23:30

Someone left the flat below at about that time and it’s been empty since. I didn’t bother to go check if my computer screens are working again now.

Btw, posting from this Android is now was briefly getting interfered with too. I was able to use it unhindered at Starbucks for a while, a place where I could work and feel safe, part of the world, feel normal AND… sometimes change passwords, unseen.

I bought that tablet without the locals having spotted it, took the train to elsewhere, paid cash for my train ticket, paid cash for the tablet. It was a steal, at 50% of its market value, just because it was used. I probably have the cost of living crisis to thank for that, because a lot of people here are desperate and all they do is whip up each other’s despair instead of help empower each other.

One day, I walked in and a young blond woman behind the counter greeted me with a shocking level of hate, sort of the same ice cold hate that that guy called Ashley greeted me with last week, at Cash Converters, no idea why. Okay, worse, probably.

The next time I visited that Starbucks, it got interfered with, this tablet. I was gutted. Too fucking crazy for words.

The tablet that I showed you, Ashley, on the other hand, was a decoy. I did sell it to someplace else and lost no money on it.

(I simply got fed up with the bizarre nonsense of needing a decoy tablet in this fucked-up crazy town, Ashley. Have you ever traveled off Portsea Island, dude? Do you know what the world is like outside of this little island enclave off the coast of England? Or course not. You live in a tiny bubble in which any female manager is only the manager in name, for the stats, but has zero power.)

But let’s be fair, these folks – like this Ashley dude – somehow have been gaslighted about me. There’s just no way that complete strangers can hate a person they know nothing about that fiercely completely out of the blue.

(No wonder I have hated Portsmouth so much. No wonder people here thought that I was the crazy one.)

Same thing probably happened when I volunteered at the Covid vaccination effort late in 2021. Why did so many people there think that I was (basically) senile even though none of them knew me? Makes no sense.

I’d seen that John guy before. On his bike. Maybe half a year earlier.

Twice. I noticed him because the first time he saw me, he smiled at me as if he knew me. Or at least knew who I was. Recognized me. The next time he saw me, he ignored me. Maybe he simply hadn’t seen me, that second time. Both times, I had been on my way to Asda.

Don’t know exactly when that was, but it was after I had posted a video about local politics or written about it. Back then, I figured that that is why he thought he knew me and smiled at me.

You know, when someone gets deliberately isolated by some evil person out there, you start noticing certain things much more. Because you have so few interactions. You notice and remember things you would not have paid any attention to whatsoever in a normal context.

Why couldn’t I get anyone to let me volunteer in 2020 and why couldn’t I get access to any of the local Covid Facebook groups back then, only a tiny one for some small village elsewhere? Why couldn’t I reach almost anyone else around here back then?

Everyone around here always whines about how they don’t have enough of this kind of staff or that kind of staff or that kind of services or this kind, but when you think that you can do something about it and make yourself useful, it almost always turns out to be no more than the usual whining that has become part of people’s identity around here. There is no actual need. It’s just whining. It’s just stuff to fill up Facebook and newspaper space with.

For nearly 15 years, I’ve had little more than horrible abuse in this town. It makes no sense. I knew nobody here and nobody here knew me. Where did all that bizarre hate come from? It just makes no sense. None whatsoever.

No matter where I went in this town, no matter what I did. It always reared its ugly head. Even though I wasn’t always aware of it at first, such as at that community leadership course in 2010.

Who had been gaslighting all these people about me? Because that is what must have happened.

Who exactly in this town is that unstable and evil one? That’s for them to figure out. Me, I couldn’t care less.

Because the gaslighting still has exposed this town’s soul to me, hasn’t it. The level of hate I’ve encountered here is beyond belief, after all.

Most people here show no reticence at all when they target someone who they’ve been made to believe is going senile or is learning-disabled or has some other kind of circumstance going on that they think makes it unlikely that the person will fight back.

That’s despicable, Portsmouth, gaslighting or no gaslighting.

Meanwhile, I continue to get lots of emails for how to pay less to unleash my secret genius if only I sign up quickly. Last-minute deals. I don’t need no unleashing of my secret genius. I just want my life back. That’s genius enough for me, thank you very much.

Thatched-roof building fires

I used to be so worried that he’d set that fire, each time I heard of a thatched-roof building going up in flames, all within a decent driving distance. One time, I wondered if he stood there, watching the fire brigade do what they still could.

When a nearby garage or car dealership had a fire, I worried if he had had a hand in that too, because of how he was always going on about cars, about people being like cars.

I stopped concerning myself about such matters a long time ago. If people want to be blind, that’s their choice. Nobody ever got hurt in the fires, I noticed. So there was only material damage and I figured it helped him get rid of anger.

Because it always seemed to follow anger to do with me.

That was in the days before animals started to get attacked and inanimate stuff in my house started getting messed with too. Roughly between 2010 and 2015 or 16.

I have no idea whether that, the fires, was him or not.

(No, I’m not joking. I wish. Somehow, I don’t think that the garage fire had anything to do with him; that was just me jumping to conclusions because it was so close and about cars and because he was always going on about cars. It was around Queens Road or thereabouts, btw. But the thatched roof fires, that may be a different story.)

15:01

Had to flip the power switch on the wall again. Computer froze.

Am starting to get a little tense again now. It takes up about 10 minutes each time, so it’s not that easy to ignore and I was actually trying to concentrate on a few things.

This is when I will often do something distracting next, such as watch a funny YouTube short, which is like a mini vacation to reset my state of mind or I do something else to relax. Just realizing that I am getting tense helps too.

If it happens a lot, though, I may have to stop what I was doing, for the day, because it’s a little like driving a car and the car displaying a mind of its own and insisting on hitting the curb or insisting on suddenly swerving to the left or right. If it were a car, you’d want to park it too, right?

13:21

Computer increasingly sluggish, froze, had to flip the wall socket’s switch.

Not doing anything in particular.

By contrast, edited a few videos yesterday without problems and had a shit load of browser tabs open without problems.

It suddenly reminds me of young Chris Packham’s determination to own a kestrel.

Dead crows strung up on the doorstep

Chris Packham calls it “hate terrorism” and he is fighting it.

I knew about the arson attacks. I did not know about the dead birds.

(Am I, too, “merely” the target of hate terrorism? I have called it “domestic terrorism” a few times.)

Why are people out there going after Chris Packham? Because they’re old-fashioned yet powerful Tories who won’t give up their privileges such as burying a live fox trapped in a bag so that hounds can dig it up and tear it to shreds during a hunt. I can’t think of anything else.

He can pinpoint a hunting publication that whips up hate against him. They’re basically a British version of the NRA in the US. The Guardian wrote the following about it:

This month, it posted a photograph to its Facebook group of a “Trophy room” it had digitally mocked up, featuring Packham’s head mounted on a plaque, as though he were an animal it had killed in a hunting trip.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/mar/30/chris-packham-crowdfunds-to-sue-hunting-publisher-for-hate-terrorism

(I’m not a BBC presenter, though, and few Tories will ever have heard of me.)

I quite like Chris Packham. Nobody should have to go through the tremendous fear and upset something like an arson attack causes. Finding dead animals on your doorstep is not particularly reassuring either. That Packham has Asperger’s does not mean that his fear and upset aren’t justified. Anyone would be afraid and upset after something like this. You’d have to be very abnormal, psychologically speaking, not to be.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/support-chris-packhams-libel-action/

The particular challenge Packham faces is that in Britain, it is seen as whiny, weak and feminine – not manly enough – if you stand up against something like this.

That’s why the hunting publication wrote the following under the “Trophy Room” image on Facebook:

“My three demands. I want pocket money. I want Fieldsports Channel to stop being horrid about me. I want more pocket money.”

But of course Packham should stand up against this! Of course he has to. If he doesn’t, it will be taken as implicit consent to abuse.

“Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women”

This is exactly what I was thinking about when the above popped up on my screen. The way older single female adults in the UK are demonized and often subsequently criminalized, I find that quite shocking.

So here is a book by Victoria Smith and it’s been reviewed in The Guardian, under the subtitle “A compelling account of ageism and misogyny that overemphasises feminism’s generational divide”. Turns out that I got that wrong… I’ll come back to that.

My first thought was that it’s British (or English?) thinking that causes this sharp generational divide. The demonisation of older adults in the UK is well documented.

But no, this is not a book review, but a review of an American film and the review is by Victoria Smith.

A little bit later… No, it IS about a book. WTF? The book is by Victoria Smith and the review is by Fiona Sturges, who must be English because only English folks are able to confuse me this much. Maybe the review has been rewritten and maybe someone else chose a movie scene instead of a book cover to start it with, though. Who’s to say?

So who is Victoria Smith? “a feminist writer, with a particular interest in motherhood and intersections of misogyny and ageism” At least that bit adds up.

I disagree with Sturges’ conclusion, namely that men are women’s biggest and most powerful oppressors. Women oppressing other women versus women empowering each other is a major measure of how balanced a society is in that respect. After I moved to England, from Amsterdam, an Englishman who has not lived here for decades told me that the UK couldn’t be sexist, let alone misogynist, because Mary Beard was also being attacked by women.

Self-hatred is a common symptom of oppression, isn’t? Ask any “battered wife”. Taught contempt for one’s own kind may be another.

If anything, it sounds as if the emphasis in this book is too much on sexual activities and on being considered “fuckable”. Maybe that emphasis was added by Sturges. If so, it is pretty… sexist. There is more to women than their genitalia. Isn’t that the battle we are fighting? To move beyond the emphasis on genitalia and on how different people use them differently?

I sometimes encounter (very) young women who underline over and over again that they’re pregnant, but they are not making me feel “old” or “past my sell-by date”. If the bizarre emphasis on their pregnancy makes me feel anything at all, it’s sad regrets for them, in view of the sacrifices they are making. I usually keep that to myself because we do not all want the exact same things from life, nor should we want to. Sometimes, I even want to say “that’s pretty damn stupid of you, then” if they also get shouted at a lot because in that case, that pregnancy is keeping them trapped in an abusive relationship. That’s tragic. It becomes even less of a cause for celebration or gloating or glee when I next ask myself what is going to happen to that child.

I never say to them what I am thinking for the simple reason that I don’t know their story and because it’s not true that only older women have wisdom at their beck and call. I’m not having a conversation with them. I may actually just want them to go away, nothing more.

Young women are not the problem, though, and neither are men. Misogyny is the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/29/hags-the-demonisation-of-middle-aged-women-by-victoria-smith-review

New! School meals! Now available at Dutch schools!

Me, I am familiar with 1960s “school milk”, but school meals? Nope.

The Dutch are introducing them now, free meals, but unlike in the UK, the government leaves it up to the schools how they use the budget.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2469299-programma-gratis-schoolmaaltijden-begonnen-kinderen-kunnen-ook-waardebon-krijgen

Schools with 30% or more pupils from low-income families can now apply for free meals.

The Dutch government has allocated 100 million euros for 300,000 children in primary and secondary education.

“Op is op”, for the schools. First come, first served.

They can then for example, for 9 euros per child:

  • Offer breakfast or lunch
  • Fill a fridge with healthy food.
  • Hire a catering firm

They can also opt for only supporting the poorest families by offering them Red Cross vouchers of 11 euro per child, which can be spent at any supermarket.

Red Cross and Youth Education Foundation school liaison officers are supporting the schools, so that organizing the food won’t burden teachers too much.

Social landlord in England said mould was ‘acceptable’ in refugees’ homes

This is otherisation. It is caused by over ten years of Tory rhetoric, which probably started at the time when Theresa May was Home Secretary and launched a policy called “the hostile environment”.

Wasn’t she also the one who suggested that refugees only came here to kill Britain’s beautiful swans? Do you remember cat-gate, too, Theresa May spreading the falsehood that human rights mean that if a terrorist has a cat he cannot be deported?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/28/social-landlord-england-said-mould-acceptable-refugees-homes

He died.

Shootings…

Shit. While I was watching a 1993 film about a guy who became obsessed with his colleague Laura Black and shot up the California computer firm where they both worked, apparently leading to the first stalking legislation in the US, someone in Tennessee shot up a primary school. The 129th mass shooting in the US this year and March isn’t even over.

Houston, we have a problem. And it needs fixing. Urgently.

Great security tip!

This just popped up in my YouTube stream and I subscribed (unsubbed shortly after, lol). This former CIA dude, or “CI-officer” like he says it, has a tip that can get you out of a lot of trouble should you ever get robbed or held up.

Carry a dummy wallet, with a few bucks, a bunch of expired bank cards (or rather the cardboard credit cards that these companies send you when they want you to apply) and so on. You can literally toss it at the person if you ever encounter someone who demands your money. Great idea! Can buy you enough time to get away safely before they realize that the wallet you threw at them is a decoy.


Does not work in all situations. I was robbed in Florida once where someone took off with my handbag with passport, driving license, bank cards and the lot, so it won’t work for that.

(That said, I instinctively instantly started negotiating and I got all my stuff back minus the 5 dollars or so that I had still left in my wallet. Because I had just shopped at my local Winn-Dixie and was walking home with two grocery bags which made me an easy target.)

Question: what does “watch” stand for in local slang?

There have been many themes in my abuse and one of them seems to have been about a watch. It’s included all sorts of people (well, one sort, mostly) in town constantly asking me for the time. That stopped at some point, but if anyone can tell me what that was about, then please tell me. Thank you.

Is it a warning?

“Watch out!” or “Watch it” or “I’m watching you.” ?

There’ve often been threats over the years and they were always veiled but also almost always followed up on and pretty vicious. I’m thinking of the animal cruelty, specifically.

(I can’t access this site so I can’t see what else it says.)

Why I may indeed be targeted by 4chan/8chan (too?)

The IP addresses I get (presumably on the network that I am forced onto) are ALWAYS blocked – banned – on Wikipedia. Those are usually located in places like Glasgow or Devon or Manchester or Edinburgh. Also, London, but that is not too strange.

I can only edit a page, carry out even the smallest change such as correct a typo, on Wikipedia if I log in with my Wikipedia account.

Vile vile vile

Police forces in England and Wales have been accused of trying to “evade public scrutiny” after an Observer investigation found that the outcomes of dozens of officer misconduct cases have been deleted from their websites.

They include some of the most serious cases of criminality, including that of the serial rapist David Carrick.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/25/police-england-wales-deleting-outcomes-misconduct-hearings

This is what a corrupt, authoritarian nation looks like. David Carrick was more than a serial rapist. He was a sadistic, intimidating, abusive, manipulative and coercive monster.

And yes, I do know what I am talking about.

16:21: I just reported the following to Hampshire Police, via their website

I am a Dutch citizen who has been the target of relentless anonymous and sometimes not so anonymous abuse since I moved from Southampton to Portsmouth. This has included physical attacks, a slogan on the wall, hacking, vandalism as well as lock-picking at two addresses in Portsmouth and animal cruelty. I used to report most of this, but that only made matters worse.

I have made four escape attempts from my abuse situation in recent years.

On my first attempt, I was intercepted by a police officer called Nikki. She took me back to my flat. As I have not been able (allowed) to support myself since I moved to Portsmouth, I had zero money and she found me walking along a highway near Portsmouth, with two suitcases.

I am a scientist. In 2019, after I came home to another incidence of vandalism inside my flat, a professor in the Netherlands contacted Gerald Vernon-Jackson on my behalf. I met with Vernon-Jackson who merely shrugged so nothing has changed.

I am currently being targeted from the flat under mine again (which currently has four or five different tenants). This has happened before over the years, but I have also witnessed before that someone else went into that flat when the tenant was not at home, so it is quite possible that someone else is going into the flat when nobody is home. For the record, I have also noticed a few ongoings that may indicate that there is drugs trafficking going on and that a pregnant woman is being used as a “front” of innocence. She gets shouted at a lot at times and something is certainly not right.

I just told them that if they kept harassing me, they were going to learn, and also not to dismiss me and terrorise me. That was followed by them targeting me again.

They seemed dirt-poor so I previously bought a doormat for them as the doormat that was there had disappeared. Because they and their visitors were constantly ringing the doorbells, I also had an extra set of keys made for them, but the ringing of the doorbells only stopped for a week or so. I thought that they were dirt-poor but I no longer believe that. There is something weird going on. They also seem to be targeting me particularly when the groundfloor neighbors are out. A coincidence?

This morning, I contacted a number of professional connections all over the world and asked them to start whipping up noise for me. I have been terrorised and far too many aspects of my life in Portsmouth sadistically controlled for nearly 15 years. I want my life back.


Added only here:


For the record, when I witnessed that someone else went into the flat, the tenant in question was not aware of that. (I mentioned it to him later; his name was Fancey.) He had just left; I was doing the dishes, saw him walk to his car and drive away. This was Easter Monday. (I think it was 2016, at around 1pm.) Shortly after, the doorbell rang and someone let himself or herself into the flat.

Previous tenants on the groundfloor were burgled shortly after they moved in, apparently by someone who picked the locks or who let themselves in with a key. Those tenants moved out the same day. The present tenants moved in next.

I have witnessed drug sales taking place outside, although this may have become less frequent in recent years. My curiosity was simply triggered by strange behaviors of people and cars so I ended up watching what exactly was going on. I have also seen people shoot up outside.

There has been drugs trafficking in the other building at this address; the people in that flat also harassed one of the other tenants (Croucher). Police intervened at some point.

There have been similar problems with tenants on the ground floor there (in the other building), but that seems to have stopped after a while. Loads of different people walking in and out and some harassment. I don’t know if there was drugs trafficking going on in that situation too. (I did report something to the council but they said that it was a matter for the police.)

The police, a we all know are worse than utterly useless, but what else can I do other than once again contact the police?

We have an equally useless landlord who could not care less and whose offices moved to a different location without telling us. It has no doorbell and no option for leaving postal mail.

The current folks in the flat under me may be Albanian. I have read that a lot of Albanian people are in terribly abusive situations here in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/05/young-albanian-men-viciously-exploited-after-arriving-in-uk

I am now starting to suspect that their abuse is not linked to the usual vile shit here in Portsmouth but is intended to protect themselves (in view of criminal activities, why else) and intimidate me.

I don’t know if the folks in the flat under me are aware of this website. (Next day: no, they are not. Something the woman said to me yesterday.)

They said that they were going to call the police about me and a guy who I had never seen before until today turned out to be standing behind the door to record me. (Different young guys, in different but similar-looking small grey and silver cars.) Except, there was nothing to call the police about. They opened the door when I came up the stairs. They attacked me verbally, but it first sounded as if she was going to apologize to me.

(The previous tenant used to do shit like that too – and other shit – because he thought that I was afraid of his dog.)

17:20: Have also now contacted a charity that helps Albanians in trouble.

20:42: They must be so pissed off that I installed an alarm on the front door because their visitors were constantly leaving it open. The alarm going off was getting them noticed by the motorcycle shop folks, I bet, the fact that there are different young guys walking in and out. That may be why they ramped up their crap against me? They now keep switching the alarm off. It’s not the folks on the ground-floor who are doing it.


When I was living in Amsterdam, there was drugs activity right next to me. I had no idea. I was clueless. Even though neighbors had told me that there had been drugs activity before (which is why they barged into my attic one day, when I was looking after a rescued stray cat who was still much too feral at that point and they’d clearly become suspicious), when the cops showed up, I still was clueless. I said something to one of the cops and he realized how clueless I was, gave me an indulgent (I suppose) smile but said nothing. It did not match what I had said.

There too, there were lots of comings and goings, but we didn’t have a wooden staircase (very common in England). That young woman, too, had been pregnant, apparently. That young woman too rang my doorbell once, claiming to have lost or forgotten her keys and I got a weird vibe at the time, that I couldn’t place. She said that she’d been to the hospital, had had a miscarriage. Perhaps. But knowing what I know now, had she been beaten or something, perhaps? She wore a kind of robe that had some blood on it. We called the fire brigade who helped her onto her balcony, wearing my old teal-green Cool Cat jogging pants, which she never returned. I laundered the robe, and left it at her door, but she then hung it on my door handle.

Is this similar to what is going on in the flat below? The vibe I get from the woman is similar. Hard to say why. Hard to describe, too. Aggressive? Defiant? Pliable and merely doing as told? She comes across as a puppet, somehow. I can’t put my finger on it what exactly it is, but the different young men and the different but similar cars and the shouting, the comings and goings without a pattern… it does not seem normal.

But it’s hard to tell.


I took the doormat away, by the way. Instead of confronting these young folks about various issues, I had decided to support them quietly, that is, in a way that made things easier for me as it would remedy the issues that way. Portsmouth is often like a war zone and it becomes exhausting and is also at times quite scary always having to confront people here. The fact that they are now harassing me more sort of caused the doormat to mock me every time I walked past it. Childish, yes.

In the meantime, they’ve purchased a vacuum cleaner anyway so there is no longer all the debris in front of their door anyway. That is why I got the doormat: to catch that debris. It looked like plant matter, by the way. Dried plant matter.

Help small-business owner Angel Pittman move from a similar hell as the one that I’ve been stuck in for over a decade. Please help her.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/hate-crime-victimhelp-move-me-to-a-safe-place

She is in America, in a sundown town, but her experiences were highlighted by The Guardian a few days ago. I am so fucking angry for her.

She is still relatively young, thankfully.

Me, I have set up similar crowdfunding campaigns for myself a few times, but I never got beyond £350, which was not enough to enable me to leave and the worst of the nightmare started happening after 2013 when I briefly had the funds that would have enabled me to escape. But no animals had been attacked yet and I didn’t know yet that my locks were already getting picked for years. I’ve tried four times since in spite of that.

I actually more or less started wrapping up my life a while ago and started making (small) donations all over the place because if my life was over anyway, if I couldn’t get away anyway, then I would do whatever the hell I still could to help others or just generally help make the world a slightly better place. My health has declined horribly after I moved to Portsmouth; things are only getting worse (and I have no access to medical care).

Below is what I would like to say to Angel Pittman.


Angel, I am so fucking angry for you. Below I explain why.

I am pleased to see that you’ve already surpassed your goal. That gives me hope, too. It shows that there are plenty of good people.

Here in the UK, there is a lot of this too. A family in Bristol, with their own hostel, suffered a double arson attack, for example. Racism. They are of Asian heritage.

I’m from the Netherlands. I’ve lived in the States (Florida) and am now in England. My dad was his own boss, my sisters are their own bosses and I have been my own boss for a long time, but my life turned into a nightmare when I relocated within England. The hate for me was not racist as I am white, but rather misogynistic, instead, it seems. Slogan on wall, bucket of liquid emptied over me, locks picked, at two addresses, vandalism in my apartment, animal cruelty, lots of hacking etc etc. I don’t want to bore you with more of my story because it is bizarrely similar to yours and you know what that is like. You don’t need me to tell you that. In the previous town here in England, I had actually been attacked, physically. The police here don’t care either, just like in Rowan County. I’ve tried to escape four times already and one day I will succeed.

Stay strong. Keep fighting. Don’t give up. I found your story just now. Me, this morning, I sent a plea for help to various relatively powerful people around the world, folks who know me, because due to England’s bizarre archaic class system, I have zero power here. I’m a migrant, I’m a female, I am not married, am a feminist, am over 45 (in my 60s now) and have been stuck in poverty for so long. That’s SIX reasons for anonymous folks to hate me.

The fear is the hardest to deal with, isn’t it? The fear and the erosion of trust in people. Just like you, I never expected anything like this. I didn’t know how to explain it to folks in my home country either. It was too fucking bizarre for words.

You did something right. You will succeed. I can tell. You have something that I seem to lack or maybe it’s also because I am simply in the wrong country.

You will succeed, I am telling you.

Best,

Angelina

PS For anyone who does not understand where the fear comes from… this level of hate, and to be personally targeted by it, is really scary. Certainly if it’s persistent. It hollows you out, eats away at you, corrodes you inside because you’re surrounded by it all the time. There is almost no getting away from it.

Me, I found a local Starbucks last year to which I secretly escaped from time to time. A little oasis. Then one day, a blond young woman, who I had not met before, greeted me from behind the counter with sheer hate, the Pompey flavor hate, and that place then soon turned into hell too. I often genuinely feel that Portsmouth does not deserve to exist and should be bombed off the map; it is that evil. It’s really scary, the level and extent of the local hate. It’s really really really scary, the Pompey-flavor hate. It makes you wish you were dead because there is no getting away from it and it’s so ut-ter-ly vile.