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Joined October 2021
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- Following4.9K
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just got off the phone with my university friend.
His daughter was diagnosed with leukemia in March.
He has insurance. Good insurance. The kind you feel safe having.
5 months later:
Savings wiped out. 401k: cashed early. Penalties and all. House: refinanced to cover the gaps insurance decided weren't their problem.
He told me he's not the same person anymore.
Said watching your child fight for her life while simultaneously fighting an insurance company over coverage codes does something to you that doesn't go away.
They did everything right.
Two incomes. No debt. Responsible their whole lives.
One diagnosis all of it in 7 months.
And somewhere a health insurance CEO is getting $35 million bonus this quarter.
I don't know how people defend this system with a straight face.
i really don't.
myshkin retweeted
It’s not a “special landmark”.
It’s a place of worship.
Built to celebrate Christ.
And treating it like a nightclub is completely wrong.
Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.
Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8z…
myshkin retweeted
Replies turned off! Coward. So when are they opening up the mosques for discos ?
Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.
Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8z…
myshkin retweeted
Word has just come down that St. Paul’s Cathedral in London—the second most important church in the Anglican world—has imitated Canterbury Cathedral in permitting “raves,” nightclub-like entertainments, to take place in its confines.
The usual reasons for acquiescing to this have been trotted out: reaching out to the young, trying to get with the times, etc. But this development simply shows that the leadership of the Church of England has lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and the secular.
Across the centuries and across the cultures, our ancestors seem to have intuitively grasped the importance of this demarcation. Whereas the secular is the arena of ordinary experience and activity, the sacred is another realm, a different dimension.
Accordingly, in the properly sacred space, one is lifted out of the conventional and introduced into the numinous. This is why Christian cathedrals are filled with images of the saints and angels and why their interiors are meant first to disorient us and then to reorient us toward the divine.
It is also why, in the initiation rituals of primal peoples, a young person is purposely ripped out of the ordinary and introduced into the mythic and mystic dimension. And it is why, throughout the Bible, sacred spaces are carefully set apart from common spaces.
The contemporary West is, quite literally, the first culture in human history that is in danger of collapsing the sacred into the secular, or better, losing any sense of the difference between the two.
This is doing enormous damage, especially to young people, whose lives have been flattened into a preoccupation with money, worldly success, and material things.
The Church indeed should go out into the secular space to find those who have wandered away from God, but it should then lead those wanderers back to the holy.
Having “raves” in the nave of one of the most sacred spaces in the Christian world is, I’m sad to say, another sign of our pitiful surrender to ideological secularism.
myshkin retweeted
If you’re going to wear a suit. Wear fucking dress shoes.
I’m so sick of this fag-fad of wearing sneakers with suits.
how can we name one when comments are restricted. anyways this is an affront.
Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.
Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8z…
myshkin retweeted
People keep pointing out that this is inappropriate because a cathedral is a place of worship.
But it is also inappropriate because it is a tomb.
Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.
Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8z…
myshkin retweeted
If nothing is sacred, everything is for hire.
St Paul’s Cathedral just signed a four-year deal with nightclub Fabric to put DJs under Wren’s dome.
Nelson is buried in the crypt. Wellington too. This is where a nation buried its dead and thanked God it still had a country.
They say the shows are “seated.” They say it’s “engagement.” The Queen’s former chaplain called it apostasy. Nelson’s family called it an insult to his memory.
A church that rents the nave to a club that once lost its license after teenagers died on the premises is not “reaching a new audience.” It is admitting it no longer knows what the building is for.
myshkin retweeted
A Hero That Trusted His Intuition.
The problem wasn’t that Morgan Stanley didn’t believe him.
Rick Rescorla had already been right once. After the 1993 basement bombing of the World Trade Center, the firm’s security chief walked the towers, studied the site, and reached a conclusion most people preferred not to hear: the World Trade Center was still a target. Next time, he said, it would not be a truck. It would be an airplane.
An airplane. In a 1993 report.
Executives listened. Then they looked at the lease.
Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the complex—twenty-two floors of the South Tower, thousands of brokers, and a trading infrastructure that could not be packed into boxes and wheeled across the Hudson.
They literally made it a trading center.
The contract with the Port Authority ran until 2006. Walking away from premium Manhattan space of that scale would have meant penalties measured in the hundreds of millions, plus the operational chaos of relocating an entire downtown machine. So the company stayed.
Rescorla adjusted. If they could not leave the building, they would learn to escape it.
He built a protocol and treated it like doctrine. Unannounced drills. No exemptions. Brokers who billed by the minute were pulled off their desks and sent into the stairwells two by two, starting from the top floors, leaving a lane for firefighters coming the other way.
People complained. He did not care. Practice, he believed, was the only thing that would beat panic.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. From the 44th floor of the South Tower, Rescorla could see the fire. Then the Port Authority came over the speakers: the South Tower was secure. Stay at your desks.
Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn and ignored them.
He started the drill his people already knew by heart. Floor by floor, two by two, down the stairs. He sang as he moved—Cornish songs from childhood, then “God Bless America”—keeping the line moving, refusing to let the stairwell become a stampede. Seventeen minutes later, the second plane struck the South Tower.
By then, most of Morgan Stanley was already on the way out.
Of the 2,687 employees in the building that morning, all but 13 survived.
It was stunning.
Rescorla could have been outside with them. He went back up instead. Colleagues told him to leave. He said he would, as soon as he was sure no one was left behind.
He was last seen around the 10th floor, heading higher.
The South Tower fell at 9:59 a.m. They never found him.
He was one of the 13.
He was a hero in every sense of the word.
Remember Rick Rescorla, he remembered for us.
myshkin retweeted
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MIDWIVES DARE GO AGAINST THE NHS?
19 September 2017 — Qualified as a midwife.
21 October 2021 — Raised my first formal grievance.
2021–2022 — Raised a further three grievances.
7 February 2024 — Resigned after years of raising concerns.
March 2024 — Threatened by a Director that “whistleblowers go missing.”
March 2024 — Publicly accused of killing a baby. I did not kill that baby.
April 2024 — Further defamatory statements made about me killing a baby,
June 2024 — GDPR/data protection breach by University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.
July 2024 — Malicious referral made about me to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
July 2024 — Received threatening legal correspondence from Bevan Brittan solicitors.
February 2025 — Further defamation re killing a baby.
February 2025 — Devon and Cornwall Police attended my home following an accusation of harassment. I categorically deny that I harassed anyone.
March 2025 — High Court defamation proceedings.
Aug 2025 — High Court proceedings concerning the GDPR/data protection breach.
November 2025 — A colleague was referred to the NMC. I was named within that referral and defamed again. By the same individual as my previous NMC referral.
I qualified to care for women and babies.
I raised concerns because that was my professional duty.
LOOK AT WHAT FOLLOWED.
Grievances.
Resignation.
Threats.
Defamation.
Regulatory referrals.
Solicitors’ letters.
A data breach.
Police at my home.
Damage to my career and professional reputation.
Years spent chasing documents, evidence and answers.
And now — the High Court.
People constantly ask:
“WHY DON’T NHS STAFF SPEAK OUT?”
Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.
WHAT HAPPENS TO NHS STAFF WHO DO SPEAK OUT?
What message does this send to the next nurse, midwife, doctor or healthcare professional who witnesses something they believe is unsafe?
Stay quiet and protect yourself?
Or speak up and risk everything?
I chose to speak.
I will not be frightened into silence.
Every document.
Every referral.
Every letter.
Every statement.
Every piece of evidence.
LET THE COURTS SEE IT.
This is bigger than me.
Whistleblowers must be able to raise concerns without fearing the destruction of their careers, livelihoods and reputations for daring to speak. @ArturNadol7566 @KenZeroHarm @YvetteCooperMP @andyburnham @Simonekatz4tay @BarbarasBack
myshkin retweeted
The Dover Protest: Observations
This being my neck of the woods, I thought I’d take a trip down to see what all the fuss is about.
In fact, I can’t get anywhere near the seafront because of the extensive road closures, so I’m having to rely largely on the imagery available online.
Several things stand out.
Firstly, the tactics.
Whatever the adequacy of the police intelligence beforehand, the protest itself appears to involve considerable planning. The logistics, coordination and timing look extremely well organised.
Then there is the demeanour of the protesters. Almost silent. Non-violent. Disciplined.
Their clothing is coordinated and remarkably uniform. I use the term “uniform” deliberately.
The near-universal face covering also frustrates identification and subsequent intelligence gathering. Whether that is its principal purpose or not, it is certainly the effect.
Most strikingly, there is a conspicuous absence of the nationalist imagery normally associated with protests of this kind. Few, if any, English flags. Instead, there is a preponderance of Christian symbolism.
This creates the impression of something framed less as a conventional “far-right” demonstration and more as a cultural and spiritual show of strength.
We should be careful about claiming to know precisely who is organising it, or what every participant believes. But we should be equally careful not to dismiss what is plainly being communicated.
These men are angry. Really, deeply angry. They appear disciplined, organised and intent on demonstrating both their frustration and their strength.
Whatever one thinks of them, that is the significant point. This does not look spontaneous, chaotic or unserious.
It looks deliberate.
And it would be foolish not to ask what comes next.
