My main professional background is in the earth & life sciences, but I now also explore topics in the broad area of bioethics. That's about equality, fairness, justice, diversity and inclusivity. It's also about people's biases, the associated otherization and everything that this can result in. That includes poverty, homelessness and poor health, shabby looks and shrinking personal bubbles, exposure to chemical and noise pollution and lots more. It's also about law, philosophy, neuroscience, technology, forensic psychology, politics and public policy (governance). Diversity and inclusivity are much bigger challenges than I used to believe. I for example now think that society's lack of genuine acceptance and support for people whose brains work very differently can among other things result in destructive behaviours for which the forensic psychology terminology is sadistic stalking or resentful stalking. My own experiences on the receiving end of something like this caused me to start looking into personality disorders and neurodiversity. That is how I stumbled upon bioethics. Seeing the massive inequality in England had something to do with it too. No, I don't have all the answers. Do you?
Jailed climate activist wins appeal against deportation from UK Marcus Decker was served with deportation order while in prison for unveiling Just Stop Oil banner over Dartford Crossing
Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent Mon 10 Nov 2025 18.48 CET
A climate activist who served one of the longest prison sentences in modern British history for a peaceful protest has won his appeal against deportation. Marcus Decker was jailed for two years and seven months for a protest in which he climbed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Dartford Crossing and unveiled a Just Stop Oil banner in October 2022. He was served with an automatic deportation order while in prison.
If he had been unsuccessful in his appeal, the 36-year-old German national would have been the first person to have been deported from the UK for peaceful protest.
This morning, Change.org sent me a petition that sounded as no more than an attack on the Portsmouth Lib Dems, but I’ve been in Portsmouth for enough years and in enough contexts to have learned to never take anything at face value there.
The petition was anonymous and contained no links.
As I am currently abroad, I can’t access the planning documents and the report received by Portsmouth City Council (PCC), but at first glance, from what I read on the web here and there, it sounds to me as if PCC made the right decision. If that is the case, however, then they are also being very sloppy in their communications, apparently. It’s ticking people off because they feel that they are being lied to.
Ah, so GVJ is chair of the planning committee these days. (Doesn’t that clash with his friendship with one of Portsmouth’s property owners/developers? I assume he doesn’t have the last word, though.)
I continue to have the impression that this is similar to non-issues that a lot of noise was made about while I was a member of the Portsmouth Environmental Forum (briefly, until it folded), but that PCC is being clumsy in its communications approach. I still can’t tell what exactly is going on.
Pool in Eastney will be demolished.
New facilities will be created at Bransbury Park.
End of discussion?
Did this pool have such a strong community role in Eastney? Is that what the noise is about? It’s been closed for 4 years. There occasionally is an overly strong emphasis on dust-covered history in Portsmouth and that is holding Portsmouth back but PCC is anything but innovative and tends to go for “more development” and for “bland and characterless”. Still, it does a lot better than Southampton.
I haven’t signed the petition yet. It sounds too much like sheer pettiness.
I’ve asked the protesters/petitioners to send me the planning documents and the report(s).
An automatic sense of gratitude will kick in whether they want it or not
It will distract them
Ya can’t fight when you’re eating
There is something REALLY WEIRD about then still wanting to fight. Something biological, perhaps? There is a big incongruence, a resistance. Is it some kind of postprandial effect?
Those around them should do what they can to keep them away, even lock them in their rooms if necessary.
The riots in 2011 didn’t surprise me as tension had been brewing for a long time, but they were far more spontaneous, and initially sparked by the police killing a black man.
For the record, Portsmouth remained quiet back then too. (Police officers were exhausted, though. All had been recalled.)
This, this seems to be very different beast. Or is that just my impression and incorrect?
Last time, I don’t think that politicians were whipping up division and the Conservatives hadn’t been in charge for over a decade yet.
There was a very small police presence only, in Portsmouth. There were verbal exchanges, and some apparently were ugly, but there was nothing else. Fairly peaceful, all in all.
7 August 2024: Oh! Looks like the current city council leader and I appear to be on the same page! (Or have I been led onto another goddamn a fake page on another goddamn mirror on that Portsmouth-based hacker’s computer once again?)
What happened in Southport is like what happened on a tram in Utrecht, the Netherlands, a few years ago. At the time, the BBC – regrettably – was quick to write about links to islamic terrorism but there were none. This was like a guy shouting that he wanted to defend the planet against unicorns from Mars while unfortunately shooting people at the same time.
When I was still stuck in Portsmouth and fed up with my locks getting picked all the time, one day (I think this was in 2022), I told a post office worker first and Gerald Vernon-Jackson next that I was going to start killing people if this didn’t stop. I didn’t mean that, obviously, but I was so desperate for someone to LISTEN to me and step up for me and I hoped that this would finally get people’s attention.
IT DID NOT.
When I volunteered in the Covid vaccination effort, I had no electricity and no hot water. The weather was cold.
When I worked in the COLD tent outside, where people had to wait after their jabs before they could leave, in case they had any instant adverse effects that needed medical intervention, I would go home after my shifts to a flat that was warm relative to the tent. That was nice.
(That requirement for people to have to wait before they could leave was dropped later.)
When I worked indoors, where it was light and warm, I would go back to a flat that would be freezing cold, by comparison. It was pretty miserable.
I barely had any food, too.
The people at the vaccination center had no idea.
When it was busy, volunteering there was great. Finally, after so many years of climbing the walls, I had something to do that kept me busy. Locals were amazed to discover that I was actually capable of telling people which door to go to. They didn’t think that I had that in me.
(They’d been telling each other that I was some kind of “retard” for so long, by then. Someone apparently started that rumor before I moved to Portsmouth and everyone seems to have believed it. After all, nobody knew me.)
As soon as there were more volunteers than patients, when the foreign volunteers had left (gone back to university, for example), bickering and boredom started kicking in. The volunteers were just standing around doing nothing, most of the time. Not my kind of thing.
Besides, I clearly was no longer needed.
There was a big rush to get the booster shots before the holidays, but that was over in January. Most people who stopped by then were asking for flu shots, not Covid jabs.
(Oh, wait, a few days ago, wasn’t Nigel Farage openly supporting the pretty extreme rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate? I will look this up.) (Yeah, Farage was defending him. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-andrew-tate-general-election-reform-b2566506.html Yikes. Farage is already responsible for a lot of violence against foreigners and now he is whipping up hatred against women even higher than it already is. He was very loud up to Brexit; then he disappeared. Went – of course – abroad. Now that he’s sniffed out an opportunity again, he suddenly pops up again, like a bad Boris imitation. Boris was often terribly offensive, but I don’t think that he’s ever openly promoted violence and physical abuse.) (Caused it? That’s a different question.)
(Now I really need something to cheer me up.)
I’m becoming increasingly a fan of Japanese culture. I understand why the Japanese are often offended by western tourists. How can they not be? I’d like to learn Japanese. I’ve toyed with Chinese some years ago, but I like Japanese better. If I can find a good use for it in my life, I will pursue it.
(Now I am finding myself watching The Italian Job, first.) (I’m also making a new course.)
(OMG. The Italian Job features a stripper called Angelina.)
19:00 I just bought a ton of chocolates to use in the new course that I am creating. I already shot at least 30 videos for it.
I couldn’t believe that they kept voting for the Conservatives for so long. This is local elections, but still, this is a landslide. I’ll need to catch up and digest this. (Also, will there be a general election soon?)Same paper, different browser…
Landlords, city councils, please, no more of this:
Don’t dump your rubbish on tenants. Don’t force tenants to enjoy their summer weekend barbecue surrounded by your rubbish. They can’t afford to have it removed for you.
And no more accidental pulling up of flowers sowed by tenants.
Sorry folks, I am not in the habit of “shopping” people but these entanglements are highly unethical, to say the least, and these folks can make your life a living hell. Below are some names and hints to warn you and possibly enable you to protect yourself.
So a woman just started talking to me about the FBI and the police and the CIA.
I saw the flash in her eyes when I told her that it’s good to pick one’s battles wisely.
Stop this insulting nonsense please. Don’t you get it? I want nothing to do with a place where it’s seen as normal that males empty buckets of water or urine over women and yell insulting slurs at them and feel it’s not done for a woman to have a profession that is not a traditional women’s job (or support herself at all).
I’ve experienced this nonsense with a stranger talking to me to see how I responded once before in this bizarre misogynistic shit show of a town. I said nothing about it back then. Why bother?
(Later I accidentally discovered where this came from. Then I understood. This place is such a cesspit. Unbelievable!)
Yes, I told this woman today that my name is Angie and that I’m a geologist. Why go into a lengthy explanation of my full professional background? Doesn’t mean that I have DID or whatever bullshit you’re going to cook up next, Portsmouth.
Local average IQ?
2.
Range 0 to 4 or thereabouts.
Yes, I look unwell. Very. That’s shame on YOU!
When I say I want my life back, I’m including my health. That is a thing that most people here don’t even get to experience.
All I have been doing in recent years was wait for the first occasion to get out of this hellhole and get my life back on its feet. Some of the rest was mostly camouflage, I suppose. I’m simply not the knitting and crocheting and embroidery and needlepoint type. I had to do more than that. Sorry if this offends your tender Victorian souls.
Holy cow, the misogyny here truly has no bounds. Yikes. 😬
I have met three or four smart and well functioning people during my time in Portsmouth. Two were working at the London Assembly (one of them calls himself a general factotum these days, last time I looked), one was a London-based barrister and one was a judge who liked cutting through crap. He called me a little feisty, legally speaking, made it a question. I replied “yes sir”. (Blame Clifford Chance, perhaps.) His name was Wilson, I think. These hardworking and efficient folks had no need to tell silly lies either.
You insult me, I throw it right back atcha, yes.
(I know how super sensitive Portsmouth is. That said, I am not making this up on the spot, about those three or four smart folks.)
This is something I’ve been fantasizing about for a long time. There are other solutions on this website that will help you light up dark homes and enable heat from the sun to enter in colder weather and help vent hot air overnight in hot weather.
Eco-Mate Sandalwood and Cedarwood Concentrated Non-Bio Laundry Liquid, Plant-based, 100% Biodegradable Paper Bottle & Contents, Vegan Friendly, Natural, Hypoallergenic, Plastic Free, Pack of 3 https://amzn.to/41d8G9K
Sounds fantastic! I love the fragrance of sandalwood and cedar. You too?
The health of millions of young people is already being ruined as a result of excessive inequality. This means that most of these young people will be in ill health when they get older. It is not the result of age, it is the result of poverty and deprivation.
The following too is something that is so vile, it’s hard to accept that this is not some kind of prank article. Children playing outdoors being considered an antisocial nuisance? We owe that to Tony Blair, by the way, and his bonkers class ideas. Labour is at times more Tory than the Tories.
As will be very obvious to anyone who stops by on this site regularly, I often sign petitions, for matters all over the world. This can involve the sending of e-mails. PETA petitions sometimes ask us to e-mail for example Fish & Wildlife people in the US.
UK petitions ask us to e-mail an MP; the e-mails are usually sent by the petition creators.
I actually stopped doing that because I was getting a bit fed up with the bland ducking exercises I often received in return. Occasionally, I still make an exception.
That said, yes, I also recall having written to the MPs’ office about a plan to start selling NHS patient data or making them available to an American company or something like that, something that the UK government tried to sneak past the public during the pandemic. I did that from my gmail address.
Anyway, they just explained to me that they don’t actually reply to e-mails but create new e-mails and they use e-mail addresses that they have on file.
That’s why. Good to know. Every explanation helps.
Also, I was out for hours on Monday, but I haven’t seen any signs yet that the locks got picked while I was out then. (Someone was in my computer when I got home, though; I had left it on but I didn’t need to log into it, which I normally have to do after 15 minutes of inactivity.)
I suspect that the lock-picking bullshit ended on or around 31 March.
Here’s why: as of Tuesday, they’ll no longer be able to pick my damn locks anyway, the vile, sadistic abusive piece(s) of shit. Like I said before: I’ve won. My mistake was fighting back, because that made it more fun for you to destroy things or thwart whatever I wanted to do anyway. When I stop fighting back or do the damage you want to cause before you can do it, I take away your motivation and leave you with nothing but empty hands. I learned that last year.
If he doesn’t, why is he apparently part of the vicious gang that has been targeting me and sabotaging my life for nearly 15 years now, after all?
I mean, where does his suddenly oh so openly fierce hate contempt for me come from?
It’s the same kind of ice-cold hatred that I have been getting for nearly 15 years now in this bizarre little island enclave where I didn’t even know anyone. It began as soon as I moved to this town.
Where on earth does it come from?
Why did Ashley last week feel that he no longer needed to hide his hatred contempt for me?
What is his relationship to that creepy Portsmouth City Council-employed woman who tried to talk me into taking my own life? I mean: WTF?!
Wtf is going on in this strange island community?
For Jane, who is only manager in name, not in reality. Shame on you, Cash Converters.
When I purchased that iPad from you at the end of 2016, Jane, that was because I urgently wanted to pay two young women who had done some work for me as part of a water management research project. It was nearly Christmas and I had promised them payment before Christmas, but I suddenly couldn’t go online anywhere any longer and other payment methods that I tried such as PayPal weren’t working out either. That iPad had a SIM card slot so it enabled me to go online.
When I returned that laptop that I had purchased from you, that was because it had already been hacked because it had been left on your shop shelves with wifi on and no protection. I figured that if I told you that, you might not want to reimburse me. Sorry. I had selected that laptop because it had no webcam; I had gotten fed up with hackers spying on me and always needing to make sure that cameras were facing wall/ceiling, in a ceramic jar or covered. (The iPad’s camera got accessed too, but I quite liked it. It had a really good camera and it was great for making nature videos. I took it to the Farlington Marshes one day.)
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.
(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.
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.
One of the problems with fighting crime and crap in Portsmouth is that everyone here never knows anything about anything or anyone. That makes it hard to tell whether you’re dealing with the usual abusive crap or with intimidation from a drugs gang. It’s impossible to tell.
The behaviors and effects are the same. The best response, however, may be different.
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.
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.
I’ve found myself agreeing with Mary Portas before, or rather, the other way around.
Since I moved from Amsterdam to England, I was very disappointed by two things:
That just about everyone here was lying all the time and saw nothing wrong with it
That many products I bought here were of horribly bad quality
John Lewis is a marked exception. I bought something there in 2005 that has weathered exceptionally well and is still going strong, and I had asked the advice of employees there but they refused to make me any promises whatsoever. They weren’t even willing to lie a little bit.
I think the British have seen so many valuable things collapse in the past decade or so that it is important for them to leave them something that they can still count on, and it sounds like leaving the structure of John Lewis has to be part of that.
I am not familiar with the company’s struggles but energy and real estate are bound to be a major factor. Its problems are likely similar to Debenhams which I have so hated to see go. What else is left?
We don’t need more Primarks.
John Lewis will likely need to make compromises, yes, but those have to be compromises that do not undermine what the company stands for.
John Lewis might learn a few things from TK Maxx, which does not seek prime real estate unlike John Lewis. John Lewis probably needs to relocate (some of) its stores and requires a good real estate scout who understands the company and its customers.
But I’m just guessing. I haven’t looked into the matter. It’s just that I would hate to see John Lewis succumb too.
For Dutch folks: in terms of shopping experience, Debenhams was and John Lewis is a bit like the Dutch De Bijenkorf stores (and also a little like Dutch V&D, which collapsed in 2015), but John Lewis is fully owned by its staff.
“The moment you antagonise your employees or sales people, your company is doomed to collapse. So, no matter how difficult it may be, always make sure that your employees remain protected and motivated.”
De Bijenkorf, too, used to look after its staff well and was a trendsetter in that area when I temped at its holding offices (while wrapping up my Master’s). I presume that they’ve managed to retain those company values over the years, but it’s currently owned by the Selfridges Group.
That’s what I got on my screen just now. The text continued as follows.
I’ve just found out I was included in a government Mis/Disinformation Report for sharing a petition from the official Parliamentary petitions website.
And it’s clear that I’m not the only one.
Big Brother Watch research has found that secretive government units have been monitoring and recording criticism of the Government on social media. Politicians, academics, campaigners, journalists and even members of the public have been subjected to monitoring by Whitehall officials, and an “information warfare machine” in the British Army. Worryingly, many of these units have a special relationship with social media companies which gives them powers to force the censorship of online speech. The government’s Counter Disinformation Unit censors and monitors dissent, not disinformation, without due process or transparency. It should be shut down.
The Counter Disinformation Unit has overstepped the mark. Whilst the public think they’re fighting disinformation from hostile foreign states, Big Brother Watch’s investigation reveals that they’re acting just like those authoritarian states by monitoring campaigners, experts, journalists and MPs who post unflattering information about them. Monitoring critics and suppressing dissent only harms our democracy.
Government units are working in the shadows to keep tabs on people like you and me.
I am very likely to be in this database too, then.
It might explain the odd behaviors I’ve gotten from UK customs officials on my most recent two returns from abroad. They clearly had information about me in a database that they looked at and one of them added information to it. The other one tauntingly held on to my passport when he reached out to give it back to me. Pretending that he was going to confiscate it?
Before I moved to the UK, I had gotten highly used to living in a democracy.
I predicted that folks would start skipping Great Britain, and would go straight to Ireland and vice versa. I also said that old-fashioned smuggling might start up again if (when) some products in Great Britain became too hard to get or too expensive.
450 million wasted on Brexit check facilities that are largely sitting unused and continue to cost the UK tax payer money
Police forces that are basically misogynystic and racist crime gangs
Only 350 of the 900 seats filled on the Eurostar these days
UK businesses relocating to other countries or collapsing because they can no longer export their products or because they have trouble importing what they need
But I’m the one who tends to be seen as learning-disabled, slow, not all there, feeble-minded, senile, delusional about my education and capabilities and god knows what else by the types of folks who achieved the above.
My life is often dominated by immense anger these days. I want my goddamn life back. My European/American, largely immensely non-English and certainly pre-Portsmouth life. My rich, active, purposeful and often joyful life.
I want the full use of e-mail and text and of the full internet back. I want to have the use of telephony at my disposal again.
Here in Portsmouth, that’s considered an outrageous demand from a cranky old woman who has the audacity to refuse to be a damn doormat for English men, refuses to sit in a corner and knit hats – and what not. It’s despicable. It’s utterly despicable.
