This evening I discovered I’ve been suspended from Twitter for posting the tweet below:
“These are distractions:
Cummins vs Hancock
Mr & Mrs Gates
variants
R number
restrictions/ mask mandate change
US vs China origin
spike protein shedding?
These are not:
vaccine injury & death
vaccine coercion
famine
QR code data harvesting
5G/IoT/IoB
4IR”
I’ve appealed.
“A. Provide impartial (non-Pharma funded) evidence that the content of this tweet is:
1) “misleading” 2) “harmful”
B. My father fought this fascism in WW2.”
They’re not going to let me back on unless I take it down.
I’m not taking it down.
If the appeal (to reason) doesn’t work (it won’t because the decision is irrational) I’ll continue fighting technocratic fascism on WordPress – until and unless I’m kicked off – and in person.
I’m opening up my comments on here. I’ve been on Twitter for 7 years and currently have 1,340 followers, despite the sneaky culls everytime I take a break for a few months. It’s been great fun and I’ve learned loads. Now it’s time to restart doing activism in person.
See you at a demo sometime. I’m the bald guy with the man bag and the cute dog. Come up and say hello!
Alan xx
Update!
This morning they backed down and lifted the suspension! This is what I’ve learned:
– I need to restart meetings up with activists in person
– That sense of freedom I experienced means I should spend less time online
– There are real people I connect with online who support me but I can only connect with them in times like this when I have another way to contact them
Food aid and control of agriculture has always been a weapon in the eugenics arsenal of the colonial powers. Right now, the target of cynical social engineers is not just the struggling economies of the developing world but the post-industrial domestic terrorism carried out (mostly on good days) by middle-aged and elderly ladies and gentlemen pottering about their allotments and gardens – or even by busy working mums and dads growing tomatoes on the windowsill.
Plants are political, now more than ever. Growing your own means that you can:
Feed your household without relying on the state-controlled market
Make sure that your food is free from carcinogenic and hormone-altering chemicals
Participate in an informal local economy of exchange
Climate change? I honestly don’t know. Here in Scotland, it typically rains for 40 years with about half an hour of sunshine during which the lads (and some of the lassies) take their taps aff and turn as blue and white as our saltire flag. People of other colours tend to be more sensible. I haven’t noticed any change, except that this year is a lot colder and everything in the garden is a lot slower to even think about growing.
However, I promised an update and here it is. Grow your own!
My horticultural style is definitely weeds among the wheat so the garden is anything but tidy-looking. Veg grows supported by wildflowers and that keeps the pollinators (bees and wasps mostly) happy. Monoculture and straight rows are so unnatural and inefficient as you just spend all your time and resources solving the problems your mechanical approach to planting has created. Companion planting protects and nurtures – and looks pretty too. It just takes a bit of time to remember where everything is. Take that time. If you’re gardening in a hurry you’re doing it wrong.
Ben the cute tan terrier flaked out on the garden path with his head resting on the grass
The potatoes are coming up, beside the basil where the tomatoes were last year.
Potatoes growing among basil and wildflowers
They’re happily growing next to foxgloves this year on the other side of my first raised bed.
Purple allium, tomato plants and foxgloves
That’s only got chives in it, so far, as the lettuce seeds thought better of it and stayed snuggled up below the surface of soil. There are some strips of carrot seeds. I’m not sure they convince me (as my Spanish friends would say) as I don’t do rows, so I had to rip the strips up and space them anyway. I think I’ll stick to seeds next year.
Chives and marigolds
The next raised bed has got garlic growing madly and some pak choi that’s not doing as well (despite the jam jars and plastic bottle cloches) as the birds and the slugs are having an eat-out every time my back is turned. I might plant some in the greenhouse as a family member does that and they’re doing very well indeed.
Garlic, pak choi, wildflowers and marigolds
The big green box has got onions which I’ve already started eating as, even if they’re not “spring onion” varieties, you can just gradually harvest them and use as much of the tasty green shoots in soups, salads and sandwiches as you can. There are marigolds everywhere. They are the queens of companion planting as almost everything benefits from their lovely company. Unfortunately, they get munched as much as the pak choi.
Onions, pak choi, radishes and marigolds
The strawberries are so happy in their cold frame! There is some rocket planted there in the corners (as that was getting eaten up too) which may have enough filtered light to grow.
Strawberries flowering with mini berries
Behind that is a wee box I screwed together today, held in place by an old bicycle tyre that I decided to leave in place. It’s to protect the rhubarb that was only planted this year (so I’m leaving it alone) that was getting a bit of a battering between Ben the dog digging there and the wind blowing through the gaps under the privet hedge.
Wooden box and old bike tyre round rhubarb
Meanwhile back in the greenhouse, there are some happy flowers, like the begonias and pink petunia. I want to rescue another San Vitalia (creeping zinnia/ Mexican daisy) that I saw shivering on a shelf outside a newsagents as that did really well last year.
Begonias and pink petunias in pots in greenhouse
The cucumber, sadly, is really struggling. Little and often, I’ve learned, too late, is the way with water!
Cucumber plant in pot in greenhouse not doing well
The sweetcorn seedlings are growing well and the sunflower/ runner bean seedlings that the cheeky birds haven’t flown in to yank out yet are coming up too.
Sweetcorn seedlings in trays in the greenhouseRunner beans and sunflower seedlings with wildflowers in trays in greenhouseMore of the same on the other shelf
The chilli pepper is okay too but those leaves seem to be on the avian menu too! They’re leaving the coriander/ cilantro alone though so that should be going into soups soon.
Chilli pepper plant and coriander/ cilantro
I did grow cress again and it did sprout up but the wee flowers are so pretty I just didn’t have the heart to chomp the plants! (I know.) So that’s migrated to the hanging basket to live out its days in peace.
Cress in hanging basket
The other herbs aren’t doing so well. Bit of mint and thyme and that’s about it. It’s just too cold!
Covered shelf of potted herbs outside kitchen
Underneath the trampoline (What? It’s the best thing for lymphatic drainage) the hostas and primroses are very happy indeed.
Hostas, primroses and wildflowers thriving under the trampoline
That just leaves the flowers I can’t name that I transplanted out below the rose bush that are quite happy amongst those purple wildflowers the bees love that I think are a kind of nettle.
Mystery big green flowering plants and wee purple wildflowers around the rose bush
The water butt isn’t quite doing what it should yet. Another trip to B&Q is in order to get the rest of the parts (quoting Acts of Parliament to the Millennial at the door as I breeze through, maskfree.)
Water butt and guttering
Finally, compost! I finally got round to building a big square wooden compost box to compliment the round plastic compost bin that the council donated.
Covered square wooden compost box
I think the reason we have so much trouble with slugs is that we don’t leave the compost on top of the soil long enough once it’s (almost) broken down.
Cherry blossom floating in wheelbarrow in front of round plastic compost bin
So, hopefully, the solution is to have two heaps and put it on the soil after two years not just one. That way it should be broken down better and can go on the soil sooner to give the birds time to eat up the slugs – which do great work chomping it all up in the heaps and anyway I’m vegan so I’m not going to kill them just cos they don’t always do what I want them to. Unlike Bill Gates, I’m not into population control.
Today there’s the usual gloating and partisan nonsense on social and mainstream media but to understand the reasons why the Alba Party didn’t rise, as fondly hoped, in the Scottish Parliamentary elections on 6th May this year, it might help to imagine a Venn diagram:
Firstly, what strikingly sets Alba off from the SNP and the (somewhat) Indy-minded Scottish Greens is a commitment to uphold the rights of women to single sex safe space and of children to pass through puberty before making any decisions about their “gender”. While “let’s get on with Indy” is also a difference with SNP executive gradualism – and Green executive indifference – that’s a debate that could be had within the SNP. In contrast, being gender-critical in that party is very hard, as the treatment of Joanna Cherry clearly shows.
So, in the Entirety of the Scottish electorate, support for Alba is largely found at the intersection of independence and gender-critical voters. Even if the former circle takes in half that population, the latter circle is small – because it’s the subset of those aware of the aggressive woke politics in Holyrood who oppose that ongoing policy capture. Therefore, in terms of Scottish voters, most of whom get their political insight from the BBC, that intersection is already very small.
Now let’s draw some more circles. Alba was not up for the Constituency election – in order not to prejudice SNP votes. Standing only for the Regional List was a gracious move but one that required voters to understand the peculiar mix of First Past the Post and the d’Hondt method of proportional representation. As the #BothVotesSNP hashtag showed, not many did. Or if they did, they didn’t care – their priority was not to maximise Indy MSPs but only SNP MSPs. Therefore #AlbaRising depended on the intersection of Indy/GC voters who understood the system and aren’t politically clannish. Smaller and smaller.
Then let’s consider the alternatives. Voters have more than one concern and some who would have happily voted Alba in the Constituency, and did vote SNP, may have used their List vote for one of the many strands of the political fringe: those awake to the dangers of the #GreatReset for the 4th Industrial Revolution had Freedom Alliance and the Scottish Libertarian Party. Those opposing Millennial woke politics from a religious commitment had the Scottish Family Party, as the historical materialists had the Scottish Socialist Party. There are others that also split the List vote.
Finally, we must consider the figure of Alex Salmond. Elder statesman, masterful politician, gracious and well-connected but with an image problem that won’t go away. Especially when part of a high profile triumvirate with a similarly controversial politician and a man of the people (however charming) whose tweets have been pounced on. Consider the voters. Those who aren’t particularly sharp have been mesmerised for over a year with our feisty female First Minister (and her popular foul-mouthed jester) pushing the profits of #BigPharma and #BigData from the pulpit every lunchtime. They think she’s done well. Many voters don’t have a problem with an older White heterosexual man but fail to appreciate that, nowadays, simply being in that demographic is “creepy” in the eyes of the largely ageist Millennials and at least worthy of wariness from GC women in general. Similar men in the SNP are very closely associated with the female leader, and many are gay. Salmond has neither advantage nor the striking good looks of the young SNP candidate Tom Wills who stepped off a Scott’s Porridge Oats box and might have made it into Holyrood but for being placed 5th on the list – preceded by female, disabled and cabinet candidates.
Having “blotted his copybook” (as my Mum puts it delicately) too, it may not therefore have been the best idea to have him visually so front and centre in recent days in the campaign. It’s the women of Alba that are so inspiring and a cannier idea might have been to make one co-leader. That selling strategy is working out for the Greens. It’s an offer that could have been made to Colette Walker of the Independence for Scotland Party, who, on reflection, may well have stood a better chance at election.
I like Alex Salmond. I don’t find him threatening (but I’m a man) and I admire his political acumen. I’m not writing this to kick a man when he’s down – and he may be down but I don’t think he thinks he’s out.
However, for the sake of Alba, for independence, for women and children whose protection urgently requires an alternative to the toxic wokery now imposed from Bute House, given the ever-smaller intersection of potential voters for such an alternative, I do think he should maybe think again.
Holyrood and Edinburgh skyline from Arthur’s Seat
Thanks to George Hodan for releasing his image Edinburgh Skyline into the Public Domain.
alchemicalquality 