that being raped was "one of her duties" and declared it a workplace accident??????????
Who the fuck is this judge? How does one even come to that conclusion??
Catherine 🐉 🕷 retweeted
0.001% TAX
A junior auditor at @PwC in Luxembourg is getting ready to leave his job. Before he goes he goes looking for some training documents to take with him.
Instead he finds a folder that anyone in the company could open. No password. No warning. Just sitting there.
Inside are hundreds of secret deals between the Luxembourg government and some of the biggest companies on the planet. Deals that let them pay next to nothing in tax.
His name is Antoine Deltour. He copies 30,000 pages. That is the whole story. He copies a folder.
Let me explain what was actually in it, because this is where it gets interesting.
Between 2002 and 2010, PwC alone helped broker 548 of these secret tax agreements, known as tax rulings, for over 340 companies. Apple. Ikea. Pepsi. Disney. Deutsche Bank. AIG. Koch Industries. Skype. GlaxoSmithKline. Coach. Abbott Laboratories. Household names, every one of them.
The trick was simple. Companies moved profits through Luxembourg shell structures and Luxembourg quietly agreed in writing to look the other way on tax.
Some of these companies ended up paying an effective tax rate under 1 percent. In some cases as low as 0.001 percent. On billions of dollars.
Who was running Luxembourg for almost 20 years while this machine was built and protected? Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg until 2013.
Deltour did not leak straight to the world. In 2012 he passed the documents to French journalist Edouard Perrin, who used them for a TV documentary.
PwC noticed and filed a complaint with the Luxembourg courts. Then in November 2014, ICIJ @ICIJorg pulled together over 80 journalists across more than 30 media outlets in 26 countries and published the full scale of it as LuxLeaks.
The timing could not have been worse for Juncker, or depending how you look at it, could not have been better. He had just been elected President of the European Commission days before the story broke. The man who ran the tax haven for two decades was now running Europe.
A month later ICIJ dropped LuxLeaks 2, showing the other Big 4 accounting firms Deloitte, EY and KPMG were running the exact same playbook. This was never one bad apple. It was standard practice.
Juncker faced a no confidence vote in the European Parliament over it. He survived. Deltour was not so lucky.
December 2014, Luxembourg charges him with theft, violation of trade secrecy and fraudulent access to a computer system. He is facing up to 5 years in prison and a fine of 1,250,000 euros. For opening an unlocked folder on his way out the door.
April 2016, the criminal trial. Deltour and his colleague Raphael Halet, another former PwC employee who leaked a second batch of documents, are both convicted. Deltour gets 12 months suspended and a 1,500 euro fine. Perrin the journalist is acquitted.
Deltour appeals. Loses. Appeals again. Finally in May 2018 the Luxembourg Court of Appeal fully recognises him as a genuine whistleblower under European Court of Human Rights standards and acquits him completely.
Halet's fight took even longer. He lost his Luxembourg appeals and only won at the European Court of Human Rights Grand Chamber in 2023, nearly a decade after he first spoke up.
The European Commission that Juncker went on to lead never opened a single formal investigation into a single LuxLeaks tax ruling. Not one. It did chase Starbucks, Fiat and Amazon over separate deals, but the mountain of paperwork Deltour handed over sat there untouched.
So that is the LuxLeaks story. Build a tax avoidance machine for 20 years and get promoted to run the continent. Copy the evidence of it and spend most of a decade fighting to stay out of prison.
@BBCNews · @ICIJorg · @Reuters · @lemondefr and others.